Free Candlemoth by R. J. Ellory Page B

it should have
been all along. We were the universal family, and there was no difference, and
no separate language, and we all breathed the same air and ate the same food and
shared the same grief.
        It
was a day that went on forever, and I still believe now, in my heart of hearts,
that we all carried a little of that day for the rest of our lives.
        
          
        In
December of 1963 my father had a stroke. He would live for another year, a
little more, but he would never fully recover his speech. My mother was an
anchor, a tower of strength for both him and myself, and without her I believe
he would have died much sooner. The Carolina Company gave him an allowance, a
generous one for all the years he'd served, and even after he died they
continued to pay that allowance to my mother. She went through the motions for
another handful of years, but she was never the same. The spirit that was my
mother had left with her husband, and even as she spoke, even as she helped me
deal with the difficulties I would later experience, I could see so clearly her
pain, her loss, her longing to be once again beside him in whatever hereafter
may exist. Almost as if she was merely awaiting my permission, some sign of my
own independence to surface so she could let go. Let go in the knowledge that I
could care for myself.
        I
think it was in that year that I ceased to be a child and started to become a
man. Nathan went with me on that awkward painful journey into adulthood. I
seemed to strain at the leashes of the past: those lost summer days where we
sat at the edge of Lake Marion with string and bamboo and mischievous thoughts.
The County Fair. The football field. The smell of summer mimosa down Nine Mile
Road. And Caroline Lanafeuille, heart of my heart, soul of my soul, light of my
life and star of my heaven.
        I was
approaching my eighteenth birthday, talk of the situation in Vietnam
became ever more prevalent, and Nathan Verney and I sensed trouble on its way.
    ----
        

Chapter Five
        
        Today
is Thursday.
        Today
we eat creamed beef on toast. Shit on a shingle they call it, and though shit
on a shingle is something I cannot recall eating before, creamed beef on toast
is a good enough approximation.
        While
I eat Mr. Timmons speaks to me. He tells me a minister will come down to talk
to me today. It is part of the process. Learning how to die I think.
        Mr.
Timmons tells me his wife has been admitted to North Carolina State Hospital.
She has deep vein thrombosis. He tells me she carries too much weight for her
height. He is worried. I feel his worry but there is little I can say. I can
tell that he loves her dearly, and much as my own mother found it difficult to
continue without my father, so Mr. Timmons will find it difficult if his wife
dies. I honestly hope she will recover. Mr. Timmons deals with enough death
already.
        The
minister I will meet. I will speak with him. I will listen to what he has to
say. Personally I think we keep coming back 'til we get it right. I don't believe
in Heaven, and Hell would be so crowded I don't think such a place could exist.
The minister will challenge me, tell me that I have to have faith, the
implication being that I have none.
        I do
have faith.
        I
have faith in the truth.
        I have
faith that the sun will rise and set.
        I
have faith that the spirit of Nathan Verney lives and breathes and walks the
world, and one day I will meet him.
        I
have faith in the fact that I am going to die.
        I
recall something then, something that occurred soon after Kennedy's death, and
even as Mr. Timmons returns to his duties I see Nathan's face once more.
        I
close my eyes.
        For
some reason I feel calm inside.
        The
world seems silent, patient perhaps, as if time is being afforded me to reminisce,
to address my own life, to make some sense of it all before it is