Free My Father Before Me by Chris Forhan Page B

Grant—was alive after all. A decade before, his sibling, Sister Dolorita, had stretched the truth about his being in the grave; he had only acted as though he were. Now Nat had tracked down his son. For what reason? Purposefully or not, he had waited, conveniently, until my father was of age—that is, no longer a legal dependent of Nat’s—to inform him that he was still among the living.
    Ed agreed to meet him, and he would do it alone. If my father felt any particular emotion about the prospect of seeing him—anxiety, anguish, irritation, curiosity, anger—he did not show it to my mother. He just went, taking the short walk north to the Duchess Tavern, a popular haunt for university students, where father and son had arranged to reunite. At home, Ange waited for his return.
    Only recently, I have unearthed photos of Nat from around the time he reunited with my father. He is in his forties but looks sixty. In one, he stands in a front yard with a few of his siblings. His brothers are dressed informally, in white T-shirts and narrow suspenders, while Nat, hair graying, wears a dark double-breasted suit and tie. He stands with arms folded across his chest, squinting into the brilliant sunlight. He might be the relative just in from out of town, the one who long ago hopped a train, made his fortune, and knows not to talk too much about it.
    In another picture, posing again with siblings and their spouses, he stands slightly stooped and stiff-legged, as if favoring an old battle injury. In a suit coat and tie, he stands to one side, slightly apart from the others, his hands behind his back. He looks almost not there, ready to be cropped out.
    For almost the entirety of my father’s life, Nat had been a phantom, one whom it was bad luck to mention. Ed had seen him in his mind’s eye only. Now he would see him in the flesh. What had he come to ask, or to offer? An explanation, perhaps. But what explanation would satisfy? What would a man say who had forsaken his son?
    Maybe he’d had no choice. Renowned detective that he was, he had been called in to lead the search for Lindberg’s baby. He had fought with the Spanish loyalists; had served as a leader in the French Resistance; had, with a cocked revolver, gotten within six feet of Hitler, but the trigger had jammed; had helped plan the landing at Normandy; had toiled shoulder to shoulder with Gandhi; had piloted a cargo plane during the Berlin airlift.
    Or no. Intensely desiring a life for his children more prosperous than his, he had shipped off to Sierra Leone for some secret dealings, none of them shady, had traveled to Singapore, to Shanghai, to Santiago, for years and years, keeping only pocket money for himself, slipping all other profits into a suitcase—this one. Open it, son, plunge your hands in, those are gold coins, all of them, and all for you .
    Or he’d been imprisoned on a bum rap. It wasn’t his knife. He hardly knew the man. Dodging the searchlights, he’d clambered over the prison wall, slicing his palms and shins on the barbed wire, spent twenty years undercover, seeking the real killer. I’ve found him, it’s settled now, I’m a free man, free at last to be the father I couldn’t have been to you before.
    Or he was sorry, so sorry he could hardly speak of it. No man had been as selfish as he, as thoughtless, as heartless. But he had changed. He understood. He wanted to speak now of the past, of Bernadine, of his fierce, undying love for Ed and for his two other sons ( Skippy! Poor boy! ). He could not make it up to them, he knew—oh, how he knew— but son, please, son, I am on my knees, hands clasped before me. Let us begin again, take me back, take me back, though I am an unworthy thing deserving only of your contempt .
    Or Nat had no time to explain himself. Ed entered the tavern, looked once into his father’s conniving eyes, and socked him in the jaw. Decked him, stalked