SR kicked a small rock lying in the gutter. He was getting closer to home now, but was beginning to curse the fact that he'd passed up the chance to take the bus from the walking streets. Foxes, unlike wolves, are not made to be great distance travelers. He paused, sitting on the curb to rest his aching feet. At this point, he wasn't sure if it was a good thing that he'd ended up with the plantigrade variety, instead of the digitigrade that were more natural for the vulpine form. Sighing, he leaned back to look up at the gibbous moon overhead. She gazed complacently back. SR took a deep breath, then stood on his feet again. It was time to continue the journey. "So, how have things been going at school lately?" George smiled across the table at the older of his sons. SR looked up from the cold turkey he had been idly pushing around on his plate. "Huh? Oh... fine. Circuits is a pain in the rear, but I suppose that's just the sort of class that it is." That seemed to satisfy the patriarch, and the family continued to eat the leftovers of Thanksgiving dinner with little sound but the tinkling of flatware on ceramic plates. It was nearly the end of the fall recess. So far, SR had made it through five long days under his parents' roof. Tomorrow he would be returning to the company of his friends. After dinner, SR helped clean up the dishes, then announced his intention to hit the sack early so that he could get on the road and make the three-hundred mile trip back to school before the heavy traffic from people returning from the holiday made the trip slow and dangerous. As he was making his way to the stairwell to go to his room in the second story, however, his father asked to have a quick word with him in his office. SR began to worry. Sitting down in his usual chair, SR clasped his hands nervously and stared across the mahogany desk into his father's grey eyes. After about thirty seconds of uncomfortable silence, SR smiled and tilted his head slightly upward. "Um... Dad? I do believe it was you who called this meeting. What's up?" George frowned, leaning back in his chair. "Well, SR, I kind of hoped you'd be the one to tell me what is up. I waited all week for you to approach me, but since this is the last opportunity we'll have to talk before you go back to school tomorrow, and because I love you, I decided to approach you." SR's stomach fell through the floor: His father knew. "Uh... what are you talking about?" George shifted in his seat again. "I got a call from Pastor Jacobsen from the congregation you go to up at the University. He seemed pretty worried about you. He said you hadn't been to church in over two months and that you weren't participating in any of the church's activities." SR did his best to keep the panic that he felt from showing itself on his face. "Oh... yeah." He cleared his throat and looked at the carpet. George leaned forward over his desk. "Do you want to tell me about it?" SR shot a glance at his father, then returned his gaze to the floor. "What's there to tell?" "Well, how about you start with the group of SCABS you've been keeping company with?" "Oh yeah. They're some people who used to live on my hall. We sometimes get together for dinner and a movie." George waited to speak until he was sure SR wasn't going to offer any more information. "How long has this been going on?" Although SR certainly wasn't keen on the idea of confessing everything to his father, he believed in honesty: He wasn't going to lie to him. "You know when I got back from my mission, almost a year ago? I ran into Chad Beasly a little while after that and we've sort of been a group ever since." George suddenly looked ten years older. Closing his eyes, he removed the glasses from his face and began to rub the bridge of his nose slowly. He set the glasses on the top of his immaculate desk, breathing deeply and tightening the muscles in his jaw. Eyes still closed, he said, "SR, what are you doing?" SR shook his head slowly, responding to his father's anger in kind. "Look, in case you didn't notice, I am old enough to make my own decisions. I don't see how any of this has to do with you." George's eyes shot open. "To do with me?" he began with mounting volume, "Do you really think I enjoy seeing my son walk the path that leads straight to hell?" "Jesus!" SR muttered. George sprang to his feet. "You watch your mouth!" SR shook his head and looked out the window, lips tightly pursed. Eventually George calmed enough to resume his position in the leather chair behind his desk. Crossing his arms, he took a deep breath and continued. "SR, this has got to stop." SR looked straight at his father. "Why?" "You know why! You spent two years preaching about it in Germany. Have you forgotten everything you learned?" SR slouched in his chair and returned his gaze outside. "Maybe just the things that were wrong." George paused for a moment, considering how to proceed. "Son, do you believe in God?" SR smirked. Almost inaudibly he said, "Father, if Jesus exists, then how come he never lived here?" Startled, George sat up. "What?" Still with a half-smile glued offensively to his face, SR responded, "It's a song..." George interrupted. "I know that. I used to like Sting, too. What did you mean by it?" This, in turn, caught SR off-guard. He blinked, shaking his head and returning his gaze to the floor. "I guess... I mean, Christ came to this earth to preach about love and forgiveness, yet all I ever see is hatred and spite for SCABS. It seems to me that we're missing the mark." George sighed. "SR, that's not the only thing Christ came to the earth to preach. He also spent a good deal of his time talking about heaven and what it takes to get there." He frowned. "But since you seem to be interested in marks..." George reached for the drawer in his desk and pulled out his Bible, replacing the glasses on his face. I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. ... For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things. During the subsequent pause, SR spoke up: "But didn't Christ say that he came not to the world to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance?" George looked up, still leaning over the tome. "Are you saving them or joining them?" SR had no response to that: He'd been caught in the hypocrisy of his own words, implying that his friends were sinners. George began to flip to another passage, but before he had gotten there, SR rolled his eyes and stated loudly, "Dad, if there's anything I learned during those two years, it's that you can make that book say whatever you want it to say." His father sat and looked up at SR through the glasses perched on his nose. Closing the book with one hand, he leaned back into his great leather chair. "All right, then. Why do you think that we should be tolerant of SCABS?" SR took a deep breath. "Because they deserve it. I mean, they're people, too! They have feelings and souls, just like the rest of us!" "So do the damned sinners in hell." SR stood up angrily. "You know, in all my years I've never been able to understand how you can think that they'll be doomed to eternal torment! You say they get SCABS because they want it! I say bullshit! Nobody could want that! Why do you hate them so much? I mean, they never did anything to you!" Suddenly, the anger disappeared from George's countenance, and he closed his eyes. For nearly a minute, he sat that way, breathing long, heavy breaths. At last, SR still on the verge of rage and George still with his eyes closed, George spoke, whispering. "SR, please sit down." Under any other circumstance, SR would have once again lashed out in anger. But as he heard the tremble in his fathers voice, and saw the ghostly expression on his face, he was overcome with awe, and took his seat. His father wasn't a man to show tender feelings very often. At last, George opened his eyes. They glistened with tears. In a trembling voice, he said, "I know you don't believe that SCABS are getting what they deserve. From the time I caught you in the front room when you were three years old-- the time you had gotten hold of a permanent marker and painted yourself to look like your zebra-morph preschool teacher-- I knew you would have a hard time believing." SR remained silently attentive. George went on, "I've tried to teach you with the Lord's words-- words that have supported me like the bones in my body when I have had times of tribulation. But despite all my efforts, I've been unable to pull away the darkness that has hold on your heart." George looked up, directly into SR's eyes. He whispered, "Satan wants your soul in the worst way." SR was too stunned to react. George closed his eyes again. "You may not believe this, but both Janice and I have had the Martian Flu. We survived unscathed." The pastor opened his eyes. "But your mother didn't." SR's mind reeled. Of all the topics not to be discussed under the Foxleys' roof, this was the most taboo. SR knew that he wasn't Janice's literal offspring: He was born to George Foxley and another woman, Teresa, who was George's first wife, and who had-- according to what SR had been able to pick up-- died a few months after SR's birth. George married Janice about a year later. There was pleading in George's voice. "SR, I'm sorry that I never told you what happened to her before. Please forgive me." SR swallowed with a dry throat and nodded. George reached for the lowest drawer on the right side of his desk. From this receptacle he retrieved a worn piece of paper and what looked like a small, simply framed paining. "About three months after you were born, when Teresa was going through the worst of the after-baby blues, she made some SCAB friends who belonged to a radical religious sect. For weeks, I pleaded with her, but she decided to join them anyway. Laws were different in those days, and people still hadn't figured out how to react to SCABS and the Martian Flu." He held the paper out for SR, who leaned forward and took hold of it. George spoke. "About the middle of May, she wrote this." The letter was brief, and outlined her feelings of divine inspiration that she should move to a small camp in Montana with this group of SCABS. It seemed almost disjointed-- as if the author had trouble completing her sentences and thinking logically. On the bottom, the name "Teresa Foxley" was spelled out in great, flowing letters. SR looked up to ask a question, but stopped short as soon as he saw his father. George was holding the small painting in both hands, the back facing SR. His entire frame was quivering slightly as he attempted to control his emotions, cheeks wet with tears. At last he opened his mouth an drew in a great, shuddering breath. He looked up and saw his wide-eyed son staring unabashedly back. He turned the painting around. It was one of the older, impressionistic kind depicting a woman in a yellow dress, rowing a boat among great waves on the sea. The coloration was dark, giving the scene the feeling that it was night. George spoke. "Every time I look at this painting, I am reminded that we're like the woman in the boat, riding the stormy waters, and that there is only One who can guide us safely through to the island of God's paradise." He stood, knees and hips trembling, and stumbled around the great desk. "Two days after she wrote that, she contracted the Flu. Doctors confirmed her death about a month later." Again, he held the painting in both hands and spoke without raising his eyes from its soft colors. "I loved her.... I still love her. He looked as if he were about to lose control again, and closed his eyes, prompting another stream of crystal water to streak down from each eye. Eventually, he opened his tired eyes and stared directly into SR's. "Would you... would you like to keep... her?" By this time, SR was too emotionally overloaded to register the feelings of shock he should have had at that last statement. His cheeks were wet with his own tender feelings. He swallowed and gingerly took his mother in his trembling left hand, never taking his eyes from his father's. At last, George broke the gaze. He was an empty shell. He stood with both arms held slightly away from his body, shoulders slumped in defeat. His own body quaking, SR stood and gripped his father in a tight embrace. Between sobs, he managed to say, "I'm sorry, Dad. I didn't know. I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I'm sorry..." "Oh son," his father began, returning the hug, "I don't shun people who are SCABS because I hate them. I love them! I shun them because I love and have hope for the people who aren't SCABS. I don't want to lose you." This was the first and last time that SR ever remembered hearing his father refer to SCABS as people. They remained that way for several minutes, tightly gripping each other and rocking from side to side. Outside, SR's little brother was playing "Be Still, My Soul" on the family piano. Copyright © 1998 by SR Foxley. All rights reserved. Please contact the author if you have questions regarding the publication of this document.
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