In Search of Joshua King

Ch1.

The once empty and see-through pint glass is now full with a dark, velvety, ruby, red liquid. The drink starts to chill the pint glass within my hand and the dark liquid within it weighs it down and anchors its smooth body on top of the cherry wood bar. The bar top has a new polish on it, which steals the light from the bulbs that hang high above the bar in the warehouse-looking ceiling and try to vanish the scratches and pokes in the wood that are scars left by too many people who were looking for too much salvation in a false wooden idol.

See the reality, or the existence of God, is a myth used to placate a society of sheep who are too stupid to understand that their Catholic school upbringing or churchgoing was all about control. Control just to keep them down in this world so they would have to look to a false idol for salvation. It is false salvation, but a salvation nonetheless that they are made to believe that they need. You’re one of the oppressed and you can’t even see it.

My ears almost explode as they find the idiot in the bar who just read a piece in The New York Times, or heard an enlightening philosophical lecture, and now he has to let everyone know just how smart he thinks he is and how dumb everyone else is. A guy who wears tight black jeans, because that’s the style, but in a year he will have baggy parachute pants on because that’s the new style—he’s a nobody, he’s a follower of trends with no real mind of his own. He’s a guy who wears a fedora hat that was bought at a second-hand store because, that’s what’s cool and different, man. He’s a guy who wears T-shirts with slogans on them like, Celebrity Beer Pong Champ and South Carolina Gamecocks Baseball. And the only reason he wears the Gamecocks shirt is because it has cocks in the name and this is ironically funny to him. But has he ever felt the stitches of a 90mph fastball leaving the imprint of the ball on his skin, letting everyone know that he gave all he could for his team? Fuck, no! He’s a guy who has zero substance, but he still lets you know that he would rather steal everyone else’s than get some of his own.

The pint glass in front of me slides easily on top of the glossy bar top, as I pass it between my hands watching the black liquid sway over itself, not in a wave crashing manner, but in a gentle-hammock-nap inducing kind of sway. It leaves a little skeletal residue at the top of the glass and then starts to rest back down, sliding on the sides of the pint before I make a river stream rush out of it and down the back of my throat. The liquid can be felt all throughout my body. It starts at the back of my tongue and down my throat, making me gag as it rushes down, but I relax and let it flow through my chest and into my stomach. I let it take hold over me and it allows me to open my eyes once again and safely put the pint back down onto the wooden bar without a single noise.

I love you.

I love you, too.

A woman with a purple crocheted winter hat sits with her legs crossed and faces a man wearing a black sweater that only allows the collar of a white shirt to breathe above the wool. Both are staring into each other’s eyes while they molest their pint glasses not knowing what to do with their hands after sharing such an intimate moment in such a public place.

They get close enough for their knees to meet and give off the sensation of a human touch that allows them to stay shy, but connected without their hands ever having to touch. They take a drink from their glasses. She takes tiny sips that only allow her lips to part paper thin, and he takes a quick gulp, but not too big of gulp because he’s not ready to show any flaws he might have. With their drinks in hand, they never tilt their heads back, they never close their eyes, and they never lose contact with each other. Instead, they allow their necks to stretch downward until they feel the smooth glass that is being guided by their shy hands between their lips. With their glasses back in their laps and their hands around them, they never remove their knees from one another or their eyes from the sight of each other and they never utter another word.

The gagging feeling hits my throat again as I empty the remains of my glass down into my body, as white cream-colored scars leave their mark on the inside of the glass. I place the pint down in front of me, sliding it like a hockey puck on ice toward the edge of the bar, where the bartender will see it and fill me up again, and again, and God willing, again.

A girl with fingernails that just reach over the tops of her pink fleshy fingers grasp my empty glass and pulls it toward her. She has black, shoulder-length hair that looks like broom bristles over the tops of her shoulders. She walks toward the silver spout to pour me another drink. She never has to utter a word to me. A slow nod of my head answers a question she never got the chance to ask me.

Her body walks away from me and toward the middle of the long wooden bar where all the liquid forget-me-nots are housed. She walks with her shoulders back and upright as my eyes search over her body. I try to use the part of my orbital to turn on the x-ray machine in my eyes and see through her pesky clothes that are clinging to her small areas. My eyes remain fixated on her short-but-neck- stretching walk.

A rush of cold air makes its way to my arms and knees simultaneously and reminds me that I have liters of black liquid to go before I get to where I am heading. The cool air pushes by me and runs up to the fire that is burning behind the two shy lovers that have still refused to remove their knees from each other. It punches the fire backward, showing its dark center that is holding its life together before the orange-yellow flames rush over it and extinguish the black before it can completely take over. The cool air is shut out by the closing of the thick, wood-framed front door by two girls looking to find their way toward the bar, and they are introduced to everyone with the creaking of their steps on the wooden floor. Their steps sound like snappers on the Fourth of July, with only little pops that never bang or erupt on top of the singing boards.

The bartender appears in front of me with a newly poured pint glass for me to attack and devour once she has released it from her pink grip. Her black hair is swept to the side, showing a small bead of perspiration at the edge of her black hairline. Her lips are thin and pink with glitter that shimmers in different spots, depending on where the light from above decides to shine. The corners of her mouth are raised upward and form a small t as she puts on a small smile for me, while sliding the pint toward my open right hand, and awaiting payment for the drink and for the smile.

With green bills in her hand, she walks toward the end of the bar to another soul sitting at the bar whose face is hidden behind the taps of those wonderful forget-me-nots. Her walk is the same as last time, with me trying to get the x-ray eyes to work again, but as she leaves a scent of hers lowers down around me, tearing my eyes a little and filling my nose with the smell of birthday cake.

"Cold, cold water surrounds me now

And all I’ve got is your hand."

—Damien Rice, Coldwater

A dent caving the hood in and a scrape across the front windshield made driving difficult for the master driver behind the black steering wheel. Some chipped paint off the rocker panel exposed the gray steel under the Ferrari’s red paint—my hand gently guided my favorite toy car over the yellow, Labrador-colored wood slates in my mother’s bedroom. It made a rrrooaarrr before it stopped at the edge of the wood and needed to turn away from the brown rug, which I would need a 4x4 to get through. The car was the envy of every black-dot-eyed LEGO citizen in his frozen cityscape, and even G.I. JOE had to turn his head to look at the car as it passed by. A belch of hot air rushed up from the basement below and seeped its way through the white painted vents that sat in the wall behind me, as I whirled myself around in a circle while trying to break some kind of speed record with my toy car.

I played on the wooden floor without a care in the world, waiting for a birthday to begin where I might get a racing partner for my Ferrari and a cake that would hurt with a sugary shock against my teeth that only a kid would want to feel. Hurt at that moment was pain over my kneecaps because I was kneeling on them for so long on the wooden slates and having to switch to sit Indian style just to give them some relief. Hurt were skinned elbows and slivers that would only come out with the use of a pair of tweezers. All I really knew was how it felt when I put my arms around my dog, or how I played catch with my brother, or how my mother hugged me and I knew she would never let me hurt.

The Ferrari found a nice patch of golden road to rrrroooaaarrr down again, as it started to speed over the slates, not slowing down to let envious eyes look at it, when a static noise came over the car radio. The golden road started to shake and the car had trouble keeping a straight line and it had to keep pulling over to the side of the road near the rugged rug. The radio only played what sounded like two dogs squaring off in a fight that would eventually find one dead and bloodied. The car wanted to fly down the road as quickly as possible to get away from the nightmare, but its tires were caught in the Labrador-yellow quicksand.

The Ferrari finally gave up, resting silently as my hand slipped its guiding way from it. I raised my head upward and caught a streak of sun in my eyes that flamed out from the window behind a man who stood taller than six feet with jet-black hair and a bushy beard that hid his face, making his true face unrecognizable to me.

HE stood in front of my mother, not as a husband or father anymore, but as a deranged evil madman who had black lifeless doll eyes that did not fit the rage and fury that came over his face. HIS booming voice echoed, stifling any noise that tried to venture into a house that was about to be brought down from within. HIS hands ripped at the air in front of HIM, and white froth had started to build at the corners of HIS mouth and drip toward his chin. HE chomped at the air biting HIS way closer and closer to my mother’s face, getting close enough for her to feel some of the white froth on her own face. I looked at the carnage and wanted to take my eyes away from it, but I couldn’t and I left them glued to the scene. It was like some hideous car crash were everyone slows down and rubbernecks to see what just happened, as they try to see if a head had smashed through the windshield or a leg or an arm was hanging out of a door. It was one of those gruesome sights that you just couldn’t pry your eyes from.

Sitting at the edge of the bed was my mother with her head plunged into her chest, tears streaming down her face. Tears, carving out lines of pain that came too soon to her face and left marks that would last a lifetime, never letting her forget who created them. Her hands were clenched like a woman praying for help, as she was looking for a reason why the man she had loved and had given her life over to had become such a madman. She was a woman praying to a God that would not answer her prayers. A God she believed in so much and had now become so silent in her moment of need.

Sitting on the cold oak floor I was left unable to play with my toy car anymore. The LEGO couple with their C-clamped hands was staring at me, waiting for me to either drive the car down the road or take them back to their silent LEGO city that was constructed under the supervision of my older brother. But all I could do was sit on the floor almost sleepy-eyed watching the unraveling of my family.

The echo of the water heater turned on and sent threads of heat through the four white painted vents at the base of the wall behind me again. The heat started to touch the lower part of my back, sending a shiver up my back and through my arms, but the tip of my nose stayed cold and ready to run, only to have the drops be whipped away by my hands that were just as frozen.

My eyes felt so heavy. I felt the tears inside my eyes but they wouldn’t come out, as my eyes had taken a stand and had grown many years beyond my own age. A resilience had been built up inside of me and I was not going to let that man, who was once my father, see that he could affect me like that.

My tiny fists were clenched—turning white and becoming aged beyond their own years. Standing on my small skinny legs I tried to make myself taller than I was by propping myself up on my tippy-toes, but I shook and couldn’t stand tall for too long. My eyes dried away any semblance of pain afflicted on me by HIM. I felt like a fish slapped on a dry dock with no way to get back into the water and no way to get back home. My body was shaking and shivering, violently trying to gasp for air. I was looking for a way back to the past where everything was right and everything would stay the same. But I also was standing, ready to take a chance at being taller than HIM, trying to topple HIM over. However my rage had left and the strength in my legs was shaken away with a cool numbness that made me fall flat on my ass and I felt the wooden floor once again.

The man who was once my father continued to rage on against my mother with ferocious indignity. The horrible truth of that cracked family picture was coming into focus and my mother had finally heard the horrible truth from HIM’S lips—he had been cheating on her. She finally had all the proof she needed to take the awful steps to break her family apart and take a first step all on her own. HIS deception wasn’t just a one-night thing, but even though he was the one who was in the wrong he took the pulpit as a fiery revolutionary preacher, shaking the house with his voice, his foot smashing down onto the floor like a piston in a an engine, almost busting through to the ceiling below. When he couldn’t generate enough strength to bash through the ceiling below he focused his anger on the wooden door and the entrance to the sun porch that was to the side of my mother’s bedroom.

HIS size-11 foot, which was in a steel-toe boot, shattered the wooden entrance to the sun porch. His booted foot went through the door to the other side and was stuck there for a moment. HIS attack on the helpless bystander had caused a wound in it that fit all the way up to his knee.

All around his leg were splinters of wood that were caught around his jeans. The hole HE made looked like a sunburst with white cracked lines that started at HIS leg and then dripped downward toward the bottom of the door. In that moment of towering rage, HIM had stopped to try and free himself from the door, struggling at first and then calmly grabbing at his thigh with both hands wrapped around HIS blue jeans, yanking for freedom trying to get his leg out from its wooden snare. But when that plan didn’t work HE violently tried to shake his leg loose, trying to shake away from a house that had HIM trapped. With every twist of HIS leg splinters broke away from the door and fell silently to the ground, having lost their usefulness to the wooden door.

HIM’S struggle continued as he desperately tried to escape like an animal that had its leg trapped by an unsuspecting perpetrator. HE was finally released from HIS own prison with one last mighty effort that sent him sailing back and almost falling over, if it wasn’t for the dresser behind HIM to prop HIM up. Perfume bottles rattled like wind chimes dancing in the breeze as his weight came to a crashing stop against the dresser, singing songs of birthdays, Valentine Days, and Christmas’s only remembered by me and my older brother.

As HE finally finished HIS verbal assault on my mother HIM started to leave the room. A person with such evil should have slithered away into the night, but when HIM left HE left like a god, with every step HE took shaking the world around me and letting everyone know what HE was doing and where HE was going.

HIM passed by me without a word and all HE did to recognize my existence was to step over me and let me feel a gust of wind pass by and erase any heat that had tried in vane to keep me warm. HIS steps started to echo away from my mother and me as HE went down the stairs and out the front door of the house.

My mother had continued to cry throughout the loss of her family. She found herself under the covers of her bed lost in the darkness where her and HIM had conceived their love for one another, but it had quickly and harshly become a scene of abandonment. She had seen it coming for some time, but the finality of it all was too much for her to process. Alone for the first time in a bed she had never thought she would be alone in, she found no comfort where she once found so much. I walked over to her and put my hand on her arm. She sat up, with the blue covers draped over her head, shoulders, and down her back.

She picked me up and cradled me in her arms and for the first time throughout the car crash, I began to cry. Her tears came less and less as my tears took over for hers. She cradled me like the child that I was and a new picture took over in the car crash dream. My mother draped and veiled in the blue and red covers of her lost femininity and I cradled next to her bosom, letting Raphael’s vision come to life and fill the cracked view of this broken family.

"Lord can you hear me know

Or am I lost?"

—Damien Rice, Coldwater

The empty glass in front of me sits alone on top of the wooden bar. My hands are under my armpits and my arms are crossed in front of my chest as I wait for the girl behind the bar to see that the pint is see-through once again and needs to be filled with the dark liquid that my lips ache to feel—again. The two girls have finally found two seats that aren’t too close to anyone, but not far enough for their conversations to be hidden. They sit with their jean-encased legs crossed and their black flats hitting the wooden line that distinguishes customer from staff, while their hands hold their glasses, which are filled with an orange sunset liquid, like they are holding balls of fire. Cupping the glasses they try to shape them with their hands moving up and down over the smooth, heavy outside, unable to find peace tonight.

I keep telling you it’s your choice, but you know all the facts. Nothing I can say should change that.

I know, but I think I just need to hear it from someone else for it to actually sink into my brain.

Okay. I think you should leave him. He’s no good for you and he’s not going to change. He’s stuck in his own little world and he’s never going to come out of it for anyone.

I know. I know! It’s just that I can see times where things can be different and he’s so nice and we get along just so amazingly. I just want it to be like that all the time.

Well, I told you what I think and you know how I feel. I just don’t think it’s going to happen and you have to move on.

I just don’t know what to do.

Their hands never stop playing with their glasses and their legs swing back and forth hitting the bar with their feet and making a message that hasn’t been decoded yet.

The girl closest to me still has her black pea coat on and has her head buried into her chest with her eyes closed and her mouth turned upside down. Her hands stop playing with her drink and find themselves inside her coat pockets where they continue their fidgeting inside the dark. Sometimes her hands find loose coins or keys that kiss together like wind chimes hanging on a back porch blowing in the wind.

Her friend sits with her eyes straight ahead starring at herself in the mirror hanging behind the bar. Her red hair curls behind her ears and follows the line of her neck resting on her shoulders. She frees one of her hands from her glass to put a stray red curl that fell in front of her forehead back behind her ear and back in place where she demands it belongs. Her lips are a straight line from ear to ear and she moistens them with a small lick from her darting pink tongue.

Who cares about him tonight. Let’s just have some fun and forget about all of it.

Her red hair whips to the side as she turns and smiles to her friend, taking her friend’s hand out of its dark cave and putting it back onto her drink.

"Why would you want to hurt me?

So frightened of your pain…"

—Pearl Jam, Animal

The sounds of weeping broke the silence of the house. A boy sat on the edge of his bed, his face planted firmly in the palms of his hands with his fingers spider webbing out over his forehead. He cried into his hands, making pools of tears that overflowed and ran through his fingers, making waterfalls of sorrow that dropped into an abyss of chocolate-brown carpet with silent thuds.

I miss him so much. I…I just don’t understand why he doesn’t want to be with us. Why did he have to leave us? Why is he a phone call away and not an arm’s length away?

Sparks of light shot out from my brother Jacob’s braces every time he opened his mouth to ask another question that no answer could soothe. His heart had a piece broken off and torn away for good. His start into maturity had begun with broad shoulders and gangly limbs that had outgrown his frame and were waiting for the rest of his body to play catch-up without a man to guide him through his own journey into a man.

The black hair that swept over his forehead was the only feature HIM had given to Jacob. Jacob’s left cheek had begun to be broken through with pimples, which gave a sure sign of the beginning of his growing up and the stage in life that was filled with awkwardness and signs of manhood yet to be seen. His eyes were brown with flecks of amber in them that our mother had given to him and within those eyes rested the same kind of pain that were in our mother’s eyes the day it all ended.

I know it hurts sweetie, but things will be all right. He is still your father and he will try to be the best father he knows how. I know it’s been hard, but there are things about him that you can hold onto. Things that will never change between the two of you.

Our mother never shed a tear for HIM again and was trying to hold herself up as well as hold my older brother up. Her strength came in buckets that neither my brother nor I could ever carry, but that was the point. Our mother would always be there to carry us and leave the pain she felt inside so that we could let all of our pain out in the hopes that we might be able to go on through another day with one less member of the family inside of the house.

I was so angry hearing how hurt my brother still was and I wanted to hurt the man who did this to my family, but there was nothing I could do. I was too small to really hurt HIM, but I wanted so badly to get back at HIM that a fire of sweat dampened the soles of my feet and made me move from my frozen state in the hallway into my mother’s bedroom. I was wandering around her room looking for anything that reminded me of HIM. My eyes had found the bed in the middle of the