darker. Charlie arches his neck, looking up at the canopy of leaves as if asking them a question.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Marcus says I shouldn’t tell strangers my name,” I’m quick to respond, and I can tell he doesn’t like that answer.
With his head tilted he questions, “You know this Marcus well?”
“I’ve spoken to him once.”
“How’d you do that? Praying and waiting for an answer?”
“Why? Do you want me to give him a message? The last guy did. I don’t mind being the pigeon. Birds are good, he says. It’s the dogs that are bad.”
Present time
It surprises me how many times I’ve overheard conversations discussing the difference between light and dark. It’s written in poetry and plays. It’s presented as if it’s fact. As if truth can’t be seen in shadows. As if clarity does not shine on the depths of sin within each of us. There is no forgiveness that comes simply because the sun has risen. It is not so easy, nor so simple.
The only difference between light and dark is what our eyes have adjusted to. What we choose to see and believe. The reality is that nothing changes solely because of the amount of light we let in. Anger has always continued to rise anew regardless of every time a person smiles and states some charming line about the sun always coming out after rain, or sings a lyric describing making it through the night.
I’ve often thought I hold that opinion because of the cells we were kept in. We could never tell if it was night or day. There was constant little light in an ever-present darkness. Even in the barn, the day would blur with the night because I often couldn’t sleep through either.
Perhaps the sentiment is more closely related to the quiet. If only people knew that. It’s not the difference between what you can see. These concepts of good and evil, right and wrong have far more to do with what we hear, what we think, and what takes over our minds.
In the night, the burdens of our pasts berate us and remind us they exist without the noise and calamity of the daily ins and outs of society that distract us. The nights are quiet. When you choose a life like I have, all that surrounds me is silence and everything inside of me screams. It’s a constant, just as it was in the cell.
Those thoughts that gather in the darkness for others are a constant for me.
All of the sins I’ve committed, the games I’ve played and the chess pieces I’ve skittered across the board only to have them fall … the voices in my mind mull over each decision constantly.
Countless days have passed where I’ve wondered if I’d made a mistake. If the men I pit against one another deserved the fate I played a part in delivering.
Men have died and I’ve gambled on their lives in order to serve a different, greater purpose.
They’ve all been pawns and nothing more. The question of whether or not I’d made a mistake was easily answered with a name of a victim. Often dozens of them. All the little birds I couldn’t save and occasionally, a bird I was able to help flee.
For every man whose downfall I played a part in, there was always a list of names to justify their deaths. The innocent and the undeserving. Each and every time.
As I step out of my car, there’s only one name that echoes in my mind now: Delilah Jones. Her name is in response to my own and what justice I deserve. I cannot live if she does not make it out alive.
There’s not a thing in this world I’ve held more conviction toward than that simple fact.
I played with her life and for that, she may already be dead.
With the bitter wind battering my back, I stare up at the row of doors to these run-down hotel rooms. Delilah’s sister pulls the coat tighter around herself and offers me a polite nod, as strangers often do. In my jeans and navy cotton sweater, with a phone held up to my ear, I’m sure she doesn’t think anything of me standing outside the building, leaning against the fence. I’m just a man on a phone call going about my business.
Cadence doesn’t know I was waiting for her to leave.
It’s easy to return it as she smiles tightly and goes about her way to where she parked her car. I’m certain she feels