Letter from a Desperate Father

Letter from a Desperate
Father

by Maron Anrow

© 2016 Maron
Anrow

Good sir,

I’m writing to you because I’ve heard
you’re a fair and generous man. You may not know this, but you
purchased a few of my goats three years back. Your man didn’t try
to wear me down with haggling. He paid a reasonable price. I
remember things like that.

I know how my recent actions must seem.
My story is not a simple one, though it pains me to dwell on how
things turned out. All I ask is to see my son, and I hope you’ll be
willing to help me after reading this letter. You’re respected in
our community, and I entreat you to use your position to intercede
on my behalf.

I will start at the beginning. My
childhood was humble. I had two brothers and three sisters. One of
each died young, and the rest moved away. I inherited our parents’
four acres of farmland and the small cottage on it. My eldest
brother said I was slow and lacked ambition, but I’m happy
surrounding myself with animals by day and books by
night.

In a way, my life didn’t begin until I
met my wife. My memories before her are faint and bland—when I
recall them, it’s as if they didn’t happen to me—while everything
after her is crisp and flavorful, much in the way a parched mouth
swells with moisture after biting into a sour apple.

Our courtship was untraditional. When I
went to feed my goats one morning, I discovered a post had come
down and two of my billies were missing. They must have jumped the
dip in the fence. I fixed the post in haste, then went to find the
animals. The Milwood Forest isn’t far from my property, and that’s
where I went after searching my fields in vain.

After a few minutes in the forest, I
heard crying amongst the trees. Not a shrill, childish cry, but a
defeated sob. I followed it, and there were my goats, resting next
to a weeping woman. She looked at me, and there was anger in her
eyes—as if it were I who had caused her to be so sad.

“Those are my goats,” I said,
justifying my presence.

Her anger changed to
irritation.

“So?” She waved her arm over the
resting goats. “I did not take them, and I’m not holding them here.
Do what you will.”

I understood her words, but I stood
there, distracted. Her appearance had arrested my attention. She
wore a standard servant’s smock, but it did not suit her at all.
Her hair was blacker and straighter than any I’d seen, and it fell
to her waist. One of my friends later told me her hair was like
silk, but I’ve never seen silk so I can’t say. She had an accent
I’d never heard before, and she held herself like the lady of a
fine estate despite her servant’s garb. To complete the wrongness
of it all, her clothes were dirtied and torn. I wondered if she’d
been in the forest for days.

I suppose I was standing there dumbly,
because she cocked her head to one side and said, “Don’t you want
your goats?”

Her strange accent entranced
me. I stammered a
yes
, or so I think I did. But I couldn’t approach her.

“Come and get them,” she
said.

I stayed where I was until I finally
found my tongue. “What happened to you? Why were you
crying?”

“Because of unkind things, and because
life is not fair.”

“What?” I’ve never claimed to be a
smart man.

She smirked at my dullness. “Will you
help me?”

“How? I mean, what do you
need?”

“I’m on my own and I have nowhere to
go. I worked for a cruel master,” she gestured at her smock, “but I
escaped. I fear to leave this forest because there is nothing else
for me.” Her eyes bore through mine. “You seem a nice man. Can you
help me?”

Turning her away never crossed my mind.
“I don’t have much, but I can offer you food and a place to sleep
for a short time.”

Now her smile reached her eyes. “That
would be enough.” She stood gracefully from the log on which she’d
sat, and when she stood, so too did my goats.

Her long black hair swayed with her
movement. She was a tall woman, and she spoke and looked at me with
masculine directness. I know men who want a meek and dainty wife so
they feel large and powerful by contrast, but my future wife’s
assertive demeanor attracted me. It was inevitable I would fall in
love.

I led her back to my home. She
appraised it quietly, and nodded as if to say, “This will do.” She
stayed in the second bedroom those first few weeks, and after that
I asked her to marry me. I’m not one to attract the eye of women,
so I was stunned when she said yes.

Not long after our wedding, I made a
trip to town. I overheard a rumor about the mysterious illness and
subsequent death of the lord of an estate a few miles from town, in
the opposite direction of my farm. I didn’t think much of it then.
But many times since, I’ve wondered if that was the estate from
which my wife escaped.

I often asked her to tell me about her
childhood and homeland. She would laugh, as if there was no point
in answering. Some people might take offense at her response, but
there was no malice or disdain in it.

“My home is more distant than you can
imagine,” she said.

“Is it near the Americas?
Africa?”

“It is an island east of Russia, north
of Japan.” She paused, then raised her brows at me. “Do you know
where those countries are?”

“Yes, but I’ve never seen them
mapped.”

“Well, then there is no point telling
you more.”

“Can’t you tell me its
name?”

“You could not pronounce
it.”

“But I could hear it.”

“Silly man.” She leaned forward to kiss
my cheek. “Do not bother yourself with such things.”

I was unsatisfied. “What about how you
came to be here?” I asked. “Can you tell me that?”

Her expression darkened at my question.
“I do not like to recall it.”

I suspected forced servitude, even
slavery, but I respected her and didn’t press the issue. I did
continue to inquire about her homeland itself, but the conversation
ended the same way each time I broached the topic. However, when we
had our son, I sometimes overheard her telling him stories from her
homeland. These stories always involved magic, such as spirits,
demons, curses, and gifts of foresight. Why could she share this
part of herself with our son, but not me?

Once, I told her tales of magic from my
childhood, hoping it would encourage her to respond with stories of
her own.

“And then the girl pricked herself on
the needle, and slept for hundreds of years,” I concluded, proud of
my storytelling.

“Hmph,” she scoffed. “What a childish
notion of magic.”

“How do you see magic?” Could this be
it? Would she finally include me in her world?

“If
magic existed, it would have to be part of the natural world.
All things come from nature. Life and death in their basic forms
are influenced by others’ lives and deaths. But fairies and an
eternity of sleep? Bah! It is easier to imagine the absurd than to
grasp a possible yet unseen reality.”

Her words made no sense to me. “What do
you mean?”

“Never mind yourself with it. You
English have limited imaginations. This is not something you could
understand.”

At this point, you probably think I’m a
weak man, so easily belittled by my wife. But that is never how I
felt. I agreed with her. Her mind was truly more expansive than
mine. What may seem like insults were simply factual statements
from her perspective. To this day, I still believe that, despite
what followed.

Now I must tell you about our son. He
arrived quickly. I didn’t keep a close eye on the calendar, but I
don’t doubt it was nine months to the day from our wedding. His
birth was noteworthy. My wife refused the assistance of a midwife,
but I ultimately got my way. This was one of the rare times my will
bested hers.

She was disdainful of the midwife, and
she proved me wrong: The midwife hadn’t been necessary. My son’s
birth was over in minutes, with seemingly little pain and certainly
no complication.

The midwife was stunned. “Such a birth
I’ve never seen,” she said. My wife hurried her out of our home,
and then her eyes were only for our boy.

His appearance took after hers.
Straight black hair, ivory skin, round eyes, slender neck, long
fingers. He was her in miniature, male form. But his demeanor was
like mine—meek and cautious. His mother complained and urged him to
be bold like her. But it simply wasn’t in his nature.

One day I was sitting on the stool in
the kitchen, mending my work boots. My boy was six at the time. He
rushed into the cottage, tears streaming down his face.

“Papa,” he cried, breaking my
heart.

I put aside my leatherwork and rose to
meet him. I took his small hands in mine. His fingernails were
short and crusted with dirt. His tears cut trails through the dust
on his round cheeks.

“What is it, my boy?” Effortlessly, I
lifted him and held him to my chest. If my wife were there, she
would have said I was coddling him, encouraging his timidity. But
she wasn’t, so I gave in to my urge to comfort him.

“Elizabeth’s leg—” he sobbed. Elizabeth
was one of our goats. It had been his idea to give them human
names. “—it’s… it’s twisted!”

I hurried to the pen, still carrying
him. He buried his face in my neck, his cheek and tears warm
against my skin. I heard the injured animal before I saw it. It
yowled in pain, causing the other goats to run around and bleat
anxiously.

I set down my son, who was crying more
fiercely than before.

“Oh, Papa, she hurts so
much!”

I knelt by Elizabeth. The poor thing’s
leg was indeed twisted and likely broken. My first thought was that
she’d jumped off a barrel and landed poorly, but that didn’t fit
the injury. The angle of her leg looked as if it’d been
intentionally yanked and twisted. It was hard to think—surrounded
as I was by the cries of my boy and too many goats—but the leg was
clearly in bad shape. The animal was not worth the effort of trying
to mend her. Her pain was great, so I decided to put her
down.

I explained this to my boy, keeping my
voice calm and confident. He said nothing, his tears silently
sliding down his cheeks.

“Do you understand?” I
finished.

He nodded once.

I picked up the goat, and as I rose to
my feet my boy asked, “Can I say goodbye to Elizabeth?” He’d spoken
scarcely louder than a whisper.

I lowered the goat to his height. He
sniffled once, then used two fingers to pet Elizabeth’s head. His
pressure was light as a feather. With her pain, the goat probably
didn’t even notice his touch. He leaned forward to kiss her, but
the animal writhed in my arms.

“Careful, boy.”

He stopped short, and petted her once
more instead.

“Goodbye, Elizabeth,” he said
softly.

I sent him home while I took care of
the unpleasant task. I sold the meat; there was no way we could
consume Elizabeth.

My poor boy was morose. He was still in
a mood the next day, but he cheered slightly when we received a
gift from a visitor. A neighbor, Mrs. Hutchins, had been sick for
days, unable to keep any food down. Apparently my wife had given
her a tonic the previous afternoon and she’d recovered the same
evening. Her husband stopped by to deliver three loaves of their
special nut bread as thanks. They sold it in town at a high price,
so it was a real treat for the three of us.

These past few days, I’ve wondered if
the two events—Elizabeth’s injury and Mrs. Hutchins’ recovery—were
related. I think it likely they were.

It’s hard for me to continue writing
this, but I shall persevere.

I know you’re aware of the fever that
spread through our community. I heard you lost some of your staff
to the illness. Well, my wife caught it. It was a shock to see my
tall, vigorous wife leveled by the wasting disease. She was livid,
spitting and cursing her fate. She often called our son to her side
and had long, quiet conversations with him. I was excluded from
these, and neither he nor she revealed what they discussed. It
wasn’t easy to talk to them, as she was quick to anger—her cheeks
pink with both disease and fury—and my boy was withdrawn, avoiding
me as well as his friends.