It was a nice afternoon, pleasant weather, nothing pressing on the horizon of life. I’d already nixed the thought of rousing myself from the comfort of home to walk a dog or weed a garden. Instead I was basking in rare contentment, a good book at the ready less I became bored with watching the small fire I had built in the fireplace. A large female Doberman lay at my feet, happy with the silent companionship of her mistress on this crisp, fall day.

I had just reached down to stroke Torrie’s head and had not yet touched her when the hair on her back stood up, forming a coarse, bristled, ridge. A growl began to form deep within her. In her rush to stand her legs became tangled beneath her and she cracked her side hard against the edge of the coffee table before righting herself and bounding out of the room.

The contentment of a moment before was shattered. Her growl had turned into a gruff and threatening bark which would continue until the individual which must be now standing on our front porch was revealed to her. Experience had taught me that nothing (shouts, threats, pleading) would quiet her. It only remained for me to bare the bedlam until I could get to the door. On my way, I ran through a short checklist of possibilities, papergirl, solicitor, stranded motorist, certain the interruption of my afternoon, if not welcome, would at least be momentary.

Reaching the door, I opened it far enough to stick my head out, allowing my body to become the barrier between animal and visitor. A man, once tall but now stooped by the rigors of life, stood before me. His eyes were cast down in shame or temerity. He wore a worn and wrinkled suit from which his body had shrunk away and shoes which had been serving their purpose as faithfully as an old dog. One hand held a suitcase with Greyhound tags fastened to the handle with wire twists but it was the hand that captured my attention. If Torrie was still barking at this time, I could not say. For this brief moment in time, which seemed to go on into infinity, I was aware of nothing but the hand, the knuckles, the fingers, the nails. My breath had slowed, if not stopped, as I slowly released my eyes from the hand and brought my eyes upward until I found the face. Recognition was immediate. There could be no doubt. The full lips traced by a natural line of deeper coloration, the high, sharp cheekbones, the gray-green eyes darkly lashed, the heavy brow, all features I had look on with love for twenty years. The differences were skin which had lost elasticity, deeply engraved lines about eyes, forehead and running the full length of the cheek and a ruddiness of complexion common to the man well acquainted with drink.

So lost in my assessment of him, I was startled when he spoke.

“I’m looking for Mike Langhorn. Do you know of him?”

Yes. I knew of him. This man hadn’t had to look hard to find him. I might have lied then. I might have replied that I did not know him, closed the door and returned to the pleasant day, the fire, the dog at my feet. But I nodded my head and held the door for his entrance. He looked down at the suitcase in his hand, my husband’s hand, and I nodded again allowing him to bring it through the door.

Torrie accepted my assessment that the stranger bore no threat the moment he was granted entrance. She allowed him to pat her head lightly before quietly exiting the foyer en route to a cozy lay in front of the fire.

Still not having found my voice, I motioned for the stranger to follow me and led him into my cozy lair and settled him in a comfortable chair. I took a seat at an acceptable distance and sat staring at him, remembering to breathe on occasion and trying desperately to collect my thoughts. It was to be anyone’s guess which of us would speak first. It turned out to be he.

“You know who I am. I can see that. How is it that you know?”

I fumbled in the small drawer of the end table next to where I was sitting for a crumpled pack of stale cigarettes I had been avoiding. A partial book of matches had been slipped under the cellophane of the pack and I removed these along with a cigarette, lighting it. The taste was bad. As my lungs filled with the smoke I had an instant dizzying sensation. I would smoke it nonetheless. I took a second drag before speaking.

“Your son’s resemblance to you is uncanny. I met him when he was twenty. Before I had known him three months, I owned every memory he had of you.”

The man smiled, though I shouldn’t refer to him as “the man.” His name was Clarence Vernon Langhorn. His wife and friends called him Vernon but he preferred the name of Mike and, in turn, named his son Mike. Which indicates, to me at least, at one time it was his intention to be a father to this boy.

“He spoke of me, then.”

“Yes.”

“Is he home?”

“No.”

We returned to the more comfortable silence I had initiated earlier. I smoked the cigarette which was tearing at my lungs and he surveyed his surroundings. The house we were in had been his home. It stood on the same ground, on the same foundation, but I knew it bore little or no recognition for him. When I married my husband, he had been living here with his mother, Beverly and stepfather, Tom. We took a small apartment nearby. A year later when Beverly and Tom bought the home next door to theirs, we rented Mike’s childhood home from them and eventually purchased it.

“Everything’s different,” Vernon said.

I nodded, remembering the story of how Beverly had to sell all the furniture in the house except for the beds, a kitchen table, two chairs and a heating stove to pay off Vernon’s debts. Monies she had earned and entrusted to him to pay their debts were misdirected to the local bars. But he had not been around to witness this and was referring to the changes which had occurred in his thirty-five-year absence.

“Funny though, he’s still here.”

My heart gripped with a pain I was not ready to share with him. “No, it was a fact of his life. He couldn’t leave the house, the address.”

“What do you mean, he couldn’t leave? Of course he could leave.” that

“I came to believe he was afraid to leave. Frightened if you chose to return, you might not be able to find him.”

The old man’s eyes watered. I noticed the hand which looked so much like Mike’s quiver on his knee.

“Do you need a drink? I might be able to find something left from Christmas.”

He declined my offer, pulled a soiled hanky out of his suit pocket and blew his nose with a honking sound. Torrie raised her head to look at him, then sighed and fell back to sleep. Vernon jammed the hanky back in his pocket, his composure restored.

“Then he wanted to see his old man. I never could get it straight with myself if he’d want to see me.”

“He was only seven when you stopped picking him up for visits. Then you just disappeared off the face of the earth. Why did you do that to him?”

He bristled then. “I didn’t do nothing to the kid. Our visits didn’t go all that well. You couldn’t tell him nothing. He didn’t want to listen. A real mommy's boy he was. Wasn't always though. There was a time when I was sort of his hero, you know."

I wondered if he was referring to the times the toddler was sitting on a bar while Daddy warmed the stool consuming drink after drink until he finally staggered home, an emergency bottle in one hand and the tiny hand of the tot in the other. Or perhaps he referred to the times when he babysat at home and the working wife returned to find her child sleeping across the booze-swollen belly of a father long passed out with drink

“I ’ve been meaning to come back for years now. I wanted to see the kid. Hear how he’s been. He’s done okay, hasn’t he? Didn’t take to the drink?”

I could have told him his son had a temper management problem, he shunned authority and had difficulty in school as a child. I could have told him he suffered emotional and sometimes physical abuse from a mother left with her own demons. I might also have said that the young man I met was flawed, not able to see his worth, struggling with his abandonment fifteen years after the fact. I chose not to.

I shook my head. “Oh, he’s been good and drunk more than once or twice in his life, but no, the bottle never took him. And he was a good father to our children. We had four. He became a cabinetmaker, very skilled, always earned a good living for his family. He did you proudly.”

Vernon smiled. “He did me proud,” he said, more to himself then to me. He reached into a back pocket and pulled out a bulging wallet removing a wad of folded papers which he began to sort through. “I’ve got it here somewhere,” he said.

I watched with patience as his shaking fingers struggled to locate an object. A grin broke through his concentration and he handed me a folded square of heavy paper. It was a picture of the three of them, Vernon, Beverly, and Mike. Mike looked to be three or four years old but it was difficult to see any of them well for the age of the photo and the many creases on the face of it. I carefully refolded it and handed it back to him.

“Would you like to see something more recent?” Without waiting for a reply I crossed the room to a bookcase where I had placed a family album I had only recently put together. I wondered for an instant if Mike would want me to give him the story of our life so easily. I choose to and place it on his lap.

From across the room, in the comfort of my chair, I watched our life, Mike’s life, unfolded before this man who had chosen not to be a part of it. I knew the album well and knew he was seeing only part of the story. He saw a groom feeding a bride wedding cake. He lingered over a photo of a young father in a doctor’s garb grinning at his firstborn child. Christenings, birthdays, Christmases, and Halloweens. Decades of our lives flipped through his fingers, first days of school, graduations, marriages and grandchildren. He paused in places to blow the red nose into the handkerchief, the tears flowed unchecked.

I was moved by this display. It would take a cold heart indeed not to have been affected. But I had struggled for years to mend the damage this man had wrought and my sympathy was in check.

When he closed the album and I had returned it to its place, he asked for the time.

“He won’t be home for a while yet, will he,” he said.

“No,” I replied, “I’ll take you to him.”

“Could I clean up a bit first? I was hours on the bus.”

While he was in our bathroom washing, I phoned the Days Inn and booked a room for him for the night and placed the suitcase he had carried into my home in the trunk of my car. When he at last came out of the bathroom, he looked refreshed. His hands were no longer shaking and I suspected, among other things, the suit jacket had held a bottle.

Once in the car, I turned on the radio to discourage conversation as I found I had little further to say to this man. He fell to sleep rather quickly. I increased the volume to cover the sounds of his sleep. Fifteen minutes later I slowed to a stop, turning off the ignition. I walked around to his side of the car and opened his door, rousing him.

He awoke in a stupor, much like the habit of his son, mumbling incoherently while he tried to get his bearings. I took his arm, helping him from the car. I lead him toward our destination. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. The sun shone brightly. The air held the sweet pungent odor of the decaying leaves crunching under our feet as we walked. Becoming more awake, he struggled against my lead, jerking his arm free of my grasp.

“What are you doing? Where are you taking me? I want to see my son.”

“I’m taking you to him.”

“No,” he shouted at me. “No, you are not!”

I took hold of his arm again, forcing him forward for the final few feet.

“Let go of me I say.”

I did let go. We stood, the two of us, wordlessly, looking down on the grave of my husband, his son.

I sensed, rather then saw, the weakening of his legs. I moved in closer to him. He placed his large hands on my shoulders, using me as support. In hope, I imagined the thumping of his heart melting the layers of ice glaze that had surely encased it.

Primitive, mournful, utterances rose from the depths of him, amplified in the crisp autumn air. His grip on my shoulders tightened, painfully, with each convulsion of his grief. I sent up a silent prayer that Mike’s eyes would be open to see the return of his father. That they are open wide enough to know he bore no blame.

After a time, the grip on my shoulders relaxed. Over the now quieting sounds of Vernon’s grief came the shrill call of a jay, the trill of a chickadee, the hum of a leaf blower. Time had continued.

“When?” he asked.

“In the spring. Early spring. An accident. He never knew.”

“I just couldn’t get it straight in my mind would he want to see me.”

“I know,” I said. “I know.”