Fortitude: Fathers and Sons

Frank Sutter woke up before first light. Another nightmare. This time he dreamed Elena was in his bed, on top of him, but it was far from erotic. Her face was a mask of rage, as he tried to throw her off. He could hear Liam, his son, crying for help just outside the window.

 “Daddy! Daddy! It's cold! Let me in!”

But Frank was unable to move, pinned down by this woman he desired.

The dream ended with him stretching one arm towards the window Liam was pounding on, while Elena howled above him.

Frank woke in a sweat, his heart beating wildly. No one was at the window, of course. Jules, his wife, was still asleep, facing away from him. He had tried to put his arm around her in the night, but she had shifted as far away from him as she could. They did not talk, or touch, these days.

 Moving quietly, so as not to wake Jules, Frank pulled his clothes on and left the house. He did not take the truck, preferring instead to walk in the bracing cold. He found it helped clear his mind.

Even though it was barely dawn, the medical technician let him in to see his son. Liam was as still and lifeless as always, encased in the cold, clinical box that was the hyperbaric oxygen chamber. While Frank knew the machine was saving his son’s feet from the frostbite, he could not help thinking Liam looked like a specimen captured and on display in a museum of oddities. Come see the savage killer!

 Frank had no idea how this could be happening. It was worse than any of the nightmares he had been experiencing. What had possessed his lovely ten year old boy to viciously murder a man?

Jules, of course, blamed him. She blamed him for everything. For leaving her alone with Liam while he was in Afghanistan, for moving them to this hostile, lonely place, and, most of all, she blamed him for Liam’s present condition.

 It was true, though, wasn't it? His little boy was lying in this chamber, in a medical coma, because Frank had been with Elena. He had snuck out to meet her, leaving his baby alone. How was he to know, though, that in that brief hour Liam would go barefoot out into the snow, to kill a man? Who could have predicted this?

Yet, Frank had been cheating on Jules. He left Liam alone, knowing he was running a high fever, to fuck this exotic woman he hardly knew.

Jules had every right to hate him. What she didn't realize, though, was that no one hated Frank more than himself.

-------------------------------------------

Henry Tyson was dying, and it bothered him more than he wanted to admit. After a lifetime of drowning his liver in booze, he was not surprised when the diagnosis came. Once the initial shock wore off, Henry thought he had come to grips with his mortality, even relishing it at times. What more did he have to look forward to, anyway? At his age, and in his state of perpetual alcoholic squalor, life did not hold much interest. He was no longer able to travel, once his greatest pleasure.

 Henry knew he should be grateful. How many men were able to earn their living having adventures all over the world, documenting nature’s many wonders through the lens of a camera? He drank and screwed his way across seven continents, beholden to nothing and no one, for over six decades.

Gratitude, however, had never been his strong suit. Bitterness and self-loathing marked his last days on earth. He was angry with everyone, but most of all he was angry with himself. He had failed the only people in the world that mattered.

Carol Anderssen was the only woman he had ever loved, and her husband Nils was Henry’s best friend. In the beginning, Nils had been funny and charming, a good drinking buddy to play darts with at the pub. Over time, Nils’ drinking became worse, and he became vicious, or perhaps Henry was simply better able to see the monster behind the man. Carol would show up with bruises she attempted to hide. The sweet, clever woman he had fallen in love with was now timid and mirthless.

They had sex only a few times before Carol’s guilt, and their mutual fear of Nils, put an end to the affair. When Henry was offered an assignment halfway across the globe, he jumped at the opportunity. Nine months later Carol called to tell him he had a son, Dan. Nils was none the wiser, and both he and his wife agreed Henry should be the child’s godfather.

He followed Dan’s progress from afar, sending gifts at the holidays and exchanging the occasional letter. Dan was a smart boy, but he had a simmering rage inside him that would explode sometimes at school or on the sports field. Eventually it was revealed that Nils was abusing Dan, as well as his mother. After Carol died of cancer at age thirty-five and Nils had a head-on collision with a lorry in Oslo, Henry and Dan, who was an adult by this time, grew closer.

And now, thought Henry, I can either tell him I’m his father, or take it with me to the grave. Death was weeks away, not months. He had to make a decision. But, a coward to the end, he could not face his son’s anger and blame.

That wasn’t the only reason, though. Dan was involved in something criminal, he suspected; something that Henry had been made a party to, yet Dan would not share the truth with him. It pained him more than he could express.

Like father, like son, Henry thought, bitterly. Secrets and lies, loneliness and isolation, would get them both in the end.