@@DESCRIPT="One Last Time by The Stranger"
                          One Last Time
     
     The storm clouds were a copper spiral hanging in the north
over the cemetery.  The hot humid air placed dew on the naked skin
of my arm.  Wind twisting and turning scattering the fallen leaves
across the country side.  My eyes could see the rain falling in the
north and approaching the cemetery.  I knew I must hurry 
     to find out what happened before he began crying once more. 
My father never dropped a tear in front of me until recently, when
something had happen to mommy.  Now he was avoiding me, straying
away when I had questions to ask.  I wanted to know where my mother
was and why everyone was so sad.
     He came walking into the den with bags sagging in his eyes and
wrinkles drawing lines across his forehead.  I stood up
     out of the car and turned my eyes away from the stormy clouds
down to the reminder of death that stood in front of me.  The
cemetery was long and full, tombstones standing straight and tall
like soldiers marching into battle.  The smell of death corroded
the air.  Far away a crow cawed at the storm clouds that
approached. 
     I closed the car door without locking it.  My stomach wasn't
feeling right but it was better than it had been the three other
times I had tried to come.  I raised my hand and swiped at my
forehead and was surprised by the pool of sweat I sank my hand
into.  My skin was cool and pale making me appear to be one of the
occupants of the cemetery and not just a visitor.  I was afraid 
     he wouldn't stop walking when I called his name.  But he did
stop, suddenly, as if he was awaken from a dream in which he was
sleep walking.  He looked across the room at me with someone else's
eyes, my fathers eyes were proud and friendly and these looked
dazed and confused and almost dangerous. 
     It took him a minute to realize who I was and then he said
"What is it?"  His voice sounded as if a razor was being held at
his throat, hoarse and filled with fear and anxiety. 
     "Where's mommy?" my quiet voice asked.
     He grew tense with my words.  I could tell even then at age
five, he wanted to be anywhere but that room.  His lips rose and
fell trying to make words spill out.  Instead he was only able to
make sounds.  He stopped trying to speak.  He pushed his hand
through the strings of his hair and closed his eyes.  I didn't want
to upset him more but I had to know.  So I
     started walking through the beautifully kept lawn filled with
flowers and notes from mourners of the dead.  Tall dark empty trees
hung over the graves like protectors.  The ground was loose under
my shoes leaving footprints in the mud.  In the back of my mind I
waited for a hand to reach up and grab at the cuff of my pants and
begin to pull me under. 
     Far away but getting closer the thunder pounded in the silence
of the night.  A slight mist began to fall.  I could taste the
salty perspiration of the rain dripping onto my face.  I walked
     over to where he was standing and placed his big hand over 
my own.  A smile appeared on his face and in my heart.  "Sit down"
he said.  The sweet man that I knew spoke those words but still
there was an edge to the voice.  I sat back down and I waited for
him to speak.  "I knew this day was going to come" he started "I
guess I was hoping you wouldn't need to know and you could just go
on with your life and forget about your mother."  He dropped his
head and let out a laugh.  "What a fool I am."
     I thought I could see him growing older in front of my eyes. 
I wanted to reach out and hold him.  I wanted him to tell me
everything was all right.  I looked up
     and watched the rain start to cover the sky.  The rain clouds
brought a heavy wall of fog that appeared threatening.  Lightning
slashing through the wall clouds like a killers razor slashing a
victims throat and watching the rain of blood escaping the wound. 
     Looking out across the world I felt alone.  Standing in the
depths of a cemetery at night right before the storm which might
wash me away.  But that's how it had to be, alone.  I ran away on
the day she was buried because I was too ashamed of my tears, too
embarrassed to have them all watching me, too angry with them all
the way they treated me days before the funeral with their tears
and words of what a wonderful woman she was and how sorry they all
were.  I was a child who couldn't understand what happened to my
mother.  I wanted them to leave me alone, to not give me their
pity, and most of all I wanted them to treat me the way they did
before my mother died.  There was only one person I wanted to be 
with, my father.  My father 
     sat down next to me and waited a second to claim hold of his
thoughts.  Then began by saying "Son, your mother has gone to
heaven to see God."
     I jumped in with a question I'd been asking since age three
"Why?"
     "Well" he smiled and then ran his fragile hand across the
dryness of his lips.  "Everyone has to go see God at some time but
we don't get to say when.  Only he knows when.  And when its time
for people to see God then they do whats called die."
     "If she's with God then why are you sad?" I asked.
     "Because it may be along time till we see her again.  And I
know were both going to miss her.  But we will see her again when
we die, but that won't happen for a long time."
     I don't really know if I understood what he was saying but I
did understand my mother was gone and that I may never see her
again.  Maybe I understood about death in the back of my mind but
maybe I was trying to push the realization away from my eyes.
     "So is she dead, like my goldfish Jose?"  I asked.
     My fathers smile widened.  "Yes, that's right.  Your goldfish
died and went to fish heaven and now your mother is in people
heaven."  A strange smirk lit up his face as he thought of the
strange phrases he was using.
     "Dad?"
     "Yes" he put his hand on my knee.
     "They're not going to flush her down the toilet bowl are 
they?"
     He laughed, he roared out loud.  Tears filled his eyes and
over and over again he said "No, no son."  He put his arms around
me and we hugged, his tears dripping down my face.  My own tears
beginning
     as I passed tombstone after tombstone with names I didn't
recognize.  But I knew hers was getting close.  Red, pink, and
yellow flowers sat propped up by every grave symbolizing nothing to
the dead but a final remembrance to the mourners who had brought
them.  The cold rain beating on their pedals and tipping them over
into the mud. 
     I walked on, slowly, the rain knocking on my overcoat like an
unwanted visitor in the middle of the night.  The rain mixing with
my tears, hiding the pain I had come to shed.  The brim of my hat
beginning to fall over my eyes due to the amount of rain it had
captured.  
     I could no longer make out the names on the stones as my
visibility was all but gone.  But finding her grave was easy, it
was the one empty of flowers, empty of any clues that someone might
have stood over it to mourn for a lost soul.  It also stood next to
an equally empty grave, my fathers.
     I stood over her grave feeling more emotions then I even
dreamed I would.  I could feel her presence, could feel the lover
she once felt for me when I was a child.  I could equally feel the
sad, depressed, fool who lied in the grave next to her.  He 
     three his liquor bottle at me and the glass exploded behind 
my head against the wall.  My eyes swollen with tears as the
monster cried something at me I couldn't understand.  "What?" I was
able to shout. 
     "Et me a beer" his slushy lips said as the Jack Daniels seemed
to be refusing his sick body and trying to work its way out his
body.
     "Get you a beer?" I questioned.  "Okay."  I ran across the
room looking back at him just in case he found something else to
throw.  I got to the kitchen and slumped to the floor like a dead
corpse.  The tears ran out through my silent cries wishing he was
dead.  After my mother died he searched for the warmth she once
gave him in the liquor stores.  He cried all the time and if he
wasn't crying he was screaming at me. 
     My six year old mind never asked for this, I never wanted my
mother to die so I could become his slave.  I can remember them
holding me at age four, the warmth and security made me feel as if
I could live forever guarded by the strength of their love.  And
now I cry at night, wishing up to the stars that it could be the
way it used to be, hoping the alcohol had kissed him to sleep so he
wouldn't come beating up on me. 
     But many nights he was there, standing under my doorway with
the dens light glowing in the background and making him look like
an animal.  My mind would panic as the burning smell of alcohol
drew tears in my eyes.  And before I knew what was happening
     my hands were covered in mud.  I dug deeper into the loose
muddy turf.  The ground seeping into my nails.  My face  
     getting smacked over and over again as he screamed at me.  My
eyes
     looking through the mounds of mud that covered my face.  Like
a beaver I burrowed down into the ground reaching for her, reaching
for the love I once knew.  My clothes
     turning red as the blood soaked through.  His big arms
pounding like logs from a tree bruising my skin.  I looked 
     as black as the night with my clothes completely drenched by
the mud.  The deeper I got the faster my hands tore at the loose
soil, throwing it back over my head and to the sides.  Looking 
     like a monster he stood over me, arms flailing, my six year
old body feeling the pain of every hit.  His curse words ripping
into me like sharp fangs.  My cries of "Daddy, please no more"
going unheard.  Then after it seemed I had no more blood to spill,
no more places to bruise, he would stop.  He would walk out of the
room and then turn around under the cover of the light and say as
tears crawled out of his own eyes "I love you son."
     I would reply under my own tears "I love you too, dad."  And
as he would walk away I would think about how much I hated him.  "I
love you too, dad" I whispered to the wind.  Then finally 
     I had reached her.  The dark corroded coffin submerged in dirt
and mud and night crawlers looked beautiful to me.  I reached into
my overcoat and pulled out a hammer I had brought.  I pounded, the
loud thuding echoing across the empty city.  The boards falling
apart under the heavy mallet of the hammer. 
     I opened the crate and looked in.  She was as I knew she would
be.  She looked exactly as she had when I last saw her alive when
I was in her arms holding her at age five.  Not one year had grown
on her nor did the cruel mutations of death have there way with
her.  Atleast, not in my eyes.
     I reached down and picked her up and all the love she gave me
in my first five years came rushing through me like a ball of
energy.  The tears rolling over my mud covered face and trickling
down to her own. 
     The rain raced down from the sky, the clouds filled the air
above, the lightning burned in the sky like a magic wand.  And I
was that five year old boy holding his mother and feeling the love
that I would never find again, one last time.
