Untitled (Junction, Sleek, Lock, Candle, Midnight)

At this junction of my life, I never saw what was about to take place. Being the very sheltered daughter of a country doctor, life was simple, but hard. My mother had died giving birth to me, and all along I had been daddy’s right hand man. We did everything together. I had helped him as he was called out at midnight, candle in hand, to the farms all across the county. I always went with him, even when I was very, very young. Someone’s loved one would begin banging on the door, and it was that clarion call that they were sick, or bleeding or even dying. We would climb into our wagon, after daddy gathered up his bag of instruments, and set out to a farm somewhere down the old road that led from our place to what ever house we were called on to go. This one particular night, I remember arriving at the old abandoned shack at the edge of town. No one had ever lived in it as long as I could think back. The boy that banged on our door couldn’t have been over eight years old. What were they doing squatting here? Where had they come from? What were we going to find once we got there? The little boy was scared, real scared. He told my daddy his Pa had been shot. I wanted to go to sheriff McGuire’s house, but Daddy said we needed to attend to the man right away. When we got to the door, the lock had been pounded off by what looked like a rock. What was left over, from that part of the door, was lying scattered on the front porch like so many pieces of forgotten rubbish. The woman that greeted us was sweating; her hair looked sleek, and out of place, in the light of only one candle, blood covered her hands. What had happened here we did not know. She was agitated as she led us to the corner of the room where on a small cot was a man whose shirt was bathed in crimson. Daddy knelt down, tore open the shirt where the wound was, and went to work. The man groaned as pressure was applied by the expert touch of my Father. Then something happened that changed my life forever. A man; angry, dark, and wild rushed in, knocking the door off it’s hinges, he had a gun in his hands, they were shaking as he shot the man lying on the cot in the head. Then he turned the gun on my Daddy and put a bullet in his chest. How come when tragedy strikes we are never truly prepared for it?

~I am a classical teacher of history, literature, and theology. Passions are the same, as well as reading and writing.