Chapter Two: Lessons In

Maurice Jackson was not a stranger to struggle. He knew strife as well as some men once knew their favorite baseball teams down to the tiniest fact. That's how he knew how to survive, by knowing how to survive in the best of times and the worst of times. Darnell had done a marvelous job teaching his son those tenants, but he never did well teaching the “Why” of survival. Why wake up? Why bother? Why farm? Why do what you do?

As Samuel made his way towards the river south of their home the answers to these questions began to bloom in his mind though he was sure the moment it came time to open his mouth and preach they would all flutter away in the hot wind.

Down a few strings of overgrown trails and he found himself standing on an embankment hugging the shoulder of the river. It's powerful grumble danced through the path it had cut in the earth, splitting a town in two somewhere up the bend where it vaulted a crumbling dam.

He looked right then left searching for a sign of Maurice's presence. But all he saw was a lone fishing pole, locked between two stones, behind it a thicket of bushes. From the green flora emerged a tall slender man, his bare chest bulging with muscle trying to redo the belt buckle tucked underneath the tied long sleeves of his shirt wrapped around his waist. He had yet to notice Sam.

'Maurice.' He said causing the man to jump.

The young man, his eighteenth birthday a memory still fresh in his mind looked up with two wide brown eyes filled with shock then relief. He extended from his hunched posture taking his full height. At six foot three, body thick with chiseled muscle from years of working the farm alongside them he was an imposing sight. But what made him truly dangerous was his wit. The raw intelligence and curiosity that drove him. He was by all accounts the type of generation that should have inherited the Earth, if the old and ignorant hadn't destroyed it first. Now he suffers the sins of his father and his own self imposed torment.

'Can't a man take a piss without someone bothering him?' The young man said sheepishly returning to his pole. At it's base he sat down, the pole extending from his ankles, knees locked at a right angle ready to swing his body forth and catch the rod at a moments notice.

'You were done weren't you?' Sam asked him joining the young man by sitting beside him resting the small of his back against a rock.

'Well, uh, yeah...still doesn't mean a man doesn't want his privacy.'

'Is that why you're out here alone?' Samuel prodded knowing full well Maurice would never openly talk about Saco unless pushed to it.

'Just out here trying to catch dinner.' He pointed back to a bucket just up the embankment, held in place by rocks piled up it's sides. 'Caught a few already.'

'You always were good at fishing.'

'Nah. It's not hard when there's no one else to catch the fish. They breed faster than we do. Rivers full of them.'

'I never was one for fishing. Something about sitting here,' Samuel took a handful of dirt in his right hand then tossed it away, 'Dirt getting everywhere. I'd rather sow a field, raise some chickens. Not sit here and this.' He fanned his hands out waving them over the picturesque scene.

Maurice stared at Samuel for a moment then turned his attention back to the river.

'It's peaceful here.' The young man said to him. 'Nobody. Not you, not my father. Not my mom. Not anybody else. Just me and this pole.'

'Yeah, it is peaceful.' Samuel agreed.

'Why you out here?'

Sam took a good long look at Maurice, his best friend's son. A man he had helped deliver into this cruel excuse for a world. A twinge of regret gnawed in his stomach, he knew, as he always knew, Maurice, Dylan and Diamond, their children should have set their sights on space, furthering human progress. Now one of the brightest of his generation was left sitting on a river bank fishing for food.

'Diamond told me you're still having nightmares.' Sam told him bluntly.

Maurice cocked his head at him biting his cheek, 'You sure you want to do this?' He said implying the verbal battle that often results when he opens up.

'It still bothers you?' Sam asked kindly noticing Maurice tense up. The fishing had distracted him from his thoughts but once that calm was shaken you could see his eyes grow hollow.

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Maurice nodded. 'You're saying it shouldn't? Every time I close my eyes...I see it. That man standing over dad, the silver pipe in his hand dripping blood. I can still feel the kick of the three fifty-seven he gave me....' Maurice closed his eyes and shuddered.

Sam was not wise enough to tell him everything would be alright. Such false assurances hindered more than they helped. Rather than sugar coat his words he felt them become raw in his throat. Even if they hurt, they needed to be said.

'Do you feel like a monster?' Sam asked. Maurice nodded an expectant glint in his eye believing Samuel would tell him otherwise. 'Well, you are. So am I. I can't tell you how many people I've killed. Some, I was a soldier in a war. Others, I was trying to survive. But every life I've taken has brought me here today.'

Samuel took a hard swallow. 'You focus on the fact that you killed a man. That you ended his life. You torment yourself. “I'm a killer. A murderer. A monster. I don't deserve to live.” Things you say to yourself when you try to sleep. But once, have you ever once asked yourself, “Why?”. Why am I a murderer, a killer.... a monster?'

Maurice looked at him blankly. 'Why?'

'You're so focused on the act itself you forget the why. Why you did it? Why you suffer? Why did you do it, Maurice?'

'To save my dad. He was going to kill him.' The young man answered.

'And there is your answer. Had you not acted he would be dead, you would likely be dead. Diamond would have never been born. The act itself was terrible but the consequences...were they worth it?'

Maurice paused briefly, his mind flooding with all those happy memories he shared with Darnell, his little sister Diamond. The nights his mother sang him to sleep. Suddenly a hard lump of longing built in his chest.

'...yeah...they were...' He answered finally. 'But how can I live with it?'

'You can't. Nobody can. The best thing you can do is not waste that man's life by squandering yours. Be better. Build a better world so that those that come after us don't suffer as we have.' Sam told him.

'That...makes sense.' Maurice clicked his tongue. 'Fuck...why is this world so fucked up?'

'We had a chance once to build something better.'

'What happened?' Maurice asked him.

'Humanity forgot one very important thing.' Sam told him.

'And what was that?'

For a moment Samuel paused, perhaps to add dramatic flair to his answer but more so that he didn't stumble on his own words. Then finally, he answered, 'We're all monsters.'

The day rolled by as the two men sat on the river bank discussing many things. Most importantly to them, discussing the course that the world had taken. Occasionally a nibble at the end of the invisible fishing line prompted them to put their chat on hold as Maurice expertly reeled in another fish. Once stowed away in the bucket the words flowed once more as he would cast another line out. Almost two hours had passed before Dylan popped through the hedges alerting them that lunch was ready long past noon.

'What took so long?' Maurice asked standing up, whipping the lure from the water and wrapping it around his fishing rod.

'What! We started late cause mom hadn't even finished tending to the garden when dad sent me to help.' Dylan defended himself.

'Maybe you're just slow.' Maurice said calmly causing Dylan's cheeks to puff red.

'I am not slow!' The boy shouted in retaliation offended at the remark.

Suddenly Samuel stood and held himself tall in front of his son, looming over him with an agitated posture. 'You have no reason to yell Dylan. Maurice is older than you and you'd be wise to respect him. If you want to defend yourself don't holler like an ape. Use your wits. Be smart with your words.'

Dylan shied away from Samuel immediately staring at his father's boots doing his best to avoid eye contact. 'He called me slow....' The boy whimpered.

'I could call you a lot worse.' Maurice said, 'There are worse things than being called slow.'

Dylan's mouth opened ready to retort but the words dried up in his throat under Samuel's heated gaze.

'Go to the house. We'll be up in a few minutes.' Samuel ordered him.

Both men watched the young boy swallow his pride begrudgingly turning his back with the sharp words on his tongue held at bay. Given an opportunity he would have forgotten himself to those words, to him, such simple things. But to Samuel and Maurice, words weighed by hate, simple as they were laid the groundwork for the end of the world. Dylan's small back disappeared into the shrubbery leaving them a moment of peace to exchange worried glances.

'You think it's time you taught him?' Maurice asked Samuel.

'He doesn't need to hold a gun. The weight of a book fits him better.' Samuel said sternly.

'As true as that is Mr. Clark,' Maurice thumbed his nose simultaneously scratching his dirtied temple with his index fingernail collecting a thin line of dirt underneath it's edge, 'Paper and ink doesn't stop a bullet flying at you.'

Samuel rolled his tongue in his clenched mouth pushing a thick glob of saliva up just behind his front teeth. Curling back his lips a brief exertion propelled the white mess away splattering it across the rocky river bank.

'No. No, it does not. But if there are no bullets to fly at you-,' Samuel tried to say.

'Then it's a knife at your throat.' Maurice cut him short.

Samuel had no reply. The truth was Maurice had all the cards. He was right no matter which way you looked at it. Were it not for that doubt, that one tiny piece of optimism telling him it could all be different, Dyaln would have learned to shoot the moment he could walk. Perhaps it was a foolish old man's hope for a better world but eventually the killing had to stop.

'We don't need to kill to make a better tomorrow.' Samuel reasoned.

'Sometimes we have to kill to see tomorrow.' Maurice told him and though he'd seen it all, heard it all, somehow those words sent a chill down Samuel's spine, especially coming from Maurice.

'Maurice, I'd think you of all people would be more opposed to that line of thought.'

'Maybe I should be.' Maurice bent down to retrieve his bucket hoisting it to his waistline. 'The nightmares, they'll never stop. I know that. But it's as you said. I'm here, he's not. If I hadn't....done what I did...I guess all I can do now is try to build that better tomorrow now.' Maurice faced him with a wide smile. 'Something like that right?'

Samuel cocked a half grin, 'Something like that.'