This isn't going to be the title.
This is the first time I have written in first person of any note. I'm not a big fan of first person, but I read the green mile and realised that it opens many avenues. I hope you give me your views on a this first first person attempt
PART ONE: The Voice and Mr Thorne
Chapter One.
When I was younger I dreamt about such things as miracles, and what type of person might be at the centre of them. I never expected to be part of one myself, although I don’t really know to this day if it was a miracle at all. I was told that I was destined to be in the position I am today, but these issues will become clearer as we go through this journey together. As I write this, I’m sixty-six years old, and I still have my own teeth (thank the lord, as I’ve heard bad things about false dentures) and a healthy thickness of hair, although it is the colour of December snow these days.
I sit in the comfortable position of my hammock, attached to two palm trees that tower sixty feet or so above me. A black leather book is resting on my knee, the feathered leaves shading me from the heat of the sun; the breeze off the pacific is warm on my face at this moment.
People will wonder why I would write this. I have a simple answer to this question if it reared in your minds, as I’m sure it might have done, is that at times there is something in a man that needs to escape, and written words might be better than spoken ones. I’ve often thought (usually, when drinking strong black coffee in a morning) why more people don’t do it. A man’s release, after all, is a man’s best friend.
The start of my journey with you occurred in the summer of 1999. I lived in a very expensive area of the United Kingdom (I’m thankful for my good fortune financially), but it is not my money that brings me to where I’m lying at this moment. My father, who of course is dead now, and has been for ten years, was responsible for my healthy financial circumstances.
My father, Malcolm his name was, come from America originally, Kentucky to be absolutely precise. He was an avid fan of the plane. Loved the ‘angels’, as he used to call them, and wanted to be involved in aviation, grimly determined that he would make it. A few years before I was born, which was about late ’34, maybe even early ’35, he emigrated from the American deep south and travelled to the heart of the United Kingdom, which if you want to be more precise yet again, Stratford-upon-Avon. I’m not sure why my father picked this particular location in England, but I’m glad he did, as I loved it. Many of you’ll wonder why I chose to move away if I loved it so much, maybe never to return. I can’t answer this right away, or there would be no story, or in my case, no account to write, which I will somehow pass onto my two daughters in the future. They, until this day, still live in England as far as I’ve heard. The truth of the matter is I didn’t want to move away from my home, but something happened and I just had to leave, and at the worse possible moment as well, but rest assured all will be revealed in time. I’m a man of my word, as I’m sure you’ll learn as the pages of this book flick through your fingers like a deck of playing cards I expect. There are no Jokers in this pack.
I still believe, although I have my doubts, that my father picked Stratford-Upon-Avon, as it was well known throughout America as the land and home of the great writer and one of God’s mysteries, William Shakespeare. To be brutally honest, I never had the chance to ask my dad his reasons for emigrating to England, and he might have not been able to tell me himself. Maybe I shouldn’t worry about such things, as I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale if my father had decided to stay put in Kentucky.
My father, as I’ve mentioned before, arrived in England in late ’34 or early ’35, and settled down with a young English lady, Elizabeth, and fell in love and married by late ’37. That covered it in a short amount of time, but that was just how my father explained it to me when I reached an age when I became interested about things like that (which for me was sixteen).
I was born on August 10th 1939, and if my memory still serves me well we were in the middle of world war two, and Adolf Hitler, the Nazi’s, the endless rows of Jews being marched likewise into the endless rows of concentration camps and gas chambers at Auschwitz. In fact, it was only a few months ago now that I watched a television programme on the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, as Adolf Hitler’s demise was complete, and the Nazi’s were shot down into ashes.
According to my mother I was trouble from the start. During my birth I was tangled in the umbilical cord, and nearly choked to death. When I think about it now it strikes something rather odd in me, as though someone slashing a red hot cord across my chest. When my mother told me about the events of my birth I listened intently, as I always did when my mother spoke to me, but I never understood the significance.
“You were trouble from the start,” said my mother. “The doctors thought you were going to die there and then, but something pulled us through, John. Something pulled us through, and I thank God for that.” She gently tapped me on my small shoulders, as I was only six or seven at the time. “You ought to thank god for that as well, have you?”
At this I didn’t know what to say. At the age of six or seven you weren’t exactly expected to be able to think on your feet very well (or sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of warm milk in my case), and I took a long time to answer. My mother, with those dark curious eyes of hers, looked at me and smiled the way she smiled, so that her cheeks lit up in a light pink colour, the colour of a pig I always thought.
“I guess so, mother,” I said coyly. My mother nodded and smiled, my eyes still on her lightly tinted, pink face. “I think God helped us both, didn’t he?” I said smiling, although I didn’t truly believe that at that age, though I do now. I didn’t know what else to say, and so I continued to thank God for my successful birth and that pleased my mother, so I had no problem with continuing my little Oscar winning show.
My mother lit up when I said that. I felt the warmness of her hand as she tapped me gently on top of my blond head (I had blond hair in those early days) and looked down at my milk. “That’s right, John, and are you going to be drinking that? I want you to drink that up, and no wasting. I have no money to waste on God’s favours. Then, I want you to go upstairs and clean those teeth of yours.”
I nodded, but didn’t say anything.
She then gestured for me to show them to her, so I did as I was told. “Johnny, those need a good clean,” my mother said, pulling a comical face. My mother made me laugh when she did that, because it was so unusual to see her as a comical figure, not that my mother was set in her ways and too strict that she couldn’t have fun. In truth, my mother was a lot of fun, as I was an only child I suppose she wanted to make sure she didn’t waste that precious time, as my mother had put it to me on many, many occasions.
It was strange that my father came from the deep American south thinking about it closely, as he had a lot in common with the late, great Howard Hughes. It was a funny kind of resemblance that didn’t go unnoticed by me, that was for sure. My father happened to make millions out of aviation, as did Howard Hughes, of course. But Howard Hughes went onto a lot more powerful and self destructive things like the movies, his reclusive ways, his bizarre phobias, behaviour patterns, and so on. Howard Hughes became an enigma of human nature, but my father did not. My father was in the aviation and in later years (much later years) started to run planes to the major airports across the United Kingdom and Europe for the major businessmen of this world that made bucket loads of cash themselves. He made absolute millions, silly money, piles of the stuff, invested it sensibly, so you have to give the man his due.
In the end, both my parents succumbed to that very famous killer…the most famous killer in the world, and the biggest mass murderer to have ever lived…Cancer. My mother died of cancer in December 1990, aged Seventy-One and she still should’ve been in her prime, but God cut her life short. At the age of Seventy-One you wouldn’t have thought so, but she could have lived to a hundred, no doubt. For whatever reason that was, my mother would have defended God’s decision though, I have no doubts about that one also. She struggled over a year with Cancer, which grew inside her like a Mediterranean plant in an English greenhouse, no business being there, but it grew inside her none-the-less.
My father was the one that really got me though, although my mother and father’s death were equal in grief consumption. How can you possibly say one parent’s death is sadder than another? It’s impossible to make that call, and I wouldn’t have done it anyway. But, there was something different about my fathers death, because I was there when he slipped from this world and stepped into the next one, no doubt in a plane if they existed in heaven, and for him I wish it were true. When my mother died I arrived at my parents house red-faced, icy air from outside numbing my nose. My father was still there, alive and well at the time, with Dr Summerville. I was told she had passed away about two minutes prior to my untimely arrival. I remember crying for hours that day. I’d missed my chance to say my own personal farewell. I can definitely put my hand on my heart and say that was the most painful feeling I have ever experienced, an even more painful experience than exiting my daughters lives. But they’re still young and alive you see, both in strong marriages. My mother was gone forever.
My father’s death was different, as I pointed out earlier. I remember going into the darkened room of my parent’s bedroom, as at this point my father’s eyes were very sensitive to the light. It was approaching lunchtime when my father passed.
“He hasn’t much time, John,” Dr Summerville told me at my father’s bedroom door. Beyond that door my father lay there dying in the same spot as my mother had died about five years earlier. Did that mean they would be reunited? I didn’t know. I had a feeling they would have been reunited in any case, and as I found later on, much later on I might add, it was true. I even have a picture of it. You don’t believe me, and you’re probably reading this with complete and utter exasperation. But it is true. “I would go right in before it is too late,” Dr Summerville urged. Then, I had a flashback to when my mother died, and I knew I couldn’t let that happen again. I rushed into the room as though I was about to confront someone breaking in through the bedroom window, but there was no one there of course, apart from my frail father.
I was shocked. Even the day before he didn’t look as bad as what he had done there. As though someone from the heavens wanted to remind people how vulnerable we are, it was presented to me right up close and personal.
My father had always been quite a plump man, not fat, but healthy looking with tanned cheeks. But now his head was a mere skull. The bone structure of his face clearly visible, as if someone had put a thin white sheet on top of what was just bone underneath. It was painful to look at, but when I looked at his eyes I knew it was still my father. Deep down in there, he was still my father.
“John…Johnny?” his voice sounded weak on the sultry air. It was summer, another difference in my parent’s deaths, while my mother died when snow lay on the ground, my father died when it was hot enough to cook an egg on the tarmac of the road outside. Learning that it was good to have windows open when you were ill, I walked over and opened one a little bit. Though, I knew now, that it didn’t matter how many windows I opened, my father’s life was a closed book I’m afraid. But that window remained open half an hour after he died, before it closed for the final time.
“Yes,” I said softly, sitting on a chair beside him. I can just remember it now (and I won’t say it was as clear as yesterday, because that is a cliché I could well do without). I was nervous before my father when he needed me to be strong, although I think he could see I was doing well despite the circumstances. The reasons for my nerves, apart from the obvious reasons, were that my father wasn’t in control. For the first time I didn’t see him as a person who was healthy and in control of his thoughts. I like to think that the last thought before he died was that he was looking forward to seeing my mother again, and it wasn’t that far away.
He weakly summoned me closer. “My dreams come true, John,” he said unevenly. “I got to fly in all those…all those…planes.” He smiled, although that was a huge effort for him at this stage when the cancer was draining everything out of him, his body must have been crying out for the end by now, but he still managed another ten minutes before he finally left. “I…I…want you to live…to…live your dreams, as I…I…lived mine.”
I nodded, and this wasn’t the Oscar winning show that I put on for my mother when she talked to me about God. This was the real deal. I could see my father believed me when I nodded, because he smiled and nodded slowly back to me. Though no words were spoken with those nods, it was a quiet understanding. “I promise I will…I promise,” I said, making sure. When I kissed him on his forehead I could feel how cold he was. “Don’t worry.”
He shook his head so slowly that, if I wasn’t looking at him with all the concentration I had in my body, would have missed it for sure. “I…I’ve got…my…Elizabeth…waiting for me now.”
“Mother?” I asked, smiling sadly, “ I bet she…she can’t wait…I bet?” I had tears tackling my throat so bad that it hurt to speak and I could feel them begging to seep into my eyes, just like when on an overcast day a few spots of rain begin to appear on your windows, but don’t quite turn into a downpour. “She spoke to you,” I asked, “mother spoke to you just now?”
For a moment I didn’t think he understood the question. After all, I wasn’t sure how the Cancer was playing with my father’s brain at that moment. For all I knew it could have been sucking out my father’s intelligence as well as his energy, but inside I didn’t truly know what was happening to him, apart from that big old Cancer’s grip was getting tighter as the seconds slipped by.
He clung onto the question for a moment, as long as he dared to, and then spoke with a quiet and composed voice. “She whispered to me…and she said…” he paused, gasping a little, and when he gasped I thought that was the end. I begun to think I wouldn’t know what my mother had just whispered to my father, but he then broke into a quiet, uneven voice again. “She said remember…remember…to…to brush your…teeth.”
That started the tears off, and I couldn’t help but cry now. My defences had just been completely blown apart, the dam walls had crumbled to mere dust particles and the water was gushing out of me. “That’s…that’s what she said to you?”
He smiled at me again, though it was waning now. “Ye…yes, John. She whisper it…to me…jus…jus…just now.”
I didn’t know what to say, but just looked at him with the same softness in my eyes, tears still watering my vision.
“If…if…someone comes to you…a chance, take it, won’t you, John?” my father struggled to say, and for a moment his eyes widened as if he saw death suddenly hover in front of him, ready to take him to wherever the next place might have been. Just for a moment he glimpsed it, and then his eyes narrowed again. “You promise…you promise me, Johnny?”
I nodded, smiling through the tears. “Ye…yes, of course father, I’ll do that very…that very thing for you.”
My father then shook his head, and this time I could see the shake of his head clearly. “No, you do it for you…not…not for me.”
My father then turned his head away from me, looking up at the ceiling with a type of mystery in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before. It was hard to tell if it was a look of fear, or relief that the pain would soon be over (my mother waiting as well) and he’d be in, what my father came to call it when he knew he was dying, ‘the next place’ or ‘the next and last dot on the map.’
“Father?” I whispered, as though trying not to disturb his time of meditation. But, looking at him, it didn’t look as though he heard, so I called again, a little louder this time. But, again, there was no answer from my father. “Doctor,” I called, “I need you in here…my father…”
Dr Summerville appeared at the door, walking over to the bedside. Before he reached down and checked on my father’s breathing I knew it wasn’t good. Dr Summerville’s face told me everything I wanted, or feared to know. My father was dead.
After the doctor checked on my father, he looked at me and shook his head. “I’m very sorry, John, I can’t feel a pulse. He’s gone now.”
After that day I never saw my father again, until he was being lowered in a pine box to his final resting place, but that wasn’t much of a reunion. As his wish was met, he was buried next to my mother…in life they were inseparable, and in death they were the same. It was also the last time I saw Dr Summerville, who’d became close to my family after his dealings with my mother and father. I heard that he took up a job position in New York City soon after my father passed, which would have offered him the chance of earning more pounds (or Dollars, I should say) than his position in England. I never had chance to say thank you to him for his efforts, and wish him luck in his new life in the States.
Before I ended up on this very beach, I lived in Stratford-Upon-Avon, like I’ve said earlier on. It was a set-up I liked very much. It was on an estate, nicknamed, “The Walls”. It didn’t sound a very complimentary nickname, considering it was a very exclusive and wealthy part of the country, but you could understand why it was called that very name.
On “The Walls” there were eight large house’s, which were about half the size of what you’d call a good sized mansion, let’s say for arguments sake, eight bedroom accommodation? My home was one of those eight. The estate had a perimeter wall that was about ten to twelve feet high, which ran around the whole estate, a bit like you’d see in a prison movie but without the wire mesh and guard towers that usually went with them. A man in a small hut let people through a tall black electronic gate at the front of the estate. Of course, he wouldn’t allow just anyone old person in, or the purpose of the large walls and electronic gate would have held no purpose at all.
It wasn’t as though everyone whom went to the estate had to offer some form of identification like you would do at an airport. It was up to whoever was manning that small hut to pick out those ‘dodgy looking ones’ as I come to learn. I still wonder to this day how the gentleman that visited me on one summer day, which started my little miracle off in 1999, managed to get through security and meet me at my home on a Sunday morning in June. A lone man in a suit, looking almost unnaturally immaculate, as though no amount of wind, bad weather or nuclear explosion would damage or disturb his looks would not stick out like a sore thumb. But, as you already guessed it, he didn’t cause any type of alarm…he was just let right in. The man who started the events, like a spark to the fuse of a bomb, was called Harry Thorne. But he came a long time after I had lived there. I had lived there nearly ten years before such a man walked into my life, and threatened to change it just like a meteorite hitting the earth would do. The whole face of my life changed. It would never be the same again.
