Chapter 1
Chapter 1
The life of my father was changed, absolutely. A forty-eight-year-old man who enjoyed black coffee at dawn, crossword puzzles, and the sight of flying squirrels gliding from treetop to treetop. An honest man who betrayed no one, believed in God but never preached, and regarded the land as holy, filled with a necessary spirit. Of German blood and he had the thought of being reincarnated, having the understanding that he was once a h*******t victim in Auschwitz, dying at the young age of twenty-three. A drinker since my mother’s death in 1999, finding pleasure in Jack Daniel’s, Jim Beam, or Absolut. Someone I’ve always trusted with my secrets, a mirror image of my grandfather, Paul Charles West. A collector of National Geographic, connoisseur of Whitman, and inspired by the sounds of the wind, squawking chickadees, or the way the sun melted over the Pennsylvania skyline into a spray of burnt reds and composed blues. The only carpenter in our family who specialized in window repairs. My father: Isaac Robert West.
I was like him. A clone of sorts, except twenty years younger. Ink-black hair, flickering topaz-blue eyes, clean-shaven at all times, five-eleven, bow-legged, with the tiniest mole on our left cheeks. I created interior rooms using complex graphic computer software at Schmid & Taylor Design. I had a wife (Carla Benning) of my own, a son (Lock Christopher) that I spoiled, and lived in my parents’ house, the place where I grew up, happy and content, while writing this.
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Reflection: When I was a child my father would kneel next to me at the edge of my twin-sized bed, instruct me to bend my elbows and press my palms together. It was a position I found incredibly uncomfortable, but unselfishly carried out. Next to me, almost too close, my father whispered, “Shut your eyes, Nicholas,” which I did. And softly we prayed together, wishing hope, peace, and love throughout our family, passion in our lives, apologized to God for our sins, thanked Him for our daily bread, and said Amen together, in unison—as close as I ever felt to my father.
His smell was of a thick sweat and Marlboro cigarettes, a habit he knocked when he turned thirty-two. My father called me his joy, the pride of his life, his little hero. He said he was the happiest with me, a fulfilled father who could ask for nothing more. I was his strength and eyes of the world—his only son. And when he tucked me in bed before I became a teenager, he pulled the sheets up to my neck, kissed me on my forehead, and whispered his goodnight to me, “I love you, Nicholas. We are one. You’ll always be safe with me. I will never hurt you—forever. I promise.”
