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“Where’s Dad?”, the three sons said.
His white hair flickering at the tips in the wind, which waved his memories hello, when he wished them goodbye. He trailed behind his three sons who were taking one scuttle after another scuttle of tiny sneakers between the shreds of wheat in the evening musk of the field.
The clouds, who find their place in the sky, interlaced and watched over calmly. As he stuck to the fine dusted path, the earth had taken his body. But his spirit was alive in my father’s memory. He died a little himself, but he was alive. Pools of sunset light bled through the cloth of clouds above him and gave more light to his dog. The one who he played with growing up, his only friend during a time of absolute unrest. The inescapability of war, which he could feel again, was in his glistening eyes and his hands locked to the seams of his trousers. His muscles tightened, and he became weak. He was made to fight in a war that was not his own back in Lebanon. Mournfully staring deep into the nests of fur, his head, and the head of the mutt, meatless, bony and ajar, stared off into the distant darkness between the trees of the forest.
He could’ve seen the forest for the trees, but my father saw everything anyway. He saw more than he thought he would by staring at the ground in that moment. His sons jumping around between wheat patches with gumboots on their feet and wooly hats on their head had no idea of the death of a companion as loyal to their father as themselves.
The three sons, wondering where the presence of their father fled, felt as if his existence came to a standstill, a limbo between the dark dirt on the ground and the bright clouded skies above.
In a maze of maize, the three sons bustled through the strands and stems to explore their surroundings and shoot for the trail where their father was. All three were adrift without him. They found him though, halfway between where they played together and the main road, staring down at the ground in the distance, as if for the 42 years of his life he had been there like a statue.
Calling his name, “Daddy!”, and silence was his reply. The noise of British cars on the nearby main road muffled his ears, and blocked out the sound of their voices. The children took one foot after another and sped up closer, even more curious now in a race to have their father’s attention. His name was called again and again. The children slinked up to their papa, and were noticeably 3 feet shorter now, saw his deep brown eyes immovable from the ground. Softly as the foreground of their father’s silhouette deepened in the evening light, all was still as hard to see up close now.
The three children jumped behind their Dad’s thighs when they saw the teeth and fur of a brown and white dog laying and decaying on his side.
Father, rolled his head to his children, and saw his eyes now beholding them. His head approached his children, and the arch in his back was bowed, turning to them to kneel in unconditional silence in the soft silhouetted illuminations of the evening light. He kissed his sons and hugged them all.
Show Don't tell
By: Rudy Acar
My brothers and I were born in England, but my father was born in Lebanon. He was of age and made to fight in the Lebanese Civil War. During the war, my dad raised a German Shepherd that his friend gave him when my dad was younger. When he got back from the war, his dog had died. He never got to say goodbye. This is the story of my
back from the war, his dog had died. He never got to say goodbye. This is the story of my Dad’s past following him to a field by the busy main road in our town in England when he took the three of us, his sons, on a hike. My dad always supported us, and protected us from living a life like his growing up. It’s funny how the worst part of the war for my dad, at least what he ever made visible to us, was his dog, Rocky.
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