Tears rolled down the cheeks of Alice as she gripped her fathers hand. He was nervous, blood shot, and the fear was in his eyes. "Its okay, Dad. Its just a check up." She heard herself say reassuringly. She knew it wouldn't be.
Barney, her father aged 67, was a large man. An electrician all his life, Barney never had trouble putting away the meals from his dutiful wife, Jane, after coming back from strange hours, missed holidays, forgotten birthdays and long nights he had put in for the company his own father had worked for. While his absence was ever noticeable, his love was not.
His love for his wife, children, and anything nearly consumable was known in most social circles around town. Somehow the man could drink, eat, inhale, inject, snort and swallow; and still come home and be a functional father. Nobody could prove it and nobody ever caught him but they all heard the rumors.
Barney was seen here and there, doing this and that, with someone and somebody. Jane would get so worried she'd have private detectives follow him everywhere; they even infiltrated his workplace and would sit in the nearby bathroom stalls with recording equipment. She had the small town equivalent of the FBI after him. Detectives would run into each other and eventually they all became drinking buddies.
But the love at home was the most evidential. Every one of Barney's seven children felt equally cared for and paid attention to by their father. He didn't go home and kick up with a beer and watch TV but he'd watch them. He'd know all their friends (both real and imaginary), help figure out their homework, talk about the after school activities, have a strong shoulder for the failed relationships and was happy when they married. He was always there even when he was barely there.
So that even when the kid's, for their entire adolescence, were assaulted with these rumors, that grew more bizarre by every passing year, they listened attentively but never really believed them. They thought their mother was a nervous wreck for even entertaining the towns ideas about their father.
But the rumors grew. As the family got older, moved out, and brought around grandchildren; so did the rumors. Federal agents replaced Jane's army of detectives solely on the basis that Barney's "habits" had fuled the Midwest illegal drug industry on his 50th birthday. Nobody ever forgot, that day, of the line of white vans down the neighborhood block and the strange talking one would hear if they picked up a phone and especially the guy who fell down the chimney and let himself out the front door with a walkie talkie in hand.
What did Barney himself think of all this? What was his alibi for this web of mystery?
Barney would laugh with a lively twinkle in his eye and say something like "the proof is in the pudding" or "they never did like ol' Barney, did they?" and the personal favorite "three fingers round is worth five in the stone, remember that, laddie".
Unfortunately, Jane didn't share the same sentiment. She died on March, 6th, 2004; from complications after a head on collision with a former detective. The detective walked away unscathed but it had seemed that all the years of loyalty and jealousy had taken it's toll.
She still clung onto her fears as she died in the hospital with Barney at her side. She took the crash as another superstition and cried in Barney's arms as she could be heard wailing "is it true?! Please, tell me its not true!". The official cause of death was ruled as a broken heart.
Barney walked out the hospital with tears in his eyes and never told anyone about it. He was dead silent through the entire funeral. He shed no tears.
Part II
Alice, the third youngest of the seven children, slowly walked her decrepit father up to the hospital doors and waited as nurses went through usual procedures that she had been through for several months now.
It had been fourteen years since her mother had died, her father took the role of widower with solitude. He retired from the electrical company the year after her mother had died and spent most of his retirement as a recluse. The family home now felt empty, full of ghosts and shadows, and it depressed the kid's to see the warm home, they remember, turn into a cold, dark, recess of memories. He still cracked a smile when he saw his children, cooed the grandchildren, but it felt emotionally empty. He never talked about their mother but they all could see it in his eyes. A distant look that pondered many things and never seemed to resolve any of them.
Several months ago, Barney fell down the stairs and it wasn't until Alice, who came to drop off the annual holiday string bean casserole, discovered him lying in a mixture of blood and other various bodily fluids.
The hospital later told her that he had been lying there for 3 ½ days.
During the physical rehab that followed, doctors began to discover that his physical health started to decline with each visit. Since then, she began to routinely take her father to the doctor once a week.
But she knew today would be different.
Last week, his doctor pulled her aside after the check up and told her that his failing health had been due to major drug withdrawal. The most serious that he and his colleagues had ever seen. "Whatever he had been doing, he was doing for decades, by our estimations. We are not exactly sure what because traces of almost every common street narcotic known to man have been found in his system. We are not sure why he's not showing the extreme symptoms of withdrawal that we usually see in drug patients but we conclude this to the apparent time hes been consuming these". He said with a hushed voice.
He leaned in and said "now, it's not the medical professional's business to lecture a patient or their family but I must implore you that he must be watched at all times. Any further use of any narcotic, a pain pill for example, will kill him. My advice is to hold him under hospital observation but I'm afraid that there isn't much we can do. His condition is deteriorating rapidly".
Alice looked blankly at the collar of the doctor's shirt, amazed and frightened, she couldn't speak. A tear ran down her cheek and she suddenly looked up, brushing it with a finger, and after a few minutes, finally said "can I at least have the rest of the day with him? I will bring him back first thing tomorrow".
The doctor stood silent before slowly nodding as he said "the authorities must be contacted. You and I both know why".
Alice walked away.
The FBI officially gave up their case in 2005 with the retirement of Barney. The papers were headlined with the official apology from the head of the FBI at the time. They offered an undisclosed amount of money to resolve damages but Barney, being Barney, declined and celebrated with a feast for this entire family.
He stood up towards the end of the meal, his entire family around him, and declared "I wish Jane could be here to see us. Look at us. I have more grandchildren than I can count and my children have been completely stable since their conception".
He paused, looking around the table before continuing, "True, I worked very hard, I couldn't spend the time that I wanted with you all; especially Jane. Our family has had to endure his very long situation that has made us all suffer. It took my Jane away from me. But I knew even then, even when my Janie would cry and confess how she would hire men to follow me around, that our name was looked at with a distrustful hatred, that my children were being tormented because of lies spread about me; I knew then that this would be all over as abruptly as it began".
Alice remembered coming up to him after the dinner, herself being in her late 20s, but feeling as a child again as she asked sheepishly "is it really over?". He laughed, something she had not seen him do since the last time he saw her parents together, and said "aye, remember what I told you when you could still fit on my knee. Three fingers round, Alice. Three fingers round". It was moments like these that each of the seven children could tell themselves that they were their fathers favorite.
Alice, now in her early 40s, sat at the edge of that same table, the family dinner table, the same faithful family table she spent so much of her life at, and cautiously awed her father as he paced around the kitchen at a lethargic pace.
She had just told him what the doctor said. As usual, he was silent, but he seemed a lot more thoughtful and grim at this moment. She wondered if it was because what the doctor had said about the police was true, if it was because he was afraid to die, if her mother's suspicion that took her to the grave was true. She was so confused and scared that she couldn't muster up the courage to ask.
Barney paused, mid pace, and began as he looked to a corner of the room but not with any sort of eye contact: "a man has two options in his life, two directions in life, Alice. He sees others going about in life, failing and succeeding, he takes notes. He learns from the failures and applies what works. Intrinsic concepts, the right and the wrong, are these directions that humanity is constantly doing a ballet between. It intertwines and recedes like the delicate feet of a dancer". He stops again.
"I'm saying that there are choices that sometimes must be made without a direction. You have a goal but you don't know how to get there. You see maps everywhere but they're all different. Ways and paths beyond your comprehension. Advice only gets you a few more miles ahead. So, you take a chance and wonder until it makes sense. Unfortunately, Alice, it never began to make sense. Jane and the family are the only thing that ever made sense. I could see it, feel it, and experience it all. But what do I have left, Alice? My role has been sufficient and I believe that it is time for it to come to an end". Alice cried quietly.
Barney walked up to her, embraced her head towards himself, and stroked the top of her head as she cried.
Part III
Alice and her father slowly made their way through the hospital, behind the nurses, he didn't know it but he began to gradually grip harder as they got closer and closer to his room.
When they were down the hallway, they noticed the familiar sight of government men as they stood beside the door of his room; hands to their ears and sunglasses to hide their appearance. They nodded at Alice as she walked past them, almost like trying to make her feel that she did the right thing, but she wasn't sure at all. Nothing made sense. She began to grip his hand harder too.
As tears strolled down her cheeks, she sat him up in his bed, and kissed his forehead. He smiled and kissed her hand. Her loving father. The one who beat her own mother to first hold her. The one who read to her at night when it was too scary. The one who knew all her friends and the one who's shoulder she cried on; the one who loved her when she was unlovable. The strong and energetic man she once knew sat in that hospital bed, still smiling as wide as ever but one who looked as weak as her in this moment. His face spoke strength but his eyes screamed fear. More tears came when she noticed.
He looked like a child who sat there patiently waiting for something. He rubbed her shoulder, it was shaking, then pulled them back and folded them together. He trained his eyes towards the front of him.
The agents walked her out and she looked behind her and saw that her father held up three fingers and said "remember, Alice, remember". An agent pulled up a chair towards him and began to talk to him. She didn't hear. Another agent began to close the door. She noticed her father began to speak.
Three years later, Alice sits at her childhood family table. Her own family sits around her and her husband, George; who she met quickly after her father's passing. She's smiling, her family is happy and healthy. Each child says that they're their father's favorite.
As her eyes scan across the old table, they rest upon a folded up newspaper that George happened to just finish. The headline "Miracle Junkie Grandpa Tells All In Court". Below the headline was a fuzzy black and white picture of an elderly man on the stand, swearing the oath, with three fingers. She ignored it and smiled at her husband. They kissed. George's hand rested on her pregnant stomach and began to massage it as he kissed her.
