Chapter 1

Such a dark blue summer evening that feels complex and sinister. He’s twenty-seven miles away from Lake Samoy in western New York, surrounded by the most beautiful and striking sunflowers. He deems it the peak of summer, although it’s only June. So hot, humid, and sticky. A time to easily fall in love under the ball of orange-blue sun. So windless out this evening. And so necessary to take photographs of Almond’s Field while holding his 35mm Nikon in both palms as a mosquito sucks the AB+ blood from his left bicep. He centers the sunflower in the upper left-hand corner of the Nikon’s frame, stops breathing, becomes motionless and catatonic, and snaps just the top of the eloquent flower, pressing a silver button consecutively, listening to the camera click…click…click.

Part 1: His Walden

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 Holocaust 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 Amentogether, 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.”

2

My father married Anne Harrington when he was nineteen. She was a soft-looking brunette who always smiled, a woman of twenty-three who worked at the Milton Glove Factory, stuffing work gloves into boxes and shipping them out to a variety of states. She was a Catholic, watercolorist, easy on the eyes, and found joy in reading mystery novels, watching dramas on TV, and baking. Happily?…they lived at 349 Murray Street in Pittsburgh. After three miscarriages I was born, their only child, Nicholas Lock West, a blessing in their marriage, perhaps something to tie them together—always.

He never kissed her or held my mother. He never whispered, “I love you, Anne. We are one. You’ll always be safe with me. I will never hurt you—forever. I promise.” I didn’t see anniversary gifts, birthday presents for mother, a vacation to Cancun, Mexico, or the mountains of Wyoming. My father seemed cold to her, withdrawn, perhaps trapped like a rabbit; behavior I didn’t understand; a way of life I grew to accept but always questioned. Did my father love my mother fully? And why did he not glow inside the realm of love, happiness, and tenderness she shared with him?

The bedrooms upstairs. Three in all. One for my mother. One for me. A third one for my father. I never saw them sleep together. I never heard doors opening and closing at night. I never woke to lovers’ footsteps in the dim hallway. Such a mystery during my years growing up. An unexplained anonymity. Confusion. Sex was unheard through the walls of my childhood home. The topic was never discussed or shared. Not once did my father mention the term the birds and the beesto me. And conventionally, I learned the act of sex through magazines: Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler

The cancer came when I was nineteen while attending Ausbreck College. It happened in her right lung, spreading throughout her body and contaminating her entire torso. My father said it was the cigarettes she smoked throughout the years. The Marlboro Lights. The Virginia Slims. The Salem Lights. She didn’t know it was inside her; none of us did. The silent killer. A mockery to human life. Insanity. How quickly it had eaten away at my mother’s organs. How absurd it was to learn that diseases are not always cured by love, happiness, and tenderness. A quiet victor, taking my mother away from me.

I remember her coughing, that raspy voice and the way she constantly patted her chest because she couldn’t breathe. I remember the visits to see Dr. Yullbrick, driving her there myself, being informed of her incurable condition. It happened so suddenly, in a matter of months, invading her system, ruining her world, munching away at her organs like a hungry trucker at a smorgasbord. Cancer had her in its firm grip and wasn’t about to let her go. Mother, I learned, became a prisoner of her disintegration. It was almost a blessing that she had passed on Labor Day while holding my hand, attempting to smile, knowing that her suffering had ended.