by John Cody Bennett

He came downstairs, paced the room, relayed to me a little bit of all that he had learned, and I listened. He was sweating, his hands trembled, and his eyes were red from intense reading.

I hate to admit it, Jon, he said, but it’s far worse than anything I had ever imagined. Look.

He showed me a photocopied page from the Semmesville library. It didn’t surprise me.   

It’s obvious that our entire existence was built on a series of crimes and tragic inequities.

Well, of course, I said. We knew that. Now, go on. Grab yourself a chair. I’ll fix us lunch. 

But even as he waited for his meal he examined another document from the 19th century and scribbled questions and exclamations in the pages of his notebook. It was an old courthouse record, a deed or a bill of sale, something related to our family and its history, although I didn’t care to ask. I served him a BLT on toasted rye, and we sat together at the long table, and we ate.

He continued to peruse the document. I’m sorry, he said, but this research is so addictive.     

It’s OK, I said. I understand. You should at least take a short break, though. It’s Saturday!  

At about 1:00, his sister and his five year-old niece dropped by, but he didn’t come down.

You know how it is, I said to her. Runs in the family. Fixates on one thing. Won’t let it go.    

Oh, yes, I know how it is, she said. I’ve been a Meek longer than you or Daryl. I get it.

I took a nap on the living room couch and remembered three images as I drifted to sleep. The first was a tree, the second one a black sow locked in a barn, and the third was just sunlight. My cousin was speaking: Busy, busy as usual, chasing dead ends, ghosts, all things forgotten. I slept for an hour, and he was there in the recliner across the room when at last he awakened me.

I sat up at once, rubbed sleep from my eyes, unwrapped a piece of gum, and chewed it.

May I read you a bit more of what I’ve discovered? he asked. It’s shocking to me. Still is.

All right, sure, I answered him, too addled from my nap to protest. Whatever you want. 

He opened his notebook, and I observed that the fingers of his left hand were stained with ink. He read with sincere indignation an unflattering summary of our family’s participation in injustice and traced it back to the arrival of the Meeks on the shores of South Carolina in 1725. I could tell he was pained by many of the details, which in truth I could not understand, as it was so long ago. After all, mankind’s barbarity is nothing new: it is but a fact, if an inconvenient one.

Does this make you feel better about everything somehow? I asked him. This confession?

He paused for a moment. It’s not a confession, he said. It’s not an apology. But it is truth.

Truth was a big word, and I rolled it back and forth in my mind in much the same way that I squeezed the chewing gum wrapper, crumpled it into a ball, and slipped it deep inside the pocket of my jeans. I asked him, too, if this truth was the same as a fact, or merely a perspective.

It’s not, he said. It’s things that happened which I choose to remember. Because I want to.

He gathered his papers and ascended the stairs. No break? I said. Just back to the grind?

Jon, you know, I wasn’t trying to offend you, he said. I don’t want to step on any toes, or blame anybody. I just think it’s important as a family to remember our history, to acknowledge it.

Makes sense, I said. You do you. And then: I’m heading home for a bit, OK? I’ll be back.

I pondered again my cousin’s words and after pulling on my boots I walked outside past Padgett’s Pond and entered the woods and followed the knotty trail through the undergrowth until I reached my own property, a cabin at the intersection of Highway 3121 and Wilkes Road. It was early April and humid already, and the smell of wisteria in the trees returned me to simpler days when a vision of the future loomed larger than the memories of youth. I lingered for a spell within a copse of beech trees surmounting a small hill, and it was surprisingly pleasant to sit and to reflect on the sounds of the birds, as I rarely noticed them and could not distinguish their calls.

Back home I putzed around the house and swept the floor and washed the dishes in the sink until sometime between 5:00 and 6:00 in the evening when I returned to Padgett’s Pond with my cane pole and a carton of earthworms, and I began to fish. For the better part of an hour, I watched the bobbing cork skitter lightly across the pond’s surface, and every so often it would struggle and, perhaps weary of the dance, submerge itself in the water, and then I knew I had a bite. Nibbling the bait and separated easily from their native country by the jerk of my line, the ensnared small bream of the pond dangeled as captives in the day’s diminished sunlight until, with no desire this evening to clean or to cook them, I loosed the hook from their gills and released them to the water. All in all, it was a pleasurable outing, and a nice way to pass the time.

At Daryl’s place, I refrigerated the worms and stowed my cane pole outside on the porch. 

It’s been a productive afternoon, said Daryl. I did a search on Ancestry.com. I found this.   

He displayed for me a handful of newspaper clippings, a Meek family tree still warm from the printer, and a report from a local historian on the economics of the antebellum South. He pointed to the names in the tree that he thought I should recognize: famous ones, he insisted, although I didn’t know them. I felt my attention flagging, my patience spent. I asked him to stop.

I don’t understand, he said. What’s wrong?

Nothing’s wrong, I responded. And there’s nothing to understand. I’ve had enough.

Enough? he repeated incredulously. You have had enough? Of what? Of my research?

Yeah, that’s right, I continued. I don’t want to hear about your research. I don’t care!

You mean you don’t care about our history, or about the injustices done in our name?   

Oh, God, Daryl, how can you be so naive? I said. Don’t you understand by now that all of human life is an injustice? I mean, you realize our family is not unique, right? We’re not special.

I understand that, said Daryl. No, we’re not unique, or special, or whatever else. I know.

Well, then, why for God’s sake are you so obsessed with tracking down all of this stuff? I asked him. I mean, come on, what are you hoping to accomplish here? None of it matters, you know, nothing will be gained or improved or restored by your efforts. It’s a waste. It’s pointless.

But I can’t help it, he said, and he wouldn’t look at me, just stared at the floor. I’m sorry. 

I instantly regretted my remarks and marveled at the anger and frustration I heard in my voice. Please don’t apologize, I said to my cousin. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. It’s my fault.

It’s all right, said Daryl. It’s no big deal. It’s all OK.

We stood in the kitchen and tried ignoring the awkwardness of our discomfited egos.

I hate to admit when you’re right, said Daryl. Life is meant to be lived. Not brooded upon.           

That’s exactly the thing, I said. The thing to be remembered and never to be forgotten.

He glanced again at the Meek family tree and at the narrative so painstakingly assembled.

I guess I wash my hands of all this, he said. It’s onward and upward. It’s never look back.

That’s the spirit, I said. That’s the way we should live. You can’t worry so much. You can’t.

But eventually, he said, as life goes on and on, what is there to do with all of that time?  

Wait, what? I said, a bit taken aback. What do you mean exactly? What are you asking?

I’m asking what to do with the time that we have. Like, what is my purpose? Is there one?

Yes, I said, it’s to enjoy a life free of suffering for as long as you can and to be grateful.

That’s it? he said. That’s all there is? It goes on and on and on, and that’s your answer?

Listen, I said, I’m just trying to help you, but you’re making it hard. You’re being childish.

Well, of course I am, he said. What other way can I be? I understand nothing. I’m lost.   

He was starting to distress me with his existentialist talk, and I knew it was getting late. 

Look, Daryl, I said, I’m sorry that the research into our family history has made you this depressed. I mean, it’s an admirable thing you’re doing, this quest for the truth, and although it’s not something I could stomach myself, I think I understand it a bit more: you should continue it.

Do you really think so? he asked. You don’t think it’s pointless or crazy? It’s reasonable?

Yes, absolutely, it’s reasonable. I shouldn’t have said otherwise. I take it back. I’m sorry.

Thanks, he said. Thanks, I appreciate your saying that. It means a lot to me. I feel better. 

I told him I was glad and that I would see him tomorrow, and as he returned upstairs to his work, to his hours of research on history’s inhumanity, I left the house and labored to find my way home by the light of the stars and by the memory of a path that wound through the darkness.

John Cody Bennett is an English and World History teacher at The Birch Wathen Lenox School in New York City, a graduate of Sewanee: the University of the South, and a Fulbright scholar from Louisiana. He has published fiction in Blood and Bourbon, the Bookends Review, The Militant Grammarian, and others, and is currently pursuing a Master’s in History at the City College of New York.