Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
He’d known Taylor for a while and knew he had a son. Now he was meeting him for the first time.
Son was taller than father, but much more slender and quieter. Son was also about half of Dad’s sixty-five years. The years count for a lot.
Observing the son, he wondered and asked him, “Are you like your mother?”
Son replied, “God, I hope not.”
Conversations erupted, and the questions that erupted from that answer couldn’t raised.
He doesn’t want his father to die, but this person that he sees every day doesn’t tell the jokes that his father used to make, and he doesn’t drink beer and coffee, doesn’t go walking with his dog, or wash his cars, or go for drives (driving too fast), or watch television and argue about sports.
He doesn’t want this man to die, even though his beard is white and wispy, and his hair is gone, and the lean, tall body sags like a worn fence, and he no longer barks out demands and orders.
He doesn’t want this man to die, the drooling one who sits in a chair and stares most of the day, the one that doesn’t eat much, mostly eating candy when he does eat, the man who doesn’t remember his name and needs help to use the toilet.
He doesn’t want this man to die, no matter what kind of wreck he is, because he knows that he’s still his father, and he will miss him more when he’s gone.
But he doesn’t want this man to suffer any more, because he is his father, so he comes every day, visiting and waiting, wondering and remembering, wishing that he had hope for something besides what it is.
“Driving that train, high on cocaine. Casey Jones, you’d better watch your speed. Trouble ahead, trouble behind, and you know that notion just crossed my mind.”
Those were the words I was singing one day while passing through Mom’d living room. She was busy cleaning. Mom did – and does – have a spotless house. I was fourteen or fifteen, with long hair that irritated Mom and Dad, and a faint mustache and goatee that annoyed my school and coaches. Mom said, “What are you singing?”
I stopped and grew still, as children often do when suddenly challenged by an adult about something that seems obvious. “Singing “Casey Jones.””
“But what were you singing?”
“I don’t know.”
Yes, claim amnesia whenever possible. Mom didn’t look happy but, after waiting for follow-up questions, I discreetly scurried away. Later, I concluded, it must have been the cocaine part, right? I chuckled about that.
Mom and Dad were divorced, and still later, while at Dad’s place, I was walking through his living room, singing…you know it.
“What are you singing?” he asked.
Having been through this questioning and being older, I skipped ahead to the lyrics instead of providing the title. After hearing them, he shook his head. Smiling, I moved on.
Here it is, as performed by the Grateful Dead, “Casey Jones,” from nineteen seventy.
Michael Seidel, writer 