Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 04:29:16 EST From: Yip3@aol.com Subject: Sterling Ducat, chapter 1 Chapter 1 "Where - the - hell - is - it? Where the hell is it? Where the hell isit? Where the hellisit? Where thehellisit? Wherethehellisit? Wherethehellizit? Whereda'ellizit? Wher'da'ellzit". The question morphs into a mental mantra as the searching becomes more frantic. From his throat, the, until now silent, scream starts as a low keening and is gaining in volumn. It is working its way into a loud, frustrated shout. BAM!!! The door slams open cutting the shout before it could actually escape. Sterling jumps emitting a yelp of surprise, knocking over a wobbly stack of books that was on top of the bureau. With the bang of the top book hitting flat on the floor, Sterling jumps again, stumbling over the shards of the door trim that had flown into the room when the door was kicked open. "WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS??" His dad always seems to shout in all capital letters. Sterling backpedals a couple of steps at his dad's shout. He had never in all his 20 years heard his dad sound so angry. Angry, yes, but never so terrifying, so terrible, so total. The anger in that shout is like a solid mass of air forcing Sterling backwards. "WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?? BOY, DO YOU HEAR ME??" His dad is waving a rolled up magazine as if it were a crudgel. Sterling can tell at a glance that the object of his search had been found, but by the wrong person. His dad has the "The Advocate" in his fist. Sterling looks up at his dad's face and falls a few more steps back at the sight. He knows that, regardless how long his life might be, the sight of his father's eyes would be the very definition of horror. "ARE YOU A FAGGOT?? TELL ME, ARE - YOU - A - FAGGOT??", roars his dad while pointing the magazine roll at his son like a bayonet. Sterling is lost. Here is his dad, having kicked the door in and planted himself a few feet into the bedroom, standing with his legs spread, pointing the magazine with his right hand and his left hand curled into a half raised fist. His dad, breathing in short angry breaths, advances two more menancing steps as he yells. "ANSWER ME AND ANSWER ME NOW BEFORE I START BREAKING BONES!! ARE YOU A FAGGOT??" With tears starting to form, Sterling triedc to speak but his voice breaks with fear. As his dad is gathering a breath to start yelling again, Sterling croaks, `I-I-I... uh, I-I..." His mind is numb, his voice is paralyzed and body is breaking into a cold, clammy sweat. " `I-I-I' WHAT?? YOU ARE A FAGGOT, AREN'T YA? JUST SAY IT! YOU ARE A FUCKIN' FAGGOT!!" His dad's face becomes an extremely reddish purple color and his body is shaking in solid anger. "Uh, mmm, I-I-I..., w-w-well, d-d-d-a-ad...". Tears begin to leak from his eyes as his nose starts to clog. The trembling starts. "WELL?? WHAT?? FAGGOT OR NOT??" Not able to face his dad, tears streaming feely, body numb, Sterling's head starts to droop in shame. Garbled by his tears and tight throat, he pleds, "D-d-dad, I-I-I d-don't w-w-want to b-b-be. I c-c-can't help it. P-p-ple-please D-dad, I-I can't h-h-help it." Silence. There is silence only broken by Sterling's strangled sobbing, his dad angry breathing and a mockingbird singing somewhere outside. This is like the silence before the firestorm, the silence of the eye of a hurricane, the silence of finality of a life altering decision. In a low hardly controlled voice, sharp in contrast to his yelling, Graham Ducat bores his eyes into his oldest son and spits out, "I do not have a faggot for a son. I do not know you. I do not recognize you. I have no first born son. Stranger remove yourself from my house and do not darken my doorstep again. You have fifteen minutes to clear out or I will beat you to within a inch of your life if I don't just out and out kill you." "P-p-please Dad. Please d-d-don't. D-dad? Dad-d-d!", begs Sterling as he is bending over as if struck in the gut with a sledge hammer. The internal turmoil and pain being too much to bear and he can't stay standing. "GET OUT NOW!! AND STAY OUT!!", booms Graham, "TIME IS WASTING!!" Turning on his heel, he heads out of the room. Just before actually getting out, he spins back around and throws the magazine at Sterling, hitting him in the face hard enough for a bruise. Turning back, he slams his fist into the door, breaking the center panel and causing the door to slam into the wall. Sterling jumps a third time at the loud retort of the door hitting the wall causing a framed photo of he, his parents, his younger brother and sister to crash to the floor breaking the glass into countless pieces flying in all directions. Sterling crumbles to the floor, sobs of unmitigated sorrow racking his body and tears flowing unchecked. He lies there lost in the pain. Sterling does not hear steps approaching the room and when the voice sharply speaks, he scrambles back as fast as he could in his condition until he hit the bedroom wall. "Sterling, get up. Sterling, Sterling, get up now." He looks up to see his mother, Helen, standing at the door surverying the room and him with her hands wrapped around her middle. Her face and posture displaying a mixture of sorry, anger, pity, urgency and fear all rolled into one. As he turns his face upwards to hers, she registers his pain and suffering and there is flicker of emotion that crosses her face before it hardens back into a mask. "M-m-mom, please..." "Sterling, you have to go. You have to go now before things get worse. Stuff some things into your gym bag and go," she says quickly before glancing back out of the door. Seeing no one, she crosses the room reaching out to Sterling to get him off of the floor. Raising to his knees, he grasps both her hands to beg her not to let this happen. Helen sees this coming and begins to shake her head no while casting her eyes down to the floor unable to look into her oldest son's brown eyes that he had inherited from her. Sterling can only sob and strangle a whimper in his throat. "Hurry. You've gotta hurry now. You can't stay here. You're twenty years old, for god's sake, you have to. You just have to. Take what you can, but go." She shakes her arms to free herself from his grasp. Once he lets go, she moves back to the door and peers out. "Hurry, Sterling, hurry." Cold reality strikes. Like a torrent, a cold wave washes over Sterling still on his knees and he shivers as a cold touch went down his spine. He places the emotional state of mind in check. He can go back to it later when he was safely away but now he must have action to survive. "Yes", says Sterling. That single, simple "yes" is not remarkable as far the word itself, but the voice that spoke it is the stopper. That voice, alien of Sterling, causes Helen to jerk around to stare at him. She would have never recognized that voice for Sterling's. She had expected to see a stranger standing in the room when she heard "yes". Here he is though, her first born, her son, the eldest speaking a word in such finality and in such cold control that she knows he is now gone. He has changed from the familiar. Her heart recognizes the first signs of her loss. Sterling stands, walks to the closet, scoops up the gym bag to take back to the bed where he props it open and begin to fill it. He has the presence of mind to throw in briefs, t-shirts, three pairs of jeans, a pair of slacks, four polo style shirts, some socks, and toiletries. The bag is stuffed. He takes a quick glance around the room for anything else he would want to take with him that was not clothing. While he was packing, he did not know his mother leaving. He spots the photo that had come crasing off the wall. Shaking the pieces of broken glass off of it, he holds it in both hands looking at it. With a sharp pull, he tears the photograph in half and let the half with he and his parents on it drift down to the floor. The other half, of his sister and brother, he folds carefully and sticks it is his wallet behind the cash he still had from being paid yesterday. Taking one last visual survey, Sterling pivots on his heel which crushes a glass fragment from the picture frame into the wood floor. He doesn't care about it and starts to the door. Before he can leave the roof, his mom comes back in. "Here take this. It's all I got in the house," says Helen as she hands him some folded bills. "This is all I can offer and you'll need it to get somewhere. Now you must hurry before your da.., uh, Graham comes back." Sterling looks at the money and the hand offering it to him. He starts to turn his shoulder to go around her without taking the money she is extending to him. His inner voice says not to be totally stupid, take the money. "Yes." Again that strange voice speaks. He takes the money, looks once at his mom's face and passes by her. As he goes down the hall, he starts to pass the living room, but thinks, "I'll be damned if I am gonna go out the back door as if I'm shamed of being myself." He backs up a step and goes through the living room and out of the front door, leaving the door open behind him. Taking the front walk to the street, Sterling leaves the white, suburban, middle class income house that used to be his home. He doesn't even spare it a backwards glance. His focus is to go down the road. "To where?", he asks himself. "Just get down the road", he answers himself. "Just get down the road." "Just get down the road." Chapter 2 It is springtime in Texas, early April, when the days may be pleasantly warm and the nights chilly. Trees and plants are beginning to bud, grass is greening and the animals, birds and bugs are starting to multiply. Birdsong fills the air in the late afternoon with sunlight streaking through the trees. No one is on the road to hear nature's symphony except one solitary figure moving slowly and erratically, hunch shouldered. The birds do not notice. Sterling does not notice the birds. He is trying to focus on just getting down the road. Trying to just keep that one thing focused is taking all the energy he has left after the scene he had just been through with his parents. The more steps he takes, the less energy he has to hold all the emotions at bay. Walking is slowing and becoming more erratic.