Lightning flickered on the horizon. The Mississippi Delta’s cacophony of bugs ceased their song.
A storm was coming. And it was going to be a bad one.
The severe thunderstorm’s winds, it’s calling card, kicked leaves and limbs across the levee. Dirt peppered the rental car’s windshield as it drove slowly down the inky dark driveway. Mikey Ryan had turned off the Ford’s headlights at the road in an effort to be stealthy. Another bolt of lightning illuminated his path ahead of him — but it didn’t matter. He knew this driveway all too well. His heart boiled like the clouds above him. It was time to settle a score.
He closed his eyes for a brief second readjust them to the darkness. When he did, he saw himself as an eight-year-old boy. He could smell the alcohol. He could feel the anger. He felt his self-esteem die. That was the day he vowed never to touch a drop of the devil’s drink. From that day forward, he kept himself locked in his room. Books became his guardian. Knowledge became his escape route from this Godforsaken place.
Now, he was back. Like his childhood, paybacks were hell.
Mikey had dreamed of this day. It was what got him through Harvard. Then Yale graduate school. He had changed his name to Michael when he had gotten his MBA. Soon he made more money in one year than this whole damned county. Yes, he thought, this placed was damned. He faced the Devil. But soon, soon he would have his revenge. He wasn’t a little boy anymore. He was no longer scared.
He had held this house together though sickness and drunkenness. Recently, an e-mail had been sent to his business e-mail account accusing him of being a bad son. That twit didn’t know half the story. No one at the First Baptist Church did. They could act all pious. Jesus knew the truth.
Their perfect household had been a facade. He soon learned Leave it to Beaver was only a TV show. Mikey knew that if it had been true to life, Ward or June would had been alcoholics and the Beaver would had been emotionally abused.
No dog greeted him on the front porch. He figured his childhood dog was long dead. The screen door banged against the doorframe with the wind. There were no lights on. In fact, the old farmhouse was as dark as his soul.
Mikey almost knocked on the door. He held his hand up to rap on the glass, but then lowered it to the knob. He turned it slowly and opened the door slowly.
He was greeted by the sound of a cocking shotgun.
“I never thought you’d have the courage to come slinkin’ back here,” a raspy voice emerged from the darkness. “You have some nerve showing back up here after leaving us, you #$%.” The profanity slithered across the room like the Garden of Eden’s serpent. “I’ve told everyone how you abandoned me. You are no child of mine.”
Mikey’s heart boiled with anger. He burned his eyes into the darkness, trying to set his eyes on the source of his pain. It was time for him to end this once and for all. He pulled a pistol from his jacket, aimed it at the voice and…
CRACK!!! BAM!!!
Lightning struck the sycamore tree in the front yard, illuminating the room. There, holding a shotgun, was a shrunken, dried-up, bitter human being. As Mikey felt his anger flow through his hands, the storm’s wind blew through the door, scattering papers and blowing the figure into a cloud of dust. The shotgun evaporated, too.
Mikey stood in an empty room.
He put the pistol away and walked outside into the pouring rain. Hail pelted him as he approached two small stones. There were dates on the newest one — 1947–2015. Next to it was another one that read 1948-1993.
He had missed the funeral. Now all he could do was talk to a stone.
“I forgive you,” he mumbled. Then he yelled again, “I FORGIVE YOU!!!” And as the last word passed his lips, the wind died, the rain stopped and a storm mysteriously faded into calm.