A Fairy In Exile

Bob rises each morning with the sun, fills his pipe with marijuana and sits quietly in the soft haze of streaming light and dissipating mist before he dons his boots and steps out into the world. Smoking weed is not Bob’s sin, though many would say that it is.

He’s a cantankerous sort. Everyone he encounters is a source of contention. Every bend in the road presents a potential crisis for which he must remain on guard. No woman has ever understood him. His children are ungrateful brats. His parents failed him. He hates his freaking job. He doesn’t have enough money, enough time, enough energy, enough anything. Nothing can please Bob. His soul is a swirling vortex of insatiable want.

Bob considers himself a “good ole boy”, raised on hard work and old-fashioned values. Indeed, Bob is one of the hardest working fellas I’ve ever known and, in theory, his view on life is squeaky clean. The problem is that Bob doesn’t practice what he preaches. He has forgotten how to enjoy the little things, and he’s not about to succumb to the suffocating pressure of religious or social expectation. He grows his hair long as a statement of his independence. He drinks himself into a stupor. He screams, he yells, he loses his mind, he breaks things. And then, he repents.

Through the years, Bob has driven just about everyone who tried to love him to the far corners of the earth. His mother has grown weary of bailing him out of one crisis after another. Behind the glass of a family photo on his father’s wall, a white slip of paper covers Bob’s face. His kids rarely visit. His last wife fled in the night like all the others and his girlfriend refuses to marry him. He lost his job of thirteen years and the one that came after devours his soul. The world is against him – of this he is certain, because Bob hasn’t yet figured out that Bob’s biggest enemy is Bob.

So, he smokes a little more to ease the anxiety. He drinks a little more to drown out the rage. He moves in on some unsuspecting female when the one who stands beside him isn’t watching. He needs to be validated. He needs the high. He needs to slide into the comfort of oblivion.

Nobody knows for sure what went wrong in Bob’s mind. His mother married quickly to avoid exposing an illegitimate pregnancy which would embarrass her small-town family. His father once claimed that it wasn’t his child, but later recanted and said that he really didn’t know. He raised the boy, invested and after all was said and done, it was his son – end of story. The mother doted on him, lavished him with praise and gifts; a habit that eventually fueled resentment in the father.

“I bought him a second-hand truck and he turned his nose up at it,” the old man said. “He told me that he was going to buy a brand new truck and I asked him how he planned to afford it when he was too lazy to hold down a job. He wanted a new set of wheels. I told him to go out and work for it. I came home one day to discover the new wheels on his truck. His mother went behind my back – an early graduation present, she said. The kid never did finish high school.”

“His father mistreated him,” the mother said. “That kid couldn’t do anything right. If he made the slightest mistake, his dad would take him out behind the barn and whip him with a water hose. I feared he would kill him one day.”

“Dad never mistreated Bob,” the brothers said. “Bob was a brat.”

The mother ran off when Bob was only seventeen. Bob’s dad had a nervous breakdown. Bob, and his two younger brothers were left to fend for themselves and Bob was suddenly thrust into the position of guardian; though he was more interested in the party life and chasing girls. Bob’s brothers moved in with friends and Bob, having dropped out of school only weeks before graduation, secured a full-time job.

It must have been hard for Bob to be caught between parents who worked at cross-purposes and to suddenly find himself thrust into a dog eat dog world, still a kid, forced to grow up, doing anything and everything to survive. Maybe his mother should have allowed his father to teach him the tough lessons. Maybe his father should have demonstrated the art of manly grace. Maybe all of those old-fashioned values that Bob hangs in the closet but doesn’t wear are more sentimental than practical for Bob.

Bob wants to believe in saving grace, but there is no love great enough to save him from himself; no therapist, no intervention, no harsh reality check, not even the church – though Bob has considered that option a time or two.

“I can’t go to church with long hair,” Bob says.

“Samson had long hair. The prophets had long hair.”

“I like sex,” Bob argues.

“God ordered mankind to go forth and multiply. How do you recken they were supposed to accomplish that?”

“I enjoy an occasional drink,” Bob says.

And, we both know that Bob has become a full-blown alcoholic, but for the sake of argument: “Noah drank. Jesus turned water into wine.”

“I believe in God,” Bob mutters. “But, I’m too far gone – nothing can save me now.”

The truth is that not even I would assign myself to the task of saving Bob. Nobody wants to save Bob. Not even Bob wants to save Bob. Yet, I can’t help but believe that God would eagerly save Bob if only Bob would allow it.

Another horse has died in the pasture. Bob claims that the horses have some kind of mysterious disease. He can’t save the horses, because he can’t afford the vet bill. He’s almost out of weed. He needs more beer.

“They ain’t got no disease!” His daughter shouts when she pays him a visit. “It’s called starvation, dad. Try feeding them!”

Bob cusses her and storms off in a rage. She can hear the click of the seal snapping on yet another can of beer. Her son – his grandson – wants to go home. As she buckles the child into the back seat of her car and starts down the neglected gravel drive toward the highway, Bob reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pipe. He’s a man of many sins and this is the only salvation he knows.