A Vestige, Part III of IV

            

             “Thanks again for your hard work on this, Charles.  I’m gonna make sure the investors hear about what you’ve done for this project the last few months”, he said shaking hands with one of his most valuable research team members.  He held a high ranking position at an invest firm in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.  The love he had for his accomplishments was only surpassed by the love he had for his beautiful wife and soon to be mother of his child.  They shared a modest two story townhome with a single car garage perched atop a fairly steep concrete driveway, which made the icy winters somewhat of a challenge, but nothing a little proactive salt spreading couldn’t handle.  He awoke every morning laying in a queen size bed next to his beautiful, albeit lately moody, pregnant love.  She was the girl that upon first seeing her shuffle quickly from her bedroom to the bathroom in her panties to brush her teeth, had forever locked his heart into a vulnerable and helpless state.  No other would ever do.  She was the love of his life.  The immediate rollover morning kiss that you see in movies and on tv, was mutually understood between the two as better left until after the brushing of the teeth and a swift gargle of mouthwash.  His workdays were challenging and stress-filled, but ultimately rewarding.  Not just the pay, but the sense that he was succeeding in both matters of a good leader and of a vested heart.  He would come home to a warm cooked meal peppered with the thoughts and gossip of his wife concerning the neighborhood wives and other such petty goings-on.  As the night would draw to a close, they ultimately exchanged a kiss and sometimes more, then gave their goodnights and turned out the lights.  

 

               This was what life was supposed to be.  So why then was this more of a nightmare than a happy dream?  Was it because that if you never ultimately achieved this ideal expectation, you had somehow failed at a position you were unwillingly thrust into to begin with?  Or was it because there really is no “way life is supposed to be”?  Or both?  As with every single aspect of anything to do with the human, happiness is completely subjective and fleeting at best.  Happiness does more damage than good, as it fills it’s host with the toxin known as hope, that is to say, the false and completely unsupported idea that everything is gonna be okay! 
               

               He awoke with a sweat soaked start.  It was still dark and the fire was down to a few smoldering cinders.  Waves crashing in the distance, always with the waves.  A few rats bolted away as he sat up and took in his surroundings, like one of those moments when one awakens from a slumber and for a very brief time doesn’t know where they are.  There was no breeze.  The damp air just kind of sat there like an uninvited guest with nowhere else to go.  He immediately set about adding more tropical kindling to the dying blaze.  Whenever daylight arrived, he knew he would have to hike on to find a more desirable spot on the island.  A spot where he could at least feel some kind of breeze and where he could set up some kind of more permanent way to collect fresh water.  A place such as this harbored no ill will, nor did it cater to any ideas of surviving.  There was only a complete phlegmatic oneness.

 

                Daylight was finally beginning to break.  He gathered his shirt and wooden spears and was on his way.  As he headed out, he made sure to pass by where he had left his freshwater holding coconut shells and drank the small remaining amount.  This was it.  It either had to rain or he had to find some sort of fresh water spring of some sort somewhere.  He traveled south at a moderate pace.  The sky was overcast and the heat unforgiving.  As he walked, he remembered the days of his youth spent in the country.  Being from the country meant having a respect for the great outdoors and everything that style of life brought to the table. 

While his mother went in to the city during the day to work, he was left to the care of his elderly grandmother.  She was a kind and well-meaning woman with wiry grey hair that sat atop her head like a straggly birds nest.  Faith was a big part of her life, as it always had been growing up in the rural south.  She did her best to teach him manners and to make thanking the Lord an everyday occurrence.  He never really grasped the idea of worship.  To him it was just something that was expected.  But like a seasoned thespian, he could close his eyes and bow his head and begin to pray with astonishing conviction.  To whom or what he didn’t know, nor would he ever.

A creeping sadness constantly stalked him like a mischievous specter, a feeling that was no stranger to him.  His devout and caring grandmother had even noted to his mother about his occasionally sullen and distant appearance, like it was a kind of sad wistfulness.  Throughout his life whenever he came into close proximity of a mentally challenged or somehow otherly afflicted person, he oddly never really felt pity for that exact person, only sadness and pity for mankind on the whole.  That just being born into this world brought the chance of being one of these helpless victims of a mistaken biological mutation.  He’d always regarded humans as a sad lot indeed.