The Promise of Light by Paul Watkins Read Free Book Online

would fall out from beneath me and leave me drifting in space. “Was he my father or wasn’t he? And how about my mother? Who the hell was she?”
    Willoughby’s hand shrank away. “I don’t know. That’s God’s truth. I don’t. I came over from Cork and that’s a long way south of where Arthur lived. I didn’t know him until I came to America.”
    “He’s my father until someone proves to me that he’s not.” I said it, but the words were hollow in my mouth. I would still call the man my father, but it was because I had no other name to give. An earthquake had come to my vision of the smooth, shining rails and their clear path into the future. The land beneath them had been cracked and blown away. I no longer saw myself moving steadily forward. Instead, I began hurtling into the past, chasing the last fading trace of the dead man. I ransacked the warehouse of my memory, looking for a sign that would have told me of this sooner. But there was nothing.
    “Right you are, Benjamin. I’m not believing any chemistry of Melville’s.” Willoughby pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket. “Does this mean anything to you?”
    THE GREY DOG IS FOLLOWING ME . It was Willoughby’s writing. I handed back the paper. “Should it mean anything?”
    Willoughby sat down in a rocking chair by the fireplace. “He said that to me before he died. I thought it might hold something for you.”
    “I don’t know any grey dogs.” The room had dissolved around me. I felt myself shunted back and forth in my chair by vicious poltergeists.
    Willoughby smoothed his brown-spotted hands across his face. “He said a number of things before he passed away. He asked to be cremated.”
    “If that’s what he wanted.” Every damn place my eyes settled in the room, there stood the dead man, locked in some action from the past.
    “You don’t quite understand. The Catholic church does not cremate people. Your father must have known that. He was raving.”
    “But that is what he asked for?”
    “Well, yes.” Willoughby took off his collar. It was held to his shirt by two gold studs. He set it down and it lay like a white sickle blade on his knee. “This is a very difficult request, Benjamin. It would never be allowed if we went through the proper channels.”
    I pictured his ashes as the fine grey dust of burnt pine. I held my breath even against the imagining of the smell. “He should have what he wanted.”
    Willoughby stood up suddenly. “You idiot! Do you see the spot you’ve put me in?”
    I blinked at him. My mouth fell open a little. He had never shouted at me before. But then I realized he wasn’t yelling at me. He was yelling at my father, whose face still seemed to drift in front of Willoughby’s old eyes.
    “I can’t allow it!” He raked his nails across the bare wood of the table. “And still I must allow it. This will have to be kept very quiet. Isn’t that right, Ben?”
    I nodded, wondering where my father was now. I felt him to be close. It seemed to me I could even hear the faintest rustle of breathing, a sound that did not come from Willoughby or me. I did not understand why he had asked to be burned, after all his life of dousing other fires.
    “He also asked that you carry his ashes back to Ireland and scatter them near the town where he used to live. He was quite specific about the place. He wants his ashes scattered on the beach at the town of Lahinch.”
    I let the words sink in. Then I raised my voice. “But that doesn’t make any sense! He hardly ever spoke of the place.” There seemed to be some hidden reason in his asking to be cremated that maybe someday would come clear to me. But Ireland? I thought he had long ago shrugged off the place and everything that went with it.
    “He didn’t speak of it to you, perhaps. But you see, Benjamin, it was where he grew up. It was a kind of holy ground. He didn’t need to speak of it, and least of all to you. Of all the things he said and did that make no