Michael Bergman’s Old Man
The sound from the TV shrieked in the ears of the old man, the smoke from the fireplace which he was sitting along stinging his eyes, trying as much as possible to focus on the special weekly report that the Gollogher Press was about to give. He hoped that… really, what he hoped for wasn’t important, the fact that he hoped was ridiculous, in it of itself. In anyways, he really believed that the new special weekly report was going to be better than the one of the previous weeks but the first words proved him wrong.
‘Dexter Islands IS ON FIRE!’, Reporter Shelley started and his face displayed the exact terror of those first words. ‘And the terrorists who have been speculated by a Dexter Call journalist to have a new name of The Blazing Empire are having an unbroken run throughout the nation’
‘On Sunday, the twenty-second of April, the nation recorded a death toll of hundred thousand people which was the highest mortality rate that Dexter have witnessed in its history but as the week got ahead, the number increased topping in Tifftam and Gollogher respectively. The total number of lives that had been lost in this week is a staggering two point three million people of which one million of them had come from Tifftam, and seven hundred and twenty thousand had come from Gollogher. This has directly led to a depletion of the population of the country’, the co-host of Dexter Call evening news had a calmer voice, calm to the point of deceit that things were a little sane out there.
As he said this, the statistics was graphically shown on the screen. For all the citizens, it wasn’t just figures, it was what showed if there were likely to remain on the land of the living by the next week. ‘The nation is in a very tumultuous period and she is undergoing one of the most trying times in her history. With the problems of the nation spiralling out of control, Dexter Islands has been termed as a failed state by the United Nations. With all the mayhem that the nation is facing, the government have remained relatively silent thereby forcing protests from the people of the country who expect a response from President Philip Hundred’. The clips of thousands of people in their different states gathering at the entrance of the statehouses and the gateways of congress-houses was what filled the screen. ‘Gollogher had the highest turnout of people for the protests and that inevitably led to a violent outcome’. The image on the screen gave a top view of hundreds of thousands of people that made Graham wonder if it was all the state’s indigenes that were gathered in front of the house of senate with placards everywhere. They had placards on their hands with different captions: some outrightly insulting, some persuasive, some crying out the emotions of the people, some begging for intervention, some of them were extraordinarily restive but in all, it was obvious that anger and grief were the only two elements that could be sieved from the atmosphere. Then there was the other image of people running helter-skelter, tear-gas being the catalyst of the disbandment.
‘After five days of nationwide back-to-back protests and rallies, the president had a heated ten-minutes’ question-and-answer session with journalists, asking questions that the president later termed as uneasy, pressurising questions and that he was working day and night with all the members of his cabinet to end the menace’, another male reporter said and then some of the scenes from the interview were shown.
Philip Hundred looked the same, a little timid but intelligent and intentional in all his movements and he was dressed his usual way. Not in bespoke suits with knotted ties like many other typical leaders. He dressed in a packing shirt with blazers over baggy jeans, an appearance that has led to several comedic reactions from the press, some remarks about the modesty and simplicity of the president, other disapproving comments about the unideal dress code that he had conformed to. That same conformity with his appearance was what worked wonders and shut the mouth of all the speculators. When some journalists had asked him about his appearance, he had responded in what pundits had said was the most soothing, most appropriate answer to such an unnecessary and discourteous question. ‘Well, I am not going to compromise my appearance for whatever reason. I am the president and as much as I would love to do the people’s bidding for rebuilding the nation democratically, nation building doesn’t entail any attire that is especially pleased to you. I think I still have control over that. Thank you’, President Hundred hadn’t found the question very informal or humorous and as such, has led more nation’s elites to glorify his wisdom on certain issues.
However, if a remark on his clothes showed that he had the wit to say the most fitting statements, his actions concerning the present insecurity and bedlam in the country, said to be above his control, had shown otherwise.
‘Yes, you. What’s your question?’, he had asked during the Q and A.
‘Mr. President, I don’t know whether you have been watching the news recently but there have been lots and lots of protests beckoning on your regime and you are just coming out now. Can you tell us why you have taken so much time to show your face and respond to the plea of the people?’, he asked. Journalists had an annoying way of asking such disturbing questions in such a placid and daunting manner.
‘Well’, the president started itching his nose. ‘I don’t think the media needs to be aware of our every action. This regime has promised to never leave the people stranded and that is what we are trying to achieve and for that to happen, it has to be done undercover. Silence is the key. Thank you’, he said and when he said that, it meant the dismissal of the question-asker and no further questions from the person.
‘Mr. President, what… Mr. President, the Order of The…Mr. President, is there any…President Hundred…’, many of the reporters would hustle for a chance to get their most burning questions to him. But Hundred had managed to escape when he saw that the entire interview was getting more of an interrogation and he just dismissed everyone and left the briefing.
‘One thing that Hundred however carefully pointed out was that Dexter was strongly against any foreign attachment or aids from other nations. And that they were going to solve their problems in the innovative way that the founding fathers had done it, also mentioning the usual vindicating statements that past leaders have given’
Then, Hundred was shown again, speaking about foreign relations. ‘We are not going to give in to such help, in quote. We are going to sort ourselves out and not let anyone take the praise for our future’.
‘This reply had come after other nations surrounding the island in North America and some other distant nations in Europe and Asia including world powers like Russia, USA and France have joined in protests for a speedy response to the state of national crisis in the country, lamenting the deaths of people and the ways they had been gruesomely killed, the videos of which were circulating through the Internet’, the broadcaster said.
‘Apart from the innumerable records of losses over the past two months, one of the menaces depleting the population of the country was kidnapping which was comprising of young people from the age range of four to seventeen. A total of nine thousand, four hundred and twelve kids have been kidnapped from their caretakers with most of the abduction happening in the state that, on the other hand had the least number of deaths, was in the little villages of Baskers’. The pictures of cute children smiling in posters tagged missing and put on a board at police station was displayed on the TV. Then later on, the pictures of mothers sitting on the ground, crying and screaming for the rescue of their dear children. ‘By the time this report was presented, none of the children had been found’
‘Since the life expectancy rate has drastically dropped and the government keep their hands folded, some citizens have dropped their placards and clamoured for a new course’, the reporter said.
‘This entire thing has spiralled out of control and since the president is doing nothing about it, we are going to assume that he is in a puzzled state. At this point, I think it is time for the borders to be put open, we cannot remain locked in forever. This is a state of emergency and we are clamouring to leave this place and go to a safe haven!’, the leader of the campaign dissented and the rest of the group shouted out in irate unity.
‘But of course that plea wasn’t considered and on Friday, a total of about twenty thousand citizens took laws into their own hands and attempted to force their ways through the borders’.
The video that was seen on the screen showed a crowd running amok along a huge barricade that marked the borders, to make it out of the island.
‘Because of this, the immigration officers were pressured to open fire which they did, leading to the further death of hundreds of people’. There was a display of dead people wrapped in white clothes placed in a large pit during the procession of a mass funeral. ‘Still the rest of the people didn’t retreat and some of them had made it past the borders alive’
‘However, many people have seemed to see a forthcoming light in the brimming darkness that has collapsed upon Dexter Islands. The Federal Bureau of Intelligence and Special Operations which was the branch of the armed forces that combated mainly against the nation’s terrorist attacks have been able to take down a number of the terrorists and investigation is presently going on. During a meeting with the minister of defence, the head of the FBISO Unit, General Dean Kaca mentioned that a new satellite is going to be launched in space on the third day of May which would mainly focus on the security needs of the state. He said that it was going to help primarily to track down terrorist action and…’
Graham shut down the television with the usual grimaced expressions that was already registered on the faces of every Dexter inhabitant who knew what had been going on for the past few months and for Old Graham, he had experienced a near deadly attack. For Graham, the sadness wasn’t from what he had seen but a reawakening guilt that seemed to be triggered by every wrong thing he read. He stood up, holding firmly to the hands of the chair until he had managed to stand. He quickly hopped on his walking stick resting on the wall at the fireplace before his unstable legs let him down and made him collapse on the ground. It had happened a couple of times.
He pressed on the walking stick as he took a step ahead and then another, the step with the right knee wasn’t much work like moving his dead left knee. Graham had been living alone for the past five years and had learnt all the perks that came with being a lonely old man. He walked up to the part of the walls of the living room where all the pictures had been hung. All of the frames were old, the pictures had been taken long ago with the youngest of them being thirteen years ago.
Although he had been alone for the past five years, the last seven months was the peak of it. At least before then, Michael came visiting and he was the one person who never got bored of him. He would talk to his son, Michael for hours and hours into the night, pouring out all the thoughts and emotions and happenings that had being isolated in his mind since the last time he was here. When Michael was going to speak, he said things that uplifted him. It was just Michael and no one else could do such great things to him.
He raised his hand slowly up to the picture of Michael, the youngest of the three pictures he had of him. He remembered snapping that picture by himself with his camera that still hung from a rusted nail in the room. It was a picture of a ten- or eleven-year-old Michael in his school uniform and no shoes smiling broadly with a ball held in the grip of his armpit. His cloth was dirty, as dirty as dirty could get but the smile on his face didn’t make him look too unpresentable. It was the day of their final school football game and they had won, nothing had made him happier. He wasn’t in the picture alone, there was a guy with a lot of hair, a lot of yellow hair, the only boy that Graham knew that was more handsome than his son. He was smiling too and he had his elbow resting on Michael’s shoulder. He couldn’t remember his name clearly: Larry? Barry? Harry? Harrid? Something along that name, he had goalkeeper gloves and they had been best of friends. They still remained best of friends, he remembered when Michael had brought him over to one of his concerts, he had seen the blonde-haired guy with him, singing with him.
He rubbed the face of the picture as it took him down memory lane. That was about the time that his divorce with Michael’s mother was getting finalised. He had really loved Morgan and he knew, just as he had told Michael many times that the most regrettable action of his life was to let her leave him with Michael to struggle. He had been greedy. While Michael had forgiven him, Morgan didn’t. There was a time when Michael had invited her to his concert. And then that same day, he had invited him too something like a made-up date for both of them. Graham had hoped for the best that day and wished Morgan had given him the chance to, at least voice out his apologies but it wasn’t so. She flared up and even tried to leave but Michael persuaded her not to. She waited till the end of the concert which she seemed to really love that she forgot that she was seating next to Graham. Once the night performance was done, she stood up to leave immediately and when he had held her, she shrugged off with so much annoyance like he had wronged her just yesterday and looked him over so detestfully that he felt worthless. Then, Michael came towards her and her face had lit up again.
‘Oh, come here, my love’, she said and hugged her son and then she had left without taking a single peer at his father, leaving him on the spot. Oh! She loved Michael because he was the only comfort she ever had and because who doesn’t love Michael? Michael was comfort, he had made Graham know what it meant to care for people, something that he hadn’t taught Michael in the first place, he had shoved him away with his mother like a piece of trash.
He returned the elementary school picture and then he picked the picture of Morgan with him a year after they got married. It was one of the oldest pictures in the place, they still looked together and Michael hadn’t been born yet. They were both under a shed as rain fell outside and Dominique, a fellow worker of his at the post office at the time who had a camera with him had snapped the picture unawares. It showed Morgan laughing and Graham looking at her with the gentle eyes and the light-hearted smiling face of a gentleman. What was so funny about the picture was that Morgan was laughing to her own joke. Yes, she had done that.
Morgan was a darling, it didn’t take long for Graham to fall in love with her and she didn’t play hard to get. They had got on well, the preacher at their wedding had called them ‘made for each other’ and they had played to that tune, until four years into the marriage. At that time, he suddenly began to really hate Morgan for no reason and conflicts had set in turned in to daily clashes and then on the day that it all ended, he had hit her. Her reaction had been explicit. She looked at him and there were tears at the base of her eyes. She shook her head and then said: ‘Goodbye, Graham’
‘Yes, goodbye and never return here. Leave here and take your son with you. I don’t want to see you around me anymore’, Graham had said and that day, he was more than pleased that she had actually taken little Michael with her. It had seemed that he had done the right thing and had been the one who wasn’t treated right in the marriage. When friends had asked about Morgan, he was so proud to tell them that they divorced and that he had gotten rid of the woman and all the issues that came with her. But it was true that most people never get to find what they had until they had lost it.
Till she died of skin cancer, Graham didn’t get to tell her anything and the guilt from that and her death was what crippled him and allowed him to age a thousand years more every single day. The fact that it was all over and she hadn’t found out how he felt about those actions, how he had almost committed suicide in longing for her.
And now the wicked tentacles of the society’s squid had grabbed the only reason why he didn’t entirely feel bad about himself. Michael.
In the core of it all, Graham saw himself as the cause of everything and felt guilt every single time. Michael was somewhere locked in a prison for what he knew nothing about, a place he will be for the rest of his life, Graham thought and that alone broke him apart like a really severe sickness. And now all the regrets he had were more pronounced and they swallowed him up like a fly in a flytrap. No one to pour it out to, no such thing as a time machine that could take him to the past and never let Morgan and Michael leave.
Not every man was lucky enough to get a second chance for their mistakes.
He staggered back to his seat and rested in it, meddling in the silence of the house and the heat from the fireplace.