A thought on time, remorse and forgiveness.

A man came to sit besides a stranger on a bench. They nodded in unison as they both noticed each other's presence. On the one side of the bench sat a smartly dresses man in a suit and trench coat clutching a paper bag probably containing some kind of wrapped sandwich. The man was probably in his late forties or early fifties. Graying on the sides, his dark blonde hair wafted in the light breeze. He stared ahead over the rippling waters of the lake towards the ducks playing in the autumn light. His eyes seemed to gloss over as he stared away in the distance, not moving a muscle, not a hint of an expression. Beside him sat another gloomy figure. This old frail figure has submitted to the shear weight of time. Everything about him seemed crushed and battered, bruised and put back together too many times. He was cleanly kept, well shaven but a lifetime of tattooed narratives were bellowing up from his chest and cleaving their way up his neck and towards his throat. His hair was shaven short, his skin darkened and wrinkled from the bitter warmth of an indifferent sun. His face was gaunt and pulled like a dagger towards the gentle waters in front of him. The man must have been in his sixties, perhaps older. His eyes hung over a tiny lunchbox. The younger man noticed the content of the lunch box, a boiled egg, homemade sandwich and an apple. It was pretty modest and seemed an particular contrast to the elaborate display of crucifixes, skulls and floral incantations on the old man's leathery skin. On this first meeting the men did not speak to each other, they both just gazed out over the waters, ate their lunch and then acknowledged each others presence as they got up from the bench and went their own separate ways. But this chance meeting started to replicate itself. The two men would sit next to each other on the bench almost every lunch. At first they barely said a word, but as time went by they started to talk more and more to each other. At first it was just sharing a smile at the cacophony of honking geese and the quacking rebuttal of the ducks. Then the old man pointed towards a heron spearing what appeared to be a snake, which it summarily guzzled up. He made some comment about how all predators eventually become the prayed upon. The younger man agreed with this sentiment, and soon they started chatting about their lives, loved ones, aspirations, health. they learned they were both from the surrounding area. The younger man had spent some time in the diplomatic service, and was actively involved with Christian missionaries abroad but had decided to return to his family home to look after his ailing mother. He spoke of his special connection to this lake. How he had spent most of his youth on its shore fishing for bass and trout. The older man had a rather hard life. He spent most of his life in the prison system. He had an adult son, about the same age as the younger man, but this son did not want anything to do with his father. He had grand kids but was not allowed to see them. He teared up every time he spoke of them. How proud he was of his son, despite not having any direct connection to him. The men would spend every lunch time in this fashion. Pressing each other for information about the other, about family, about the past, and then suddenly mid sentence fading away internally into their own despair and self loathing. When they had nothing to say to each other, they would just observe the play of nature, the earthworm at their feet excavating another tomb, a frog latching onto an unsuspecting flying critter, a king fisher belting down from it's vantage point and spooning up that very same frog from its pedestal and into the gullet of the nevermore. Sometimes the young man would rattle his left hand inside his inner breast pocket desperately searching for something, visually worried about something and then just sliding his hand out of the pocket as his shoulders dropped and he continued to stare motionless ahead of himself for the remainder of the time. After a while the old man would get up, bid the younger man farewell and walk towards the edge of the shore. The younger man predictably would also get up after this and walk the opposite way past some bushes. But once, as the younger man peered back through some bushes he noticed the old man bending down besides the water and seemingly whispering some words, contemplating deeply for a while. Again, the young man withdrew his hand from his inside breast pocket and observed the old man dropping some small light object into the water. How curious he thought to himself. What does the old man whisper, he thought. What does the old man drop in the water? He started to observe the old man's habits from behind the bushes more carefully, ignoring the contents of his own pockets altogether and scrutinizing the movement of the old man's lips, his hand gestures, his mannerism. One day he could not keep his curiosity at bay any longer and he waited behind the bushes for the old man to walk out of sight. Once out of sight, the young man scurried out from beyond the bushes and scampered towards the edge of the water where the old man had left his presence in the water. From the water's edge he noticed a small beach besides a drainage pipe a short while down the shore. He noticed something on the beach and stepped closer to investigate. That is when he noticed with amazement small bits of paper in various states of decay aligning the shore. There were hundreds of these little papers, folded into tight little bundles. He jumped down the embankment onto the small beach and started picking up as many papers as he could. Most were soaked and broke up like mushy pulp in the hand. But some were still viable. As he opened them he could see there was some message inked inside of them. Most were too blurred to make it out but the more he opened the more he could start to discern. He noticed a pattern among all the papers, as if they all conveyed the same message. One paper revealed an "I'm" another "sor". Soon he could make out the phrase "I'm sorry". Then, "I'm sorry J", "I'm sorry Ja" "I'm sorry, Jas... give me.". The young man's face dropped. He was pale and shivering in the cold. Something started to well up inside of him. It was coming out and there was nothing he could do to stop it. The tears were streaming down his cheeks and over his lips, into his mouth, and running down his neck. "I'm sorry Jason. Please forgive me." The man turned around to get back up the bank, wiping the tears from his face, he suddenly made eye contact with the old man standing back at the bench. They both just stared at each other in an awkward silence. One man looking bewildered, suspiciously at the other.The other man just with a blank stare. A frozen expression of horror, caught red handed. The old man eventually picked up his scarf that had fallen in behind the bench, wrapped it like a serpent around it's prey and dropped his head as to give a departing nod and went on his way again. For the next few days, the old man sat alone on the bench again, eating his lunch, staring out over the water and then continued on his way past the water's edge. Then one day the young man appeared again from behind the bushes. He withdrew his arm from his inner coat pocket and came to sit down next to the old man. They didn't say a word. The young man noticed the old man's hands were now trembling quite a bit, but his face remained cold and emotionless. "You know why I'm here." said the young man. There was silence for a while, and then the old man murmured, "Yes, I know why you are here." The silence continued. "You know, I used to come to this spot in my younger days. There used to be two boys selling bait to the local fishermen. They used to sit on this very bench. Maybe not this very bench but it was this very spot." The old man gestured around the area. "About forty years ago. I used to watch them through the bushes back there. You see back then I was a messed up man, well I guess in a way I still am, I was in a local gang, heavily into drugs and high on crack cocaine at the time. I remember seeing the two boys counting their earnings at dusk after the day's hustling. I remember being desperate for money and so with a knife in my hand I pounced on them. I remember you put up a big fight. I had that lock box in my hands but you just would not let go. You were really tough for such a young boy. Your brother bit me on the arm. I turned towards him. I lost it. I took a jab at him. I got him somewhere in the midriff. I had no intention to harm the two of you. It just happened so fast. I was in such a bad place. I remember dropping the box and running along the water's edge and hiding in between the reeds over there. And then working my way slowly though the shallow water towards the edge of the park. I didn't get far before I was surrounded by the police and some local fishermen." The young man sat there besides the old man for a while. "I was so glad when I saw you drop the lock box." The young man began choking on his own tears. He pressed on "I didn't even notice by little brother lying on the ground. I picked up the box and then noticed my brother holding his stomach and from between his fingers the blood started to gush out and run all over his hands and down his little arms. He just stared at me, pale in the face, a pained and shocked expression on his face. He never made a sound. I cried out for help, but no one heard. I took of my jacked and tried to wrap it around his stomach but it was getting soaked by all the blood and no one was coming to help. I kept on calling and calling. I felt so helpless. Eventually as my brother's color was turning even more pale, I decided to pick him up and carry him towards the closest roadway, half a mile upriver. At the roadway, I manage to stop a car and load my brother on my lap, into the car and on the way to the hospital. I squeezed his hand so tight as we raced through the small town streets. I kept saying to him, "Keep your eyes open Jason, you're gonna make it." He never made it to the hospital." The old man shed a tear. "You wrote to me in prison a lot. I kept all your letters. You always said you were going to track me down. You always said you were going to make me pay, make me suffer, the way Jason suffered. I know I not only killed your brother but I destroyed your life too. Your father committed suicide. Your mother suffered so much." "Why did you come back here?" said the younger man. "As you probably know I was released from prison on sympathetic grounds. I don't have much time left on this earth. I'm riddled with disease. You once told me to come back here so you can finish me off, right here where your brother died. I have been coming here for five years now. I have been waiting five years for you to come. I have nothing in this life. My own son disavowed me. My grandchildren don't know me. I have done nothing I can be proud of in my life. So here I am, as requested. You know I tried to write back to you, to tell you how sorry I am. The prison would not allow me to write to you but I asked ex inmate friends to forward my letters to you. In them I promised to come back here everyday and wait for you. In them I promised I would pray for your brother's forgiveness from heaven and I would leave a memorial of that fact for both him and you to see." The young man wiped a tear from his eye. "I have something to show you." He pulled out a revolver from his inner breast pocket. "There is one bullet in the chamber. Another in my pocket. I have waited so long for this moment. I heard you are back in town and I quite coincidentally managed to track you back to this spot. But talking to you, it reminded me of how I used to sit on the water's edge and talk to my brother as we watched nature play in front of us. You remind me so much of my brother. I really wanted to shoot you, right in your guts." The tears came streaming from the young man's face as he chocked up again. He looked over at the old man. The old man tucked his tortured face into his clothing, closed his eyes and whispered "I'm sorry". His hands trembled as he expected his own end. He sat there waiting for at least a few minutes. Then he felt the cold steel pressing against his temple. And then a sudden splash in the water. He opened his eyes and saw the ripples in the water. He turned towards the young man walking away. The young man looked over his shoulder, gave a nod and disappeared beyond the bushes.