Rehearsal

Steven Baird

We grew to become cruel men. We gathered our wounds and we coddled our scars and lionized them under the tract lighting of The Saluda Bar. When called upon, we mourned our dead, and then moved on. But sometimes we couldn’t.

This past July I lost my son, Daniel Benton Sawyer. He was twenty-three years old. I could tell you the number of months and days, but I won’t. My life was a rehearsal for this loss and I am unprepared to measure his life against mine.

Two days after my boy’s passing, my friend Wayne Scobee was busted for illicit behavior. He offered to blow a Georgia Tech student in a Ruby Tuesday bathroom stall. The boy was nineteen and he broke Wayne’s nose. I thought about breaking it again if he showed up at the funeral, but I was too goddamn tired. Nineteen? My head orbited that number like a comet. Nineteen. That was younger than Danny. I needed time to sort through the rubble, and time was no longer a luxury, if it ever was. My heart was too cruel a place for any illusion of forgiveness.

(A work in progress)

32 thoughts on “Rehearsal”

    1. I really don’t. This particular character interests me because he is antipathetic to most men I know…. I’m curious to discover how he got that way. Thank you for reading and following. 🙂

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