Behind Blue Eyes

                   “One thing you can't hide - is when you're crippled inside.” ― John Lennon.

It was a summer day when she got the call. It was her sister on the other end.
Her father that she hadn't seen in over 25 years was dead. Her sister had read it in the local paper.

He'd been missing for two years apparently until one hot summer day a fisherman and his son found the remains on a muddy riverbank. Naturally, he was identified by his dental records.

Big Jim. The Wazoo. Tweedy. The Bad Man. Dead.

Rakishly good looking in his youth and as vain as any good Oscar Wilde character, they'd called him
"Tweedy" in high school. Vain, volatile and charismatic.

Marrying her mother fresh out of high school and stealing whatever hopeful youth her mother had left--she'd birth five kids for him in just as many years. Vain. Volatile. Charismatic. Dangerous.
One too many crushing blows to her mother's bones, flesh and sanity and she'd leave him after giving birth to their set of twins. Straight from the hospital and never to return.

"Big Jim". Shadowing her mother for years, her father's stalking and propensity for violence would cause the family to put rod iron bars on the windows of a home situated in a sunny, quiet neighborhood.
Cops knew him by his first name. His antics increasingly strange. Family members tagged him "The Wazoo".
Vain, volatile, charismatic, dangerous.

She recalled being very young and walking home one afternoon from visiting an Aunt just down the road. Her father coming down the same sidewalk as she walked up. She recalled the white-hot fear. She recalled messing her pants and running past him safely home. He was always trying to talk to her. Engage her in some conversation. Asking about her mother.

When she became a young teen, she'd also recall finding him sitting on a fence in the park... stoned. Walking up to him fearlessly and with white-hot anger--she'd threatened to kill him if he bothered them any more.
He looked lost. A twinge of sadness gripped her heart. She would kill him though.....if she had to.
Vain, volatile, charismatic, dangerous, ill. Lost.

"The Bad Man". That is how he was known throughout her entire youth.

                                                                    ..............................


The newspaper wrote that he'd committed suicide. Weighing his ankles down with sand, he would jump from a local bridge on a cold winter's day to his certain death.
In other reports and lore, it was said that he been taking medication for his bipolar disorder for years but had seemingly stopped. His brother would find his pill bottles neatly placed beside his comb and brush atop his dresser. Nobody ever knowing what had happened to him or where he was until that fateful day a man and his son decided to go fishing.

Vain, volatile, charismatic, dangerous, ill, lost. Dead. In his mid-fifties.


Days later she would receive the newspaper article in the mail. Standing with it in her hand she began to shake and cry. Cries giving way to guttural sobs. His blood ran through her veins. Flooded with emotions she'd never realized were still inside her.
Wiping tears in the mirror from her blue eyes...

The Bad Man. He had blue eyes.




CJ. Ellis




Art credit:

Andrew Salgado; Oil, 2012, Painting "A Shapeless Doubt"