Three weeks later he was at the park, sitting on the ground, leaning against the bench. There was bread in his hand; he was breaking it up and throwing pieces to the ducks, watching them try and catch the bits on the fly. He was listening to the old man telling him a tale about his twin daughters when the were four years old and the schemes they came up with in order to go to war with their daddy and not be left behind at home. They actually managed to stow away on the aircraft carrier he was travelling on and weren't discovered until the carrier was an hour and a half out of port when they got bored and decided to go and find daddy and get him to play with them.
He was in a quiet mood today. He just sat and listened and chuckled in a few places, but mostly he just smiled wistfully, wondering if the little girl he saw in his memory would have gotten into mischief like that.
A loud noise drew his attention away. A mother was yelling at her son for some misdeed and gave the boy a smack.
He flinched sharply as another memory quickly overtook him.
* * * * *
He was a small thing, young.
A woman had a hard grip on his arm, hard enough to really hurt and leave a mark. It was his mother. She was yelling furiously at him; about what, he wasn't all that sure, her screams at him had passed a while ago into incoherency. When his mother drank, anything could set her off.
His arm was really hurting, he was scared and he wished someone would come in and stop her and take him away from her. But he knew that was a pointless hope. No one ever stoped her.
She slapped his cheek. It stung and tears tried to form in his eyes but he refused to let them come, knowing they wouldn't do him any good and would only make things worse.
She saw them anyway, shrieked at him even louder. His mother then picked up an old hardwood and copper walking cane and proceeded to beat him into unconsciousness.
* * * * *
He gasped and shuddered and folded in on himself, convulsively trying not to throw up. He felt tears streaming down his face uncontrollably but couldn't stop crying.
The old man was concerned for him. He rubbed the younger man's shoulder, knowing that something bad had just occurred.
It took him a while before he was able to collect himself and apologize. The old man just gave him a sad smile. He told him that he'd just gotten a memory back and then, because the old man had shared so many tales with him and owed a tale in return, he proceeded to tell him what happened.
The old man just sat there and listened. At the end of the telling, they grey head was bowed low. He raised his head back up and looked the younger man in the eyes for a minute or so and then nodded gravely. He stayed silent. After all, what can you really say that would help after a tale like that?
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