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Jacob’s Catharsis

A Novel by

David DeLane Snow

  Jacob Townsend’s nightmarish dreams propel him to a resolution of his past he never imagined.  An ancient discovery, a lost brother, a beloved wife; what more could one want in life?

CHAPTER ONE

   The slap was loud and unwarranted as the sting from the woman’s hand immediately began to show its welting print on the young boy’s cheek.  The boy was no more than six years old.  He tried to rub his right ear, but the woman continued to violently shake him by the shoulders while screaming at him.  She was angry about having been prematurely awakened.  The frightened child did his best not to cry out because he knew that it upset his mother all the more.

   Just as she raised her hand for a second blow, another boy jumped in between them both.  The nine year old shoved the younger boy to the ground making him skid to a fall a few steps away.  The older boy shouted, “Leave him alone! Run little brother, I’ll hold her off.”  With that the thin blond-haired boy on the ground scrambled to get away, but not before catching a glimpse of her beating his rescuer.  The tall dark haired hero then fell to the floor and curled up as the angry woman began furiously kicking him in the face, back and ribs, shouting, “So you think you can handle this instead – alright!”

   Crouched behind his nearby bed the younger boy could only watch in silent horror as the beating continued until the woman grew tired, and then quitting on her own accord.

   Jacob woke up wide eyed and breathing heavily from his dream.  Its realism was disturbing as he sat up on the side of the bed rubbing his ear, and the sleep from his eyes.  His sleeping wife rolled over and continued to lay undisturbed.  Jacob seemed to have suppressed so much in his life; amazed by how single nightmare could have resurrected a host of unremembered emotions – long thought forgotten.  But, the haunting vision of those two boys – his mind strained to put their faces back into focus.  He almost knew their names, but the attempt to recall them was futile.

   The phone rang.

   “Hello? Morning, James.  Yeah, go ahead and order three black and four baby blue ones, they seem to sell a lot.  Alright, yeah, I’ll see you at the regular time tomorrow.  Good Bye.”  Then, just like that with the phone returned to its cradle it was gone again; his dream and any concept of its recollection.

   Jacob had always thought it was his fate in life not to have a family history, because he had been in and out of orphanages and foster homes for most of his life.  He had no memory of his mother, and only the vaguest flashes of a brother and father watching the original series of Star Trek in a dimly-lit living room.  Yet those nearly forgotten happy thoughts were overshadowed by layers of darker experiences.

   The first foster dad that Jacob ever remembered was an alcoholic bum who lay about the house in boxers barking out orders to him and his three other abused foster-siblings.  By his second family, Jacob had decided to be a loner among four foster sisters who showed him no interest whatsoever. 

   Creepiest of all was his third foster home, which had luckily only been a three week stay with an elderly couple.  They smoked constantly, had a million cats, smelled of Ben Gay, and saw his teenage years as a sign of their own coming deaths.  Their mantra was, “I remember when we used to do such and such, we’ll be long dead and buried before you’ll even recall our names.”  Ironically, years later he never could remember the pronunciation of their Austrian names.

   Three day after Jacob’s sixteenth birthday, he was finally adopted into his fairy tale family.  Even though his new parents, Patricia and Charles Douglas, belonged to an ultra-conservative “thou shalt not” religious group, they at least loved him.  They were caring and accepted him with all his flaws, such as still being afraid of the dark, a bit reclusive, and a chronic nail bitter.  They had two others of their own who accepted Jacob into their family as if he had been raised among them his entire life.  Marcus and Mich.  In appearance they could have been twins, but were as different as night and day.  One was a Rock-n-Roller and the other a Sci-Fi nerd; Jacob himself fell somewhere in-between both their interests.

   It was during this time when he lived with the Douglas family that Jacob began dating a red-headed girl named Arlene Stapleton.  She had no father, but lived with her mother and grandmother across town.  After meeting her, Jacob would peddle his ten-speed bike over to her home and spend his every waking moment visiting with her; whenever he could steal away the chance.

   One day, before his senior prom, after Jacob returned home from one of his best visits with Arlene, everything changed.  The entire evening had been marred by one of the worst thunderstorms he would ever remember.  Leaning his bike against the leaking car port, Jacob came home soaking wet.  Standing just outside the back door fumbling with his house keys, he could hear the seventh ring of the kitchen phone.  Entering as fast as he could, hoping to catch the ringing before it stopped, he nearly slipped. 

   Jacob almost yelled into the receiver, “Hello?”  The air conditioner had been left on high, yet the conversation turned his spine colder than his dripping clothes.

   “Hello, Jacob,” the familiar voice asked in an awkward tone?

   “Yes.”

   “This is Pastor Coleman.  I have got some really bad news for you, son.”

   “Okay?”

   “I – I am so, so sorry to be the one to inform you, and like this over the phone; we’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon.  Jacob, everyone in your family was involved in a serious car collision.  They – they didn’t make it.”

   “Make it?”

   “They are all dead, Jacob.  We are here at the Hos….”

   Just like that he was all alone again.  Hollow and ice-numb did not even begin to describe the emptiness that swallowed his thoughts.  His entire fairy-tale family had been killed by a drunk driver, and in an instance things were changed.  The wind hallowed blowing a spray of rain inside from the side door he forgot to shut.

  

   

   Nothing was the same after that.

   Nothing.

   He did not graduate from High School, moved into a friend’s house, and gave up on believing in God altogether, the church and the whole world.  Had it not been for the love and support of Arlene’s friendship, Jacob would have ended it all that very day.

   Yet, through it all, Arlene was there for him.  The funeral of four caskets, studying for his GED, and the arduous job searches.  She became a constant presence for him, and continually reassured Jacob that he would find his own place in life; and God willing one day even the family of his good memories.  Jacob had found his lifeline in her, for Arlene had become his only solace and reason for getting up in the morning.  Two years later they married in the very park where they first met on his way to school.

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