German Fables

I started to read the beaten paperback volume I had hidden away under my pillow after that Christmas Eve. It had been eating away at me that he thought I already had. He must have thought that I would have read it by now. I owed it to him to read it.

I read his bramble story, the dancing bear, and the one I recognized from the first night I heard him mumbling, the one with the bow. The highlighted lines kept revealing more of a much larger picture. I began to write them down and the picture started to piece together. The list went something like this:

"Why you are so eager to seize hold of the clothes..."

"Neither do I wish to take the clothes. Merely tear them."

"... you have no decorations excepting your polish. What a pity"

"Wishing again to try its powers, he spans the Bow and it breaks"

"I am forced to dance to music,"

"... why do they always laugh when I dance?"

"A Gluttonous Pig"

"... he was already casting a greedy eye upon another."

"Life is full of disappointments"

"It was invented for my rider's benefit, and to make me his obedient slave"

"Sweeten it then with their honey, if you can; for not until then will you be of any value to Mankind"

" WHAT incomprehensible creatures men are!"

I am forced to dance to music. I let my eyes linger on that line for a while. It was clear Theo wasn't the one with the highlighter. Theo's mother didn't work graveyard shifts. It was the only shift.

The picture was of a woman, that I could see. I think she was wiping away a tear. I thought maybe she was trying to stand just a little taller. Silence sat with me for a long while. He looked over the written words with me. They were his favorites because they can communicate without sound. He sat with me until a door slammed shut and the screaming began. The thunderstorm came home. Then silence had to leave. The thunderstorm wailed and roared on. She's right, they are incomprehensible creatures. I comprehended my father enough to lock my door.

I returned to the paperback on my bed and hoped for silence to sit once more. Then I read it all over again.