A Lesson in Punctuation (standard:drama, 2950 words)
Author: P. Andrew Case	Added: Nov 22 2005	Views/Reads: 3417/2137	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A man serving a life sentence is diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and battles with the decision of whether or not to tell his family, who he has not spoken to in years.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

“I really do think it's best for you to let Carol know about the tumor.”


“What's the point?  I haven't talked to her in nine years.”  Allen
thought back to the last time he had attempted an ill-fated phone call 
to his ex-wife.  A man had picked up with the nerve to refer to his 
house as the “Rummage residence”.  After verifying that Carol was, in 
fact, residing with this Mr. Rummage, Allen hung up, leaving Carol, his 
two children, Jeremy and Jason, eighteen and fourteen respectively, to 
be nothing more than memories of a life he would never get back. 

“Allen, they're your family.  They may not love you like they used to
but they deserve to know.  Jeremy and Jason are at a period in their 
lives where they need to know that their father is there for them.” 

“Jeremy hates me.  He won't even read my letters anymore.  And
Jason...well how would you feel if a man called up and said that he was 
your father and that he was dying of cancer all in the same breath?  I 
think I'd be a better father through picture albums and an example of 
what not to do.” 

“Only you can make that decision.  I just want you to know how important
it is.” 

“You think I don't grasp the importance?” 

“I didn't mean th-” 

“You spend what, two hours a week, thinking about this?  Then you go
home to your wife and think about which bullshit message you want to 
give to the congregation on Sunday.  Well you know what I do when you 
leave?  I go back to my cell and I do one of three things.  I think 
about calling my family, I write in my journals about calling my 
family, or I have nightmares about calling my family.  The only 
appointments I have are sub-par meals, doctor visits, and these little 
debates with you.” 

“How is the treatment going?” asked Timmons, anxious to change the
subject. 

“It's not treatment.  It's pain aversion.  I don't think people want to
find out that their tax dollars contributed to the well-being of a 
convicted murderer.” 

“Well you've made it longer than the doctor expected.  Didn't he say you
had a year to live?” 

“Yeah, a year and a half ago...” 

______ 

November 18th, 2005 

I have a newfound appreciation for punctuation.  I realized today,
during my senseless theological discussion of foliage with Sam, that 
all things, good or bad, are united by the fact that they have endings. 
 I imagined two very different worlds.  The first, a world without 
punctuation.  A world where sentences, no matter how eloquent or 
meaningful, went on forever.  Great thoughts were reduced to ramblings. 
 There was no order and certainly no meaning.  Writers got tired of 
writing and readers rarely made it more than a few nonsensical lines. 

Then I imagined a world with only punctuation.  Stories were endings,
jokes were punch lines, letters were post-scripts, marriages were 
divorces.  It was so much more efficient and yet, so unfulfilling to 
the human mind,  that damn organ that obsesses over the how and why of 
things.  It's easy for me to lust after this world.  I have no desire 
to live out the remainder of whatever menial amount of life I can 
scrape out of this body.  I realize though, that we live in a happy 
medium.  A compromise that must have been reached long ago by a man 
with nothing to live for and a child who still had lofty dreams.  I 
wish that man would have stood his ground.  And I'm sure that, at one 
time or another, that child grew up and shared my wish. 

Despite my current state of discontent, I realize that my life's
sentence is soon to be punctuated.  I've given up the idea of revision. 
 I will be read as the man who cheated on his wife, lost his family, 
and killed another all in a matter of hours.  My only hope now is to 
create some sort of subtext.  Something that can be read between the 
lines.  That way, no matter how foul or offensive the words, there 
might be some understanding that I made a mistake in ink, one that 
can't be erased, but hopefully someday, forgiven. 

Allen Barnes 

Allen put away his pen, somewhat relieved of the pensive burden he had
been carrying all day.  It was time to temporarily escape into sleep.  
The nightmares had become more frequent, but they were still, by far 
and away, the better alternative. 

______ 

“Allen.  Breakfast,” said Ty, the weekend prison guard. Allen had been
awake for hours staring at the ceiling half-dreading those very words.  
He was hungry, but not for prison food.  Fifteen years and his stomach 
still hadn't come to terms with what the government decided passed the 
test of edibility.  Nonetheless, he got himself up. 

Allen tried to drown out the obscenity-infested small talk that lingered
in the breakfast lines.  He tried to think about the next good meal he 
would have.  Thanksgiving wasn't too far away, if he could make it that 
long.  He was salivating at the thought of turkey, stuffing, and 
potatoes, all smothered in gravy.  It was a rare happy thought, so he 
clung to it desperately.  He referred to these as “needle thoughts in a 
mind stacked with hay”. 

THWAK! The slab of an oatmeal-ish substance collided with his bowl,
obliterating his appetite and interrupting his needle thought.  He had 
stopped saying “Thank you” after the first week in prison.  It didn't 
help anything.  He figured “I forgive you” you was a more accurate 
response to this atrocity of a meal, but he wanted to make as few 
enemies as possible. 

Allen took his tray and sat down at his usual spot at the end of the
first available table, next to Barry, the closest thing he had to a 
friend in the maximum security penitentiary.  Allen took Barry's dry 
biscuit in exchange for his own cup of dated fruit, an agreement they 
had come to long ago. 

Prison small talk was hard.  There was no “What's up?” or “Got any big
plans for the weekend?” to fall back on, unless you enjoyed hearing the 
same response every day for years and years.  One had to try much 
harder to salvage some sort of communication in this vile setting. 

“So I got my mom visiting today,” Barry started.  Allen was relieved at
the arrival of a topic of conversation, no matter how boring. 

“Oh yeah?” 

“Yeah.  She said that she's going to bri- OH SHIT! ALLEN!  FUCK! 
GUARD!!” 

______ 

“There he is,” said a strangely familiar voice as Allen awoke to a
blinding light. Damn, he thought assuming this to be heaven, Timmons 
was right.  “You gave us quite the scare, Barnes.” 

Did God just call me Barnes?  The only one who called him Barnes was Dr.
Evans, who did so only because Allen referred to him as Steve, on the 
grounds that he refused to believe he was a real doctor. 

“You had a seizure this morning.  You fell mid-spasm and knocked
yourself out on the table.  You've been out for a couple hours.” 

“A seizure?” 

“Yep,” said Evans, “pretty common for this stage of a malignant tumor. 
I'm telling you, we're on thin ice now.  We're probably going to have 
to keep you here for the next few days, just in case...” 

Allen could tell by the unusual sympathetic tone and the unfinished
sentence that he probably wouldn't be seeing his cell again. 

“Be honest, Steve.  How much longer?” 

“Come on, Barnes.  How many times do I have to answer that? Haven't you
ever heard of ‘ignorance is bliss'?” 

“If ignorance is bliss, then I'm a fucking genius.” 

Dr. Evans chuckled after the few seconds it took for him to get it,
exposing his slow wit. 

“Alright, nothing is set in stone at this point and stranger things have
happened.  Just last year, a patient of mine...Greg Pankhurst, I think 
his name was...” 

“Steve.  If you're going to give me an amount of time that's less than a
month, I'd appreciate if you don't spend half of that time bullshitting 
me on my chances.  Just tell me.” 

“My best guess is within the week,” Steve said, looking down at his
various charts as if they meant something at this point. 

“Thank you.” 

______ 

“Hello?” said a voice with a crack of adolescence, “Rummage
residence.”	It was Jason, his fourteen year old, whom he had yet to 
obtain sufficient proof even existed.  He was conceived the week before 
the accident and Allen found out about the pregnancy the first time 
Carol had come to visit him. 

“Jason...?”  Stupid, stupid.  Allen's thoughts raced like marathon
runners rounding their last corner and fixing their eyes on the tongue 
and tooth finish line.  Lately it seemed that the wrong things to say 
were the most fleet of foot, as if they had stumbled upon some 
subconscious shortcut through the back of his mind. 

“Yeah...who is this?” 

“Jason, please don't hang up.  It's me, Alle-- your father.” 

“Mom said I'm not supposed to talk to you.” 

“Your mother doesn't know what I'm about to tell you.  Please, just give
me a few minutes.  It's important.” 

“Don't you want to talk to Mom or Jeremy?” 

“Yes, but they won't want to talk to me.  Besides, now is as good a time
as any to meet my son.  Just a few minutes.” 

“Who is it, buddy?” said a man's voice in the background. 

“Just Danny,” said Jason, “I'm going to take it up in my room.”  Allen
had never been so happy to hear his flesh and blood display the 
hereditary talent of lying. 

“Okay...what do you need to tell me?” 

______ 

November 19th, 2005 

Last night was the first time I ever talked to Jason.  He kind of
reminds me of myself in a way.  Not so much that we're alike, but he 
embodies those qualities I used to strive for.  He‘s the me that I 
wanted to be.  He's smart, thinks for himself, and best of all, 
open-minded.  He had every right to hang up that phone last night.  I 
probably would have secretly applauded him for doing so.  But for some 
reason, he decided to hear me out.  That conversation gave these words 
so much more meaning.  Without it, this was going to be at best, a 
multi-volume suicide note or journal that would be buried with me, 
never to see the light of day.  Now it's somewhat of an autobiography 
with a fourteen year old audience. 

Allen stopped writing, remembering he still had one last call to make. 

“Hello?” 

“Hey, Sam”, said Allen with a newfound courage to call the reverend by
his first name.  The kind of courage you only find in your last few 
days alive.  “It's me, Allen.” 

Allen explained the phone call that Reverend Timmons had been
practically begging him to make.  However, that was not the most 
important matter at hand.  Allen had to ask him for one last favor.  
Any letter, especially package, sent to Jason in Allen's name would 
certainly not be delivered to him without inspection by Carol, which 
Allen was sure would fail due to its content.  The plan was to mail the 
journals to Reverend Timmons and have Jason stop by his house one day 
to pick them up. 

“I don't know, Allen”  he said, “Couldn't you just ask Carol to let him
read them?  I mean, it's basically your dying wish.” 

“It's too risky.  I just want to give my son a chance of knowing his
father before he dies.  Please, for me.”  Allen smiled, knowing he had 
pushed the right button. 

“Alright.” 

“Thank you so much, Sam.  For everything.” 

Allen hung up and picked the pen back up, cringing at the thought of not
finishing his last journal entry. 

Dear Jason, 

It feels good being able to address this to someone.  It gives it a
purpose finally.  It's kind of funny that I've spent the last year and 
a half wanting this to be over and then I go and find purpose on my 
deathbed.  There's probably a lot in these journals that I wouldn't 
want you to know about me.  But you deserve to know.  I've never been 
very good at endings and chances are, that's what this is.  I guess the 
best thing I can do is end gracefully.  I'd love to give some 
ferry-tale twist to this and talk about how I've accepted Christ as my 
Savior and issue some sort of eloquent apology to you, your family, and 
all the other lives that I've destroyed.  But it would be no good.  The 
truth is the best ending.  In this case, the truth is I don't believe 
in God.  It makes no sense to me that human existence and all the 
tragedies that it entails are a result of some divine being's 
insecurity.  Just because he was no longer satisfied with the praise of 
angels, who he created with the absence of choice, just so they would 
worship him, he decided to throw two humans into a garden with a single 
temptation and a nature that made it impossible to resist.  Fast 
forward a few thousand years full of wars, holocausts, floods, and not 
to mention the death of his own son, and here I am.  Defying him in an 
open letter as if it makes the slightest difference.  This can't be why 
we're here.  To please him.  And if it is, I'm glad to take advantage 
of one last opportunity to deny that purpose.  As for my regrets, 
they're obvious.  I lost my everything and stole someone else's for a 
few moments of self-indulgence.  I don't deserve anyone's forgiveness 
or sympathy but I do want you to know that I am personally sorry to you 
for depriving us both of a significant part of our lives.  If my sole 
purpose of living was to ensure that you don't make my mistakes, then I 
will be more than happy dying tomorrow, knowing I accomplished that.  
If given the chance, let your mother and brother know how much I love 
them and missed them.  You only get to write so much before you have to 
put a period.  Write something worth reading. 

Dad 


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