Eluthia Ch 8

Will mumbled to himself. “This place is sucking the life out of me! Northshore is dead. What do these independent contractors expect to get out of this place?”

 

Minus peered behind him. “Invest somewhere else.”

 

“I can’t. I am already tied to this place. Unlike your father I have never made good investing decisions.”

 

“Funny you should say that. I feel tied myself.” Said Minus.

 

Will ignored Minus’s last comment by scoffing. He swayed his hand in disapproval. “Only if your father were here. And d****t to hell, his fault to.”

 

“How is it his fault?” Minus said.

 

Will gave him a badgered look, pursing his lips out with a sigh, and then rolling his eyes. “How would you know anything?”

 

“I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.”

 

Tracking was the operative word. Tracking his father’s footsteps, because Minus had been painting lately. In his previous dreams, it did occur to Minus that his footing had been lost on absurdly long and high roads. Roads that deterred to other places. Roads that did not have a beginning or a destination, they just kind of frolicked about in endless recession to memories that wavered in Minus’s brain. What was his uncle tracking? Nothing. His search futile, he burdened himself in his office with paper and phone calls, tracking resentments that hastened around streetlight corners.

 

“Boy. I built my brother, your fathers life. I told him all the right investments.”

 

Creased lines formed on Will’s forehead denoting that his assertion was right. But his eyes were in another place as if he were hemming something that wasn’t there.

 

“I just wanna know. I hardly remember my father or mother.” Said Minus.

 

“Look at a photo book.” Said Will sarcastically. “Go to the library in the archives. You should find something. What is there to tell? You treat him as if he were some enigma.”

 

“Well, he is. All I got is a picture.” The photo of Caleb Wellington Sr. silhouetted against the backdrop of their house in the Garden District, the perimeter of the house surrounded in a fleur de Les, iron gate. Patches of petunias flower the front lawn. Caleb has a relaxed gaze, peaceful and serene, yet has an air of importance about him that separates him from the rest of the surroundings as if some faint depression had bounded him. He wears the look of an artist.

 

“You never asked about him before. Why now? It unnerves me that you all the sudden have this conscientious about your folks.” Said Will.

 

“It’s not just about my father. It is me too. All I know about myself right now has been coated by my dreams. I get snippets of my early life, and I feel that part of my life is trying to grow back, but major parts of my life are also obscured by the excesses I use to live by.” Said Minus.

 

“I think that concussion on your head did you in. But could be worst. You could be under the dirt like your friend Val.” Said Will.

 

As Minus gutted his feelings right before his uncle he possessed the urge to carve that part of his brain that only narrated his supposed relationship with Will. Every other window of experience had been curtained by alcoholic excesses. It was no use getting any information out of him.