Since I’m Here. A letter of introduction by Boo Radley
A little background.
Yesterday James Altucher followed me. A strange thing happened when that happened.
I wanted to write. Not just write, but go ahead and write something and then click "publish" once it’s finished. Actually, to be more honest, I just wanted to finish something. It had been a long time since I’d had the confidence to do that. I went to sleep thinking about it and knew I couldn’t ignore the nagging sense of DO IT any longer. Thank you James. This whole process sucked a lot.
So, I woke up this morning (early for once) and wrote ten ideas. I increased my exercise by actually making coffee instead of buying it. I acknowledged what I was grateful for in my life and I started to write.
____________
I once was told, “We don’t want your kind here.”
I didn’t think real people actually said that.
____________
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Boo Radley is introduced as a phantom-like character that is the fascination of the neighborhood children, Jem, Scout and Dill. They have never laid eyes on him, as his father has locked him up following an act of juvenile delinquency over 20 years ago and after stabbing his father 15 years into his time. Boo is now middle-aged yet is never seen outside of the house. Jem and Scout perhaps feel his presence more than anyone in Maycomb County, whose citizens continue to disregard his existence outside a realm of rumors. The house he lives in is “droopy and sick”, regularly boarded by closed shutters and tightly sealed doors. It is unnaturally gray and colorless.
What would happen to a man confined to his family for 20 years?
The children sensed this as a fundamental question of life and its possibilities were acted out in front porch plays. They also sensed he was reaching out to them through a myriad of events and unexplained phenomena. Jem decided to write a letter to the unknown person leaving treasures in a tree’s knothole out front of Boo Radley’s house. He wrote a letter of appreciation to replace inside it but found the knothole covered by cement.
What if he had been able to leave the letter there and Boo had replied?
What would Boo say as his first, and possibly last, communication in so many long years? As Atticus said, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” What would it say about him? His letter could sound something like this…
I want folks to know why I did it, why I hurt my dad with the scissors, but it’s not simply something that can be explained by saying you’re angry, though that’s true also. By then, my father had locked me up in the house for more’n 15 years. I suppose I am crazy. You can’t just be told and told everything all the time and not do that, go crazy. Even I know it’s wrong to stab your dad with scissors. What’s hardest to say and worse to explain was that I did it out of love. Love for him, myself, others I’d seen, being humans. Love is hard to come by for those always alone. There has to be a way to get it.
Haven’t you ever had to choose the wrong to try and make things right? It was there-sin, sin, sin-I knew it was as I grabbed hold tight of the scissors and before I even swang. I knew it was a sin and perhaps my first should be against him. After all, he is my sustainer (so willed by his creator) and my flesh and blood. His blood was dark with sin. Wiped clean, my scissors shone once more, glorifying the day’s offering-light-by a weakened shutter slat.
I am still here years later; my stabbing him did not change this reality he created. I am still here and only the newspaper reminds me what society really does each week. They move on as I become too far-gone.
“Eunice took Happy to the hospital on Friday. Miss Maude won the Azalea contest. Farmers fear drought.”I too, fear drought. I will wither away and dry up as these thoughts move ever inward, sucking energy from within. I am a desert wasteland. I am a parasite feeding on itself. I had to turn it away. I stabbed him. He still did not love.
I used to play innocent games and romp and play, as you. It is there in me, the memories stronger then the sin. I remember a cocoon turned to beauty if you held it close and kept it warm. I learned about discovery and how it keeps one free by being different than me. Everything comes from outside of me. I am nothing here, alone. Who am I to live outside of this house now? Folks are afraid of ghosts.
Take this trinket; I am here to worship your passing, an offering that you come my way. Carefree, skipping, hopping, twirling, quarreling, outside, free. I care you enjoy being you. God for surely loves you too.
I gaze outside as I always do, barely sleeping, my eyes on the world through horizontal slats or tiny decays of broken wood. Quickly, you run to touch me, my house, then back through the patch as you struggle to be free of a fence you feared would lock you in like me-forever. My fences are not barbed and steel yet they are real and I unsnag you to save you back to the outside. Way from the reality and back to the myths:
He is a scary monster-
(much better than the truth)
He is a murderous animal-
(nothing lives here)
Outside I am scared, more so of you, than you, of me. You are life itself and memories I cannot bear. Be good so good they cannot lock you away where tomorrow is nothing more than today and today is done dead. The blanket I gave you warmed me when I was young; it holds fibers of a woven past, fibers of my very being; from when I was one. Does it now dress your bed in the house of light and laughter and warmth? Was it your shelter in the makeshift bedroom tent? I thought I saw myself elevated above, held by your flashlight as it shined through my pores. But I should mind my own business, as folks do ‘round here.
