Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Chapter 1C-Scars
It didn't seem right and he worried about it. He took long walks in the bitter cold to get his mind off things. His uncle's estate was just a few clicks north of New Rome. New Rome was a city-state in what had once been central Minnesota. It was an area with many lakes and lots of privacy. The privacy came with a big price tag. Again Tobal wondered at the source of his uncle's obvious wealth.
This time of year the lake was frozen over and he took long walks on the snow and ice. Bundling up against the bitter cold wind helped him forget his face was covered with bandages. Feeling the painful cold in his fingers helped him forget the painful lacerations on his face. With his uncle gone most of the time he was pretty much left to his own devices and he liked being outdoors.
There was something fresh and clean about being alone and outdoors that gave him comfort. The ice and snow crunched loudly under his boots and the sun glared brightly. Today there were sun dogs on either side of the sun with a rainbow arch partly visible. His breath came out in clouds and burned a bit in his lungs. He turned off the lake and headed toward the stables. He had been spending a lot of time there lately and liked working with the horses. They were better company than his old friends were and they didn’t care about how he looked.
As Tobal moved away from human contact he turned more and more to the silent companionship of animals and nature. If his uncle noticed he never said anything and neither did any of the staff.
By Christmas Eve he was fretting and fingering the bandages on his face, itching to tear them off. He’d been instructed to leave them on one final week and today was the day they came off. With trembling fingers he went into the bathroom, found surgical scissors and began cutting the layers of gauze away from his face. He was tired of looking like a mummy. The gauze wanted to stick to his skin and he felt pain as he gently tugged at it, lifting the last of it carefully off his right eye. The bright bathroom light stabbed into his eye and sharp blinding pain flashed through his head.
He closed his eyes against the pain and waited until it faded away. His fingers touched the newly healed skin and he carefully opened his eyes and looked into the mirror.
"No", he screamed in horror!
Four angry scars ran diagonally across his face. They were about an eighth of an inch wide. One reached from his right temple to cross his right eye, slashing across his nose and touching the corner of his mouth moving down along his jaw. That was the worst. That was the one that had almost taken his right eye out. There was a smaller one above that started at his forehead and swept across to the left eyebrow. There were two smaller ones across his cheek and along his jaw starting at the right cheekbone. They looked swollen, angry and discolored around the scar tissue that was forming.
Tobal stared in horror at the face he would be carrying for the rest of his life. With a curse his fist smashed into the mirror. As it shattered into pieces he screamed and clutched his bleeding fist, sobbing as blood flowed down his wrist into the sink and onto the floor.
"No! Goddess No!" he sobbed.
Blood spattered and covered shards of broken mirror erased his image as he slumped toward the floor holding his ruined face. His life would never be the same.
Tobal took it hard. He refused to go back to school and went from being an out going, fun loving kid to a loner. He didn't want to see any of his old friends or do any of the things he used to do. He continued spending time alone on the grounds of his uncle's estate either trekking across the frozen wasteland of the lake or riding his horse through the eerie quiet of the pine forest. He was numb inside and it was the harsh bitter cold that broke through his isolation and made him feel things, even if it was only physical discomfort. Somehow it felt good to feel something, even if it was just the cold. As the days passed the quiet solitude seared his soul with an agony that let him know he was still alive.
He kept to himself, even when indoors. The few friends that came to visit were turned away until even they stopped coming. There were no more cards or invitations. One day his uncle brought up the subject of his going back to school.
"I'm not going back to school", he shouted in anger at his uncle.
Uncle Henry tried pleading with him, drawing him out, doing things with him, but nothing could break through the wall that Tobal had placed around himself. He was locked in his own hell of suffering and self-pity.
His face had healed as well as it was going to. He had just come back from a consultation with his doctor. Plastic surgery might make the scar tissue smaller and less noticeable but his skin would always show the scars. Plastic surgery had been his final hope and he felt himself falling even deeper into a black hole of despair and apathy.
It was late New Year's afternoon when his uncle Harry knocked on the bedroom door asking to come in. Tobal grudgingly stood aside and let him into the room. Uncle Harry wheeled his old fashioned wheelchair slowly into the room balancing a highly polished and elegantly crafted oak box on his lap. It was the size of a small jewelry box with ornate carving on the sides and top.
With a start Tobal recognized the deeply engraved symbol on the top of the box. It was a carving of a man and woman standing side by side and holding hands. Surrounding the nude figures was a deeply engraved circle. The entire image was about three inches across and carved out of highly polished white oak.
Uncle Harry laid the box gently down on the bed and wheeled his chair back making room for Tobal. He was looking at Tobal thoughtfully. There were conflicting emotions in his eyes. Dark shadows that Tobal didn't remember seeing before showed beneath them and he felt a sudden chill. This was not the uncle that he was familiar with. This was not the uncle that he had known his entire life.
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