The Outcast Path

My sweating palms told me that I was making a big mistake. The thick letter-headed paper with the address on shook in my hand. I was at the correct location. My phone in the other hand also shook, it’s screen still displaying details of the type of establishment I’d been sent to. I had been expecting an office, a house, anything but this.

Sitting on a bench across the street because I feared that my legs might give way, my brain scrambled for an explanation.

“I could have you done for loitering you know.” A strikingly beautiful man sat beside me. “I saw you arrive earlier, I thought you were the health inspector the way you’ve been watching my bar, but you seem a little lost for that.”

“That’s your bar?”

“Sure is.” He was slim, maybe mid-sixties with salt and pepper hair. I glanced down at the last will and testament of my father that I had collected a week ago.

“I’ve been told to come to this address. I have something…to collect. I’m the son of…”, I placed my hand on my chest, ready to introduce myself as the son of a man whose rejection I’d been supressing all my life. A man I hadn’t seen for twenty-two years.

“I know who you are. I was hoping you wouldn’t take too long to visit. Please.” He motioned for me to follow him as I tried to figure out if this was my late Father’s last chance at another cruel stab at me. I was his one true mistake. The gay black sheep of an old-fashioned family. The men had been in the FBI for generations. The women stayed at home to raise more alpha males and more homemaking, childbearing women. And I got lost in between.

I rejected another call from my long-term fiancée, he hated that I’d insisted on going alone. He’d been worried since I got the news Dad had died, he was probably waiting for me to have an existential crisis. Truth was I was I felt nothing, just sort of numb. Dad had been nothing but a bully, ashamed of me, joining the others in our family to remind me of that. The lawyer’s office last week was the first time I’d seen my Sisters in years. I hated them, the feeling was always mutual.

The bar was classy. A black and white theme. Subtle scents of Sandalwood and jasmine. Not the typical idea of a gay bar. I just didn’t understand why I’d been sent here. To even be mentioned in his will was a shock enough. Again, I checked the letter,

‘Alex, go to the following address where you’ll be given an item of mine’

I couldn’t think of anything Dad would possibly want me to have, even more so why I’d had to travel so far to get it. It was signed and dated by him, almost two months ago. He had written this just before he died.

The man stopped outside a door in the apartment above the bar. “This was your Father’s domain. I’ve kept it safe for him until this day, please go inside, and…..”, he handed me a small black notebook. “…well, this will explain everything, call if you need anything, and take your time.”

Dad left the black notebook to me. I’d wondered if it ever really existed, but it clearly did. A small part of me revelled in the fact that my Sisters would be looking for it, only to realise Dad had had wanted me to have it. The reason why though unsettled me.

Inside the room was a small desk, a chair and a lamp that was already lit. Tall shelving units lined each wall. I took the small black notebook and sat at the desk.

I ran my hand across the top. It was old and worn. Leaning back in the chair I took a moment to try to process. Dad had told us that he’d kept the details of his treasures in this notebook. The stories he told us when he would finally get some time away from his secretive career. He always leave out the main details, just enough so that we knew he’d returned from an epic battle with a spy or discovered a forgotten mummified Prince and that the notebook would one day lead us to the treasure.

He told us that his notebook contained maps to each of the treasures he’d found. We all became obsessed with it, making our own treasure hunts. It was when they found my treasure that it rippled through the family like some plague. They put a stop to it immediately, although I continued with the maps for a while before learning harshly it would be best to keep it all in my head and act how they wanted me to. My idea of treasure was my Sisters’ dolls, because I wanted to be a Mommy with a Husband and lots of babies. And that was apparently morbidly wrong for a little boy.

A wave of dread washed over me. I shook my head in disbelief at how I’d convinced my loving fiancée Josh that it was right to spend what little of our savings we had on the flight to get here to this stupid room. To collect a small black notebook from a Dad who despised me, ashamed of my ‘choice of lifestyle’. The humiliation that it had brought to the family when they discovered I had an incurable disease from said lifestyle was enough to banish me for good. I felt the rage bubble. Josh and I had been saving to pay for adoption or surrogacy. A family for Josh and I, and I’d taken us back to the beginning because I thought maybe my Dad had seen the error of his evil, dark age way of thinking.

With one angry swipe, the black notebook flew across the room, sliding across the glossy mahogany floor and spilling some of its pages. I cleared the tears from my eyes and prepared to clear up the mess before leaving this ridiculous situation.

As I bent to scoop up the papers, one of the pages facing up caught my attention. And what was on it was like a bullet to the head. It was a drawing. A kid’s drawing. My treasure map. The reason why Dad had stopped telling our family of his FBI adventures.

Slumping to the floor amongst the chaos my anger had created, I stared at the page. My name written in crayon at the bottom, ‘Alex, age 6.’

I took another paper, another treasure map. And a another. Carefully lifting the black notebook, I turned the cover to open it. Stuck to the pages, were my treasure maps. My mouth fell open. I always left them some place for Dad to find them. I never imagined he would even look at them, let alone keep them all these years. I flicked through, quickly scanning before turning to the first page. There was a note.

Alex, this is your treasure hunt, using your maps

Discover my secrets from my adventures as an FBI Agent

This is what he would tell me and my sisters, the last line of it anyway. I felt like I was in some weird daydream that a therapist would enjoying picking apart. Why me? Why now? And why here?

Studying the first treasure map, I was baffled. It made no sense. I felt those bad feelings return when I’d be ridiculed and scolded for taking things and hiding them as treasure. And then I spotted the corner of the page, in neat black ink was the word ‘EYGPT.’

I let my head fall back as I wondered what I was supposed to do, it was then I remembered the room was full of shelves. Each shelf had a single item on it, things that looked mainly like crap from some tacky souvenir store.

My eyes examined the shelves and quickly I found ‘EYGPT’. A cheap bust of Tutankhamen.

Written on it was the number 4. I returned to the book, feeling less angry and more curious. The second treasure map was a map of Space. The word at the bottom was STAR. I found a money box in the shape of a star. Drawn on the bottom of it was the number 8. Placing the star carefully back down as though it were some priceless antique, I laughed to myself. The joke was on us. There were no secrets, no treasure. Dad was never going to tell us his FBI secrets. He would have been shot if he disclosed anything.

I continued with my search until I had eight numbers from various inexpensive items. The next page was different. It wasn’t one of my maps. It was a beautifully illustrated map clearly made by an adult with a talent for drawing. And at the bottom were the words ‘MY SON’. My eyes welled up, making it hard to find anything that might look as though it represented me. I felt a wave of emotion hit me. I had never been called that before by my Dad.

Eventually, I found a photograph in a frame, high on a top shelf. It was of my Dad holding a baby in the hospital. I knew it was me, I was the only one with dark hair, like him. A label read ‘OPEN THE FRAME’.

I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t ready, unprepared for whatever was in there. I put the frame face down and stepped away. Somehow, I could deal with my reality before today. It was what I was used to. The harsh dealings were comfortable and familiar. I felt like years of therapy were about to be unravelled and I would never be able to tie it back up. But on the next shelf was a baby suit, folded neatly. It was the one from the photograph.

I took the frame, undoing the back quickly. The photograph floated to the floor with a folded paper. It was Dad’s handwriting, scrawly. I pictured him in the hospital, sick, using what little strength he had to write this.

‘To My Alex, I can never take back the way we treated you. I’ve lost my soul and happiness knowing that I destroyed your childhood and missed out on getting to know the man you’ve become. My life is meaningless. I hope you can one day think of me fondly, I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness. The numbers are a code for a safe, stay healthy and get the family you and Josh always wanted, with love, Dad.’

Underneath the note he declared the sum of $20,000 to me. He knew Josh’s name; he knew we wanted a family. Stay healthy, he was talking about my Aids. I was flawed.

I sat for a few minutes to process it all before eventually leaving to thank my unknown host to this madness. ‘Why did he send me here?’ I asked.

“I was his partner” the man replied calmly.

“Oh” I replied not hiding my surprise well. “No offence, you don’t look the FBI type”, regretting my words instantly, I felt my face blush.

The man cocked his head. “Wow, homophobic slurs coming from a homosexual. The apple really doesn’t fall far...”

“I’m sorry?” I replied, confused by the array of words he said in one sentence.

The man sighed, “I wasn’t your Father’s FBI colleague...” he paused, waiting as though I knew what he meant.

“Your Father was just like you”,

the crease between my eyebrows deepened, “I don’t follow…”

“ was his childhood sweetheart, his soulmate, the love of his life…”