You know how you're just looking through old connections, wondering how they have been after several months or even years? You start to think things like "Did I know they were that handsome?" or maybe "Were they always gay, or did I just never see it?" Truth is often stranger than fiction, but I think I'll let truth have this one. I'll add the truth to the book so that in so doing the world at large can do their own due diligence as I have; they can find out the dark and torrid secrets that hang just behind the grey eyes of the fallen master who once held one of the highest of positions in his church.
Mind you, the master, as I may call him, didn't start out at the top! No, his was a sorted story to be sure. There were years of self-abuse, family corruption, pain, and suffering from his inability to face who he was and what he wanted to be. Rather than standing firmly in a decision, he chose to hide and to drag countless others into the charade! It's no wonder he ended up taking a head-long plunge over the cliffs of Arthur's Seat at the hands of his homely "Plain Jane" wife, who while she knew he was gay, had also kept his secrets and the truth now shown so dingy and tacky upon her reputation as well. Better a dead husband who no one knows has lied than to let him tell all and jam her gears as well. The year was 1931 after all and homosexuality was still both an offense against the Crown, but also quite disgusting in the eyes of most civil-minded in Edinburgh!
Was it just that he was gay? Could that be enough of a reason for the petty-minded soon-to-be-widowed wife to shove her glorified babysitter over the edge? She never really loved him, but he was useful in some ways. When she found him wallowing in the streets from drunkenness and from long-standing opium addiction, he was at least grateful to be inside, being fed was nice, even if it did mean he had to sleep beside her and pretend he was attracted. Her young son was fun enough and who knows, over time perhaps he could be "useful" as well. Could she have even imagined the influence her new husband would have on her boy? Was it safe to leave them alone? Was it true what the boy tried to explain a few times? Were they just "games" between "father" and son? I'd have cut him hard before the push! I might have even called the cops myself to admit I did it; I rid the world of yet another grotesque child molester! She couldn't face herself. She simply walked away. No one even noticed.
Just before the end, just before her hands last felt the hardness of his flesh as she heaved with all she had, she remembered a letter her husband had written to her son as he was graduating from prep school. It said something about how brave the boy was; how he was in fact the "bravest man I know", and the thing is, he was hardly a man! The fact that her son had decided to live the life of a decadent was not necessarily appalling to the woman, but she couldn't convince him that good Christians would wrestle constantly with the Spirit inside of them if they were Christians at all. The boy wasn't wrestling with anyone. Was her husband? It didn't seem like he was to her -- it seemed as if he had set the stage for the boy.
There wasn't even so much as a thud. She waited long enough by the side of the crag, to be sure he wouldn't be able to get a grasp and hold onto something or somehow manage to stand or climb back to the top. There wasn't much of a chance of his surviving the fall. She had truly meant to kill him. In the shadow of the twilight skies, however, she hadn't noticed that he had sat his guitar down; he had laid it against the side of a tree. Though his crumpled body may soon be found, bloodied and broken, at least the innocent one would be spared. The music would live on. The notes would be played by someone, someone else whose fingers were not as deceptive as his when the old hymns were strummed across six inviting strings.
He ruined everything, she thought. He didn't deserve to share in this life now. Hadn't she saved him from the streets? Hadn't she given him a roof over his head, food, love, not to mention a child of his own? Would their daughter now wonder if her father was even telling the truth when he'd hold her and tell her he loved her? Was this new life he was choosing more important to her? She was only a child, but she would have questions. She would grow up believing Daddy jumped. Why should the little girl lose two parents over the choices of one?
DISCLAIMER: No, this wasn't about you, Tex! It's fiction.
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