In the Image
by: Stephanie Watson (SLWatson)
2006

Disclaimer: BBI owns him, I just write him.

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The clouds boiling in the sky were the color of steel... a blue-gray that would bring with it hard winds and maybe hail; horizontal rain at least. It would hit like the Book of Revelation, flatten any tall grass growing, bend trees, and then it would be over like it had never happened.

Such was summer in the Midwest.

Mike had just finished loading his old beater for his last trip to Milwaukee, but his mother (having broken down in tears for the sixth time this afternoon alone at the thought of her youngest son moving away) had insisted that he wait until the storm was over before leaving. He thought that it might just be a stall tactic -- when he'd announced that he was heading out on his own two weeks earlier, she hadn't taken it too well -- but waiting another twenty minutes or so wouldn't make much of a difference.

So he leaned on the window sill and looked out at the fields, and waited.

His father hadn't said one thing or another about it, really. Mike was a little surprised, but he shouldn't have been. His father wasn't known for being particularly demonstrative; he had all of the stoicism of his forebearers, who had lived a hard life by the land, and who kept both their joys and sorrows mostly to themselves. If he was upset about Mike moving out, it didn't show.

The wind picked up from a dead calm. One second the air was heavy and almost oppressive, and the next second it was whipped into a frenzy. The whole world went from sunlight to murky darkness. And the rain started, hard, only a moment later.

He'd stayed an extra year to help out after graduating high school; now he was nineteen and had a job at a cheese factory in the city, and he wasn't so sure where he was going but he knew that he had to get there. Life couldn't be lived in a vacuum -- sometimes, you just had to jump and hope that you could land on your feet.

Mike took a page from his father's book, and kept his own nervousness to himself. It was a strange thing, to leave home and the land you grew up on for a life that would be drastically different. Just in the process of moving, he'd come to the conclusion that city life, with its hustle and flow, was utterly foreign. How he would fit into that world was beyond him, but he had to at least give it a try.

Looking out at a land transformed by thunder and lightning and rain, though, made it a little bit harder to leave than he expected. The air snapped and roared, tearing over the slightly rolling ground, bending the trees back on the property's edge; in the city, it wouldn't sound or feel like this. Wouldn't smell like it, either.

Mike had done his best to fulfill the role of the 'good son'; it was a foregone conclusion that Eddie would never do it. They were both the image of their father, but only Mike seemed to have inherited any of his father's personality. Ed, though... well, maybe an alien dropped him off in a cocoon and he hatched into someone who looked like one of them, but could never act like one of them.

Mike frowned to himself as he looked out the window. His feelings towards his brother had been a bone of contention for a long time, and he didn't want to spend his last minutes as a member of this household thinking about them.

Instead, he thought again about his father, who was born on this land and would die on it, and who never really complained when the bad things happened. Who was devoted to his family, and who worked hard and lived an honest life, and who must have had dreams when he was young. Maybe, though, farming and raising a family and being a good man had been all he dreamt of... and in that case, he had succeeded.

And it wasn't a bad dream, even if it wasn't Mike's and probably never would be.

He felt his father's presence rather than actually heard it. In part because his father had presence -- he could silence a room by walking into it, even if he didn't say a word. It had always been that way; whenever Mike screwed up or did something stupid, all it took was a disapproving look to make it clear that he had. And if there was one thing that the son couldn't stand, it was disappointing his father.

In the rain streaked glass, the reflection of the two of them made it hard to tell which of them was which; the same hair, the same eyes, nearly the same build. The same thoughtful expression, though it was a good bet they weren't thinking about the same things. His father was probably wondering if any damage would come out of this thunderstorm. Mike was thinking about whether he could ever live up to the reflection -- to be a good man.

It was over within minutes. The sky to the southeast was black, and the sky overhead broke into sunlight, and it looked like fair weather from there on out.

"Guess I better go," Mike said, finally breaking the silence, glancing to his father before heading towards the door. He had to get out of there before his mother insisted on another twenty-minute hug-and-cry session.

"Yep," his father replied, neutrally.

Mike didn't really expect anything more than that. He just headed out the door, and down the porch steps, and for the car. The air was already warming back up from the rain, and smelled clean and alive -- some part of him wanted to stay here. Familiar ground. No where else in the world smelled like home.

But his future wasn't here. He didn't know where it was -- but he had to find out.

He already knew that wherever he went, some part of this place would go with him.

Some part of these people.

He was opening the door to the car, wincing a little as the hinge screeched in protest, when he heard his father call his name. And wondering a little about what he could want, Mike looked back, eyebrows drawn.

Whatever the man on the porch was going to say was never said; maybe could never be said. But he looked like he wanted to, and that alone maybe was all that was needed. Instead, tipping his head up in something of a salute to his son, he simply said, "Be good."

It was okay. Mike knew what he meant. He tipped his own head in a return of the salute, smiling a little. "Bye, Dad."

And didn't look in the rearview mirror when he drove away, into some unknown future.