///Indie Journal Daily///

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

The Halls of Knowledge, part seventy-four

Vantarvian's story continued ...
Macksennett bent down and watched as the girl regained consciousness. He said, "You fainted."
"Yes," she said, "because my name is Justine."
"That could be a coincidence," Macksennett said.
"No, it cannot," Justine said. "Because I look nothing like my fathers."
"Fathers?"
"Yes, I have seven fathers."
"How is that possible?"
"I don't know. Seven men raised me in Arabia and all claimed to be my father. And they all agreed it was true, so I believed them. Now I meet you and you are fair-skinned like me and you have hair and eyes and shoulders like me and you say you sold your daughter to slavery and my fathers became rich in the slavery business and here I am with the same name as your daughter."
"So then?"
"I think you are my eighth father," she said, standing and brushing her skirt.
"No, no," Macksennett said, "you can only have one father and maybe I am that one man. You could be the daughter I sold to slavery, only older."
Macksennett looked down at Vantarvian sitting in a seat in the makeshift pew and said, "It was my daughter and I made her promise she would not go back to her Arab parents. I mean those Arabs who all claimed to be her father. She agreed to stay with me in Spain but if she didn't go back to Arabia then she would have no money to finish school. So I had this idea to fake being a priest and be sent to a far-away place where I could skim money from the weekly offerings."
"So you have been taking money from the weekly offerings here?" the young Vantarvian said.
"Yes I have. But only to be sure Justine stayed in school. When she was finished with school I only skimmed half of what I had been skimming when she was in school."
Young Vantarvian said, "Why should I believe all this if you have lied about everything else?"
Macksennett said, "Because this is true and you can go to the United States of America and see Justine."
"You know I cannot travel to the United States of America, no less only to prove your story is true," said young Vantarvian.
"I do know that," said Macksennett. "But I also know that you are a fine young man who cooks one hell of a human leg and that you will give me at least an hour's head start before you tell the governing body that I have left."
"Why should I do that for a rotten, stinking liar?"
"Because," Macksennett said, "one day you will grow up and you too may have a daughter and have to sell her to slavery and then find her years later and realize you have much to make up to her."
Young Vantarvian was silent.

~To be continued

Frank Cotolo 10:34 PM