The King of Expectation

Prologue

In a time of crisis as in absolute calm, the need for a savior is destined to arise. The thought of standing in between two passages have always seemed to somehow fit the human idea of organizing her very survival. Suggest a guide to a busy mind and you will probably find that this person has got hundreds of reasons to come up with which puts faculty to that person's existential stance as a unique individual, capable of both acting and thinking all on her own accord. The free will, as most would call it.

But even so, it is commonly said and suggested throughout cultures all over the world that the closer to one emotional extreme a person comes the individual spirit seems to submit to a bigger, perhaps greater idea about salvation.

But I wonder, is not always truth greater than salvation?

Sammy

You could never see it just by looking at him, how deep the scars really went.

Like a man under water desperate for air, he had fled after the death of his father. Deep into the meanders where sights and sounds do not reach. Deep into the valley where one man cometh but seldom leave. Once though, Sam Hayden was a part of something. Something he could fathom, yet believe in. Growing up in a small family as an only child, Sammy found soothing comfort and strength in the sole existence of the mundane traits that made up his everyday life. School treated him knowledge, interpretation gave him wisdom. Life was framed by subtlety in tender and slow moving motions. Sammy was one of those children that, even though he did not lack friends and company, had a really built and fervent imagination to boost his senses. He felt and was everything in his mind and he saw anything anywhere that he wished. Sammy used to imagine that growing up in the realms around the facts of his life was a bit structured like a tree. His parents were like the roots and stem, but the branches and all the colors of the leaves, they were all him. This combined with the universally suggested life he was offered growing up in a small Arcadian town in the dull midst of anywhere anytime made his youth surroundings a beautiful sort of marriage between him and the world just outside his frame of mind.

His mother was an image, a bird perched in a tree, very subtle in her love to Sammy but the gestures were there however delicate and Sammy understood how to grasp them from an early age. Never one to holler, never one to kneel, she wore her presence like a silhouette shaded by the secret fashions of her mind. But for Sammy, his father was the real hero to end all heroes. He used to boast about him even, of how he took precious time to sit up with him half the nights on in reading through his manuscripts for him with great passion as if his audience were there seeing and feeling him trough the wide hunger in little Sammy's blue eyes. Oh, he was a genius, Sammy always chanted like a true believer, how he managed to capture all the emotions using all of those little tricks of the trade he had picked up from working with different actors and directors all of his professional life. I guess a therapist would easily consider Sammy's love for his father an act of persuasion towards the ever-changing present. One could say that his father's presence was as much imagined as it was real as Sammy seldom saw his father more than once or twice a week.

Sammy's mother was a homemaker not needed to work thanks to his father who spent most of his time either in Los Angeles or on Broadway, leaving Sammy to fill in the blanks of his character. I mean, he was not a bad father as one may assume, he was still caring towards his family, it was just that success had come in the way.

Just snippets of time here and there were called upon to craft magic in the eyes of Sammy, creating a formula of essence and hollowness just keeping his sanity budding towards wonderment and imagination. Soon in the days of his youth he had a mind of sound faculty, truly the spawn of great influence and expectation.

His relationship to his mother was that of a small craft to the earth it belongs.

Always by and near in dependence, but with both eyes and ears in constant analogue with the broader horizon far off and away. He always found her charming with great convenience since her subtlety gave way to few conflicts and arguments.

In fact, there were never any conflicts too fierce to mention between Sammy and his mother. It was as if she was one of those hosts on TV coming in and out of ones life leaving few chances of emotion whilst catering to those lonely needs making themselves heard on a shallow everyday level. Distance and attachment, bound and prevented, never shall they meet. It is like there is a hidden principle of just fitting into the social patterns to such an extent that the real ways of communication that remains is so universal that anyone could join in at any one time. I guess it is like using mathematics instead of philosophy. Numbers instead of emotions.

Sammy's relation to his father then, was very different in this sense. It was in all absolutes unique and powerful, like a true sender and receiver relationship should be, and Sammy based his whole adolescence and life on the traits and ideas that he gained from those rare moments with his father. No one was really close to Sammy as in the way he had built his enchanted little world fit enough for him and his father. In there, they were truly two of one kind.

The funeral

Samuel... Sam Hayden said the minister in a gentle proud voice and looked to Sammy whose eyes where inside him carefully upright in the front row to the left at his father's funeral. Eyes black as night in November and not even with a whisper over his lips he slightly attempted to get up, but nobody noticed. His shoes shone dark of polished leather, he was no more a little boy seeing caring faces all around him, he had been brutally turned into something else. The small chapel was packed to the brim with acquaintances and adornment, all whom his father in some capacity worked with over the years. Adulation cut through the atmosphere like a knife, leaving a still sea carried by a martyr. There were even some reporters there covering the event, people with big black cameras with giant lenses eyeing the famed parts of the audience like hawks and lions. None of this mattered to Sammy however, as he was as alone as a man ever could be in that moment. The murmur around him kept him in like walls, his emotions faded for each living minute. The minister's second calling of his name out loud barely acted out as a faint echo in Sammy's veiled mind.

Do you wish to say something, something you would share with all of us present, asked the minister now standing just in front of Sammy, so close even that one could see the pale blue inscriptions on the sleeve of his ceremonial robe. We would love to hear your voice, she said, and Sammy locked eyes with her in a manner a grown man looks into the eyes of child. Without a word he then rose from his seat on the pew and almost marched up to the stand so he could face everyone and really see who all those people were around him, who up and till now had the bare characteristics of a sounded blur. He must have taken at least a minute or so because the silence of his study felt really prolonged until he started speaking.

There is so many of you here that I have never seen before, he said in a worthy and propitious voice, I guess you all were in some fashion apart of my fathers life.

After that he suddenly sort of changed his agenda, as his posture sunk and his eyes steered away past folk and the fairies of the chapels cipher. You will have to excuse me now, but this is my funeral too... he said with words said in haste and without any real desire behind them other than those wishes desolate of functioning thought. Kind of frowned he stared into the vapors of the saddened aura which by now made up the whole mental state of the little chapel. Moving on from there his words had forsaken him as emptiness took over his resolve. Imagination and thought turned into speech was a process long gone forgotten. Sammy stepped down from the stand not relieved but with eyes still of some conviction as he walked past the minister, walked down the isle and out past the gates of the little chapel as something new, long before the funeral were really over. The clouds just past under the sun meeting his face with a fresh wind of change as the small virescent alleyway sunk into his mind frame as he walked down the centre of it seeing his whole life coming towards him, painted from destiny itself. Pebbles and stones put sound to every step he took. He never turned his head again, and he was never to forget his father.

Coming back

An indigo spring morning was an old and well used expression in town and it was certainly one of those that day. The preparations for a summer festival in honor of the splendor and beauty of the Indigo bush made the town's inner parts literally glow upon the opening of their flowers early morning to the coming of the first late April sun. Sammy turned the corner again into heart of town for the first time in nine years since the funeral, now a man not only by force but in numbers as well.

He had inherited almost all of his father's money, so the word in town around his unexpected exodus was that he probably chose to spend his mindless fortunes in Europe somewhere carefree and fancy. No one had really worried for him, such poise and permeability in the society had his fathers name given him. This added to the simple fact that nobody had ever been close to him like his father had been, left everyone only speculating upon where Sammy may have gone so abruptly on that black day at the chapel. There he was no less, handsome as crafted by a master in the arts of masculinity, his roughed and tender shapes gave promise to an alliance that had beauty as its foreword.

Fitted into a slim lined dark brown Armani suit his carefully cut hair just reached and matched his chocolaty colored beard as to once and for all establish his manhood.

At thirty now, Sammy looked like he could be the mysterious leading man in an old Fellini film as he elegantly strolled across the city square towards the real estate agents office in town. Sammy quickly reached the wide and big old building with built in wooden sidewalk taking up the whole north side of the city's main square.

There must have been about ten different shops and services available next door to each other, and Sammy soon noticed as if reminded from deep memory that most of the establishments there were old ones, still there as they had been in his childhood. Everyone from the barber to the old Jewish butcher. Sammy stood upon the sidewalk for a while, reminded of the signs and who and what stood behind them, before he saw the door he was looking for right there at the corner and entered as the first client of the new day.

No one was around, no one was watching. His fathers influence had made him notice these things, to see no one, to not see anyone. There is a difference there and... well; I think it has to do with that imagination of his again. As Sammy walked in the door to the small office a huge desk practically by itself prompted him to instantly sit down in front of it as a great big man of rotund proportions met him with an eager welcome by shiny smile and sturdy handshake. The real estate agent was a powerful figure, a piece of south western motif in color and running motion rambling enthused of how much he had enjoyed helping Sammy finding a home back in town. Eyes green as grass; he looked straight into Sammy when he spoke as if curiosity could not keep him any longer. Sammy was a bit surprised by the force in the real estate agents gestures so early in the morning but soon learned to just see it as some sort of flattery catering to his trivial side. I mean after all, Sammy was only there to pick up the keys to his new house; all the papers had already been signed and done with.

Apparently the well to do man was an old friend of Sammy's father since high school, who now obviously felt it to be more or less his duty to introduce Sammy back to the intricacies of the local society once more. From traveling word to faith in rumor, Sammy's absent years had apparently given him the regard and luster of an old time Gatsby-esque socialite in the eyes of the townspeople. He was a shining silver dollar who the great big man had his eyes on collecting.

A series of dusty miles followed, boring anecdotes of a static town and the people turning those corners and walking those extra miles for survival. Or something, Sammy was not really working the honest ears he usually used until the big man hunched across his massive oak desk and in a broad gesticulation stood up so he could formally invite Sammy to a welcoming get together that evening at his house upon fancy West lane, in the very same neighborhood where Sammy's new house were. He promised a lovely dinner, some friendly folk and the chance to meet his own family, whom he felt were the most important thing in his life. Sammy did not mind the invitation there and then; in fact, he was surprisingly enough somewhat excited by the thought of being offered a free home cooked festive meal on the very first day of the rest of his new life back in town. Bemused and at last awoken, another handshake past the introduction into friendliness took Sammy on his way out unto the pavements of old feet and new textures. Your going to love it, shouted the great big man confidently from his office door, its got air conditioning!

Sammy met up with a morning just turning into a clear blue day coming out of the great big mans office, and people had actually begun showing themselves on the streets walking swiftly back and forth as a new working day progressed. There were not really any cabs in town as the people had never really showed any interest for them for some reason, so Sammy without a driver's license decided to take the fresh journey to his new dwelling solely by foot. The twenty minute walk through the ample riches of growing grass and budding flowers made him a favor though, because the first thing he did in his new house was inaugurating his specially imported custom-made Spanish black marble Jacuzzi which he had gotten placed on strict orders right in the centre of the grand patio that made up the eclipse of the house adjacent to the garden, which in turn had been filled with red and white rosebushes. The roses formed a pattern, a gorgeous smile, like a triumphant winning of new land and desires. Sammy wanted to keep the walls inside the house clean and had on the whole, with the exception of the Jacuzzi, not spent one cent on seemingly unnecessary superficial objects. He saw them as distractions to such an extent that he had even made up an exact blueprint over the placement of each carefully selected and preordered item or furniture. No more than three items in every room was the principle giving view to a setup consisting of, for example a big cushy sofa, a coffee table and a tall floor lamp shaped like a tree trunk.

He saw beauty and tranquility in the shapes of simplicity and the key to these concepts was his disbelief in polarities. Opposites and relations. People see, he thought, a man to a woman as the heavens to the earth, dependent back to back to keep from falling. Love and hate, war and peace, the calm to the created and the passive to the active. Sammy did not want to fall, so he always made sure to cut off the relation by making every situation count on its own terms. He was to take baths in his Jacuzzi, rest in his recliner and listen to music in a specially equipped room where he would sit down, close his eyes and listen to nothing other than the brilliance of his favorite composer, Bach. These were the things he wanted to do and enjoy, and nothing more, causing different versions to appear in the wake of the one dimension in use. Sammy had thusly cherished his father's imaginative ways to the very extent that he did not even need no other source of pleasure whom which ideas were sprung. Bach was his only illumination. His own mind worked like a template fairytale, a mystery and the facts of life arranged just like he saw them, sitting on the ocean floor. Oh, and the mirrors. Sammy would not keep as much as a pocket mirror around him since the death of his father. He wanted reality, not reflected reality.

He wanted the truth in reality, having seen the reality in truth.

Maybe when your view has been changed so radically by death and leaving, your eyes change perception? From seeing the story come alive to carefully organizing ones thoughts is a change best described in the necessity of attention.

We see only what we want to see, until we figure out what we really need to see. After that there is only void, a void for no one other to become intimate with or even acknowledge because that void is what we give to people. Or take. Sometimes we are also forced upon this void.

The key thing that Sammy had learnt from his fathers time with him was to always pay attention, keep the information that is received and then properly use it for either bemusement, joy or wisdom. Sammy taught himself thusly how to listen, perhaps the most treasured of virtues a man could have, and as he grew older he used it to see and make patterns regarding everyone and everything in his youth's environs.

His thought, however naive in perspective, was that he could add up and figure out pretty much any goings on around him... And through his eyes of fantasy and fiction come light of day his attempts never failed him.

But as Sammy with his head quietly relaxed back sitting in his exclusive Jacuzzi thought; who doesn't? It is probably just the prerogative of having a mind of ones own, he thought. Sammy's eyes were still baby blue like his fathers, but never shall they harbor such esteem for the world that they actually would bother to look at it clearly enough to make any kind of calculation of it ever again.

The Dinner Party

An old country song, perhaps Hank Williams, played in the background as Sammy turned to the foreground as the centerpiece of the delicately orchestrated affair.

A dinner with the great big man and his family and friends had turned out to be an outright festival of local corporate names and high end personas. Delicious foods and beverages fluent as the dialogue spoken. Perfect lighting, full moon and that warm moving light coming from the bottom of the heart shaped pool on the patio, giving it a sense of difference about the whole party. Everyone wanted to see the long-awaited return of the boy who never was. His fathers name hovered like a halo over Sammy, so by no fear and suspicion everyone saw it as their prime duty to try to welcome him home the best they could. To Sammy though, his fathers name sat upon his head like a laurel wreath. Eyes seeing past self and accomplishment, eyes seeing elsewhere and others had put it there. Though their curious smiles made him follow, he knew he was just a mirror in their eyes. A window to pass, seeing into great lengths unto far off places. To them, Sammy was a living statue of his father. A risen arch of his father's vast influence, a figurine without apparent flaw. They expected to highly to speak to him in person and they expected to fondly to ever compromise their wishes. So all of them took their distance, floating gently around and around, as if Sammy bare scent were enough. All but one. Suddenly a small elderly man with grey hair and red bowed glasses introduced himself as the head of the city council, with a perplexed kind of expression on his face. His eyes wore a withered green tone of respect for Sammy and the sound of his voice had the echoes of a man speaking from the debts of his soul. The loss of such a citizen, he said, was a great one indeed, and no less would all these people agree with me. The elderly man was sure enough a stranger, but with his well mannered ways and habit to sympathize, he could soon enough acquaint himself with anyone. He wanted to assemble a memorial service devoted to Sammy's father in the small chapel once more, come next Sunday after the sermon. He wanted a change of wind, a setting of a new unspoken direction in town once again. We all saw your father as a, well, savior I guess, and lord knows he did wonders for the spirit and the people of this little town, he said as the concrete hope that was Sammy gathered in his eyes before him.

And now you are here, and we are so proud that you have decided to return to our community where you can continue on in a happy manner, he said with temper in his lit green eyes. Sammy did not say much in response to the elderly man, and the truth was that the elderly man did not seem all that interested in actually hearing him speak at all. He just wanted to make sure that Sammy had heard him, so with no further courtesy the elderly man left him with a promise in hand that he would be there as a guest of honor for the memorial. Sammy stood around for a while seeing those underwater lights float across the green leaved bushes in the yard, thinking of his father and a time when he was fifteen and had just met and fallen for his first ever girlfriend. As painted from the cellars of his mind, his sudden moment of loneliness awakened a memory perhaps lost to him in broad daylight. Sammy was an innocent, and a rare one at that, and unbelievably enough he had managed to find a sweet young girl who shared his situation. This particular late summer night had Sammy for the first time invited his girlfriend over to watch a rented film and his mother had saintly left them in solitude as his father was in New York supervising the rehearsals of one of his plays. Sammy had rented E.T and made a bowl of popcorn and the breeze of the soft summer wind gave the evening just that hint of romance that the young couple had hoped for. But as the moon entered the darkened skyline and glossed the young pair's milky white complexions and seething red lips, a car suddenly drove up in front of the house. It was an airport cab, Sammy remembered because he just barely saw it leaving as he bewildered got up to look. Soon someone had entered the front door, just the short hallway down from the room in which Sammy and his girlfriend were. It was his father, but to Sammy it could have been anyone that night as the moon in his father's eyes had made him look like nobody he had ever seen before in his life. He had been drinking, but Sammy did not understand it at the time. He was too much in wonder. Sammy took to the hallway real quick with his girlfriend left behind, but as his father entered the moonlit hallway he did not really seem to find enough interest in the fact that it was his only son who stood there waiting with a curious and surprised look on his face. His jacket was kind of slanted and the four top buttons on his white shirt were undone as he just passed Sammy with a big silent look in his back walking up the stairs to the second floor. Sammy felt strange as he restlessly stood around for a second or two not knowing what to do or feel before he remembered his girlfriend waiting in the next room, who had seen what had taken place from her view on the couch. I should leave, we can do this tomorrow instead, she said to Sammy in an understanding tone of voice as he sat down beside her.

Sammy had no choice but to see her walking up the stairs to get her purse that she had left in his room. No less confused, Sammy remembered quite vividly what happened next, the fright that was in her eyes as she threw herself violently down the stairs, out the door and that split second that he saw her big brown eyes in a silent shout as she turned back her head whilst running away in horror. Nobody believed her story. Sammy's father was larger than life itself to him. Sammy stopped feeling.

The Memorial

Anyone carrying a secret always shows hints of it whether they like it or not. It is a living thing, an animal fighting to come out into the open at any cost. Sammy was at his usual numb state of mind as he patted off the fresh yellow color of dandelions off of his brown leather shoes. He had taken a shortcut across the lawn in front of the chapel. He wore a full-length black coat carefully custom stitched and designed to make him look like a member of some exclusive and illusive club. Dark Bono-esque shades worn right until he had reached his place on the pew added to his stature as a man apart from men, a shadow amongst the mortals. But no matter the shape and form he gave, the portrayal of the prodigal son returned was unavoidable in the eyes of the townspeople. It was as close to biblical prophesy come true one could come in a small secular town destitute of anything other than the chapel itself binding it to a common higher denominator. Sermon on Sundays was strictly a social thing, even for the elders, a chance to meet those not seen during the week perhaps and catch up on local news and the gossip surrounding it. Sammy sat down front to the left as the minister silently greeted him with still eyes as to welcome him to the parish, the community. The clear triangular windows in the ceiling allowed the sun to make its grand presence felt, and to the now full chapel it was seen reflected on Sammy's godlike apparition who took the suns gentle rays with great tenderness and gratitude. Sammy had a song on his mind when the minister started talking. It was Bluebells song, a pet name that his mother had before he was born. It was the call sign of innocence, he thought, the manner in which to describe those yet acquainted by the deliverer of faith and belief. Sammy thought of it because he had just seen Bluebell across the aisle on the other side, for the first time in nine long years. She had Sammy when she was just sixteen so her face was still fresh and strong towards the expressions she tried to hold back upon noticing him in that instant.

Her hair followed closely the features on her face, leaving her eyes, nose and mouth fine, framed like a Degas painting by her unusually shaped elliptical black earrings. Sammy looked at her but he could not find her eyes, it was if they were long gone into a mind best undisturbed. Sammy froze for a long second, took his eyes to a softer place straight ahead and still felt nothing. The minister spoke for a while, but soon did he let over his place to Sammy in a heartfelt greeting along with vows of glad tidings from the returned son of the late great man which had been his father. But as Sammy rose to walk up to the microphone right in front of the packed chapel, some other mindset carried his conviction. His blue eyes were like those in some melancholic renaissance portrait, two cold stones in water mirroring nothing.

No one could ever have been ready for what he was to say when he opened his mouth to speak.

I want to tell you a story, he said with great dignity in his voice, in fact, I want to tell you the very same story that my mother told me on the day my father died.

The small chapel went so silent upon those words spoken one could easily have heard each soft breath Sammy took inside each word and sentence. It was a story about a man trapped between two worlds. One held with chains of responsibility and the principles of being an adult and the other permitted by the freewheeling nature of those inner most desires. And this other world, where lust ruled decisions, was the one that also ruled over him. Only his own body's imagination towards reality could make him act any differently than his urges suggested. And those urges were plentiful in the land of lonely, and so when he was about thirty years of age, he met a young girl in a bar in town. She was fifteen years old, but looked twenty-five, so by the time he had seen her properly across the old wooden counter he had already made up his mind about her. She had gotten in for the first time, wearing black high heeled shoes and a tight pink dress that had no intentions of hiding her budding femininity from showing. She was stunning and beautiful and her golden curled hair made her look like Marilyn Monroe. Sammy's mother looked at him with eyes speaking both of defeat and curiosity as he quickly in the corner of his left eye saw into hers and thought and felt nothing more than the notion of going on with his story.

The man, he said, was handsome and charming as any man, but most importantly he had that aura that a mass of apparent virtues gave which only people carrying real success in the world had. He was like magnet, a force loaded by norms of fortune and glory. His sand dune tanned, chiseled face went to her teenage milky complexion like chocolate to vanilla. His blue eyes deeply to her innocent bare shoulders, though slowly on did she realize that her teenage wisdom were not what had drawn him to her, no, those powers at work were far more primitive. Sammy paused suddenly and as he took some deep breaths that almost echoed on the chapel walls, he gazed out as to look everyone present straight in the eyes. You see, he said with his index finger in the air, the reason we don't really need salvation is that we can not act on the past, a savior would just be a guide to new mistakes. We can not change who we have become, we can only change who we aspire to be. That night my mothers voice were kept in vain, her body taken and her identity shaped for all times to come.

Shame and pride prevented her from abortion; I was a small prize to pay for the upkeep of his pleasures. But now I stand here. And he lay there. And nothing could ever change that no matter the person he shaped me to be, feeding me images of the outside world of wonder and hope, of faith and disappointment. The silent echo turned slightly faint in to a collective murmur all across the pews. Still, nobody did or said anything loudly. Sammy's mother looked up as if realizing that her shame was unjustified and this time Sammy's eyes were there waiting for her and for the first time in his whole life he actually saw someone in her eyes. A person absolved by the reality of truth and the words carrying it into the present onward unto past.

Sammy pushed for tears unknowingly, but he was incapable of giving them their freedom as he realized that he had actually had a mother all along. That family shattered on that day was still enough a family, how lonely one mind thoughts ever may have been. Sammy had to clear his throat as compose himself and the attention of the crowd, and so he continued his speech seemingly unaffected by the emotions unlocked inside of him.

On that same night as my mother had told me this story, he said, my father came home early into the hallway looking sharper and healthier than ever before.

He was Hollywood by then, virtually timeless in appearance by the radiance of glamour and myth. He wore a brand new suit, sand beige Armani with a slim black necktie arrogantly tied around the milky white shirt, and his face was smooth and tanned to go with his short brown cropped hairstyle. He could have served as a poster model for the American dream looking the way he did. But in my eyes I saw an intruder, a perfect heretic, like a mirage standing in the hallway carrying new rules and principles. He asked me something but I did not answer, he called for me but I did not respond. He was dead on arrival, as sent by his own free will. Mother's story had stirred my views to such extremes that my fathers very presence inside what was our special place no longer, did not make me feel anything at all. It was if I had been burnt by the truth for the first time leaving my senses numb and cold to any impression. Sammy took strength to each new word out of his mouth as his deepest; long-awaited truth began to find its place in the open sphere. Initially he had been nervous but found ways to hide it, by now, he spoke from his hearth.

A clear toned voice cut trough the stunned atmospheric silence in the small chapel as he said; and then I became him... Truth shall liberate you I thought, said Sammy cautiously, maybe if I confront him I can see it with my own eyes. But I just froze as he came out of the bathroom in his blue robe after a long soothing shower. I wanted to ask him, was it true, look deep into his blue eyes about what my mother had told me, but I could not do it. This man was the man who had been my role model, my guide to my future self. He looked me silently in the eyes as he past me in the hallway on the second floor outside my old room as if he knew I wanted to tell him something he did not want to hear. And, said Sammy with a surge of emotion to his words, my eyes must have spoken of a million thoughts because as he reached the stairs he suddenly stopped as if to remember something with his head lowered seeking thought in the deepest of memories. He just stood there in the yellowish-red light from the setting sun, thinking god knows what, with me just a few feet away. It was poetry, he was so beautiful. He was my father. Twenty seconds later he was dead pushed down the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck. Though there is no right or wrong, nor black or white one must ultimately choose between truth and salvation.

I chose truth. After my fathers funeral nine years ago which many of you attended, they were kind enough to keep my whole litigation under subtle wings as they took me to a small prison in California right after I left the chapel on that day. I guess my fathers good name through and through has hidden me for all kinds of reasons over the years amongst people like you, but now I'm telling you the truth. I will hide no more. The crowd was no longer stunned in their silence; they were simply listening to what he was saying to them, taking in every word and thinking about what they really meant. Is there a thing such as true salvation? No, I have seen no such occasion in my lifetime. Salvation will always try to lead you somewhere whilst truth is happy with where you are at the moment. It is here now and never lost tomorrow. Sammy looked quietly to his empty seat and noticed the fine wood in the pew. The intricate lines in the fibers underneath, which formed the foundation of the smooth, oak brown exterior. He felt like he was under water as applause and voices drummed across his field of senses like if they were coming from somewhere totally different. It was never to turn into a travesty; his confession had been to honest, as if everyone refused to shut their eyes to the truth. The eyes are the windows to the soul, thought Sammy as he shut his eyes to see inwards as everyone else opened theirs to finally see him, the real him. Sammy saw, but he did not realize what he was seeing. He felt, but his emotions were so deeply buried down within that he could not comprehend them. He actually felt again, as time struck his body like a hard punch in the gut, he shivered but he realized for the first time the actual meaning of the words he had been saying. He had not become his father at all, no; the person he had become was someone far more important. Someone a person struggles long years to become. He had become himself. This time after his speech was over he did not leave directly, he did not have to. The organist began playing his final hymn for the day as Sammy sat down on his seat like anyone would on a sermon on Sunday.

Sammy had shown that in this world, a person can be whoever he or she wishes to be until that person finds himself somewhere inside. With or without a savior.

The end.

Thank you.