A Fathom Is Six Feet by Robert Nazar Arjoyan
Rud couldn’t stomach the raw sight of birth, the entrance of life. Now, under the glowering eye of a daytime moon, he was forced to face the worst of all deaths, to plunge what little was left of himself into a goodbye that had no end. When beautiful Tammy was entering the world, Rud could do nothing but turn away and hold in his sick. At this, her untimely way out, he simply didn’t have the strength. Kneebound, Rud gaped at the dirt heap which would soon disjoin him from his daughter and without a thought as to why, scooped a burning fistful of that damned dust into a trembling hand and sprinkled it over his own sweating, pounding head.
“Rudyard?”
His father towered above and Rud suddenly felt like he was but a boy, looking upwards, hurled back to a time when covenants were easy to make and easier to break, when cancer was just a word and the lies of parents were kind.
“On your feet, son.”
Rud stood then, slitted further afar from his stolen child by a fathom. Colding, he looked at his dad and feared the man’s disappointment. The hard hand on Rud’s slender shoulder was ever true, a stalwart symbol of an oath kept fast. There, even among all those dead, Rud was sheltered within the protective paternal aegis, a sworn deed which had somehow slipped through his still grasping fingers.
The wet clanging of chains commenced, as did the mechanical needling of dozers, while the piercing shrieks of family mingled with the hungry thrust of tractoring earth.
Rud had broken a vow and this sensory brunt was a pledge that would break him.
“I’m sorry, my sweetheart. I love you,” he promised into a passing knife of wind, too late, too late.
Robert Nazar Arjoyan was born into the Armenian diaspora of Glendale, California. Aside from an arguably ill-advised foray into rock n roll bandery during his late teens, literature and movies were the vying forces of his life. Naz graduated from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and now works as an author and filmmaker.
Find him at www.arjoyan.com
Art by Ani Belichkov – www.belichkovani.com
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