Virtual American Gothic - Second Season Episode Twelve Family Matters by Queribus and Roguewriter Concept development by Buddy, Dana, and Robyn ********************************************* NOT TO BE ARCHIVED TO A WEB PAGE WITHOUT THE AUTHOR'S PRIOR CONSENT. Special guest stars: Christopher Walken as Daddy Buck Isabella Rossellini as Simone Buck ********************************************** The day began with perfection, a mild June sun coaxing more buds out of rose bushes already dripping with fading petals, shining patches of green and yellow hope into the quiet cemetery gloom, silhouetting the crows who rose in one startled dark thought from a tattered bouquet left as if by accident on Gage Temple's grave. There were a few thick, milky clouds piling on the horizon but nobody paid them any mind. Ben was slumped in the passenger seat of the Crown Vic. His face was distant, drawn. Behind the wheel, hardly needing to watch the road, Sheriff Lucas Buck regarded his deputy with keen interest. "Problem, Ben?" Ben shifted in his seat, couldn't meet his boss's gaze. "Been having trouble sleeping." "Bad dreams?" "It's Ben Jr." Lucas nodded. "Family matters. I know that number." "He's growing up wild, Lucas. Waylon- Barbara Joy-" "Nobody reining him in, that it? You know what you've got to do, Ben. Reach out-" He does so, momentarily taking both hands off the wheel to illustrate-"and take hold of the matter." "I don't know how to do that, Lucas." <> "Hell, you got two good hands, Ben. That's one up on Captain Hook." "But he's there and I'm not, Lucas." <> "A man either owns his own son or someone else takes him over. " Lucas grimaced. "That's a hard fact of life." Ben Jr suddenly appeared in the road holding the tail of a screaming cat. Buck's car braked barely an inch from the boy's chest. The cat fell to the ground running. "You're letting him get away." Caleb complained and flicked off his lighter. "Why'd you want to do that?" Ben was out of the car in an instant. "What were you doing to that cat, Benji?" His son stared back as if his world had come to an end. "See, Ben, it's like I told you." Lucas leaned out the window to his deputy. "You gotta keep a tight hand on the family. Happy Father's Day." -------- The gulls swooped and swirled over the waterfront pier in blatant aerobic pandering. They particularly seemed to like hot dogs. "So. . ." Lucas said tossing a bit of bun to the birds, "you're practicing on Ben Jr." A gull snatched up the bread and spiraled back into the sun. "That's good, starting a base when you're young." "Is that what you did?" Lucas glanced stoically at his son. Never let the past loose. The past had teeth and still could bite. "I imagine," Buck said carefully, "both the Bens are easy to handle." "I wouldn't know." Caleb took another bite of his hot dog. "So . . ." Lucas tossed a bit of frank at the birds. It splashed in the water. No takers, "you going to visit Gage's grave for Father's Day?" "What for? You're my daddy." Covering his surprise, Lucas turned to his son, with a cynical smile, "When you choose to remember it." "Fact, I got you something." The surprise was getting harder to hold. "Yeah?" "I remember a whole lot of things." Caleb said, handing his father a long envelope. "Go ahead, open it." The gulls swooped closer in the slowly darkening sky. Lucas opened the envelope and pulled out an official-looking document. "For instance," Caleb continued, "I remember you throwing me down the stairs. Some people might call that child abuse. The state judge did, one you haven't bought yet. That there's a restraining order keeping you away from me forever." Lucas just laughed. "You can't just hand me a letter and tell me to go away. This doesn't even look official!" "The official one's waiting at your office. I'm sure Ben will be glad to hand it to you if that's what you want." Lucas grabbed his son's arm, "You can't do this." "I just did" Caleb grinned, "And if anybody ought to go to the graveyard it oughta be you, crawl right back in that empty hole." Something was happening to Lucas's sense of time, slipping down the wrong end of a narrow tunnel. "Then I can live with Dr. Matt. He's been more of a father to me than you ever could." Lucas saw Caleb as if from a great distance away . As he watched his arm rose, almost of its own accord and struck at his son. The imprint of the big hand throbbed crimson across Caleb's face, as tears filled the boy's eyes. Funny, Caleb could imagine his father killing him, but he could never imagine Lucas hitting him. ------------------------ Memory cracked open. Daddy Buck, his huge grinning face looming over the gaze of a ten year old boy, like a bloated balloon in some Thanksgiving Day parade from Hell . "Now don't you cry, Lucas, or I'll just have to whip you again. You got to turn those tears to anger, Lucas, that's what makes a real Buck." His cold dark eyes glowing like water bugs in a bone white face. "It takes a lot of whipping to make a real Buck, but I'm a good father, son, I'll get you there, don't worry." His laugh rang with hellish good cheer as . . . . . Lucas shook his head only to see Caleb running away down the water front as the clouds clustered and darkened overhead and the seagulls shrieked. Running straight into Loris Holt who stretched her arms around him as if to protect the boy from all harm, past, present and future. And the storm finally shattered over the town with a thunderous downpour. ---------- Memory descended again. A small boy seen only in silhouette approaching a tall dark door on the second floor of the Buck house. He opens the door, black on the inside, black on the outside, carefully, silently as if something of great treasure or great terror lay within. A woman is painting by the window in the dim light. She is dressed in tones of black and grey , her fragile figure seems almost of another world. Her paintings fill the room, stacked on the floor, leaning against the walls. There is very little color in them. Pictures of grey leaves swirling in a wild black wind, pictures of dark, shrouded houses, the black shuttered windows clouded by rain. But most of all, there are pictures of crows. Crows flying across a full moon, crows devouring smaller birds, crows leaning over an empty cradle. "Mama. . " the boy barely whispers as a heavy ashen hand falls across his shoulders. "I don't think we need to bother your mamma about these little things, Lucas. You know Mama ain't always really here. She's mostly leaving for somewheres else, somewhere in her own mind." Daddy Buck whispered, steering his son away from the open door. "You can't depend on people who leave, son, You gotta depend on the man who's always here, and I always WILL be here, depend on that!" As the elder Buck closes the door, the woman by the window turns just for a moment. "Lucas? Was that you?" ------ "You don't get it, do you, Barbara Joy?" Ben insisted, "The kid was helping Caleb Temple burn a cat!" Waylon, Ben and Barbara Joy were squared off like tag team wrestlers in the Sheriff's Office. Benji huddled miserably in an castered chair, virtually forgotten. BJ pulled her scarf further down over her brow, not all this and the storm of the century, too. Waylon raised his hands- hand and hook, anyway-as if to tell her "it's your kid-your problem." He walked out leaving her with the dirty work as always. "I can't handle him, Ben," BJ said plaintively. "He's insolent. He's moody-" "He's burning CATS, for crying out loud!" Ben Jr. rolled himself into the furthest corner. "And what am I supposed to do about that, Benny? I can cook his meals, and I can clean his room, and I can wash his clothes, but I can't- REACH him anymore." "What do you want me to do?" Ben asked her. "You're his father. He's your son. Figure it out." She turned to leave, steeling herself for what she had to do now. "You take him, Ben. At least for awhile. I'm through trying to find my son in there." It took a moment for this to sink in. "WHAT?!" ----- Lucas stormed into the sheriff's office as BJ left, the rain and wind trailing in after his long coat. Ignoring the father and son both in their own brooding worlds, he rummaged through Ben's desk, snatching up the papers Caleb had mentioned, and pushed through to his inner office. Once surrounded by the familiar brown gloom he could feel his heart resume its normal rhythms. There was a whole hell of a lot of things to put right. Judge Monroe was eating an early lunch when Sheriff Buck called him, but he wasn't too distressed at being called away from the table. His daughter, Nancy, had cooked all his favorite dishes for him, but, at six years old, Nancy was not exactly a cordon bleu chef. That pork chop had looked distressingly bloody. What would be right, trichinosis or pleasing one's child, fatherhood required such diplomacy. "What can I do for you, Sheriff. . .Buck, is it?" "Well, that is the name you put on the restraining order, Judge. An order, I might add, which is totally out of your jurisdiction." Oh no, that Buck! Monroe was a recent appointee and somewhat unacquainted with the in and outs of rural South Carolina politics, but he had been warned about Fulton County, albeit in the most oblique terms. "I realize there were certain jurisdictional problems, but as the situation was explained to me, emergency measures had to be taken and the legal minutiae could always be adjusted later, as they say." "And just who explained this emergency, Judge." "Let me see," Monroe shuffled through some papers and found the letter. Which was interesting since it should have been in the file at his office. "A certain Doctor Matt Crower verified the boy, Caleb Temple's, statement that you threw him from a second floor balcony. . . hmm on November of last year." "Hardly an emergency, is it Judge? Did the Doc tell you he was a inmate in Juniper House at the time of this alleged attack?" "No? Juniper House, I don't. . .?" "Don't know it? That's good. Your little girl, Nancy, would hardly want her daddy acquainted with the Rubber Room Motel -- you know, the Nuthouse." " How did you know my daughter's. . .The doctor that signed this was crazy?" "I don't believe they call it that nowadays, but he did take a potshot at me last fall, so Dr Crower required a slight attitude adjustment in the thorazine department." "Good Heavens! I thought this was a clear cut case." "Aw, now, Looney Tunes, excuse me, Dr Crower, can be very convincing when he's having, what ya call . . . an episode? You wouldn't be the first to trust the wrong man." Buck narrowed his eyes and saw into that darkness where all shapes lie, and there was a lovely little ambition for the State Supreme Court deep as a wading pool in the Judge's mind. "Between the two of us, I certainly wouldn't want this mess to interfere with your relationship with our esteemed senator." "You know The Senator?' "He and my daddy went to school together." And a very rough school that was, Lucas thought. "If you need me to put in a word on your extraordinary judicial restraint . . " "I would appreciate that immensely, Mr Buck. I assume you want that order quashed." "We understand each other perfectly, Judge." As Buck hung up the phone, Ben knocked on the door and peered around it. "If you don't need me here, Lucas, I'd just as soon go home. It's been a bad day." "Hang around, it might get worse. Family reunion over?" "It's barely begun. Oh say, weatherman on Channel 4 says there's reports of a funnel cloud, they're setting up some kind of tornado watch. I thought those never came our way." "They don't. Must be an Act of God." "There's nothing godly about destruction." "Isn't there?" Lucas leaned back in his chair and looked long and hard at his deputy. "Ben, do you remember anything about my father?" "He had some dealings with my daddy." I'll bet he did, thought Lucas. "But no, I can't say I remember much of anything except. . . " "Except?" "Well, his laugh. He was always so . . . cheerful." "Yeah, he loved to laugh." ----- In his mother's dim bedroom, a small boy lifts a painting of a crow sitting on the bedroom window ledge, its head tilted and quizzical. "Do you like that painting, Lucas, I painted it especially for you. We must be good to the crows. They travel on so many roads, riding the winds and the storms. One never knows where they could go or what they could see down those lost empty highways." The boy lowers the painting and rubs his shoulder surreptitiously, but Mama can see very well in the dark when she wants to. "Did that man beat you again? He likes to raise his hand against smaller things, it makes him laugh." She rubbed the faded scar on her wrist, "I've never liked that laugh, Lucas. Someday we'll have to do something about it." ----- Loris Holt was of the opinion that Caleb needed to be kept busy, so back at the boarding house they were taking the ancestor masks off the walls and stacking them carefully in boxes. "It's just kinda windy and rainy," Caleb mumbled, "I don't see why we have to take every one of these masks down." "The weather's like so many things in Trinity, it can change on you sudden, turn nasty. For instance, I'm worried about my neighbor's cat, he's been missing all day. If a bad storm kicked up he could get hurt." "He'll probably come home all right." he put one of the masks on and growled convincingly. "This one looks like Godzilla." "Careful. You might be talking about my Great-great Grandfather." The boy took off the mask and looked at it carefully, somebody else had horrors in their family. "Caleb, you've been troubled lately, haven't you?" "I don't know about troubled." he laid the mask aside, "I get angry sometimes." "Sometimes when people get angry, they take it out on little things that can't fight back." "Cats can fight. And I didn't hurt it anyway." "Child, I believe it's time for you to make peace with who you really are and try to make those changes in your life that you CAN make. Did you ever think you could be both Lucas Buck's son AND a good man?" "No." Caleb said doubtfully, those two things never could go together. "Well, I thought it or I never would have let you into my home." "There's nothing good about Lucas Buck!" "Maybe, maybe not." Whatever memories Loris had about the Sheriff's good side were for her and her alone. "If I were Dr Matt's son, I could be a good man." "You've got a lot of friends, Caleb, Dr Matt's one of the best, and I agree there were times when he seemed just like a daddy to you. In time- with some healing- he might BE a good daddy again. It's written deep in him."" Loris tilted Caleb's head up to look straight into her eyes. "But not now, he's not the one in your blood, he's not the family you need to make peace with." "My family is in the cemetery resting in peace. Even Gail left without saying goodbye. She shot herself rather than stay and take care of me. I tried to make peace and it didn't work." He wouldn't cry, even now, couldn't cry or it would never stop. "You don't know your poor cousin's reasons for taking that terrible road." "I'm on a terrible road of my own, Miss Holt, and it might go to the same place where Gail ended up. Dr Matt's all I've got left to hang on to. He's got to let me be his son. If he doesn't want me, the sheriff's got me." "Don't do it, honey, this is a bad day for Dr Matt." "This is a bad day for me too, ma'am. Fathers aren't the only ones who feel bad on Father's Day." ------- Ben was just shuffling papers back and forth in the sheriff's office, too restless to do any work, too miserable to go home. The storm was growing rougher and wilder outside, as gusts of water battered the windows. Ben Jr. was still sitting hopelessly in a corner chair, nothing but telexes and Carolina Highways to try to read. "I thought we were going to go to the picnic." "In this weather? There's a tornado, or some such thing, coming in." A long silence settled over the room like grief. "I'm sorry, Daddy." Ben Jr's voice was barely audible. "You should be, Benji. I've never been ashamed of you before in my life. But I was ashamed today." "Nothing happened to the cat, Daddy." "That's all I ever hear from this family. This didn't happen, that didn't happen. We didn't mean for things to go wrong! Well, this time, I saw you with my own eyes." "I didn't. . . " The boy's eyes glazed with desperation. "And Waylon never hit your mother either. All the bad things in this town just get buried and I have to help bury them. Nobody talks about them, but you can bet your ass everybody knows." Benji made himself smaller and smaller in the wake of his father's tirade. Never tell on anybody. That was the only rule that stayed the same. Never ever tell. Lucas came out of his inner office and looked at the boy as a crow might size up a mouse. Ben wasn't even talking to his son anymore, he was beating on himself with his own words."If I'd only- SAID more- DONE more- hell, stood up for something, somewhere!!- I might still have my family and my own son wouldn't be burning up cats." "It wasn't me." The voice was small, broken. Ben flushed, seeing Benji's misery for the first time. "It was Caleb," Benji choked out, angry and shattered by his father's outburst. "I found Caleb with the cat. I took it away from him! I was just trying to HELP, Daddy!" He ran out into the rain. "Truth," Lucas murmured, "Do you know it when you hear it?" Ben was frozen with shock. He opened the door to call Benji in. But the boy was gone. "Better go retrieve your son, Ben," Lucas said. "Storm like that..." His eyes pierced through Ben's regret. "Could take him away forever." ------- Caleb knocked on Dr Matt's door but there was no response. The boy felt a white glow settle around him for a moment like a regretful sigh. He didn't want to know what Merly thought about what he'd done. "Leave me alone!" Caleb hissed. "You weren't much help when you were here. You sure cain't help me now." The light faded sadly. "Is someone there." Matt's voice sounded ghostly. "It's me, Dr. Matt, please open up, I need you." Matt Crower opened the door a tiny crack, barely enough to show his tired red-rimmed eyes. ""I'd- rather be by myself today, Caleb.." The gaunt man said listlessly. "It's. . .it's bad today." "Well, it's a bad day for me too, for everybody, there's a tornado coming. " "We don't get tornados on the coast, Caleb." Matt didn't shut the door, just wandered away from it, so the boy walked in. The room seemed as if it had been scrubbed for surgery. All the pictures were gone off the walls, the bookcases were emptied, all the books boxed, and every light blazing, trying to wipe the shadows away. Some got through. "Sure looks like you're getting ready for a storm." Matt half-sat, half-fell on the bed. "Some storms never seem to go away. What do you need, Caleb?" The doctor was only half present, constantly looking into the antiseptic corners as if something might hide away there that no one else could see. "I need a family I can count on. Especially today." "Don't you think sometimes we have too much family." Matt glanced under the window as if someone, maybe a little girl with blonde, pretty hair was hiding there. "Lucas hit me today." "He did?" Focused for a moment away from his personal misery, Matt looked at the boy with clinical compassion. "Did he hurt you?" "Nah, it was just a slap." "Well, it could have been worse, he's done worse to others." "It's Father's Day, Dr. Matt, and my father didn't take me to a picnic, he hit me instead. So I don't want him to be my father anymore; I want you. My mama's gone, my sister's gone. Gail shot herself to get away from me. I need a daddy." "You blame yourself," Matt observed, this was something he understood all too well. "Gail had her own problems, she wasn't trying to get away from you." "How do you know?" Caleb blurted out, "How do you know what I've done and what I could do?" "I know that fundamentally you're a good child with a good heart." "I burned my own house up, Doctor Matt, and this morning I almost burned a cat up, too." "What?" "I was playing with that cat next door and it started scratching me and growling like I was some scary monster or something." "Sometimes cats just don't want to be played with, Caleb." "Well, I'm not a monster so I thought I'd show it something really scary. I was just flicking around this ol lighter and it didn't like the fire much." Caleb pulled the lighter out of his pocket and flicked it. Dr Matt jumped just like the cat did. "Didn't you ever want to scare somethin?" "You're scaring me right now, Caleb." "Am I?" For just a moment that seemed a really good thing to do -- He watched his shadow climb the bright walls, huge, knife sharp and powerful. Caleb closed up the lighter and tossed it across the room deliberately. "I ain't going to hurt you and I was never goin to hurt that cat, either." "You've been scared a lot, Caleb, in your short life, didn't that hurt?" Matt stood up and shook his head, all the phantoms were back and closing in again. There was a darkness covering this damaged child. "There's no excuse for passing on pain. That's when YOU become the monster." "Not yet! Can't you help me to stop being bad?" The tears he had been holding back all day flooded over him. "I could be good if only you were my daddy." "Oh, Caleb, don't do this. Some days I do well to breathe in and out. I hurt you once, I can't hurt you again." "Please!" Matt shut his eyes and turned away, whispering only for himself. "It's not up to me, Caleb. You're another man's son." but the boy heard him and it hurt worse than Lucas's hand. "You don't want me either," Caleb spoke quietly, letting the truth sink in, "there's nobody left." Matt heard the door slam behind like a death sentence. This wasn't right, he shouldn't fail another child he loved. Just for a moment he saw the shape of Caleb's shadow with crystal clarity, a tall man bleached white as bone with a twisted cruel smile. This wasn't Buck but it came from Buck, that was clear. "Caleb, wait, come back. I saw the monster and it isn't you." Matt ran after him, but the boy was faster than the wind that cracked and pushed against the old boarding house. "Miss Holt, stop him." Loris Holt came out of the kitchen as Caleb rushed for the front door. "Where do you think you're going? There's a tornado coming, child." "I don't care!" Caleb cried, throwing open the door and rushing right into his father's arms. "Let him go!" Matt yelled at Lucas from the stairs. "Of all people on the face of the earth, he doesn't need you right now." "Doesn't he?" Lucas said, his eyes burning through his son's face. "Of all the people on the face of the earth, I'm all he's got right now. Aren't I, son?" Caleb stared up at the sheriff for what seemed like forever. Then his body seemed to grow limp in the tall man's grasp "He's right, Dr. Matt, he is all I've got." "Something dark's hanging over that boy, " Matt said to Loris. "You people better get on down in the cellar before that storm blows in. You can call Ghostbusters later." Lucas ordered. "We're not going anywhere without Caleb." Matt said, but Loris was already pulling him down the cellar stairs. "Can't you tell an Act of God when you see one?" Loris insisted. "That's not God." -------------------- A dark hood of rushing wet noise made sound and sight disappear. Street names and numbers dissolved in the swirling storm. Ben Healy shouted desperately into the rain's false night. "I'm sorry for not believing you, Benji." Lightening and thunder bellowed together and stirred the street like a boiling pot. Where was his boy in this hellstorm? Oh, please bring him back, whoever could, whoever would, bring him back safe. "I'm sorry, Benji." The tempest chopped his words into fragments. "I'm sorry that you'll never know just how sorry I am." Lightning slashed through the tree in front of him like a knife on fire. Whip sharp branches cut across Ben's face, driving him back, tumbling him into a roadside ditch half-filled with black rain. The sodden ground tugged at his feet --nature had declared war, crashing and exploding around him , an army of small tree limbs rushed upon him ready to take no prisoners, his feet collapsed in the waist deep water. He couldn't find the edge of the ditch. Suddenly he saw hands flashlit by lightning. Small hands, but there they were. Reaching out for him. "DADDY!" Benji screamed, Ben gasped, surging upward, hope giving him the buoyancy he needed, straining for his son's hands. -------- Lucas and Caleb walked out of the boardinghouse into the sweep and grandeur of the roaring wind. "Are you afraid?" Lucas asked. "Not of the wind." Caleb said. "Of me?" "I'm not scared of you . . Ms Holt says I'm troubled." "Really?" Lucas pulled the boy into a cluster of trees while the storm seemed to revolve about them like a spiral concerto, a vast clouded presence beyond reason or emotion. "When I was little, my father used to trouble me --- me and every other creature he could get his hands on." "What did he do to you?" "He hit me." "Like you hit me?" "Little bit harder," Lucas shrugged, his expression cold and indifferent, "little bit more often." They could see the funnel cloud not quite touching the ground --- right in front of them. The whole world seemed turning in an ecstatic dance. Was the Boarding House still standing? Was Trinity still standing? "So that makes it all right for you to hit me?" Caleb was shouting but the wind clutched his words and took them straight to his father. "No it doesn't. I was wrong and I'm sorry. Maybe you deserve a better father than I had." Lucas never raised his voice beyond a low murmur, but Caleb could hear him clearly. The cloak of the storm had wrapped around them, locking them together, beyond the noise and the maelstrom. "So I know how you feel, son, and I promise you will never feel a blow from me again. I didn't learn everything I am from my father, I learned a lot from my mother too." Lucas cupped Caleb's head closer to his chest. "Shut your eyes, the storm is coming." Caleb closed his eyes against the singing of the wild wind. --------- Memory flashed like silent lightening. Lucas's mother's thin, fragile fingers gently guided the brush across her canvas, greys and blacks, as usual, with a congealing whirlwind of darkness centered in the middle, tiny claws outstretched. "Don't you want the window, closed, Mama? It's getting mighty cold out." Lucas's voice is no longer that of a young child's. "I never close the window all the way, Lucas. My friends couldn't visit me if I barred their only doorway. The rain and the wind won't ever hurt me. They might even bring back the family I thought I lost." As she spoke, a glossy black crow hopped through the window and perched close to the easel. "There you are, my beauty, so lovely. Do you like me enough to come even closer, precious one?" The crow blinked once or twice and then bounced over to Lucas's mother's chairarm and ruffled its feathers jauntily. "Aren't you the little man. Can you come onto my arm?" The crow stared at the dimly lit woman as if trying to make up its mind and then placed first one foot and then the other on her lace sleeve. Mrs Buck stroked the sleek black feathers delicately and closed her long fingers around the bird's breast. Then her other hand flashed out and swiftly cut the bird's throat. She positioned the dying bird carefully on the table next to her easel and went back to her painting. "Hand me the cadmium red, Lucas. It makes such a striking tone next to black." She stroked a few thin layers of red against the black mass in the center of her painting, outlining the birds throat. "Just a touch though, cadmium red can be so. . . difficult. It's poisonous, you know, especially to a man who has abused his body thoroughly, much as your father has. So lovely a red and so very fatal." Flash to a sudden vision of Daddy Buck convulsing, his mouth red as Cadmium. ------- The red slash across Daddy Buck's mouth curves into the rushing torrents of the storm blowing across Trinity right now, in our time. And at the still center of that ruddy whirling wind a father and a son stand locked in an embrace. "I'm sorry, Ben," the father said softly. "Me too, Daddy." The boy smiled up at his old man, because in the end, the love of the family can not be broken. "Did I save your life?" Benji asked, almost in awe. "You always have, boy," Ben said, holding his second chance like a golden gift. "You always have." ------- The splendor and daring of the storm dissolved as quickly as it had arisen, Caleb opened his eyes to a bright sunny sky, damp and fresh with the smell of rain. "Act of God's over, I guess." Lucas adjusted his black raincoat and stepped out from under the trees. "Is the boarding house still standing?" "See for yourself. Looks like it got a good wash." And indeed the big old house looked shiny clean and new, not a shadow in sight."I don't think that funnel cloud ever touched down." "Did you save us?" Caleb asked. His clothes were dry as a bone. "Why would I do that?" Buck walked over to his car. "You'd better go back and see to Dr Matt, he looked halfway to a conniption fit." "He said it was a bad day for him." "It would be. Stay away from cats, you hear." "I will." "Unless they're Selena's" ------ Later that night, in the comforting gloom of his inner office Lucas had finally found the perfect place to hang the painting his mother had done especially for him. Just enough light hit the dark faded tones to pick out the gleam in the black bird's eye. -------- Lucas stood silently over his mother's bed. She seemed so small to him now he was grown with a new-born son of his own. Small and barely capable of breath in the chill room where the doorway for the crows was still left open. Too frail to paint, she'd left the new life she'd found after her husband's death and come home. Her only child pulled at her heart. "You'll always remember me, won't you, Lucas? Always remember everything I've done for you? Have you forgiven me for taking my freedom? You're so far away, precious one, come closer, you have to remember and forgive, Lucas, now that you're the man of the family!" "Don't worry, Mama. I'll come as close as you want" her son said, slowly turning the broad-brimmed trooper's hat round and round in his hands. "It's so cold in here, would you like me to get another blanket." "Just raise me onto another pillow, my little man, so I can breathe easier." "Of course Mama." Lucas set down his hat and picked up a lace edged pillow. He laid it gently and delicately over his mother's face and pressed down, not very hard, it didn't need to be very hard. His mother's thin frail arms fluttered upwards, her fingers coming together against his back in a brief embrace, and then slowly flickered down into still death. As Lucas raised the pillow from her face he said, "I hate to disappoint you, Mama, but some things are better forgotten than forgiven, especially family matters." As he glanced to the open window, a crow flew in and perched on the ledge, mirroring exactly the picture his mother painted for him. Memory closes its vault on the last image: Lucas in his pale khaki uniform, looking at the crow in the window-- a shrug on his shoulders, a half-smile on his face. END Disclaimer: Any Story/episode that is a part of Virtual AG - Season Two is based upon the television Show, "American Gothic", which is the property of Shaun Cassidy, Renaissance Productions, and CBS... any characters/storyline added to support this concept is the property of the author acknowledged as such...Please, Don't Sue Us!**