Stained Hands

​​​​​​​Part 1

Barney could never get all of the stains on his fingers and hands completely off. No matter what he washed with or how hard he scrubbed with his formerly white washcloth. Most of the dirt and grime cleaned off OK…a noticeable difference…and enough to touch food or shake hands. But if you were staring, some of the lines on his raised calluses at the top of his palms and bottoms of three of his fingers were a bit discolored. Not to mention the slightest remains of dirt beneath several cracked fingernails… No matter what he did…it was just part of Barney now.

“Barney” is what he’d been called by everyone for as long as he could remember. The only time he was called Barnabas, was if he got pulled over by the police or on the first day of school before he had chance to correct the teacher. Usually after a few chuckles from his new classmates.

When he was a kid, he’d have never thought he’d end up with these kinds of hands. Even up until his early 20s… He had the hands and fingers of a surgeon. Between the two things he loved doing most…swimming and cooking…there wasn’t much time or sport to dirty up. That was then.

Today, on his lunch break, he found himself caught in a pool of thought about yesterday’s and yesteryears. Stained hands and chipped nails caught his attention. Shaking his head left then right then back again with self disapproval, the image of his hands added regret to judgment. Then he did what he always did when he caught himself feeling. He stood up, shook it off like a dog coming out of a lake. Then under his breath, he despisingly uttered, “Cut it out you damn pussy. Get back to doing what you do”. And he picked up his wrench… while he laid down his heart.

Part 2

It was in the evenings mostly, that the haunting would resume. Self-deprecation in small doses could keep the ghosts away for a few hours at a time. When he needed more reinforcements, Barney found dozens of hours or even days could quietly pass undisturbed, depending on how much drink he could handle without feeling like an alcoholic. If regret owned him the day after, he’d find the droning of one of the 176 channels streaming through his TVs surround sound and HD perfection of clearer than life images helpful.

Unbeknownst to Barney, there were dozens of subtle “narcotics” which allowed him the freedom to move about…less distracted in his days by the voices. Wordless voices, which he could only describe as the sound of something dying. A long grieving whine. Not a complaining sort of whine, but a deep grounded sad sort of whine that had become for him an unwelcome friend for some years now.

Although unaware of why, Barney found himself increasingly exhausted. Not from his work in the shop. That sort of wakened him. But from daily having to pull up all sorts energy to manage the haunting… The voices… The sadness he could not name.

Barney became tired of being tired. And began stepping away from what he was realizing were numbing activities. Tired of not being awake with quiet. Aware with peace.

The first time he noticed the tired state of his soul was when he was invited to a retreat for yoga and cooking. He’d never done yoga because he always thought it a womanly sort of thing to do… But cooking… Cooking was his first love lost. His dream life, sacrificed for love years back, love which eventually failed him and left him here. With these stained hands… and these voices.

Enough about the weekend sounded intriguing so he went. From the first moments of the opening morning…he knew he was where he belonged. The feeling of sliced pieces of food passing over his former cooking hands as he cut and stirred and cooked, awakened a desire and a joy he had forgotten was possible to have. A joy that was part of his dormant being. And for hours that felt like days he was carried away by smells and sounds of stirring, slicing, snapping, sizzling — an orchestra of forgotten delight, finding its home again in the vacant recesses of parts of Barney he didn’t remember he had.

It wasn’t until the evening yoga class on the beach, which Barney stumbled through — fighting his manly embarrassment, that a clarity began to seep into his being. As he lay in the final resting pose of Shavasana, after a long, long day, and much travel, he noticed something. Actually he noticed the absence of something first. He hadn’t had a drink for two days. There were no TVs and he had not cursed his pathetic person for sometime — and yet the voices — the caverness sadness was silent now.

Again, with no words available to describe what was happening, he broke pose and lifted his hands slowly in the darkness, placing, as if he were being guided, his right hand onto his face holding his cheek. And then his left hand onto his heart… And he just stayed…and stayed.

Tears began to pile into the eyelids of his formerly hardened eyes, and as he attempted to wrestle them from falling onto his cheek, he found himself whispering words to… What? To who? To the quieted voices…

“It’s OK.

It’s going to be OK now.

I’m here.

I’m here

and I won’t leave you again.

It’s OK now… I’ll stay”

When finally Barney sat up, everyone in the class had gone. He sat upon sand, with falling sun. He was alone but not lonely. He was not exhausted. He was talking to… Himself he guessed… And if he had a pen and journal he would have written:

“My life

just got married

to my soul.”

but because he wasn’t a journal type of guy,

he just decided

to live

like his life and soul

would never lose

one another again…

And then…

He did.