Part 1:
He is an embittered man, one who bides his time staring at his mantel, which holds a collection of silver spoons, and rocking back and forth in his chair. One of his legs is shorter than the other, and he has never bothered to buy a cane, nor could he afford it. Pennies of pension are spent in the local pub, where he drinks cold beer, sipping at the despised white foam that has formed, and clenching his throat against the tides of guilt that beat against the back of his mouth.
Donovan’s face was once cherubic, but his apple cheeks have hollowed and sagged into pouches with yellowed spots of skin and a windburnt complexion. His stiff white mustache seems to constantly be bristling with anger, or quivering with sorrow. He wonders sometimes if it would have been better to simply die alongside his wife, young and full of life, but here he is, unbeautiful and defeated, polishing his silver spoons and thirsting his days away.
He has two sons. They have moved away now, but he thinks of them every day with a passionate rage, working himself into vexations by thinking of how they have abandoned him in his rocking chair, vicariously living through them, without ever knowing what they are truly doing. Perhaps they are married now, and he contemplates their families that he has established in his mind. One of them works as a printer down the road, this much he knows, and the other is a tavern brat who associates with the basest of men. He is embarrassed by this, and he clearly sees in his mind his son—no, himself—coming home at late hours of the night, having successfully wasted away what little money he had made that day, his bristling mustache dripping with stale drink and fury. He remembers dropping into his rocking chair, the same one, and putting his feet rudely and defiantly up onto the table, waiting and shouting for his wife to put something in his belly to nullify the sour pitcher of drink resting there.
She was a wonderful woman, his poor late Ellen. She hadn’t a lovely face, for otherwise she shouldn’t have married a man like himself, but she was sweet, with her blue eyes and wispy hair, and a slightly upturned nose. She had raised his two sons with a firm hand, and he used to quite enjoy watching her shout at them when she was in a most foul temper. They would cower in fear and he would feel such pride at having found himself a woman who could instill such cowardice in two young boys.
End of part 1. Comments and criticism welcome and begged for, hopefully before I post part 2, which will be in a few days or so.
