Write! with Peter Hering

Pictures of my youth came and went; the nausea remained, poaching my stomach with small stabs of remorsefulness. Why was I here? Where was I going? Why had I promised my kids Tobago and instead delivered them shadows of Polish misery? The questions remained; the ability to answer them dissipating with the smell of diesel crawling up my nose.

Excerpt from: ‘Promises from Tobago’
L. Jerome

I walked past the row of suburbia; single-family happiness lining the old expansive alley like rows of steadfast tilia trees. Even Tobago was adorned with the life I loathed.

Excerpt from: ‘Promises from Tobago’
L. Jerome

Tobago didn’t look like I thought it would; it didn’t smell like I thought it would, either. Instead it poached me of substance and burned small, seething holes into the fragile membrane of my life: so much for this being paradise.

Excerpt from: ‘Promises from Tobago’
L. Jerome

That incredibly hollow and paralyzing pain of loss shot through my body, infiltrating every atom of my being; this was the pain of love lost that I had never known.
“Where is Christopher?” the black man asked me, the white’s of his eyes bearing down on me, invading my air space. I sensed a certain sedated giddiness about him, as if he knew that this was going to be best day of his professional life; a career-changing kind of day. Truth was, it wasn’t every day that the TTPS could handle a case that had garnered so much public attention. The rest of his colleagues seemed to be a bit overwhelmed.
“He’s dead,” I answered keeping my eyes on the small wooden table separating us.
The black man – who had the very Irish name of O’Hallaran – didn’t flinch. Instead, he took a deep breath and exhaled methodically.
“I’ll give you one more chance, Mr. Burrows,” he said, sitting down across from me. “Where is your other son? Where is Christopher?”

Excerpt from: ‘Promises from Tobago’
L. Jerome

The Tobagonian jail was cramped and the walls were wet. They’d already transferred Owen into another room; for safekeeping, they’d told me. I heard him crying – screaming even – from where I was now seated, in a small – at best – 35-square-foot room that contained a small, fragile table and two uncomfortable chairs. Strangely enough there were two pictures hanging on the wall – one of an abstract summer landscape, the other portrayed a dark and sinister night at a nameless harbor-front hotel, probably in Scarborough. Both pictures exuded a non-chalant family charm; they made me shiver, I had no family anymore.
“Mr. Burrows?” a rugged black man, who looked like a base jumper, asked, entering the room. He was dressed in a dark suit minus the tie. His head was cleanly shaven and the lines crisscrossing his face suggested he was most likely on the wrong side of forty.
“Mr. Burrows,” he repeated, sitting down across from me and lighting a thick Cohiba. “Where is your other son?”

Excerpt from: ‘Promises from Tobago’
L. Jerome