Back Across the Rubicon: Eight From the Land of No Return

And how many times have I passed by them on this world without a thought or glance, unable to recognize them for who they were? I know now that I have passed by them; I see where I could have stopped, where I was intrigued by someone but had not the courage to pursue them, where one decision might have altered my fate and brought me to my redemption. If that is still possible. For as many times as I have passed by the others, just as many times I see that we have met each other in different guises, and then orchestrated the same betrayals, the same foolishness, the same dearly bought sins. So perhaps we truly are doomed; perhaps we shall spend all eternity repeating our lives; perhaps there is no exit from this world.

Perhaps the Earth is hell.

*****

Adam

My name is about as uninteresting as it gets. Adam. Not too bad. Biblical. Well, that has its disadvantages. Any time I ever heard of a girl in school named Eve, I avoided her like the plague in case the other wise guys at school got any funny ideas. Jones is the other half of my name. Short, but easy to remember. People tell me it's Welsh in origin, but I'm only taking their word for it. I was born and raised in middle of the road America, the good ole US of A, and I went to a regular high school, took the usual college entry exams, and got into a pretty good university, which of course my father had to sell a kidney to pay for. Or else take a second mortgage on the house.

But my name hasn't always been Adam Jones. At least, that's what I've since come to learn-however the dreams-or maybe I should call them visions-didn't begin until I met this Chinese kid in kindergarten. His name was Ken. Kenneth Hwang, if I remember it right.

I don't know if Ken's family was just passing through or what, 'cause Ken stayed only a few years in our little town. From the start, we just hit it off. Like we'd known each other forever. Ever had a friend like that?

Ken was my brother, we were that close. I'd never really thought about Ken looking different from me, except that his eyes were kind of interesting, and he could talk in a strange way I thought was pretty neat. I must also have been pretty dumb back then, because I thought it was his made-up language. You can probably guess then what I did. Yup, I tried to speak like him. Ken almost wanted to believe I could, but what did he or I know? Of course I couldn't speak Chinese, not really! Or maybe he just hoped I could. There weren't any other Chinese kids in our corner of white bread America. But when I started talking, Ken started trying to correct me, as though the whole game meant a lot to him. He said he didn't know why, but I just wasn't getting it right. I didn't even understand his questions. Imagine that, I couldn't speak Chinese, not even when I tried really hard. My mother told me later that Ken's family was from Tiawan. I always remember Ken when I come across stuff with the label "made in Tiawan" now. Funny that I can't imagine what Ken would look like today. When Ken left, we made all sorts of promises to stay in touch, but we were only eight years old. No, we didn't keep our promises, flimsy eight year old's promises. But sometimes I have this odd feeling, like I'll run into Ken again.

Maybe because of what almost happened to us just before his family moved away.