Secrets

Be circumspect when sharing your secrets. The Devil is listening.

 * * * 

Secrets are everywhere. We find them wrapped up like riddles inside of boxes of enigma. We disguise them, bury them, revisit the scenes, exhume the bones. They lie there in state, hidden from prying eyes and itching ears. We’re in love with our secrets. 

It’s a winter morning.  Cold, but the coffee is hot. The dog lies comatose at my feet. He’s keeping his secrets to himself. The cell dings twice. Incoming text. Who’s this so early? I ask myself. 

The message is terse. “I know your secret. It’s going viral today.” That’s it. Nothing more. I don’t recognize the cell number. 

Crank text, spam, I think. But it gets my attention. I usually delete such, but someone thinks I have a secret. I’m pure as snow, at least in my mind.  Oh, I’ve had a few secrets. Everyone has. Some of my old secrets come to mind.  

As a teenager I bit my nails. Kept it secret because of embarrassment. Would shove my hands in my pockets to disguise the nasty habit. My mother would anoint my nails with a bitter potion extracted from skunk spray. I was vaccinated regularly for tetanus. Nothing worked. I kept biting them. 

Then one day with hands shoved in my pockets, I fall on the playground. Spat. Face first in the dirt. The scar remains. Something has to be done. 

I tried to hold hands with a girl during the Saturday matinee movie, but she was revulsed at the disgusting habit. Heck, if a boy can’t get a girl to hold hands, he’ll never get a kiss. And if no kiss, then for sure he won’t ever be able to…well, you know where kisses lead. I quit biting my nails.  

My curiosity is aroused. I text back, “Who is this?” 

 “Doesn’t matter. Your secret sin will be revealed soon.”    

“What secret sin?” I respond. 

Icons appears. A firecracker, a flame, and a bomb. That’s all. 

“Is this some sort of joke?” I text. 

Silence. Now I’m concerned. Is somebody trying to ruin my reputation, my credit, cause a divorce? Accusations, even if unfounded, lead to windmills of the mind. Scripture comes to mind:

“There’s nothing hidden that won’t be revealed.” 

I reply, “Are you God or the Devil?” 

“Both. I’m your conscious,” the text reads. “Deal with it, dude.” 

I think about secrets. They’re everywhere. Church pews, rosary beads. Moonlight swims, sand dunes. They’re in doctor’s offices, lawyer’s offices, bank safety deposit boxes and hotel rooms. They’re on bathroom scales, in hair salons, on doorknobs. 

They’re found in family trees. I looked up my own lineage recently and found a dog lifting its leg on my tree. The PS said I had significant Neanderthal variant. I thought that to be a badge.

Secrets are found in old photographs, in office files yellowed with age, in the back seats of cars, the tailgates of pickups and buried deep in cemeteries. They’re found in diaries and antiperspirants and in last night’s wine glasses. They hatch on golf courses and hide in drug prescriptions. Secrets can be found everywhere. 

Secrets can be as subtle and deadly as a coiled cobra centerpiece in the middle of a dinner party, or on the trigger of a locked and loaded .38 Special snub-nose, just waiting for a twitchy finger. Secrets are rusty steel traps hidden among the weeds of our memories, waiting to entrap us.     

Secrets are heard in the faint whispers of phone calls that fade when ears appear. Or on the beach where waves wash up secrets on the shores of our slumbering conscious, leaving its lifeless litter of flotsam as reminders of the a past long gone.

The cell dings. “Ready for the revelation?” 

“What’s the deal here? You looking for a bribe?” I text. 

“I’m a friend,” is the reply.

“You’re harassing me.” 

“No, I’m saving you. Listen, just come clean with that dark secret you harbor. It’ll lose its power over you, you’ll sing with Dr. King, ‘Free at last.’” 

“No, you listen. I have no secrets, I’m ‘fessed up, repented, pure, clean, ready for heaven’s gates.” 

“Not quite. Your secret is so dainty, so sweet that you keep it boxed up, hidden from view. It’s deadly. I’m helping you flee from it. Here it comes, your secret revealed.” 

* * *

I wait. Life can sneak up on us in strange ways. The text appears. No words, only this photo:    

Rest assured, your sins will find you out, too. Confess and repent while there’s time. The Devil never sleeps.

 

Bud Hearn

January 18, 2021