The Watchers

I wrote this one after seeing my young son adopt some of my personality flaws. My foul mouth and often neurotic behavior, to be more specific. It caused me to contemplate the importance of of being mindful, not because some powerful being is watching, but because little ones are...

"Watch what you do when the Watchers watch you."

We're taught this little rhyme as children and repeat it in our minds throughout our lives. It's our first thought in the morning and our last before we fall asleep. It's not just a memorable phrase; it's a means of survival.

As I knelt in the farmhouse mudroom, helping my young son tie his snow boots, I repeated the rhyme.

His name was Adam. He was five. It was never too early to learn about the Watchers.

"Watch what you do when the Watchers watch you. Repeat it back to me," I said.

"Watch what the Watchers watch too," he replied. He smiled pridefully, confident he’d gotten it right.

I helped him slip on his heavy down coat. "Not bad for a first try," I said. "C'mon, we have chores to do."

Watchers were a rare sight in our part of rural Arkansas. That's why we chose to live here. When they first arrived decades ago, giant black metal men, ninety feet tall, dropping out of the sky, we assumed they were here to conquer our world. But we soon learned that wasn't their intent. They had no ill intent. In fact, they had no intent at all. No knowledge. No guidance. They simply watched us and repeated whatever we did.

"Grab the snow shovel for me," I said as I tried to push the pig pen gate open against the feet of accumulated snowpack. "It's out back. In the barn."

Adam nodded and took off after his assignment.

Fetching things from the barn was the only duty he was good at. He knew that when he came back, I would heap praise upon him for doing a good job. His face would light up with pride. It was old hat by now—how I kept him excited about helping me around the farm.

I grabbed my pickaxe and headed towards the horse trough. Figured I’d break the top layer of ice while I waited. That was when I saw him. His matte black metal body landed feet-first in the back pasture, by the barn.

"Adam!" I yelled as I dropped the pickaxe and ran towards the barn. "Don't move, son! Whatever you do, don't move!"

To his credit, Adam listened better than I would have expected a boy his age to listen. He stood as still as a statue, and the Watcher did the same, initiating his training sequence with my son as his teacher.

When I got to Adam, he was crying. He was scared, but he didn’t wipe a tear. He didn’t move a muscle. He just let the tears flow down his face and land in the snow at his feet. I couldn't have been more proud.

"Okay, son, we gotta get out of sight. If he can't see ya, then he can't watch." I looked at the farmhouse and then at the barn. The barn was considerably closer. "So, here's what we're gonna do. Pretend you're a Watcher and watch me. Do everything I do. Step for step. Movement for movement. Got it?"

"Got it," Adam muttered, moving his lips as little as possible.

We began to walk towards the barn. I would step. Adam would step. The Watcher would step. Each step was a fraction of a second apart.

"We're almost there," I said. "You're doing great, son."

Adam said nothing. He was concentrating on his steps—keeping them in perfect sync with mine.

The Watcher loomed large over us, his enormous skeleton of a body blocking out the sun and making the cold winter winds all the less tolerable.

Just feet from the barn, I glanced up at the Watcher. I was curious if he would act differently if it became clear that we were heading out from under his gaze. He didn't seem to notice.

In my distraction, I kicked over a small mound in the snow. Out of the mound ran a field mouse. As it ran towards Adam, I panicked. I was afraid the creature might frighten the boy. It could cause him to act erratically. People act unpredictably when they're afraid.

I leapt towards the creature and crushed it under my heavy boot. I felt relief as the boot came down on the mouse, and I knew it was dead.

I can only assume Adam never saw the mouse. When I leapt and stomped, a second later, so did Adam.

A fraction of a second after that, so did the Watcher.

I watched the Watcher. I watched him bend his knees just as Adam did before making his big leap. I watched him clumsily jump sideways onto one foot, stomping as he landed. I watched Adam, the horrified look in his eyes, as the heavy metal foot of the Watcher came down upon him, like a defenseless mouse.

You spend your whole damned life being told to watch what you do because beings bigger and more powerful than you are watching. That your actions are judged by something above. But that's bullshit if you ask me. It's more important to watch what you do in front of the smaller and less powerful. Your mistakes are your own, but the ones you pass on in moments of weakness repeat into eternity.