One night, when things had looked especially bad for me I had stolen what cash I could find and swam the several miles distance across the sound in the dark of night to the mainland. Nearing the beach I had been caught in an undertow current, which I had barely survived getting out of, but I had. I had been surviving life's strong currents ever since.
I saw him then, sitting under the canopy of an umbrella on a small patio out in the middle of the lawn that lay behind the house and the beach below. I walked through the perfectly manicured grass toward him. My father, Iya Muatombo, had been born in a grass thatched hut made of mud in Ethiopia. You could say that he had removed himself from the humbleness of his beginnings as far as one could.
His back was to me and when I was still twenty or so feet away he stood, the massive muscles of his shoulders and arms bunching the material of the perfectly tailored suite.
How he heard my approach over the crashing of the waves below and the landward breeze I could not fathom. He had the senses of a cat and the instincts of one too.
My father was a brutal monster, but that was objectifying him somewhat. He was also cunning. He had not risen so far on sheer strength alone. Never had I seen the raw magnetism of strength combined with extreme intellect in a single person before until just the other day. Flint was such a man. I hoped he wasn't a monster too.
My father turned to me with that familiar not sure what to make of it half smile and revealed a mouth of pearly white teeth. His skin was as black as coal and he still shaved his head bare. His conditioning hadn't slumped a bit and he still stood at an even seven feet in height. The only way I could tell that he had aged at all was that his eyebrows were a little greyer.
He was seventy five years old and could have passed for a man of forty five. What kept him so young, I didn't know, but it couldn't be clean living that was for sure. His deep voice broke the wall of silent study that was between us.
"So, the prodigal daughter has returned. Is your unexpected appearance indicative of any intention on your part to kill me?"
"I could ask the same of you father?" I replied evenly, standing still in the grass, waiting to see what would become of me.
He smiled a little broader and indicated the chair across the table from him and I moved to it and sat down. He did not follow suit, but instead followed me. I started to rise, but his hand on my shoulder held me down.