"Baba, what does it mean to be a black sheep?"
He absent-mindedly toyed with the stray lint on his black-knit sweater as he recalled each of the mocking faces. For him, a black sheep was as cool as it could be for any nine-year-old. A stand out in the crowd, a removed from the ordinary? Yes. A misfit turned into a punching bag for school seniors? No.
"Are you a black sheep as well? " His eyes rested on his Baba's black coat that he had hung on one of the wooden rungs.
"Yes Sir, I am the black sheep in the sea of ordinary white wools", he tugged his black coat playfully, as he put on his best high-pitched sheep impressions. "Baba, have you any wool?"
His father did not seem to listen. The days at the High Court were long even for a veteran like him, who clearly had a way with both words and judges.
"Baa Baa-", his son insisted for his attention.
"Baa Baa, Black Sheep, have you any wool?" his tone hinted an air of annoyance. He was getting impatient.
His father quickly snapped back to reality and his character as the shrillest sheep from the valleys, "Yes sir, yes sir, Three bags full."
Three bags full.
Three bags saturated with sins.
He spun the pretty threads of lies with his bag full of black wool, he served appreciation and apricity to those that had their plates full. Their sentences were shorter, his yarn darker, as he measured, cut, and snipped their fates while blinded justice drifted farther.
His master, a man of many virtues, has his bag even fuller. His sea-facing farmhouse with walls made of quartz is not the only thing painted red. His hands weigh heavier, as he treads closer to the finish line, and further from his mind's eye.
The Black Sheep turns out to be only a consumer in this capitalist economy.
He customizes his wool to his master's needs, the yarn spun too dark for justice to see. His stained hands, his laundered laurels, and his under-the-table deals, all never see the light of the day- thanks to his black sheep.
"Dinner's ready", a call for the father-son from the living room through the clattering of spoons and knives and a lingering scent of red wine. A call for the black sheep twenty years ago.
Would the bread have tasted the same, if he had not spun rose-tinted sweaters out of black wool, if he hadn't traded himself for an alcoholic's life? He saves the fuzziest furs for his hit-and-run dame. He lets her have a bag full of customized justice to her name. Nobody would know what wine she had on the night of October twentieth or what highway to heaven she drove her fellow pedestrian to all swept well under the black wool duvet.
The doorbell rings as a police siren speeds up through the streets. The father gets the door. A little boy, with scratched hands and knees, visibly nervous greets him. He often saw him on his way to work, rummaging through the trash he always took out. Did the little guy perhaps experience Midas' touch in his new-found home? The neighbour, in a fit over his guilded copper ring, seems to confirm the same. "That filthy boy, who lives down the street, clearly stole it." You could hear the landlord scream through the streets.
Before the boy tries to speak, the black sheep hands him the last bag of wool.
His face shifts shades at the sight of the custom justice he just received. With his bag of wool in his chained hands, he is escorted to his new haven, built behind the very bars that confine him. The black sheep spun him a web of woven lies in the court's sight, but ended up being strangled by the same black lines.
"One for my master, one for my dame"
"And one for the little boy who lives down the lane."
Born in innocence, it’s where the boy will stay. Bagged justice was obsolete, the black sheep continued to play.
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