Harper

Some people call me Spider; however, my name is Clifford Cornwall Harper. In the spring of 1948, the Ontario Provincial Police charged me with abandoning my four children in an isolated shack in the dead of winter. If praying is only a means of self-expression, perhaps Arlene’s technique of asking me all those questions and writing the answers like a story is just as useless an exercise. It has not stopped the nightmares and indeed, I now have memory to haunt me – the death of Arlene. The big question remains: would the world be a better place if I had never been born? If the answer is yes, then I must ask myself is there still time to change that answer? At over eighty years of age, I do not have much time left to make amends. If the answer is no, perhaps all I can do is hang around to see if my kids or my grandchildren might need me. I think it is just my dog and me now. At least he does not talk my ear off by posing questions about the past.