Sightings (10 page)

“Did I wake you?” Dad asked.

I grumbled.

“Sorry, pal,” he said patting my head. “You just rest up for tomorrow.”

The following morning, when my name was ticked off the participant list as a “late addition to the Pioneer Games,” I shot a look at my father who was busy pretending to polish his gun.

Helpless, I picked up an axe alongside boys like Dennis – boys who had things at stake – and at the sound of the whistle, I chopped as fast as I could, the blade sinking into the soft spot of the log. I split that wood over and over again, and even after the event concluded, I just kept hacking, turning it to pulp.

“Hey man,” Dennis said, keeping his distance as the chips continued to fly. “Hey, we have to go tie knots.”

I threw down my axe, watching as the other boys lined up, anxious to try out their cow hitch or their double figure eight.

“Dennis,” I said, wiping my brow and starting toward them, “you think you could teach me a noose?”

After I lost the Pioneer Games (Honorable Mention), and after Dennis took second, Dad came up to both of us, placed a hand on each of our shoulders, and said we'd given it all we had.

“And where'd you learn to tie an oysterman stopper knot anyway?” he asked me.

I refused to look at him.

“Oh, come on,” he said. “It's a growing experience! You forgive your old man, right?”

“Sorry, Floyd.”

For the rest of that day, the bleachers were crowded with people equally as obsessed as my father. Often, when there was no performance or lecture, the audience was invited to participate in tutorials on soap-making, candle-making, even leather work. People purchased cups of rabbit stew from Mom, ate venison jerky, drank cups of fresh pressed cider while the apple skins rotted in thin circles on the grass. Cans of Budweiser were stashed in a cooler behind the wagons, though spectators were asked to drink their beers by the cars so as not to “compromise the integrity of the atmosphere.”

For much of the afternoon, I ground teeth and cracked knuckles in the back of the Conestoga wagon. I watched men and women in sunglasses and button-up shirts peruse the grounds, ask the reenactors all about the kind of weight a wagon could hold, from what type of wood the axles were carved, the true importance of the yoke. Dad appeared to have the answers to everything and more, oftentimes positioning himself in the center of the circle while he employed his vast tire manufacturing knowledge to tackle any subject.

“The thing about yokes,” he said, pressing a firm hand to an elderly man's shoulder, “is that there are two kinds: the bow yoke and the head yoke.” Ron Carter stood behind him, nodding. “Most people don't know that, and it's unfortunate because . . .”

I turned away, watched Sam and my mother dipping candles into alternating bins of hot wax and cold water.

“Hey there, Max,” Mom said, smiling at me. “Twenty-four hours and we can all go home.”

“Did you know he signed me up?” I asked. Her smile wilted. She didn't answer, didn't say anything. Instead, she peeled wax from her hands, her fingerprints sticking. Sam re-dipped her candle once more.

“Ta-da” she called, handing me the gift. “For my brother, the honorable mention.”

As night loomed the crowd settled back into the bleachers, preparing to watch us perform a short play on the hardships of pioneer life. This took much convincing. We kids were supposed to look sad and hungry and tired, and we'd been instructed to fan ourselves with our hands to show the heat we had to endure “day in and day out,” as Stu Callahan, our director, explained. “Think you kids can handle that?”

I'd chopped wood, I'd tied knots. Yes, I could handle that.

Dad's part required him to blather on and on about the possibility of starvation, how the hunting just wasn't as good as in years past, how provisions were running low and food was beginning to spoil. It was the largest part and just the part he wanted. Mom's job was to knit and appear unobtrusive, which was just what she wanted, too.

The first ten minutes or so went smoothly enough, but then Dad cleared his throat, walked to center stage and began ad-libbing a few lines.

“Dear God,” he called, arms outstretched before him. “Heavenly Protector! We need food to feed our families. We got lit'uns starving out here,” – dramatic pause – “dying!”

The crowd gasped, then chuckled.

He paced to the other side of the platform. “We're sick and we're weak,” he said, falling to one knee. He picked up his gun, eying it as if it might be the bringer of food. “Who will be the one to save us?”

I had a pretty good idea, but I wasn't going to watch him do it. I, too, was sick and tired, and my spirits were hardly raised by my father's efforts to upstage everyone else. As I watched him struggle through his routine it occurred to me that Dad wasn't acting at all; this was just him.

I walked off the front of the stage, and as Dad continued his speech about the “lack of sustenance,” I mumbled, “You know, Floyd, there's always cannibalism.”

My father froze, watched me take a seat in the bleachers alongside old men in American flag shirts. After a pause, he continued his carefully rehearsed lines. As he spoke, he leaned against his gun like a cane, chattering on as if nothing fazed him except, of course, the impending fear of starvation. I made fists, I counted to ten – both failed attempts at calming the pioneer blood within.

It all became clear much later. How when Dad gave the signal – waving his gun in the air and shouting, “But the Lord will provide!” – Ron released one of his hand-fed deer from the back of a trailer and into the brush just behind the stage. Then Dad really put his theatrical skills to work, and much to the surprise of his fellow reenactors, pointed to the newly arrived deer and raised the gun.

“Glory to God! Sustenance!”

And then he blew her head off.

It was that quick. There was a head and then there was not one – just four legs buckling like an unhinged table, a torso corkscrewing into the ground. The horrifically hoofed tap dance elicited an array of reactions, most of them tinged with some form of gagging. Almost immediately, the man to my left began vomiting; nobody told him his reaction was historically inaccurate.

The deer stuttered one final step before wobbling to the dirt. Her chest fell first, followed by her hind, and then, the great thundering of a body at rest.

There was no trophy left worth mounting. Just venison.

“And the Lord hath provideth!” Dad shouted.

If there had been a curtain, this would have been an opportune time to close it. But there was none; just a crowd of horrified spectators trapped in the bleachers, screaming.

In yet another breach of authenticity, someone must've reached for a phone because within minutes – as Dad tried calming everyone down (“Don't worry, plenty for all!”) – a
DNR
officer leapt from his jeep, gun drawn.

“Sir, I need you to drop that rifle right now.”

There was so much noise, so much commotion, that almost everyone forgot about the deer carcass fifty yards away.

Dad dropped the gun, put his hands up.

“While I have done as requested,” Dad began, “I'll have you know that I do not recognize the authority of the
DNR.
My name is Floyd Fowler, and the year is 1846 . . .”

“Sir! Get on your knees now.”

“Hey, listen,” Dad whispered, starting toward the ground. “I was just trying to make it authentic, all right, officer? Like how our ancestors did it. To keep from starving. This wasn't sport, okay? This wasn't a sport kill.”

The crowd began to dissipate, mothers ushering their kids into the backs of Conestoga wagons while the men fumbled with their beards and suspenders, some making their way over to examine our father's kill. The ones that remained wrapped their arms tight around their families, promising never to return to this lunatic-ridden Godforsaken place.

“It's how it was done in the good old days,” Dad repeated as he was pushed toward the jeep. “You have to understand this.” His eyes glanced everywhere for help. “Right? Hey! Hey! Someone tell this guy that this was how it was done back then. That it's historically accurate.”

No one stood up for my father.

“Jesus, kid. The plan wasn't to kill it,” Ron Carter told me, coming from behind. “Just pretend. We were supposed to be pretending. Reenacting.”

The
DNR
officer shoved my father's slumped body into the backseat of the jeep.

“Back then, it was our destiny!” Dad shouted. “Our obligation!”

“Our Manifest Destiny!” I cried.

Our father had shot a deer out of season, and this, we were informed, was serious. Nevertheless, within a week's time, it was mostly resolved. Not better, just resolved. Dad paid the one thousand dollar fine and had his hunting license suspended for three years. Then, after a bit more paperwork, the state begrudgingly forgave him.

“Just be grateful he didn't get jail time,” the
DNR
officer informed our mother. “You can get up to ninety days for a stunt like that.”