Sightings (8 page)

There were things about Dad that Mom said if our teachers found out, we'd have child services swarming all over the house. Things like Dad's habit of leaving slabs of rotting meat in the basement sink. Things like the deer carcass splayed out in the living room for four days last November.

That year, Dad transformed himself into a mighty hunter, and though he initially appeared childish in his oversized orange vest and camo hat, the rifle added an unexpected legitimacy to the charade.

“Yup, off to bag some big game to feed the family,” he said, insisting that we line up at the door to see him off. He liked to give the illusion that he was headed off to war, not just the backwoods off of U.S. 20.

And though we had our doubts, Dad turned out to be a pretty good shot, taking his deer during the season's weekend opener, even snagging a turkey a few months later.

Dad's friend, Ron Carter, was a fellow hunter, and a man who ran a deer farm to support the small faction of hunting tourists who lingered within the city limits. Mom thought the entire operation repulsive – to raise an animal only to shoot it for sport – but Dad explained it to us in terms we could understand: “It's called the Circle of Life. You saw the movie, right?”

Ron's industry made him nothing short of a venison aficionado. He ate deer the way most people ate chicken – in a seemingly endless array of possibilities. During his hunting years, Dad managed to try out nearly all of Ron's recipes: deer patties, deer stew, chuck wagon venison, even venison stroganoff. Dad made a production out of each of his so-called “creations,” gathering us around the kitchen table for a sermon-length prayer, thanking God and the bullet and the deer and his steady hand. For theatric effect, he kept his meal veiled under a silver cover, leaving us to guess what peculiar concoction festered beneath.

Beaming, he'd say, “Without further adieu,” and then, with a flourish, remove the cover. We'd look at it hesitantly, and hesitantly, he'd look back at us.

“Well, Ron gave me the recipe,” he'd shrug, shaking his head. “Goddamn Ron. I didn't think it would even turn out as well as it did. It's a miracle, really.”

Over the years, my father discovered that the problem with killing large mammals was space; that is, where you keep the carcass. Where
do
you keep a quarter hind? Ron Carter had recommended several butchers, but Dad – who fancied himself “one with the earth” – wanted to do it his way: “We shall honor this deer's untimely death by dividing her equally between the living room and basement sink.”

This alternative to butchering practices was not embraced by all, though my mother, who had long before learned to pick her battles carefully, turned to Sam and me and said, “Please don't tell your teachers.”

Before I could offer my own two cents, Dad and Ron had already begun dragging the front half of her into the living room atop a bloodstained tarp. She stunk of guts and wet leaves, though my father informed us that what we really smelled was victory.

We turned to our mother for answers.

“It's only temporary,” she promised. “Just a day or two.”

We kept staring.

“Look, he means well. He just doesn't know how to
be
well. Does that make any sense?”

Sam and I nodded because it was easier than continuing the discussion.

As Dad and Ron began filling the basement sink with her hindquarters, Sam and I took turns flipping through television channels, growing ever more uncomfortable with the third set of eyes watching with us.

That year in sixth grade social studies, Mrs. Powell sent a letter home asking if Dad would like to give the class a short presentation on “the perils of westward expansion.” We were just wrapping up the unit, and she'd been impressed by my knowledge of Manifest Destiny, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and in particular, my analysis of the painting Dad kept in his den, the one called
American Progress.

“Basically it's got this giant woman walking west with a book in her hand,” I described to the class. “And all around her, families are in wagons and on horses, and they're all moving west, too. But the thing that most people don't see, the thing that my dad had to point out to me, was that the white woman is stringing telegraph wire as she walks. It's supposed to represent progress, I think, like the spread of progress to the west.”

With that, quite regrettably, I'd piqued Mrs. Powell's interest and proved my father a credible source.

“Max, do you suppose your dad would be willing to speak to our class?” she asked one day after the bell rang. I knew the answer –
Yes! Certainly! Where do I sign up?
– but I shrugged and said he was usually pretty busy managing the line at the tire factory. “He works a lot of hours,” I explained. “And this is their busy season. Tire season.”

“Tire season, of course,” she winked. “Well, maybe we'll try him all the same, see if we can't get lucky.”

Mrs. Powell must have sensed my hesitation because she didn't ask me to deliver the letter directly. Instead, it arrived in the mail (making it more difficult to intercept), and Dad, who rarely received anything that wasn't a bill or a renewal request for
American West Quarterly,
made a grand production over the letter.

“Well what do we have here?” he called, extracting a rarely used letter opener from his desk and tearing the top off the envelope. He began reading it aloud, and from where I sat next to my sister on the couch, I could just make out his delighted facial expressions through the doorway to the den.

“Hey Maxy,” he called to me. “You know any Cynthia Powell?”

“Social studies teacher.”

I kept my focus on the television.

“Says here,” he cleared his throat, “that she's selected
me
to give a presentation over at your school next week.”

“Just a small talk, I think, Dad. And not for the whole school, just our class.”

“Mmhmm. A presentation. Some kind of speech, it says here. On the perils of westward expansion.”

“Maybe for like ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Mmhmm. Well, I do know quite a bit about perils.”

I glanced over to catch him drawing his finger blindly along the calendar. “Well let's see if I've got any openings . . .”

A few minutes later, I overheard him and Mom discussing it in the kitchen.

“I don't know, Amy. I'd have to take off work,” Dad said, ho-humming around for Mom's permission. “It's just that I've been selected and all, and I'd hate to deprive the youth of America from such a valuable learning opportunity . . .”

“Just . . . try not to embarrass him,” Mom whispered. “He's your son. Twenty minutes tops, okay? Tops.”

He said sure, sure, of course, twenty minutes. A twenty-five minute presentation would be just about right. Maybe thirty, he assured, but not a minute more.

I didn't tell anyone he was coming. Maybe, I thought, the class wouldn't even recognize him beneath his cotton smock.

I entered Mrs. Powell's classroom a few minutes early, and though he hadn't yet arrived, I could sense a kind of father-son-impending-doom in progress.

The others wandered in, slid into desks, anxiously awaiting the “surprise guest” Mrs. Powell had promoted throughout the week.

“As you all know,” Mrs. Powell began, clasping her hands together, “today is a very special day for us. So special, in fact, that we've brought back a man who lived over one hundred and fifty years ago!” She waited for an awe that did not come. “And he made a trip all the way to the present day to tell you about a little something called . . . The Oregon Trail.”

Jesus,
I thought,
Dad put her up to this. He probably wrote her lines.

From behind, I heard the clip-clop of dusty boots, a familiar clearing of the throat. The others turned, but I didn't; I knew what I'd see if I did.

“Has any of you's all seen Chimney Rock?”

I glanced up to view him in full garb, a hand blocking out the invisible sun as he scanned the faces of my peers. “Well, has you or ain't you? You ain't slow in the head, are ye? Answer me!”

On our family vacation a few years back, while driving through Oregon City, Oregon, Dad insisted we stop at some pioneer museum so he could show off his Floyd Fowler impression to the curator. The curator had listened thoughtfully as Dad recited his lines from memory. When he'd finished, Dad struck a heroic pose – knee bent and hands thrust toward the heavens – waiting for applause.

“Well,” the curator had said, “that certainly was a liberal interpretation of pioneer colloquialisms. But you know, primary sources indicate that the language you have employed here, in particular the use of ‘ain't' and . . . was it ‘you's all'? In any event, those phrases are anachronistic of the time period, and further . . .”

Our red-faced father had no idea what the hell the man was talking about (he understood only that the guy wasn't clapping), so he stormed out, grabbing my sister and me by our hands as Mom followed close behind.

It was a tough lesson, though Dad's classroom performance served as proof that he'd taken none of it to heart. However, thanks to a more forgiving audience, his reenactment of Floyd Fowler received an encore from my classmates. Dad did everything from demonstrating how best to slather on bear grease (“Nature's bug spray!”) to how to carve an apple with a Bowie knife (“Nature's carver!”).

“You see, the thing most of you folks from the twentieth century don't realize,” he said, clouds of dust puffing from his boots, “is that we pioneers didn't have all those newfangled contraptions you have nowadays. If we want fire, by God, then we rub some flint together and we make fire.”

“Can you make one right now?” asked Jimmy Goings.

“Son, I'm glad you asked that,” Dad smiled, pulling a pair of black shards from his pocket. “It would be my pleasure.”

He began slapping the flints together, reaching for a few nearby geography tests for kindling. Mrs. Powell started a round of applause to signal the end of his performance, though my father missed the majority of his praise – far too preoccupied showering sparks to the pages.

“The damn . . . things . . . just won't light,” he grunted, continuing his flicking. “What kind of paper you use here? Won't work if it's not pulp based, you know.”

But apparently it was, because a moment later a slight crackle began curling at the edges of Jimmy Goings's D-. Jimmy began to cheer, then put his pinkies in his mouth and let out a wolf whistle.

Mrs. Powell reached for a nearby squirt bottle, extinguishing the flame prior to setting off the fire alarm.

“Now why'd you go and do that for?” Dad asked, scratching his head.

“All right then,” said Mrs. Powell. “Let's give one more big thank you to Max's father.” The class shouted a rousing thank you (especially Jimmy) as Floyd Fowler sauntered away.

“Well, you's all take care now,” Dad called as he left the classroom, tousling my hair as he passed.