Authors: Karen Harter
“I told her we would take care of the finances,” Mom said. They exchanged a glance that I couldn’t read. I had never heard
my parents fight, but I wondered if there might be heated words exchanged behind closed doors that night. In my mind I could
still hear his tirades over lights left on when we had left a room or phone bills with long-distance calls. I had seen the
Judge pick up a penny from a parking lot and drop it into his pocket. I wondered what open-heart surgery might cost.
“Yes. Good,” he said without expression.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t eligible yet for insurance on my last job.” My heart was so heavy just then, not just physically but
with the newfound knowledge that I was
really
sick and helpless, with a son to raise. We had barged into my parents’ empty nest with all of our possessions. Where there
had been order and tranquillity, there were doors slamming, a child’s sometimes loud and whiny voice, a row of books lined
up in the middle of the hallway as a road for toy cars. TJ wandered into the room. He crawled up to my lap, tucking his head
under my chin, his bare feet sticking out of pajama bottoms that had become too short for him. I held him close like a soft,
comforting blanket. “I want to get a job; I just don’t know right now. . . .”
“Don’t worry about it,” my father said. “Let’s just do what it takes to get you well.”
TJ patted my upper chest. “Does it hurt, Mom?”
“No. It just makes me tired sometimes.”
“You better take a vitamin.”
I kissed him and squeezed his toes. “We’re talking grown-up talk here. It’s way past your bedtime too. Say good night to Grandma
and Grandpa and get to bed.”
He oozed off of my lap onto the floor. “Is that really my bedroom now, Grandma?”
She smiled. “For as long as you need it, sweet pea. You and your mama can stay here as long as you want.”
He looked pleased. “I never had a room all by myself.”
I glanced at the Judge. He didn’t flinch. I imagined he must be thinking how convenient it was for me to just show up when
I happened to need a roof over our heads, food to eat—oh, and someone to pay a pending heap of medical expenses besides. Good
old Samantha. Independent as one of those aloof cats until it’s hungry enough to come rubbing against your leg as if it really
liked you all along.
I did like my father once.
Back then he smelled of damp earth and the spicy cottonwood. If I had been stricken blind as a child, I could still have picked
my father from a lineup just by the lingering scent of cottonwood buds on his hands or the bruised leaves tucked into the
pockets of his shirts. His eyes sometimes glimmered like sun-dappled ripples, though they could quickly take on the hard gray
of angry winter water. Like how I felt about the river, I loved and feared him. It was a healthy fear, I suppose; maybe
respect
is a better word, knowing that though he might appear placid on the surface, there was a powerful current pushing just below.
His course was steady and predictable—a daily routine that rarely changed. Breakfast was wheat toast with marmalade and coffee—black
as tar. His brown leather briefcase, swollen with briefs and opinions and an occasional law book, secured under one arm, a
sack lunch and a thermos of coffee for the long road to the city in the other, he would kiss our mother in the kitchen doorway.
The kisses were not like in the movies where in the next scene they’ve got the sheets pulled up to their armpits, but they
weren’t Ward and June Cleaver pecks either. Our parents lingered there, sometimes whispering and smiling, sometimes quiet
with their foreheads touching before he winked at us and walked out the door.
The calm and quiet would probably not return to our household again until we saw his headlights in the driveway that night.
Then all banging, stomping, hollering and chasing one another around the ottoman came to an instant halt. It was unspoken.
Our father was the king of our house and we knew it. Our mother must have taught us that, though I don’t remember. I just
remember the peace that came through the door with him and the way our world revolved around his presence. When our father
sat in his big chair, we huddled near him, telling amazing stories about the adventures of our day. He would put the daily
paper aside, cross one leg over the other while one foot went slowly up and down. He smiled and touched our hair thoughtfully
as we chattered.
One time he scared me. Right in the middle of my story about the owls in Donnie’s barn, he grabbed Lindsey and me and held
us too tight, and when he let us go he was crying. Mom told us later that a bad man hurt a little girl and our daddy had to
hear all about it in court.
On Sundays we went to church. Rain or shine, hell or high water. Literally. Even when the road was covered with a sheet of
water and wild mallards and snow geese paddled happily around in the fields. We never discussed it. At least until I was in
my teens, at which time I felt strongly that Sunday mornings would be better spent beneath my warm quilt. I could not reason
with my father. He said one day out of the week was not too much to give back to the Lord after all He’d given us. I couldn’t
understand what pleasure God could take in the whole thing. Didn’t He hear the same boring hymns coming up from churches all
over the world? English, Spanish, Swahili, Portuguese—they all must sound the same to Him. And what difference would my absence
make? I could hardly carry a tune anyway.
Lindsey, who seemed perfect in every way, somehow understood that even she was a sinner. She liked to go confess her sins
and take communion. I stopped taking communion when I was fourteen. The pastor read from the Bible where it says: “Whosoever
shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.”I didn’t
need that. At the time I didn’t know what made one person worthy and another unworthy, but it was safe to say I was in category
two. My guilt was sufficient without adding to it the crucifixion of God’s son.
After church, our parents mingled with the other locals, mostly farmers and blue-collar workers. Some of them still called
my father
sir
or
Your Honor
, though we had been living in the valley for years. Lindsey would lean against the Judge and wrap her little arm around his
leg while he rested one hand on her shoulder, the other on mine. But grown-up conversations bored me. I tended to ease away
as quickly as possible until a rock-throwing incident in the parking lot one Sunday. His grip on my shoulder grew firmer after
that. Then, for a time, I succumbed to fidgeting by his side where his deep, liquid voice filled my ears and eddied safely
at my feet.
Like the river, he was a boundary around my small world. The problems came when I grew older and realized that there was more
to know than what my father taught me; there was a realm to be explored beyond his rigid control. But the raging current of
his will was a dangerous thing to cross.
Maybe that was why I did the things I did. Any prisoner longs for freedom. I found mine by crawling out my bedroom window
for clandestine meetings with stupid boys, boys whose names I could barely remember now. I took up drinking. I was the life
of every party, the one who could be counted on to do the unexpected or downright crazy thing that we could all laugh about
back at school. Wayne Bly hung me by my feet from a three-story window so I could spy on the tenant below who played concert-style
piano but never came out of his apartment. Trudy and I
borrowed
my parents’ car one night when I was fifteen and without a driver’s license, planning to return it before they awoke. That
was a plot gone bad. We made it as far as Dixon, where I nearly crashed into a truck when I made an illegal left turn. We
were helping the old driver gather the box-load of potatoes that had spilled onto the road when a green patrol car pulled
up. The Judge actually called the sheriff on me—his own daughter! After that I was sentenced to cleaning out the garage and
doing yard work for an eternity of Saturdays, and when I was finally allowed to go out into the real world again, my curfew
was ten p.m.—not a minute later.
But these were not the things that caused the Judge to send me packing when I was only seventeen. I finally committed that
unforgivable sin—the one that still lurked behind me like a menacing shadow. I resented him for that. It was his standard—not
mine—that sent me away. But he was the Judge. Guilty! The angry smack of his gavel still echoed in my mind. Worst of all,
his verdict clung to my back like a clawed thing that I had not been able to shake even after all those years.
TJ straddled the Judge’s lap, facing him and patting his hands on his grandpa’s cheeks as if he had known him from birth instead
of for just a few days. “Do you wanna go feed the worms when we wake up, Grandpa?”
“Tell you what, son. Let’s do it when I get home tomorrow night. You’ll probably still be asleep when I go to work. I have
to drive a long way.” He tousled TJ’s hair. “What I need you to do is catch some bugs—as many as you can. Grandma will give
you something to put them in.”
TJ nodded in earnest. “Okay.”
Mom and I exchanged amused glances. My son—my treasure, my trophy—then went over to kiss his grandma, and when he eventually
wandered off toward his new bedroom we were all smiling.
“So, what are the bugs for?” I asked.
The Judge shrugged. “To keep him busy. A man needs a mission. Besides, you need a lot of rest.” He looked at his watch. “In
fact, it’s after ten. Why don’t you go on to bed now too? Your mom and I have some things to talk about.”
I nodded, gathering up my empty water glass and the shoes I had kicked off, though I had not considered retiring that early.
Just like old times. I had been dismissed. I was back in his household, willingly, helplessly subjecting myself again to his
reign. I paused by my mother’s chair, thinking of bending down to kiss her as I used to do, but it would be awkward. “Good
night,” I said from the doorway.
“Good night.”
“Sleep well.”
But I tossed and turned until dawn.
I
FOUND MYSELF at home in the semidarkness at a table in the rear, like a coyote finally back in her den. Not that I’d ever
been inside this particular establishment, though I had pedaled my bike across the gravel parking lot of Fraser’s Tavern at
least a hundred times. Lindsey and I witnessed a fight there once between a local farmer and a logger who smashed each other
up against the parked trucks. They spewed words that were foreign to us and broke someone’s side mirror off and there was
blood. After that Lindsey swung wide whenever we crossed the lot, keeping a wary eye on the big wood door of the tavern.
I hadn’t planned to end up there. I just knew I needed to get out of the house for a while. I needed to think, to adjust to
the recent flood of changes in my life. The image of my enlarged heart seemed to appear on my eyelids every time I blinked,
and with it came an overwhelming sadness. I was grateful for the fact that my parents had taken us in. Without their generosity,
TJ and I would be homeless—and the thought of what might become of my son if my heart should fail me was enough to send the
sluggish organ into gyrations. It was good to be home, good to be in a secure place with family where I could get away like
this sometimes, knowing that TJ was with people who loved him. On the other hand, there was this thing between the Judge and
me. I could almost feel the vibrations of negative electrons between us, pushing us apart, causing me to revert emotionally
to the confused and defiant teenager who once lived in his house. Honestly, even being there in Fraser’s Tavern felt like
an outright act of rebellion, though I had frequented similar establishments back in Reno without finding it necessary to
park my Jeep on the dark side of the building, away from the street.
I leaned back, propping my boots on a vacant chair. The night was young and many tables were empty. A few men straddled stools
at the old bar, loudly offering advice to the baseball players on an overhead TV screen. Two women played darts in the corner
nearest me. The skinny one with bad teeth lunged and thrust. The projectile wobbled and bounced off the wall about three feet
from target. Her friend snorted a laugh, grabbed the darts and shot three missiles—a bull’s-eye, a triple twenty and a bouncer.
The faded red T-shirt stretched over her ample belly said
I’m from Dixon—What’s Your Excuse?
“You lied.” The voice startled me. “You said you’d never grow up.”
I turned to gaze into the strangely familiar face of a young man carrying two brown bottles and a glass mug. I squinted up
at him, suppressing any sign of recognition. “Are you the waiter? It’s about time.”
He grinned and pulled the chair out from under my feet. “How ya doin’, Sam? I heard you were back.” He sat down, ceremoniously
poured cold beer into the schooner and pushed it toward me. “You’re lookin’ good.”
“Hello, Donnie.”
“It’s Don now. Just plain Don, if you don’t mind.”
I smiled mischievously. “You’ll always be little Donnie Duncan to me.” My eyes fell on the crop of hair protruding from his
open shirt and the bronze forearms resting on the table like two legs of mutton, and I was well aware that Donnie Duncan had
grown up.
“And I’ll always remember you as the weird little kid who hung by her knees from cottonwood branches with her shirt falling
over her head.”
I laughed. “Those were the days, weren’t they? Remember the rope swing by the river?”
He took a swig and pounded his bottle on the table. “How about the night we swung out double and you fell off? Your sister
and I heard the splash, but it was so stinkin’ dark we couldn’t see a thing. We called and called, but you didn’t answer.
Then Lindsey went blatso on me. Why did you always do things like that?”
“I lived to freak out Lindsey. It was my major life purpose.”
He shook his head. “You were a strange child.”