Papa
By Tarri Driver
I was curled up in an old, vinyl recliner, in the liminal space between sleep and awareness. Through my closed eyes, I watched the rising red orb grow. I saw the capillaries behind my eyelids, and their glowing, subcutaneous tributaries and estuaries. When I felt the warmth of the morning sun shining through the window onto my face, I resisted opening my eyes. Through slits, I saw the tattered camouflage jacket thrown over the arm of my chair, its musky scent forever ingrained into the fabric. I saw the cracked, leather-and-rubber duck boots flopped over in the corner. I heard The 700 Club on the television and Pat Robertson insisting that God always has an order and a time and a plan for every damn thing.
I looked over to my dear dad. He was lying in a hospital bed, partially sedated, brow furrowed, whimpering. Birds nests of wires and drainage tubes wound around the perimeter, connected to towering machines that beeped intermittently. I had driven the six hours southeastward and sat by his bedside overnight. He had awoken every 20 minutes or so, in a panicked fog, gasping, trying to pull out his catheter and leave the room. He had finally calmed down, and I’d managed to steal a couple hours of sleep. The previous morning, part of his occipital lobe had been sucked out from the back of his skull after a brain infection had nearly killed him. The doctors told him he’d likely be blind in one eye and that his memory would take a while to start working again.
I wondered what would be lost and what would remain.
We had talked on the phone the other night, and everything had seemed fine. He was watching a cooking show, The Pioneer Woman, turning the volume up so I could hear Ree Drummond defend the extravagance of her extra-fudgy chocolate brownies.
“Did you hear that?!” Dad was incredulous.
“A whole stick of butter and three eggs!” He cackled.
We both agreed—a rare occurrence—that we would indulge, if given the opportunity.
The day after our cooking-show call, he’d spiked a high fever and felt so terrible that he had asked a neighbor to drive him to the ER. This alone struck me as incredible, as my father never asked anyone for help. The neighbor said Dad had been out of his mind by the time they’d arrived at the hospital—hallucinating, talking nonsense, passing out, slurring his words.
It had been hard for me to imagine him in that state. The man was built like a fire plug, always clear-headed and precise. In his early twenties, he’d made his living as a professional wrestler, traveling up and down the west coast. It was easy for me to see him in this previous life, getting into trouble, literally fighting for his life, with flair, for money. In my mind’s eye, I could picture him as a younger man, sitting in the corner of the ring, spotlights shimmering on his golden wrestling singlet and patent leather boots, a mixture of blood and sweat sliding off of his bald head and splattering damp, pink-petaled flowers of violence onto the canvas floor, his own heartbeat pulsing in his ears. I could hear the crowd cheering for him:
“Golden State Quake! Golden State Quake!” Or was it “The San Fransisco Fracas?” Perhaps “The Western Squall.” Had it been like that? I never really knew. Like a lot of things in his past, he wouldn’t talk about it.
The man in the hospital bed looked withered, depleted, helpless. My heart sank. My poor papa.
I stretched out my legs and massaged my temples. My stomach rumbled, and I wondered about hospital breakfast options. I craved black coffee and something sugary.
Just then, a memory emerged. I was sitting with my dad and uncles, circled in the great room of a cabin. Through the window, I could see snow falling outside, and hairless, bloody carcasses—remnants of the morning’s hunt—hanging from posts, draining. The exposed muscles and tendons were dark blue and grey in the twilight. Burning wood crackled and hissed in the fireplace, the smoky smell wafting through the room. We were sitting atop turned-over plastic crates and in camp chairs. In the cluttered, oddly cozy cabin, everyone wore camouflage. Numerous ammo cartridges, cookie packages and drained coffee mugs littered the scarred kitchen table. We sat in our family circle passing around guns, mostly pistols and hunting rifles.
“Wow, I like this SIG! How’s the kick?”
“This Ruger is nice, but would it really do any damage?”
“How’s the accuracy on this GLOCK?”
I didn’t have anything to ask or add to the conversation.
I watched Dad and my uncles manhandle the weapons and fantasize about various hypothetical active-shooter scenarios and how they would handle them. My dad rocked back and forth, his hands flailing around his head like wild birds while he proudly shared that he carries a handgun to church and walks the grounds every Sunday during the sermon.
“We always lock the doors, but if someone came in there ready to light the place up, well I’d…I’d…!!!”
“I’d give 'em a third eye!” was the emphatic, general refrain.
I remembered feeling deflated and like my insides had taken a beating as I listened to my dad pine for his chance to enact righteous violence on any number of imaginary yet deserving bad guys, while my uncles nodded like bobbleheads.
My flash-back was interrupted when Dad sat up from the hospital bed, one startled eye blazing into mine. I could see that the other eye, presumably now blind, had already begun to wander in its socket. He lurched towards me and grabbed my elbow with urgency, as if he were falling. His violent wheeze blasted a fetid cloud in my face, yet I drew near. His one good eye shone blue like polished sapphire. I was transfixed. In determined speech, he told me a story:
“Sissy! We were sitting together under a tree in a blind in the woods. And we kept falling asleep. And then a rustling of leaves woke you up, and you nudged my shoulder and woke me up. You whispered to me, ‘Papa, there’s a doe!’ And when I opened my eyes I saw her. And she wasn’t far from us. Her coat was beautiful, just beautiful! Golden and so shiny! She had big, blank eyes, with long lashes, and she flicked her tail. She hadn’t seen us yet, and I lifted my rifle, and I aimed it at her, and you said, ‘Papa, don’t shoot her! Don’t shoot her! She might be a momma deer!’ So I lowered my gun, and we watched her walk away. And she walked into the sunrise, and then she stood straight up and walked on her hind legs! She walked on her hind legs, Sissy!”
He loosened his clasp on my arm and folded his hands together on his lap. The look of bewilderment disappeared as he grimaced. His lips drew in so that he looked like a caricature of an old man missing his dentures, and the lines in his forehead and wrinkles around his eyes deepened as he squinted. He took a few labored breaths before he continued his vision, more slowly this time:
“Then, we were sitting in big, wooden chairs at opposite ends of a long, wooden table. We were still in the middle of the forest. The light was coming down through the tree tops, real soft and dappled. It was misty. We were surrounded by a bunch of women who were standing and sitting around the table. And they were beautiful, Sissy. Just beautiful. And they all had white hair. There were bowls in the middle of the table, all in a line, and the bowls were gold and filled with jewels and stones and feathers and such. And there were shiny trinkets and gemstones spread all over the table top. Everything was shining and golden, like the coat of the deer that walked on her hind legs. And it was so beautiful, Sissy. There was a bowl in front of me that was chock full of precious stones, and the women were singing and praying and swaying over it. Like how we do in church. And the bowl looked lighted up. It became shinier and more beautiful, and the stones and trinkets in the bowl multiplied right before my eyes. I couldn’t believe it! And then you joined in with them, Sissy. You started singing and praying with the women. And then the bowl got so bright that I couldn’t look directly at it anymore. But I could see your face, Sis. It was lit up with golden light. And I watched your face, and you looked right deep into my eyes and smiled at me, and you looked pleased. You looked very pleased, Sissy.”
With his eyes still closed, tears rolled down his cheeks. He put his hands over his heart. He swallowed hard, exhaled with a grunt and fell back into the bed, exhausted. I was stunned by his story, and I wondered what to make of it.
I looked down at my dad in his hospital bed, and with my hand upon my aching chest, my breath caught, and I stifled a sob. I felt a yearning for something I couldn’t name. The loss of something I’d never had. The impossibility of something I’d always wanted. I put my other hand over my dad’s hands, both still over his heart. I synchronized my breathing with his, and our chests rose and fell together.
THE END
Author Bio: Tarri Driver is a lifelong artist, and after a decade as an art therapist and college-level instructor, she now writes, illustrates, and publishes from her home studio, designing commissions and preparing for gallery shows. Forthcoming works include the third children’s book in her Lunar Mooner Lula series, a book of short stories for adults, and a gallery collaboration in Nashville. Her stories will also appear in the 2024 issues of Wising Up Press and Tiny Spoon.