“Oh.” I bit my bottom lip to remain stoic, because I knew that laughing would just add insult to injury more insult, and I patted his arm reassuringly. “So, what did Daddy say?” I asked cautiously.
“He didn’t say anything. He just looked at the boar in silence and then led me away from it. I’ve never heard him so quiet. Then he asked me to string his hunting bow for him, and I almost got a hernia doing it. He took me out back to try to shoot it, and I almost shot myself in the leg. For real. I almost shot myself. In the leg. I think your dad was expecting me to kill myself accidentally so that he could tell you there had been a tragic accident, and then you could just move on with your life and find someone else who doesn’t make wild boars look like cheap male prostitutes.”
I tried to convince Victor that my dad actually adored him, but then I remembered that two weeks earlier my dad had tried to teach Victor flint napping (the art of making arrowheads out of rocks the Native American way), and Victor had been doing surprisingly well, until he cut himself and had bled so much we started to suspect he’d hit an artery. “You sure you want to marry a hemophiliac?” my dad had whispered to me while looking for something to use as a tourniquet. “That’s a hereditary trait, you know.” It was possible my father was trying to kill him.
In a final desperate attempt, Victor decided to make a present for my father of an authentic Native American medicine bag he’d made himself with a found coyote face, a dead turtle, and some braided leather for the strap. When he’d finished his macabre handicraft project he held it up to me triumphantly, and I stared at the eyeless coyote face for a moment, and then went back to reading my book. “Isn’t this awesome?” he insisted (somewhat manically), and I shrugged halfheartedly, allowing that it did seem like the sort of the thing that my father would enjoy. This wasn’t saying much, though, since my father also inexplicably enjoyed picking up interesting roadkill, and creating mythical taxidermied creatures out of spare parts. Victor was pissed that I didn’t share his enthusiasm, and he gruffly and dismissively waved me off, pointing out that I was “a girl,” and thus couldn’t understand such masculine endeavors as winning over your future bride’s father with such a manly gift.
“You’re probably right,” I admitted. “It is hard for me to appreciate the sheer machismo involved in a man making a purse for another man.” Then he clarified (quite loudly) that it was a medicine bag, and I replied, “Oh, I wouldn’t know about such things. I’ve never even owned any coyote-face purses, because I can never figure out which shoes to wear them with.” Then Victor glared at me and told me I wouldn’t understand, and I agreed and blamed it all on my vagina, since it seemed like that was what we were both doing at the moment. Then Victor sighed defeatedly, kissed me on the forehead, and told me he was sorry in a rather unconvincing manner. I suspect he said it less because he realized he was being sexist, and more because I think he was just afraid to argue with my vagina. Which is a pretty smart move on his part, because my vagina is wily.