My car contained guns, bundles of cash I’d found hidden about the house, and boxes of vintage pornography. If I got pulled over and searched, I’d probably go to jail. If I had a wreck, money and porn would litter the interstate, mixed with my funeral suit, my grandfather’s rifle, a shotgun, three hundred rounds of ammunition, the remnants of my father’s ashes, and whatever was left of me.
The last items to pack were Dad’s ax, the old maul, and a broadsword that wouldn’t fit in a box. Without plan or forethought, I carried them to the edge of the hill. Mom had cast the ashes in three distinct areas, now little more than gray streaks in the ground. A few tiny piles of sediment lay beneath blown leaves. I pushed the sword blade through the ash into the soft earth and pounded the hilt with the maul. I did the same with the ax. I placed the heavy maul on a pile of brush. I’d acted on impulse and now spoke without filter. “I know you were curious about the afterlife. Just in case there is one, I figure you’re here and know what I’m doing. The sword is for Andy. The ax is for John Cleve. The maul is for Turk Winter. I figure you’d appreciate this. Okay, Dad. See you.”
A flash of silver metal glittered on the ground. I picked it up and wiped it on my pants to clean the dirt. It was a stainless-steel disc used by the crematorium to identify the corpse and later placed with the ashes. Number 179. An odd number. Square-free. A safe prime.
Dad.
Chapter Eleven
MOM IS circumspect about details of her early years in Haldeman, stressing only that she was never unhappy: “That was where I was and I accepted it.” I can’t imagine it was easy—she’d grown up in a city of more than fifty thousand people, in a tightly knit community of working-class Irish, with many relatives. In Haldeman she lived on a dirt road in the woods with four young children and no friends or family nearby. Dad was gone every day and many nights, working as a salesman.
To a large extent, my mother was on her own in a foreign environment. I was Mom’s sole source of aid, her little helper. She depended on me, and soon my siblings did, as well. Mom was the shepherd and I was the loyal guard dog, protecting my ragtag flock of three. Mom often said she liked it best when I got sick instead of my siblings because I didn’t need her ministrations, preferring to go off alone like a dog and lick my wounds.
Naturally we all wanted my mother’s attention, but they received it more directly than I did. On me she bestowed a special appreciation for daily assistance and making her laugh. It was less a mother/son relationship and more like that of a senior and junior partner in a shared enterprise. There was a bliss to our closeness as we worked together to get through the day. Mom and I lived in fear of Dad, but each of us knew he loved us best. He remained in love with her throughout his life. I was his favorite child, the golden boy of the family. In his eyes, I was always firstborn son, prince to the king, a successor.
I spent very little private time with my father, which made those experiences intensely meaningful. When I was thirteen, he took me on a long drive in his car. He was extremely quiet, which was unusual. A few times he began speaking, then faltered and trailed away in a mumble. After an hour or so we returned home and he gave me a pamphlet on frog reproduction. In retrospect I understand that he had tasked himself with explaining the birds and bees to his son but was unable to follow through.
In 1971 he took me to the movie Billy Jack. He’d seen it the week before and believed its message of a lone man fighting social injustice would convey a valuable lesson. I was thrilled that he wanted to spend time with me. What I most recall is my father’s pre-movie commentary on behavior in a theater, which began with the choice of viewing position. Never sit down front, where you’d have to strain your neck looking up. Don’t sit in the back, because that was where people talked. The middle was no good, because most viewers sat there and you’d be hemmed in. The best seat was three quarters toward the rear, near the aisle, behind and to the side of a couple. No one would sit beside them and block your view. I listened attentively, and we entered the theater. We were the only people there.