My Father's Story

Perhaps my father's story is next. Perhaps it'll begin with a man sitting in his easy chair in his den, alone on a Sunday night, watching his Atlanta Braves in the early season when they still have a chance to take the pennant. And, perhaps, along the bottom of the TV screen come words about a tornado that's been spotted over Hartwell Lake near the Twin Bridges, not too far from where he lives.

The man frowns and clenches his teeth and tells the little dog that is sitting in his lap, "Get out of our way, right, Rambo? We can't see the pitch, can we?"

The pitch comes.

The tornado comes.

The tornado bypasses his house and, instead, hits about 50 yards away at a trailer where his three grandchildren live. The trailer they've continued to live in despite the man's daughter, their mother, having abandoned them for a man who puts up fences, the steel and chain-linked kind.

The trailer with the big holes in the floor.

The trailer in the man's backyard.

While the man continued to live in his brick house, all safe and secure in his brick house, up on a hill.

Then I might jump way back to an icy night on Portman Road in Anderson, S.C., in January of 1944, when my father, a boy then of 14, killed two people. The car he was driving, carrying his best friend, slid across the road and ran head on into another car, this one carrying a woman, whose name I do not know, on her way to earn 65 cents an hour on the third shift, weaving cotton at a textile mill on the outskirts of town. All died at the scene, except my father, who was transported to the hospital with two broken legs.

"Your Daddy was never the same boy after that night," my grandmother's told me.

There he was, three months prior, a world champion. He'd been in Chicago, showing his award-winning 4-H bull, and had won a first-place ribbon for Best of Show. I've seen a picture of him, sitting at a round table with other winners in a fancy hotel, his blond hair combed over with tonic, a light brown tweed suit on his chest. He's looking straight into the camera and flashing his dimples, almost as big as his ears, almost as big as the hope in his eyes.

Then I'd fill in what was in between, the important moments, like his meeting my mother, the woman he would marry, at Broadway Lake in May of 1949. I've seen pictures of them that summer with the choppy waters of the lake behind them, the two of them standing in the foreground with their tanned arms locked. My mother has on a bathing suit. She looked good in a bathing suit.

I'd tell about the children they spawned — my sister Donna and me.

And then I'd include my wedding day in August of 1974 when my father and I are linked arm in arm, my right in his left, at Sweet Canaan Baptist Church, where my great-great-great-grandfather planted the water oaks along the side just before the Civil War began. The organist begins "Here Comes the Bride," and we begin to move, my father walking me toward my future husband, who is standing with the preacher along the front of the church, positioned between the bride's aisle, which I will soon forsake for the groom's, as soon as we both recite our vows, which I have both written and helped him memorize, and we are pronounced husband and wife, and I put my left arm through his right, and we exit.

But my father on my wedding day is crying so hard, we only take two steps, and he stops and brings his hands up to his face, my right arm rising with him, and I feel on his upper arm where his muscles used to be when I was little and we would be down along his creek, and he is holding me, while he shoots snakes, water moccasins, as they slither down maple trees and bask on rocks in the sun, only for my father to laugh and then look at me to see if he has my attention, my complete attention, which he does. But on my wedding day, I feel his muscles no more, only his arm, clothed in lime green and white checks, the size of the plastic packages that will hold the condoms my husband later that night will use, while I recall my father's arm from earlier that day, the way his tears made it bounce.

Then I will go to college and get a job teaching, and one day in the early spring, my car won't start in the parking lot after school. And I will call my father, who lives about five minutes away, and learn that the man who works for him has just planted my father's tomatoes and corn and okra and green beans.

And I will ask my father to come get me, but he will tell me he is looking at his garden, at the dirt fresh plowed and full of promise, and that I should call my mother, who is at work in town, about 15 minutes away.

But I do not do that. I hang up the phone and start walking. I walk in heels, and I carry my four English textbooks and homework papers the four miles between Westside High School and my house. When I walk in the door, the phone is ringing, and it is my grandmother, and she is saying, "Why didn't you call your Mama, hon?" And I tell her, "Because I called my Daddy."

Years will pass. And then one day, my mother will die, and one of her friends comes through the receiving line at her funeral. My father is standing beside me and is crying. He tells her, "I didn't know she was that sick."

My mother had been sick, very sick, for five years, so sick that she no longer could work in town, but she could live in my father's house, that brick house, up on a hill. And each morning, he would come to her bedroom door and holler, "You up? I said you up yet?" And each morning, he would get louder and his voice harder. And she would think he is mean, and it would make her cry. She bears this until near the end, near the very end, when she calls me and says, "Honey, can you come home?" and I leave my home I built for myself, down along the coast, after I divorced my husband, and I drive the four hours up the state as if it will be the last thing I will ever do. When I get there, I ask her, "Why did you call me home?" and she tells me, "Because I needed someone to be sweet to me before I die."

And I am.

And she does.

And my father finds himself the next season, when his Atlanta Braves still have a chance to take the pennant, watching baseball with his dog, trying to see the pitch.

Yes, let's go back to the tornado.

My father, let's call him something that he always yearned to be, and that was rich, because, to him, that was success, so let's call him a rich name, let's call him Oliver. Let's say Oliver watches as the words along the bottom of the TV screen go away. He strokes his dog's back and smiles.

The pitch comes. The batter keeps his bat up in the air. He hits the ball.

A sound, loud like the boldest thunder, begins to fill the air and the world outside Oliver's house. Oliver turns up the volume on his TV remote.

The sound barges into the house.

He turns it up some more. The TV goes blank. The light beside his chair goes dark. His dog climbs up on his chest and tries to bury his face in Oliver's neck. It is raining hard outside the window. The sound is so loud and the world outside his house is so dark, he flees his chair with the dog and runs to the middle hallway. He lies in the floor, face down. The dog he shields. They are just outside his dead wife's door.

Let's say the tornado passes and the rain stops and the world soon is sunny and quiet again. And let's says the man learns his grandchildren, all three of them, were killed.

Then, let's say the deaths and the destruction at that trailer is so bad, a TV crew out of Greenville from the local NBC affiliate comes over and shoots video of the pieces like pencils that are left behind, the light brown teddy bear with the baby blue bib that says "Feed Me" that belonged to the youngest. It is still whole and laying on the exact spot where his high chair used to be, even though the leg a few months before had been shot out with a bullet his father had put in it when he shot through the trailer the night he'd caught the little boy's mother talking on the phone to the man who puts up fences, and then went outside and stood in the porch light and stuck a gun in his mouth and fired, only to have the bullet come out the side of his cheek and into the trailer.

Then let's say the reporter sees Oliver, standing on his porch at his brick house on the hill, and she comes running toward him, her videographer following closely behind. The man has his arms folded across his chest. His little dog is at his feet. The reporter asks him, "How do you feel about losing your three grandchildren?" and he begins to cry, and says, "I didn't know it was that bad," and soon his arms break free and his hands, his flat hands, cover his eyes.

And, finally, let's say the video and interview are so good that the local TV station sends it to the network and Tom Brokaw that night shows it to people everywhere, and everywhere people will say, "That is awful. I am glad it is not me."

Yes, this is where I begin.

Because this is where my father will begin.

Because one day soon after that, I will get sick, and he will do something he's never done before, not for me and not for another living soul. He will offer to help. The way it will happen is he will call me at home on the 1-800 line I'd installed for my mother, so he would not fuss at her for making long distance calls to me. And I will answer the phone that day, and when I hear it is him, I will have to sit down, because in the 44 years I will have been alive, he has never called me. And I will think something is wrong, something worse than my mother dying, but, then, what could be worse than that? So I stand again and listen, and he says to me, "You ever thought about going to see my doctor over in Greenville for your troubles? I could take you." And I will have to sit again, this time pulling my cat in closer to me, feeling her rub up against my leg and purr as if singing, and the song I will hear is "Here Comes the Bride." And when I can, I will tell my father, "Thank you," but my voice will not be strong, because what if he doesn't mean it?

But my father does mean it, and he does take me to Greenville, and he is sitting beside me and staying, and I ask him why he cried at my wedding, and he tells me, "I didn't want to lose you." And he will begin to cry again, and it will be his idea to tell me he hollered at my mother each morning, always from the doorway to her room, because he was afraid that she had died in the night and he'd go in one morning and find her dead. So he hollered loud, and he hollered mean. And not because he was losing her. But because it is his own salvation he is worried about, because he was thinking if she died, he could too. "And if I died," he says, "I'd go to hell."

And then I will put my arms around my father's shoulders, trembling and not strong. And to myself I will think I forgive you, and to my father I say, "I love you." And to myself I will begin to count one, two, citing his children's names. Donna and Sheila.

And then I will ask, "What were the names of the people in the car accident, Daddy?"

"What car accident?" he will say.

"The one when you broke your legs."

And he will tell me quickly, "George Keasler and. Mrs. Camellia Rhodes."

And I will count out loud, "One, two" and then say, "See, Daddy, you put two back, don't you see? Two — Donna and me."

And he will look at me with eyes of blue. And I will look back, mine also blue, and we both will begin to fill with water, not frozen and not choppy, as my father comes to know that the accident was that bad.

Because look at what's happened.

This is the gift of the story. The reason readers will read and listeners will listen.

Because it is now that the man can forgive himself. And once he does, he will be able to see his children as his chance to finally find glory. And he, at least and at last, can find some peace. And, then, maybe, just maybe, he'll be a champion again one day.

Yes, my father's story is next. This will be the loved version of his life.