Father's Day on Holy Ghost Creek

FATHER’S DAY ON HOLY GHOST CREEK

by Carl J. Weaver

Copyright © 2018 Carl J. Weaver

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for Linda

…he came to a solitary broom tree and sat beneath it. He prayed for death: Enough, Lord! Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors. He lay down and fell asleep under the solitary broom tree, but suddenly a messenger touched him and said, Get up and eat! He looked and there at his head was a hearth cake and a jug of water. After he ate and drank, he lay down again.

1 Kings 19: 5-6

The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

John 3: 8

From the brightness of his presence coals were kindled to flame.

2 Samuel 22: 13

FATHER’S DAY ON HOLY GHOST CREEK

The screams startled Connie, waking him from his nap. His hands jerked up from where they’d been resting on his lawn chair, and his feet kicked out. Disoriented, he wondered why he wasn’t at home in his recliner or at the library reading room, and during this moment of confusion, something dropped, but he didn’t know what. One hand returned to the chair while the other went to his mouth to check for drool. His feet returned to earth. Looking around, muttering, What, what?, seeing pine trees and his pickup and the orange tent where the girls were screaming, feeling the chilly air, it came to him that he was in the campground, the one that he and Jane had been coming to for years. He stood up, steadying himself, unstable on the uneven ground and the slope of his campsite, but the screaming intensified as one or the other or both of the girls got a second wind.

Okay, okay, that’s enough, Connie said as he started toward them.

They stopped their wailing and turned toward his voice.

Connie paused at the border between the two campsites due to old school, campground etiquette which said that you just don’t go walking into someone’s campsite without an invitation as if the screams were not an invitation of sorts. The pause wasn’t even a second long, but it was long enough for Connie to look for the father because Connie was still foggy enough that he didn’t connect the screams and the father’s disappearance. And it was long enough for the older of the girls to give Connie a look which questioned his ability to come to her aid. She looked beyond him toward the rest of campground as if hoping for a better hero.

Connie heard his wife’s voice from behind him.

Connie, she said, barely above a whisper.

That was enough. Just, Connie.

A word, sure, but mostly it was the tone that Connie heard, a sound that you and I won’t ever understand, but something that Connie understood after forty-eight years of marriage. It meant, Connie, don’t stop there. Go.

Yeah, yeah, he said without turning to acknowledge her although he did lift a hand in a little wave as he continued down the little slope toward the tent.

What? he asked as he approached the girls, aware that his voice carried more irritation than concern.

Connie was approaching the tent from an angle, and he couldn’t see inside.

What?

The younger girl pointed into the tent and stepped aside. After one more step, Connie saw their father’s head. The sight caused him to stop short.

What? he asked again, looking at the girls as if this were some sort of joke, but he knew that it wasn’t.

He’s sleeping, Connie told himself, and he stepped back, his first move in beating a retreat to his chair, to his own campsite, to his nap. He had no business being here. But something compelled him to take a closer look. Probably, it was the awareness that Jane was watching and judging. Or maybe it was natural curiosity. Whatever it was, it brought him to a knee which pressed into the wet ground, wet from the rain of the night before, wet that soaked through his khakis which would normally have bothered him were it not for the sight that had caused the girls to scream: The man lay there in an orange glow, on his back, in his underwear, on top of his sleeping bag, with a fishing knife stuck in his chest.

Oh, shit! Connie said, and he stood up and backed away, a good five steps toward his own campsite.

He didn’t think he had cursed that loudly. In fact, he wasn’t aware that he had cursed at all, but it was enough to elicit a scold from his wife.

Connie! she yelled.

He ignored the scolding. If ever there were an acceptable time to swear, this was it, and he turned and was about to say as much, but she was moving toward the scene, looking at him, then looking at the tent, sure that this—this, this, whatever it was—was all his fault.

No, Jane. Don’t, he said, and he put himself in her way.

Don’t what?

Don’t look in there, he said.

She had gathered some momentum coming down the slope that was common to most of the campsites on this side of the road, and she easily moved him aside. He could have stopped her if he had really wanted to. He had had some strength in other days, and she wasn’t that much bigger than he was. If he had had time to think it through, he might have taken a stronger stand for her sake, but no, he let her push him aside.

She gave him a look as she passed as if to ask what would cause him to swear. She went to a knee just as he had, and she took her look.

And she gasped.

She rose, spun around and glared at him.

Or maybe it wasn’t a glare. Normally, he could read her expressions, but lately, things had been touchy between them, and he wasn’t as sure as he once had been. And then, too, her expression changed several times in a few seconds, and he couldn’t keep up. Her lips moved as she struggled to find something to say.

But other campers were arriving then, and Connie turned his attention to them. First to arrive were the scouts from across the road, and they crowded in, trying to see, but Connie stepped up to the tent and said, No! and he closed the outer tent flap and tied it quickly. He turned to the scouts and said, Back up!

But adult campers had come up behind the scouts, so they couldn’t back up as ordered.

Connie looked at the crowd. The old school portion of his brain registered the fact that some of them were in his campsite and some were here in the dead man’s camp and none of them had been invited in, but he let all that go because some of them were asking, What? or What happened? or What’s going on? and he had to deal with the questions before he dealt with his etiquette issues.

But first, Connie looked at the girls and then at Jane and then at the crowd and then at Jane again.

Could you take them? he asked.

Where?

He thought, What the—?

He said, I don’t know, Jane. Over there maybe. He pointed to their picnic table. It was hardly far enough, and he wondered why he’d bothered. The girls already knew. And when Jane didn’t move—and neither did the girls—Connie gave up on that and turned to the crowd and said, Their father’s in there. He’s dead.

Dead?

Yes.

"Dead dead?"

What?

Not sleeping?

The question struck Connie as stupid, and he was about to respond in kind. But before he spoke, he inhaled to ensure that he had enough air for what he intended to say, but the inhalation, like so many—so, so many—failed to inflate his lungs, and he tried again, audibly drawing in air through his nose, then again through his mouth, then again through his nose, panicking when he couldn’t get enough as if he were drowning, feeling the eyes of the crowd on him, noting that they did nothing to aid an old man struggling for breath. He resisted the urge to bend over and put his hands on his knees because how weak would that look? And then, on the fifth try, the panic subsided, he assessed his breathing and decided he would survive, but before he answered the question, he thought about the bout for a second or two.

It was no wonder that he’d had the bout what with the exertion of jumping out of his chair and rushing to the tent. And dropping to a knee and then jumping back up again. What was a wonder was that the bout had not happened earlier. Or, then again, maybe there was nothing to wonder about. His breathing troubles, something that he’d been coping with for a while now, since long before he had gotten an official diagnosis, were a new normal that he was learning to live with, but they were also something that he had not fully learned. They were unpredictable. Here in this campground, at 8,100 feet, any little activity like jumping from his chair could set off a bout. Or not. Preparing to answer a question could set off a bout, too.

He thought, too, about how he looked. Probably, he looked liked an old man struggling for air, but he hadn’t done a lot of gasping and he hadn’t gone to his knees, so, hopefully, he looked like a wise man, pausing to consider a sensible question. Which led him to think that the question was sensible. The guy hadn’t seen the body or the knife, and so it made sense to wonder if maybe the father was simply a deep sleeper.

Connie said, No. He’s definitely not sleeping.

You sure?

I’m sure.

Connie considered mentioning the knife, but even though the girls had already seen it, he didn’t want to talk about it while they were so close. And then, too, Connie thought that he shouldn’t be giving out many details. Maybe he’d seen too many cop shows, and maybe he thought that if he withheld something, it might help solve the crime, but when this particular thought flashed through his mind, he realized how ridiculous it sounded, and once one thing seemed ridiculous, others did, too. For instance, how had he become guardian of the orange tent? Who was he to be withholding information?

His confidence sagged, and he felt another bout coming on, so he took a moment and breathed as deeply as he could.

He’s got a knife in his chest, he said. "He’s dead dead."

Several of the guys went open-mouthed and turned to look at each other.

He instantly regretted the last comment, and he turned to look at the girls and then at Jane, and he wanted to ask her again to remove them from the scene or to ask her why she hadn’t done it in the first place, but he’d been losing a lot of arguments lately, so he didn’t say anything.

She had moved behind the girls, and when Connie looked at her, she put her hands on the girls’s shoulders as if to protect them although he didn’t know what she was protecting them from. She leaned down and whispered to them, and then she led them over to her picnic table.

While he was distracted, one of the scouts went inching up to the tent, reaching out to the flap.

Hey! Connie said. Suddenly, his guardian instincts took over, and he went to grab the kid’s arm, but the kid was quicker and snatched it away. He moved back to his spot in the crowd of scouts.

Stay outta there, Connie said, and he was aware that he’d raised his voice, and aware, too, that he was moving toward the kid, somehow inflated enough to take action.

The leader of the scouts yelled, Hey! and pushed his way through the bunch of boys until he stood in front of the boy. He puffed his chest out at Connie.

Take it easy, he said.

Connie looked the guy over—the puffy chest, the beer gut, the red face—up close, where comfort zones become uncomfortable with BO and hot breath and a guy looks bigger than he did the day before when he was across the road at his campsite.

When Connie was in his twenties, he’d been described as wiry, and he could have dropped this guy with a quick punch to the throat, size be damned. The cockiness of that decade had