by Caldon Mull
“Fuck! I love this place.” Bobby sighed, looked up at the first stars and closed his eyes. His face relaxed completely, all the lines smoothing out of his skin. “All my sons will have this place after I’m gone, and the world will be right with the Hoskins.”
“All your sons?” Mark looked up.
“Yeah… well I’m not gonna have Caith grow up alone. We gonna try again as soon as we ready.”
“Well, Lizzie and I not planning for that soon.” Mark grinned “I know she wants a girl first.”
“She put in an order?” I gasped at Mark, playfully. “One baby girl, blue eyes, blond hair…” “Nooooo…. Not like that.” Mark laughed.
“I was about to say how’d you get your little soldiers to follow those orders… Me, I’m just catch and release.” I sniggered, still light headed from my last round of laughing. I felt good. My cheeks ached and my sides were smarting, but it had been a long time since I had laughed so hard.
“You a damn good Dad to Fabby, y’know that?” Bobby pointed at me.
“What?” I looked at him, surprised “You kiddin’ right? I don’t know what I’m doing half the time.”
“I heard that Fabby is really happy.” Shane nodded at Bobby “An’ Mano calls to tell me how he’s doin’ as well as Parsons. They say that too, Big Guy… you a real good dad.”
“How?” I spluttered “I don’t see it. Half the time I’m scared I’m fuckin’ up, the other half I know I’m fuckin’ up.”
“Bullcrap!” Bobby sniffed “You always listen to him. You show him how to do stuff, an’ you real affectionate with him. Whatever you do, you think about him first… you teachin’ him how to be a good kid.”
“Uhhh… I guess.” I shrugged, slightly embarrassed.
“Yeah, well you also firm with him and you ain’t no pushover. When the girls spoil him, you cut through all that crap with that “No!” tone you use.”
“You use ‘a tone of voice’?” Shane snickered “You actually use ‘a tone of voice’?”
“I… do?” I whimpered “I don’t, do I?”
“Yip.” Mark grinned “You do, I work for you, ‘member? You used it on me, too.”
“Uh-huh, you do.” Bobby smirked “I heard it lots.”
“Yeah, come to think on it, you do.” Shane nodded at the others.
“So, you a good daddy.” Bobby patted my cheek affectionally. “Jes’ live with it.”
“Oh, guess I gotta.” I sighed.
“So you gonna woo the vet lady?” Shane belted his beer, belched hugely and reached for another in the icebucket.
“Ahhh… reckon so.” I shrugged, reached for another beer, blushing furiously. “Tell me more?” Bobby leaned forward, grinning “Andy’s got a skirt?”
“Not just any skirt, the Kids cousin!” Shane beamed beautifcally “Niiiiiiice looking, too.”
“Well, Dean’s really handsome.” Mark grinned “I c’n imagine what she’d look like.”
“Meat, my man…” Shane leaned back “You have no idea.”
“What’s her name?” Bobby sluiced another two fingers of bourbon into his glass and made himself comfortable again.
“He really likes her, he had a boner all the time he was talking to her and the ol’ guy.” Shane grinned.
“Black Bear gave you a boner… you sicko, you.” Bobby chuckled as I rose to the bait.
“Nooooo…!!! Not Black Bear give me a boner, Moon Shadow gave me a boner and I didn’t realize I had it, so I walked around with it, and… Hoskins, you stinker!”
“Moon Shadow’s a pretty name.” Mark chortled, slapped his thigh in appreciation.
“So, what’d you do? Fess up…” Bobby grinned in the gloom, white teeth flashing.
We talked about Moon Shadow and my meeting long into the night, and relationships in general and of our relationships. It was about ten when Mark excused himself and the three of us turned in as well, together. That morning I took the Jeep and drove up to the Reservation to begin my official courtship of Moon Shadow.
I don’t want to talk too much about the detail in the next part, because… I would feel wrong about it. I don’t mind exposing my body, I don’t mind exposing my heart on these pages. I don’t feel right about exposing any more of my soul… Over the next months I found in Moon Shadow the other pieces of me, those pieces of her that were also those missing parts of my self.
We shared a soul, and to me that meant that my soul had become complete while I was with her. So… it’s not really only my soul I would expose further, it would be hers as well… so I won’t. That discussion is not about me, not about my healing as was intended with this journal in the first place. That discussion would be about us, and with all due respect to my brothers, that is none of their concern.
I realize how it sounds, but in her I found the thing I had been seeking, and for all of what I have been writing towards for so long, all of the numbness, all of the careful steering I have been forcing myself towards getting well, had finally been found. Over the next few months while courting her, I discovered in her what would cause the final explosion of who I had been into… me.
I feel like I’m babbling. I stand by everything I have done, and everything I have said and pretty much everything I have written to myself and to whoever would be reading this, were I ever to send this out. I think there will be a time when I would need to distribute this manuscript to somebody else… In a way this would remind me of who I am, as well as who I was and what it took within me to get there.
I guess, it would also serve to bond those who have been with me all along, to remind us of why we are us, and to refresh us as to why we are all together. I still feel like I am babbling, but the one thing I now know about feelings is that sometimes you can’t explain them too much with words. The stronger they are, the less likely they are to be explained in words. My journal has been serving me along to remind me what I was feeling, what I felt or what happened to me to feel what I was feeling months later.
When I was next home in Redmond, I opened my Fathers Leather-bound journal and started to read what he had written in it, as I had promised myself some time past. I read of his life, of his thoughts, of his inventions in many, many pages written in his careful, neat cursive style.
I read of his travels and I read of his comments after seeing my mother for the first time, and of his frustration in trying to impress her, and his initial impressions of Parsons (which I really had to re-read, because the fiery, foul-mouthed person depicted in these accounts simply didn’t correlate with my dear Uncle… but no matter, people do change.) and on and on. I realized that my father was an extremely reserved person, but that it didn’t mean that he didn’t feel strongly about things.
My personal impressions, my memories of him were the man sitting at his lathe, whittling little wooden cars for me and painting them carefully while I watched his strong hands make something special for me out of a small, ordinary block of wood. The contentment that came through in these small actions with me, I had always taken for silence… not the reserve I came to see in his writings. I had been wrong in all of my impressions of this man, all of my life.
It struck me then that we, as people, do the same with our own lives, starting out with a small ordinary block of wood, and then spend years carving and painting it until our lives become something that brings joy to someone else.
All through my childhood, the love I had felt for him, tinged with the fear that I was not quite what he had wanted, was a big issue in my life. Now, reading what he had thought of me forced me to look at myself through his magnifying glass. He had thought I was perfect. None of the self-doubt I had ever felt about myself was present anywhere in his journal. He had provided me with hundreds of entries of affirmation and support, none of which he had ever told me in so many words.
I cried while I read his words, and cried and cried. All the things I had wished he had said to me, were in here, plain as day. All the little actions and small glimpses of his pride
in me shone through here, in his private thoughts. I resolved one night, sobbing to myself near the end of his entries that I would not be like him with Fabby. I don’t mean this in a bad way. The years of my life I had lost with him, that I had now found with him in his journal, were painful after so long with all my other assumptions of who he actually was.
I don’t think he ever meant to live forever, but he was always waiting for the perfect moment to tell me all the things that I really needed to know from him, all that he really felt… and then it was too late. There will never be a ‘perfect moment’ for anything as I have found, only the best possible thing you can do, at the time you must do something.
I suppose that’s why I have my ‘perfect days’; a collection of moments that, while not ‘perfect’ in themselves, make the overall picture as good as it will ever get for me. I guess I’m splitting hairs, but it had taken me years to get around to this realization, my head so full of shit and my heart locked in deep freeze.
The irony of my troubles was that all I had to do was to be brave enough to open my father’s journal and discover within it all the shining points of light that I had needed to see, in order start to be whole.
I don’t resent the fact that I had found my own way to this point, and seeing it now spread before me makes the years I had spent broken and fixing myself on my own, all worthwhile. What I had gained from doing it my way, were the people who shared in my life.
Scar tissue is stronger than normal skin, and scars do help you survive the next wound.
I don’t know when my own life will end, and I don’t want to be bothered about it at all. What I could do that was different from my Father is to show my loved ones how much they mean to me at any moment, and as completely as I can.
I read to the end of my father’s journal. It ended the week before we left for Libya. His last entry was clear that he was not going to make any further entries. He had reached the place he could tell me all the things he wanted to tell me, he was going to show me all the things he had done. Although I know how that turned out, it was evident to me only now, that when he had … died he was at peace with the world, and with me. He did not die with unfinished business, he died knowing that I would live to be the man he had seen to and nurtured me to be, no matter what happened.
I saw all his hope in the future, all of his pride in his past and his life encapsulated in his last entry, and it spurred me to action.
He wrote: ‘You cannot know what is to come in the future, you cannot plan for it. All you can do is to make sure you are ready for each day as it comes, and are sure that your last day past, saw your best efforts.’ Like in Football, you play each game with all you have and hope there will be another one, where you have yet another chance to do your best… until the next game. The trick is to keep playing, while the trick in life, is to keep living.
Within the week I had taken Fabby back to the Wildlife Centre and introduced him to Moon Shadow. After seeing how they got along for a week together, I proposed to Moon Shadow and she accepted.
There is nothing more for me to put in here now. My life begins at this point, at the point when my journal ends. It has served its purpose, and I am well. Where we go from here is an adventure I will face one day at a time, sparing no effort. This journal is a promise to me by myself to know myself fully each day, and live and feel as if each day may be my last, until… in truth it is.
I have nothing more to say. My writing here, is done. Andronicus Caifus Finch
September 1997.
Epilogue - December, 2007
The sun shone brightly, clear and cold. A small breeze whipped up a flurry of dead, brown leaves that swirled past the ankles of the small group of people gathered in the garden. Light sparkled off ripples in the Lake stretching off into the distance, and the sounds of waterfowl echoed off the far hills.
A small man stood addressing the gathering, his once red hair now a silvered monks-cowl. “It is p-perhaps the worst thing I have ever been asked to do, but what can I say about Andronicus Caifus Finch that would make me miss him less. This Memorial Service in this p- place, the one he loved the most in this world, would never give justice to this man and his works. I had been a p-personal friend of his for many years and can say, even now, that he was the most difficult man I have ever known.
“Should I talk of his bravery, or his athleticism? Should I talk of his genius, or of his vision? Should I p-perhaps talk of his generosity and his p-patience? All of you know something about this man, as complex and as p-protean as he was, to all of us he was, in his own words ‘…just call me Andy…’. It was not difficult to like him, and for my own p-part to admire and esteem this giant of a man.
“Andy was worthy of such an unusual and convoluted name as he was given, and although he hated it with a p-passion, he really did deserve his name, it gave anyone who knew him by that name clarity on his p-personality.”
The small group chuckled quietly, lost in their own memories as Doctor Mason took a sip of water and continued “My memory of this p-person is nothing grandiose as all of the qualities I have listed. It is of something very p-private, and will serve to illustrate my p-point. As you all know, he was instrumental in saving many lives during the last great storm, a P-paul Reverve- like action with himself and some of his friends, many who are here now. You are also aware of how he saved his life-long friend by rescuing him from this very p-place… when it was still a farm, and not the Lake it became that night. You are also aware of the injury he took, very nearly costing him his own life. All of these qualities show Andy at his best, a super-hero with a keen regard for others and a p-purpose to help those who needed it.
“But… this is not my memory of the legend, of the man. Just before that night began, I had Elizabeth-Ann Summers in labour in my hospital and I knew that he had that generator and the p-power supply in that marvellous bunker of his, in his House. Thanks to him, and to all he did that evening, two more lives were saved even before he got to work rescuing the rest of the town. This is very much in line of what you will remember for a long time of Andy, the Legend. My p- private memory of this man… is his reaction to the sight of other p-peoples blood…”
A tall, stocky man in an Armani suit burst out laughing suddenly, his laughter infectious… soon everyone was grinning or laughing with. “I ‘member that one, Doc…”
Doctor Mason smiled and let the laughter run its course before continuing “… That’s right. He could be cut, bruised, have an eighty-stitch head wound, he could have a nose-bleed… and as long as it was his own blood, there was no p-problem. But as soon as there was a spot of someone else’s blood, he would faint dead away. I’m not sure if you know how much blood there is during a normal p-pregnancy and birth… can you imagine the difference in a breached birth?” The chuckles continued, the sombre mood of the meeting suddenly far lighter.
“Let me also say something about Andy’s dress sense…” The guffaws started from where the chuckles left off “…because he had none. The only time he ever got his clothes co-ordinated was when that was all he had in his wardrobe. Black T-shirts, denim jeans, sneakers… no p- problem. As long as that was all, that was in his wardrobe. If it was cycling gear or swimwear, then that was never a p-problem because those types of clothes suited the function he used them for.”
By now, some of Doctor Masons’ audience were well into belly-laughs, he continued relentlessly, a reminiscent smile tinging his freckled face “I remember a Thanksgiving in my house when he arrived in all of those, looking fashionably casual when my daughter p- pointed out that he had one white sock and one orange sock on.
“He looked down and said in that surprised tone of voice he had “Oh! I’ve got a pair just like that at home, too.” My daughter also mentioned years later, that the first time he started to look acceptible for occasions was when Moon Shadow started buying his clothes for him and laying them out in the morning. Naturally, Andy simply never noticed any need for clothes to be clothes, oth
er than to cover his nakedness and provide warmth.
“The p-point of my recollection is that Andy was a big man with a big heart… and by no means p- perfect. If he was p-perfect, there would be nothing to love… only admire and aspire to be such as he was. That night in the bunker, p-prior to the big storm, he helped as far as he could p-possibly help and then fainted dead away. He did everything he could… as much as any man could ever do, and at the end of the day, he was only human… he was as p-perfect as he could be. He was, in all senses of the word, a beautiful man.
“Three weeks ago, on the night of the Saturday the twelvth day of November, 2007 at quarter p-past ten in the evening, my good friend died in a car crash on the Interstate 405 on his way home. The other driver had fallen asleep behind the wheel and was killed instantly in the impact. The p-passenger in Andy’s car walked away with no serious injury, because Andy had swerved to take the full brunt of the collision on his side of his car. This would be typical of Andy, and very much in line with what we know of him.
“He was buried at his family p-plot last week, he was thirty-eight years old and gone in his p-prime. We are here to commemorate this Memorial Garden in Storyville to the heroes of this Town and to this man in p-particular. He had already begun this work to commemorate Kyle Summers the P-parks Ranger who died saving a family from a wildfire in San Deigo, and to Bear P-paw who had died saving two p-pensioners from muggers in Los Angeles. He had thought to p- personalize these hero’s in bronze sculpture, and would p-probably not have thought that his p-portrait would be p-part of this opening ceremony.
“Some of the discussions I had with him while we were talking about this, were for the merits of just a portrait bust, or a full-sized statue. Then we argued about how to clothe the statues, if they were going to be life-sized. In the end, you will see them all life-sized and in the uniforms they will best be remembered. You will also notice we modelled the bust from when Andy still had his now-famous hair. As most of you know, he never did grow it back, but even now folks in these p-parts refer to him as the ‘hippy wide receiver’.