Fathers

by David J. Daniel

  “Deer stalking.”

  I stood and stretched. The images of his previous life, so skilfully painted by my father, quickly dissolving. Becoming obscured in a red mist as I snapped again, “Deerstalking? You’ve got to be kidding?”

  “Why would I kid about something like that?” Asked Dad a little bemused at my anger.

  “I don’t know. Aren’t you a bit old for deerstalking?”

  “Too old? Never too old son. The way I do it you hardly get a sweat up. Anyway if we get anything you will be the one who has to carry it out,” he chuckled.

  “Aw great,” I said as I rolled my eyes. “Hey, it’s still raining. Will they come out in the rain?” Hoping the answer would be ‘No’.”

  “Listen... It’s eased off. The wind’s dropped. It’ll be fine in the morning, and they’ll be out alright. They would’ve been cooped up under cover just like us, you know. Keeping out of the storm. Now they’ll be keen to get out and have a feed. Mark my words we’ll see at least one tomorrow.”

  “Yeah great, can’t wait,” I said sarcastically. “But what about your story? When are you going to tell me the rest? You haven’t even got through your childhood yet let alone the rest of your life,” I added.

  “Yeah I’ll get there. The next rainy day perhaps. We’ll see.”

  I sat back down. “Aw c’mon dad you can’t keep me hanging. I’ve really enjoyed listening to you. I mean I never realised you had such an interesting upbringing. It’s certainly different from what I went through. My childhood was very tame compared to yours, bloody boring in fact.”

  “That’s just the way it was back then, it was strange times. I’ll get back to the story when I can. I need to think a few things over in my mind first. Sort a few things out.” He paused sat back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling.

  I watched him. Head resting on my hand. Waiting for him to continue. After a couple of minutes he said, “I don’t know if I should tell you everything Keith. There are some things that are maybe better left unsaid. Could be better if they stayed buried... I don’t know, I really don’t.” He looked me in the eye and said, “Yeah, I definitely have to think about this for a bit before I make a decision on what I tell you and what I don’t.”

  “Aw c’mon dad it can’t be that bad can it?”

  He didn’t say anything for a while then he suddenly stood up. “Nah, probably not. I’m just tired is all. I’ll get back to it some other time...Right! Enough of this, let’s get to bed. If we leave it any later we may as well stay up till morning!” And he trundled off to his room.

  I sat there thinking about what he had just said and came to the conclusion that he was not going to finish his story! That all of a sudden, it had got too hard, too difficult to remember the past. Something happened back there that he wanted to remain secret. Something that scared a young boy. That is possibly still scaring an old man. He was carrying a burden. The burden of guilt or shame or worse. And I knew then, that I would have to draw that story out of him, extract it from him, even if it causes pain. Like when a dentist pulls a rotten tooth; it will hurt like hell but the end result is definitely worth it. Beneficial in fact. Because as someone once said a long time ago ‘A problem shared is a problem halved’.

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  The light flicked on in my bedroom. I struggled to open my eyes in the sudden brightness and had to squint to see my father leaving the room. “Time to get up,” he called as he disappeared from view. I heard him go to the bathroom, then the water running and splashing and all the other bathroom noises. I reached over and grabbed my watch off the bedside table and glanced at the time. “Shit. It’s only four o’clock!” I grumbled to myself and wondered if my father had gone mad. I turned over, pulled the covers over my head and tried to get back to sleep. A short time later the covers were whipped off my bed leaving me exposed and curled up on the mattress in a foetal position, and with only a pair of underwear left to serve as my bedclothes. “What the fuck. You’ll give a man a heart attack!” I cried.

  “Now, now. That’s enough of the foul language young Keith. I’ve told you a thousand bloody times don’t swear and don’t exaggerate,” he chuckled.

  “Everyone’s a comedian aren’t they? Jeeze what are you doing to me? It’s bloody four in the morning!”

  “Just about quarter past four now so get a move on or we’ll never get to shoot a deer. Chop, chop.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I whined.

  And I swung my legs out over the bed and sat up. He left, chuckling away to himself as he made his way to the kitchen. I yawned and stretched and after getting dressed and using the bathroom I made my way to the kitchen and gratefully accepted a cup of tea that was handed to me.

  “Right get that down ya. There’s a couple of bits of bread in the toaster, so shove that down your gullet and well be on our way,” he said as he downed his brew and made his way to the sink to rinse his plate and cup.

  “Bloody hell Dad I’ve only had about four hours sleep. I feel like crap.”

  “You and me both son. But we can’t pick and choose when we want to do things like hunting or fishing. We have to go when nature lets us go, if you want to be successful that is. With fishing it’s the tides and the weather and with hunting it’s also the weather, but also the seasons and the times of day. If you want shoot a deer you need to get up early, get ‘em at first light or wait till dusk and try then.”

  I yawned. “Dusk sounds good. I’ll wait till then.”

  “Ah, but only a fool turns down a great opportunity that is presented today, in the hope that a greater opportunity may be presented tomorrow.” Then he winked at me.

  I scowled at him and somewhat dismissively said, “Whatever.” I might as well have said ‘shove it where the sun don’t shine’ or ‘go tell it to someone who cares’ because that’s how it sounded and maybe, just maybe, that’s what I meant. Well, understandably, Dad got a little angry and pointed his finger and said, “Remind me what you said when you first arrived. What was that big speech you made all about? The one about ‘getting to know me better’ and all that other stuff. Gee I actually thought you were genuine when you said that.”

  “I was, it’s just that...”

  “Just nothing.” He interrupted. “Look this is what I do and this is what I am. I like to go hunting. Now I really don’t give a flying rats arse whether you want to come or not but don’t spin me a story about how you need to ‘find out who I am’ or talking a pile of bullshit like ‘I feel I don’t know you’ . This is who I am. This is what makes me tick. This is what I live for now. Not all that crap from the past. That’s all dead and buried and done with. I live my life day by day, not in the past worrying about all the fuck ups I’ve made and feeling sorry for myself. And, if you’ll take my advice, and I bloody well hope you do, then I suggest you might wanna do the same.”

  And with that he stormed down the hall slamming the door behind him.

  I sat there for a short time nibbling on my toast and sucking on my tea as I turned it all over in my mind. I shook my head, got up and took my plates to the sink and rinsed them out. I turned as I heard the back door open and close, and I quickly followed my father outside. “Wait,” I called. He stopped and turned. The dawn was still some time away although a dim glow in the east could be seen. The porch light was on and moths danced around the globe, occasionally crashing into their object of fascination and then they fell, dazed at my feet. Dad was standing in the shadows, and in the gloom I could only make out a silhouette of him and the shape of a rifle held by his side. Flashes of white flitted around his legs as Scrappy ran around and around him in his excitement. I spoke. “I’m sorry. I do want to come. Give us a chance and I’ll get some gear on.”

  He said, “Go on then. Make it snappy though, I wanna get there before it’s properly light.” And he turned and merged into the dark.

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  Bloody hell! I was holding on as tight as I could as we bucked and jolted and skidded and raced our way up a treacherous farm track. I was on the back of the old man’s quad bike, Dad was driving and Scrappy was in front of him, the navigator Dad called him. I was sitting half on the seat and half on the carrier. A back pack was hanging over the handlebars in the front and I carried the rifle slung over my back. The barrel kept whacking me in the back of the head every time we hit a rut or went over a bump on this primitive road and the metal bits on the rifle were digging into my spine. The track was slippery as an eel, and steep, and Dad had to gun the motor to keep the bike moving as fast as he could otherwise we’d lose traction on the clay surface. The journey started off all right as the lower tracks were all sandy and relatively easy going. I was actually enjoying the ride at first as we raced through the early morning darkness with only the dim headlamp of the bike lighting our way. The ride ignited my senses as we hurtled through the night. The roar of the motor, the smells constantly changing as I breathed in the tang of the ocean and then the damp loamy soils of the lower flat lands. The musty smells of cows and sheep and the stench of their dung. The wet grass. And then as we travelled up higher and higher and further from the coast, we went through partially broken in land and I experienced the earthy smells of rich soil and decomposing logs and the fungi that miraculously appear overnight after it rains. The stands of bush and scrub manuka and native flowers were exuding their own individual and collective perfumes enhanced by the recent wet. And I could taste it all. I could taste the mushrooms and the dirt, and the liquorice and aniseed flavours from the wild fennel, which grew across the track in places, as we went smashing straight through it! Tall stalks whipping at our faces and bodies as we ducked and batted it away. I saw the stars; the Milky Way, the Southern Cross and Orion or the ‘pot’ as we called it as kids. And shining brightly and standing out larger than the other planets and stars, Venus, the morning star. The moon was a slither, a perfectly cut clipping from a fingernail. I saw a couple of rabbits and a hare hop and scamper out of way as we barrelled along, and a possum close enough to touch, sitting on a branch of a tree that overhung the track in one place. I felt the changes in temperature as we went through pockets of warmth and coldness, of dampness and mist and then through clear, crisp, air, so fresh and clean and cold that it was intoxicating, that it made me gasp, chilled my soul, filled me with life. And then, almost as if I had had too much joy, as if I had indulged too much in the finer things of life, I now had to suffer and endure the distasteful dishes. I now had to be punished. So I had moths and bugs hit my face and arms and legs. I even swallowed a couple of insects, gagged on them, but managed to spit them out in disgust. Others went straight down the gullet and didn’t come back out, and I hoped at the time that I didn’t have an allergy to moth or beetle or whatever it was that I’d ingested. I soon closed my mouth but like an idiot I held out my hand to bat the overhanging leaves and branches that intruded onto the track. That was until I clipped some bush lawyer, its thorny vine ripping my palm. I rapidly pulled my hand back and shook it to try and ease the pain but it did no good. So I gripped the carrier again, feeling very foolish and felt the thorns that had broken off and penetrated my skin digging further into my flesh. The blood oozed from my wound and made gripping the carrier quite slippery and very difficult. And now we were heading up higher and higher on this violently bone jarring, arse bruising, teeth shattering, joint dislocating, nose bleeding, shit of a track and I was holding on for dear life. I didn’t notice the pain in my hand anymore as I had pain everywhere else, and far worse. I felt like screaming, telling him to stop. I give up. I’ve had enough. Take me home. Back to the city. I’m sorry for wanting to experience your life. It was a brain explosion. I’ve upset the apple cart. I’ve disturbed the Yin and the Yang. Messed with the Chi. I don’t belong here. This is crazy. I’m a city boy. That’s where I belong. Not out here in the middle of the night torturing myself so that I can partake in the slaughter of some poor defenceless animal. I buy my meat from the supermarket. I don’t need to kill. Don’t want to kill. I’m civilised! I pay someone to do the killing for me. That’s what civilised people do! And then, to make matters worse the bike slipped around a corner and slammed into the bank. I screamed like a girl and the old man glanced over his shoulder, just for an instant, and I could see him shake his head. And I was embarrassed. Embarrassed that I did that, embarrassed that the old man heard me. But I held on tight and gritted my teeth and still we kept going. Careering, out of control, forever upwards on this, this goat track! And then I thought: Come on, enough of this. HARDEN UP YOU PUSSY! I’m a man aren’t I? This is what men do, don’t they? They do outdoorsy things. Outdoorsy? They do OUTDOOR things. They hunt. They kill. They bond with other men. They bond with their Dads. They learn from them. Look up to them. Respect them. Want to be like them. Some even become them. And as I looked at the back of his grey head I thought: You’re in your seventies. I’m in my forties. And I’m complaining because I’m uncomfortable? You’re still living life to the full - grabbing it by the horns and running with it - and I’m acting like the senior citizen. I’m fit and healthy and relatively young. I’ve got years and years left in me. And I’m going to give up because something’s a little bit tough? Because it hurts? Because it’s painful? I came here to experience life, to see how the other half live. For God’s sake I need to grow up, be a man and embrace it. Learn from it. Get excited by it and enjoy it! And enjoy my father’s company and share in his life. And as the quad bike skidded to a halt and Dad switched off the engine I thought: And that’s what I intend to do. Starting right now. Here, today!

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  It was getting lighter and where we had stopped was next to a clay bank about a couple of metres high. This had been created by a bulldozer cutting the track into the side of the ridge many years ago. Above us and in the centre of the ridge was a rickety old post and batten fence that ran long ways along the top. This split the ridge down the middle creating a left side and a right side. On the left side the grass went for about a hundred metres before it gave way to bracken, which gave way to scrub, which gave way to trees, which formed a seemingly impenetrable stand of native bush which carried on as far as the eye could see. On the right side where we had parked, we looked down on a basin of mainly grass and scrub with the odd clump of manuka bush, regenerating native, and thickets of blackberry and gorse scattered here and there. Effectively we were on a ridge between two valleys, one thickly bush covered, the other abandoned farmland reverting back to bush. According to my father both could be productive land when it came to stalking a deer or disturbing a pig. We left the quad bike by the bank as we made our way on foot up the bulldozed track. He carried the rifle now, and a pair of binoculars. I had the backpack which Dad said contained some gear for surviving in the bush and other things like food and water. Oh, and I had my cell phone which I still couldn’t find any coverage for and for the life of me didn’t know why I still carried it on me. Scrappy carried himself, and a couple of fleas no doubt, and ran back and forth along the track and up and down the sides of the hill, his nose to the ground, sucking up the scents, reading and deciphering the hidden messages left there as clearly as we understood written words. The track gave us an elevated view into the grassland side, the right side, but no view of the left side. I asked Dad why we didn’t walk right up the centre of the ridge so we could see on both sides, but he said: ‘We would stand out like dogs balls if we did that’. Our profiles would have been highlighted beautifully on the skyline for all to see if we had done as I had suggested. The bulldozed track eventually petered out and we ended up sidling along the ridge and following an old animal trail. Although we were heading up it was a gentle incline and fairly easy going with a slight breeze in our face. I was really enjoying this walk in the hills as I breathed the fresh clean air and marvelled at the beautiful views.
I stopped, and looked back and could see the shape of the land as it swept in and out along the coast, the bays and inlets forever changing shape with the ebb and flow of the tides. The streams and rivers lay like silver ribbons on a green and brown chequered cloth. The ocean was lava, molten orange magma, as the sun emerging from the sea ignited its surface and then broke free to light the land and sky, banishing the darkness to the other side of the world. I sighed with a feeling of contentment as I dined on this panoramic feast, the aches and pains suffered on the ride up here were long forgotten. I turned, once again happy with my lot, and then my euphoria quickly evaporated as I realised my father had left me behind and was about a hundred metres ahead. I jogged until I caught up; panting a little as we came to a small stand of manuka that Dad indicated we should stop and sit in. He lifted the binoculars that were hung around his neck and scanned the area. Fingers of sunlight lit up the previous dark hollows and nooks and crannies of the land and Dad probed the area silently and thoroughly with his magnified vision, while I concentrated on getting thorns out of the palm of my hand. After a while he said very quietly, “There’s one there.”

  “Eh?” I answered not looking up still picking at my hand.

  “A deer. Here you have a look,” he said as he passed the binoculars to me.

  “Where am I looking?”

  He pointed. “You see that gorse over there, about two hundred metres away. There are three bushes in a straight line and they run up to a bit of manuka scrub...”

  “Yep, got that.”

  “Well, just on the other side of that is a deer, laying down chewing its cud.”

  I searched the area he pointed out to me, but blowed if I could see anything that remotely looked like a deer.