by Sloan Parker
“Talk to us,” he whispered against my ear.
I drew in a deep breath and let the words tumble out. “I’ve been to Majestic Falls State Park before today. When I was a kid. My dad took me there.”
Richard’s entire body stiffened. Luke’s eyes widened.
Before either could say anything, I added, “We only went camping there the one time. It was before he…” I flipped a hand through the air. I didn’t need to say the rest. They knew what he’d done to me when I was a teenager, how he liked to smack me around whenever he was drunk. They didn’t know the specifics, but enough to get the gist of how much he’d hurt me, both physically and emotionally. “Going there just brought up a lot of memories, mostly the good stuff with him. I guess thinking about that part of our relationship always makes it…” I wasn’t sure what words I wanted to use.
“Hurt more.” Luke said.
“Yeah. That trip to the park was when I first realized something about him, and I can’t seem to let it go. I keep thinking that maybe I should’ve talked to my mom about it back then, that I made a big mistake keeping it to myself. Maybe I could’ve saved myself a lot of pain if I’d just talked to her.”
I could feel the unease building in Richard’s body, but his voice was soft when he spoke. “You want to tell us about what happened with your dad in the park?”
“I don’t know if I can. I never talk about him. I never let myself think about him. Or that trip. He was different after that week. The way he was with me in that park when I…” I shook my head, not sure I could say more. “He was never like that again.” Which explained the recent dreams. Consciously repressing a memory didn’t always keep it buried. It could do the exact opposite.
Richard lovingly laid a hand over my heart. “Might do you good to talk about it.”
Luke nodded.
When I said nothing for a moment, Richard added, “We’re right here with you.”
“Okay.” I started the story where the dream always began.
* * * * *
The ground under my feet felt wrong. Harsh. Uneven. Like I was about to slip and fall on my ass at any moment.
Which was a stupid thought. I wasn’t usually the clumsy type. We’d been hiking the roughest trails of the park for two days now, and I hadn’t fallen once.
I’d probably just jinxed myself.
Everything about the moment felt wrong, epically wrong, and I had no idea why. Maybe it was one of those things thirteen-year-old kids couldn’t understand.
It had been hours since we’d left the rented boat at the dock and started the trek through the dense forest. I couldn’t stand the silence anymore. The longer it went on, the more time seemed to drag on and on.
I just had to say something.
“Dad?”
He didn’t say a word in return. He’d never been big on talking, the total opposite of me. But this quiet hiking all day was pushing it, even for him.
If he was mad, it was my fault. Why couldn’t I have been excited about the stupid fish I’d caught? Why’d I have to stare at the tiny thing in my lap, watching its wide eyes as it gulped in air instead of the water it desperately needed to survive?
I thought he’d been okay about my reaction. Despite our plan to cook any fish we caught, he just said, “It’s okay, Matty. Throw it back in.”
So I did, relief washing over me as the fish swam to safety with sharp swishes of its tail.
I always liked how I didn’t have to explain stuff to my dad. He just got me.
After I’d thrown the fish overboard, I looked up at him, and he simply smiled. He hadn’t done that the entire trip. I thought he’d been proud of me for caring about the fish, or something along those lines.
So why the rushed hiking like he had to get away from something? Or someone? Maybe me. And why the silence?
I sucked in a deep breath and continued trudging along the trail, my complete focus on his back as I tried to keep up with him and not lose the backpack that kept sliding down my arms every five minutes.
Another twenty steps, and the need to speak again was overwhelming.
“Dad?”
He sighed and said, “Yeah.” He didn’t stop, though, just kept on pushing forward like we were running late for something. Which didn’t make sense. We were in the middle of nowhere. What could we be late for?
I hopped over a rock in the path. “Where are we going?”
“To find someplace to camp for the night.”
“Do you know somewhere special?” He said he’d never been to this state park before, and we’d already passed several designated camping areas, so I was more than a little confused.
“No.” He rounded a substantial oak tree and started up an incline, following a narrow dirt path that led away from the top edge of the gorge we’d been hiking along. “Just looking for what feels right.”
I trudged around the tree after him and began climbing the hill, both hands holding my backpack in place on my shoulders, my focus on my feet so I wouldn’t slip and complicate the journey for him. The ground, still damp from the rain that morning, made the tennis shoes I wore not the best idea.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He sucked in another ragged breath, then finally halted. He turned around, towering over me, not only due to his height advantage, but also because of the incline. “I just needed to do some thinking before we stopped for the night.” He spun on his heels and started trekking up the hill again, this time going at an even faster pace, his strides more agitated.
I hurried to catch up, which made talking more difficult, but I couldn’t stand not knowing. “Is the walking helping? With your thinking?”
At my words, he came to a sudden stop and whirled to face me once more. There was a shocked look on his face as if what I’d said had somehow snapped him out of the intense focus he’d had for the past several hours. For a long moment, I gaped up at him, trying to remember what the heck I’d said. Then he started laughing. I didn’t get what he found so funny.
I kept staring at him, hoping he’d explain.
Eventually the laughter died off, but the relaxed grin remained, just as he’d been right after I’d let go of the fish. “No, Matty. It’s not the walking that’s helping.” His smile widened. He scanned the surrounding area and gestured with a tilt of his head toward a flat spot on the ridge at the top of the incline. “Up there. That’s a good spot, don’t you think?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
He started up again, and I followed. This time we hiked at a more leisurely pace. Not that it mattered. I didn’t get far. With my next step, my foot landed on the edge of a rock, and I faltered, my ankle twisting. I fell onto my ass with a thump that reverberated throughout my body. No time to react. I instantly tumbled down the steep slope in a backward somersault.
I tried to grab for the thick brush alongside the trail, but I couldn’t get a hold of anything. Vines and twigs scraped my forearms and hands. I kept flying down the hillside, barely avoiding slamming the side of my head against the moss-covered boulders and massive tree trunks lining the trail.
I heard my dad running after me. “Matty! Oh God. Just hang on. I’m coming to get you. Just hang on. Please, God.”
Another few seconds rushed by, and then I finally slowed enough I managed to dig my fingertips into the damp earth. I came to a crashing stop, lying flat on my stomach, my face half-buried in a puddle of mud.
My dad was there in a heartbeat, helping me sit up. “Are you okay?” His voice was shaking. “Jesus, you could’ve smacked your head on one of those rocks or fallen over the edge into the gorge and…” He swallowed down the last of his words.
Died. I could’ve died.
That was what he’d meant.
That hit me with a shock I’d never known in my thirteen years. I guess kids mostly figure they have a whole lifetime left, that everything and everyone they knew and loved would always be there. I was no different.
“I’m okay.” The ankl
e wasn’t bad, and nothing else hurt all that much, but I was covered in mud and sweat. My backpack had slipped off one of my arms and was open at the top. Strewn along the path up the hill were my favorite Green Day sweatshirt, a pair of sweats I’d worn for pajamas at night, and four pairs of the extra underwear my mom had insisted I bring. Everything was wet and muddy.
There was no stopping the frustrated, embarrassed tears. I batted at them with the heel of each hand. Why the hell did I always cry at the drop of a hat? “I’m sorry.”
He sat beside me and slid an arm around my trembling shoulders. “It’s okay. Everyone falls at some point in their lives. It’s that you get up and try again that matters. Are you sure you’re okay?” He examined my head and face, wiping away some of the mud.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
He gave up on checking me over and looked up the hill at my scattered clothes. “Why don’t we just throw those muddy underwear out? Otherwise your mom’s going to think I literally scared the crap out of you by bringing you out here.” I gave him a wide-eyed look, and he nodded. “It’s totally going to look like skid marks once they dry out.” He burst out laughing. I did too. We sat there for several minutes, laughing and joking about what she’d think if she found those stained underwear in my bag.
When our laughter died off, I stood. My right ankle already felt better. I could put pressure on it.
He got up and pointed to an area at the base of the hillside, closer to where I’d landed after my stellar fall. It was another designated camping site with a fire ring. “Why don’t we camp there instead?”
“We don’t have to. I can keep going.”
“I know you can. But this is good.”
He gathered my stuff and then kept his eye on me as we made our way to the area he’d indicated. He had me sit on a log from a fallen tree while he pitched the tent and started a fire. The sun was setting, and the forest around us was coming to life with the glow of fireflies and the nocturnal song of crickets. A single firefly landed on the sleeve of my muddy sweatshirt. Its light dimmed, then flickered on again. It was the first time I’d seen a firefly in person. I watched it crawl down my arm. Then it flew off, its body producing that brilliant, beautiful glow again, adding its light to the dozens of others in the sky. It was the most magical thing I’d ever seen.
I decided right then and there that, despite my trip down the hill, I loved Majestic Falls.
An hour after the sun had disappeared behind the horizon and we’d finished eating our bowls of chili, we settled in on tree stumps on opposite sides of the fire. My dad fiddled with the line on his fishing pole, and I stared into the orange and yellow flickering flames, thinking about what he’d said about getting up after a fall. I got that he wasn’t just talking about physically falling down, but I wasn’t exactly sure what he’d been trying to say. Had I done something he thought I’d failed at? Or was he saying he had?
I didn’t think I could ask. Which felt so strange.
Despite that he’d never been much of a talker, he also never seemed to care how much I rambled on. In fact, I was old enough now to get that he sometimes asked me questions just to get me going. But sitting by that fire, he was even more subdued than normal. That had me back to wondering what his silent frustration and the long walk through the park had been about. What had he needed to think over? Was it related to something he thought he’d failed at?
“Dad?”
“Hmm?” He didn’t look up from the fishing pole.
Something told me not to mention his need to think again. Instead I asked, “Did you and your dad ever go camping when you were a kid?”
At first, he didn’t say anything. He set the pole aside and picked up a stick to stoke the fire. There was no missing the tight clench of his jaw as he focused on the growing flames.
Great. I was fucking up the entire weekend.
He finally said, “No, Matty. My dad wasn’t a very nice man. He didn’t do anything like this with me.”
“Oh. Okay.” My mom had mentioned on more than one occasion that my dad didn’t like to talk about his family or his childhood and that I shouldn’t bring up either topic.
I should’ve listened to her.
He kept jamming the stick into the fire, anger rolling off him, directed more at the flames than at me.
I felt so stupid for asking. I’d just always wondered what my grandfather was like. He was my only living grandparent, and I’d never met him. I muttered, “I’m sorry I brought him up.”
My dad stopped with the stick, his focus locked on me across the fire, his eyes serious and steady. “It’s not your fault.” There was a pointed resolve to the way he watched me that I’d never seen from him before. He gestured at me with the burned end of the stick. “Don’t you ever think anyone else’s problems are your fault. A person’s anger comes from the inside.” He tapped his chest, then jabbed the stick my way again. “No matter what happened to a man in his life, it’s his choice to let it go or to hold on to it and let it change him.”
I had no idea what he was going on about, but I got that it mattered to him that I understood. “All right.”
“I mean it, Matthew.”
He rarely used my full name, so I just nodded.
In a move that seemed odd given his words, he smiled at me. “And don’t worry about that fish today. You have a big heart, and I don’t want you to ever feel bad about that. No matter what.”
“Okay.”
“You’re a good kid, Matty, and you’re going to be one hell of a man when you’re all grown up.” He watched me for a moment more, then went back to gazing into the fire, his fist clenched around that stick. When he spoke again a few minutes later, the words were said so quietly I almost missed them. “I don’t ever want you to feel the way my dad made me feel.”
I didn’t think he planned to say anything more, but then he added, “He died this week.”
“Your dad?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He dropped the stick to the ground and propped his elbows on his knees as he stared into the fire once more as if lost to another time and place. “It’s all going to be okay now.”
I wasn’t sure how I knew, but despite his words, I had a feeling nothing would be okay again. For either of us.
Chapter Eight
After I finished sharing what happened that day with my dad, I grew quiet. Having gone through the whole thing, I realized now that the dream version wasn’t exactly accurate when compared to my memories of that day. In the dream, my dad sometimes morphed into an older or younger version of himself, the younger depiction looking disturbingly like I did now. Sometimes I didn’t fall down the hill. Sometimes he pushed me.
It felt good to tell them what had actually happened. It made the dream seem less powerful.
“Matthew?” Richard’s voice held a soft, patient tone. He was waiting for me to say more.
“I’m okay. It’s just that as much as I loved my dad, that was the day I realized he hid something very dark and damaged beneath the surface.”
Richard kept his arms wrapped around my chest.
I laid a hand over one of his. “The next day after we got home, I found out from my mom he’d gotten a call about his dad right before we left for the park. He ended up going alone back to his hometown for the funeral. That camping trip is one of the last good memories I have of him. He changed after that. It took some time, but I could see it happening. At first, it was just the drinking, the anxiety. Then came the anger, the rage. Eventually he directed all that at me.”
Richard’s body tensed beneath mine again, but he held me with that same gentleness he’d used the entire time I’d been telling the story.
I shook my head as if that act alone could somehow make the words stop pouring out of me. But I wanted to talk to them. I wanted to move past this once and for all. “When I fell that day in the park, I knew he cared about me, that he loved me. I heard it in his voice.
”
“I think,” Richard said, “that makes it all the harder on you. Harder to reconcile the bad shit he put you through.”
“Yeah.”
“But Matthew, you did nothing wrong. No matter what you realized about your dad, it was not your fault that he hurt you.”
“I guess I know that. Logically. I just wonder what would’ve happened if he had talked to somebody about what he went through as a kid. Maybe things would’ve been different for him. Maybe he wouldn’t have become so angry. Maybe he wouldn’t have started drinking.”
“A lot of people drink, and everybody gets angry sometimes, but they don’t beat on their own kids because of it. It was all on him to get help, to stop himself from hurting you. You did nothing wrong.” He paused. “Why didn’t you tell us all this before you went on the interview?”
“I didn’t want to make a big deal about it. I wanted to go, and I thought you might try to talk me out of it if being in that park was going to remind me of him.”
We were all silent for a brief moment. I thought maybe they were waiting for me to say more, but then Luke blurted out, “Hell yeah, we would’ve tried talking you out of going.” It was the first time he’d spoken since I’d finished telling them about the camping trip. He was sitting up now, his legs tucked underneath him, arms folded across his chest. “I don’t think being anywhere near that park is good for you.”
“But I really want this job.”
“I get that, but…” He shifted his gaze to Richard as if hoping he’d say more on the subject.
Richard encouraged me to sit up and turn to face them. “He’s right. I would’ve tried to talk you out of going.” He held up a hand before I could respond. “But maybe that wouldn’t have been the right move. This needs to be your choice. You know what you can handle. You wouldn’t put yourself in a position where you’d feel miserable all the time.”
I nodded. “I think it’ll be okay. If I get the job, it won’t be long before I’ll have all kinds of new memories there.” I hesitated, but I needed to say the rest. “I never told you guys, but I thought I saw him once.”