Moonglow

by Michael Griffo

  It’s hard for me to imagine my father being so irresponsible and reckless. I’ve never known him to go out hunting for food or for sport; I can’t recall his ever mentioning that it was something he did with his father. I lean my head against the wall for support. This is not the man I know. Sure, my father grew up to be a hunter of sorts—he’s a cop, he hunts down criminals—but that’s like a peacekeeping effort, not murdering a defenseless animal.

  “So you snuck out in the morning with a rifle to go hunting solo?” I ask.

  “And I wasn’t coming back until I had shot the biggest buck I could find,” he adds. “My family was going to have a venison feast thanks to me.”

  Once again I wait for my stomach to turn as I imagine my father cooking up a deer, a meat I’ve never tasted, never dreamed of eating, but I find the concept natural. I’ll dwell on that later; now I have to urge my dad to get to the point. “So you’re out in the hills by yourself,” I repeat. “And . . .”

  “And my life changed,” he says quietly.

  My body shudders. And I’m not being figurative; I literally shake. It’s like a ripple that starts at my toes, runs up the length of my body, and doesn’t stop until it escapes out the top of my head. Whatever happened to my father all those years ago, this thing that he’s labeled a curse, has affected him deeply. Now it’s my turn. I look at him, and it’s like I’m looking at myself. We both had similar experiences at the same time in our lives in the same place on the planet. I’ve got to hear more.

  “Daddy, please just tell me,” I say. “How did your life change?”

  He runs his fingers through his hair, revealing a thick layer of gray underneath the brown. Really, he’s a lot older than I think he is.

  “There was an accident.”

  My father’s voice has aged. It’s somber. No, not somber. Scared.

  “About thirty yards away I saw a beautiful deer,” he continues. “Female, sandy coat, her chest spotted dark brown, and she was standing still, looking right at me.” He’s pointing straight ahead, and I swear he can see the deer in my room. “It’s as if she’s giving me her permission to shoot.”

  His hands unclasp, and he raises them as if he’s holding a rifle. Tilting his head, he shuts his left eye and looks through the little view thing in the gun, whatever it’s called, and he’s eyeing the deer that he saw over thirty years ago. He has no idea that he’s sitting on the floor in my bedroom.

  “My heart was racing,” my father says in a whisper. “I had never shot a deer without my dad by my side, and then they were young does, hardly worthy opponents, but this was going to be a huge victory, a huge kill, and my dad was going to be so proud of me.”

  I’ve never heard my father speak so callously, so cavalierly about a life before. This is the man who helped me bury my pet hamster in the backyard when I was nine. We had a funeral for Whiskers. How did this bloodthirsty little boy grow up to be so gentle?

  He fake-shoots the rifle and slightly raises his arm, which I guess is like the aftershock you feel when you pull the trigger. He repeats this movement twice more in quick succession and then after a moment’s hesitation one final time. Four shots for one deer.

  His hands are dangling at his side, the rifle is gone. I don’t know if he’s out of bullets or out of the past, but there won’t be any more shooting today. A glimmer of sweat has appeared on my father’s face, and he looks pale and ghostly. No, he was just out of bullets, because he’s still lost in his memory, and whatever happened in the past is happening now.

  “I killed him.”

  Him? “I thought you said it was a female?” I ask.

  “The deer got away,” my father replies. “I killed him.”

  One bead of sweat slithers down the side of my father’s face. He doesn’t move a hand to wipe it away; he gives it freedom and lets it slide down his skin and fall to the floor. The natural order of things has taken over. I have to do the same thing to my voice, give it freedom and let it ask the questions it wants to.

  “What do you mean killed him?”

  “I-I didn’t see him. I was focused on . . . on the deer,” my father stammers. “He . . . he must’ve been crouched near her, hidden in the brush, hoping to take her down the same way I was.”

  Suddenly, my room shrinks in size. My father gets up; it’s his turn to pace in the cage. Problem is he’s bigger than me and more powerful, so it’s frightening to watch him lumber from one side of the room to the other, his fists clenched and slicing the air. Every other step his head twitches to either get rid of the memory or make it come into focus.

  “I tried to tell her that I didn’t see him, but she wouldn’t believe me!” he shouts. “I tried to tell her that it was an accident!”

  He’s talking to me as if I had been there, as if I understand what he’s saying.

  “Daddy, who?” I ask. “Who did you tell?”

  “The wife . . . the wife of the man I killed!”

  Briefly my father stops pacing, but watching him bent over, his hands gripping his hair, is almost worse. I get the feeling that this is the first time he’s ever said these words out loud, or at least to another person.

  “She came running up to us, and she saw me standing over his dead body.”

  I look down to where my father is staring, half-expecting to see a corpse lying there in a pool of blood.

  “Two holes in his chest. I hit him twice out of four shots,” he remembers. “I didn’t even see him; I was aiming at the deer, but his wife . . . She saw me, and she saw my gun, and she saw her husband. . . .”

  No matter how many times you watch your father cry, it’s never an easy sight. You want to know that he is sensitive enough to feel so deeply that tears are the only recourse, but you don’t want to bear witness to it. You want him to be strong and cry in private, when he’s alone, not tarnish your ideal of him. Even though I would prefer to look away, I can’t. I watch my father as half man, half boy cry over something that happened decades ago but clearly is as real to him as if it took place this morning.

  “She tried to stop the bleeding, but it was too late; he was already dead,” he says. “Only when she stood up did I see that she was pregnant.”

  He grabs his stomach as if overtaken by intense pains.

  “Her belly was huge and swollen, and her dress and her hands were covered in her husband’s blood. She didn’t have to say a word; I knew the truth without it ever being spoken,” he says. “This is all because of me.”

  There are those words again. This is all because of me. Now they make a little more sense, but just a little. Okay fine, I get it, he killed this man by accident, but what does that have to do with me?

  “She put a curse on me,” he says through the last of his tears. “For what I had done to her husband and to her, she cursed me. And that curse has finally come true.”

  Oh my God, he believes this. He believes that there’s a connection between these two deaths, this unlucky hunter and Jess. Just because they both were killed in the general vicinity of each other hardly links them. This woman, this angry wife screwed up my father’s mind, I mean royally screwed it up big time, if because of her he truly thinks these two events are related.

  “I know you think it sounds crazy. You must think I’ve lost my mind,” my father says, accurately summing up my thoughts. “Trust me, for the longest time I thought it was just the ramblings of a bitter woman.”

  And certifiably insane I want to contribute.

  “I remembered all the stories I had heard growing up about how the Indians believed in stuff like that, in curses, witchcraft, the supernatural,” he adds. “So this was just a woman turning to her beliefs in a moment of despair. Like we prayed when Mommy got sick.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stands up at the mention of my mother’s name. How dare he compare this vindictive witch with my mother?!

  “She was doing what she had been taught to do,” he says. “Avenging her husband’s death.”

  “The
man you shot . . .”

  “The man I killed,” my father corrects.

  It might be accurate, but I can’t say the word so I ignore it. “He was American Indian?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which tribe?” I have no idea why I ask that question, but I want some simple information, nothing about curses, just a fact I can hold on to. A fact that my father can’t recall.

  “I have no idea,” he answers. “I assume they were native to the state, Plains Indians, I guess. They must have lived in the hills. I had never seen them in town before, and I knew practically everyone. Still do.”

  “So who is this woman?” I question. “Do I know her?”

  Even though this occurred when my dad was a kid, most people his age and older never leave this town, born and raised and proud of it, so the odds that this crazy Indian woman is still a Weeping Water resident are pretty good.

  “No, after that day I never saw her again,” he replies. “But I’ll never forget what she looked like. Jet black hair, perfectly straight, and skin the color of milk.”

  That doesn’t make sense. “Then she couldn’t have been an Indian,” I say.

  “Her features, her bone structure were pure Native American,” my father confirms. “Just her skin color was different, very pale; she must’ve had some European blood in her family.”

  So how does one chance meeting turn into a lifetime of regret? “So you meet this woman once and yet you believe she’s manipulated your life for all these years?!”

  “Yes.”

  The tables are turned, and I’m the parent now. “Well, that’s not good enough!” I scream. “You need to explain everything.”

  I’m no longer afraid. I’m angry, so I’m now standing in front of my father, my face inches from his. “You don’t believe in rituals and curses; you never have,” I continue. “I get that you want to protect me, but the only way I can protect myself is for me to confess what I’ve done.”

  “But you didn’t do anything!” he insists.

  “Yes, I did!” I scream. “I don’t remember it, but there’s no other explanation.”

  “Luba put a curse on my firstborn!”

  Luba?

  “The Indian woman,” my father replies, answering my silent question. “She clutched her swollen stomach and knelt down in front of me. She placed a hand on the blood that was still pouring out of her husband and then lifted it up to the sky.”

  My father mimics the crazy Luba woman’s movement and raises his hand.

  “It was a beautiful spring morning, and I’ll never forget how the blood glistened in the sunlight; it made the sky look even bluer,” he says. “I was so amazed by the sight of her hand dripping with blood that at first I didn’t understand what she was saying. Not until she said ‘I curse you.’ ”

  His hand turns toward something, something that doesn’t exist in my room, but only in his mind.

  “She turned her hand toward the moon,” he explains. “It was faint, pale gray, but it could be seen against the blue sky. Unusual, but I’d seen the moon during the day before. Now I couldn’t take my eyes off it.”

  For some idiotic reason the mere mention of the word “moon” makes me uncomfortable, sick. I want to run out of my room, but my father’s blocking the door. And anyway, I know, deep down I know that I have to hear this.

  “ ‘By the light of the moon I curse you,’ she said. ‘I curse you and your firstborn child.’ ”

  With his free hand, my father clutches his stomach. He’s no longer in the present; he’s no longer my father; he’s a crazy, curse-wielding woman from his past. I’m amazed by the transformation, and when he speaks again I can hear the woman’s evil voice.

  “ ‘When your firstborn is the age you are now, it will become an animal, like the animal that lives deep in your soul, and transform into a werewolf.’ ”

  A werewolf?

  The word bounces inside my head, inflates larger and larger, so no other word or thought has any room inside me and it’s the only word my brain can recognize. Then it breaks free and ricochets off the walls of my room. The word has come alive, and it’s all around us. I turn and see the Two W mascot looking at me. My father was right; I have been drawn to it, but no, no! That’s crazy!

  “ ‘The full moon will possess your child and steal its soul like you have stolen my life,’ ” my father says, repeating the pregnant woman’s words. Then he begins to cross himself, his right hand touching his forehead, his stomach, and both sides of his chest. “ ‘In the name of my husband, my child, and the moon . . . I curse you.’ ”

  When my father looks at me, it’s like he’s coming out of a trance. His cheeks are red, and his hair is wet against his forehead. He looks so tired I almost tell him to lie down, sleep until he forgets everything, but he’s not done with his story.

  “I didn’t believe her, Dominy. I thought she was mad, vengeful, lashing out at me for killing her husband,” he says. “I ran home and put the rifle back with the others in my dad’s gun cabinet. He was still sick, so no one even knew I had been gone.” His breathing quickens; the little boy is in full control of my father’s body. “Shortly after I got home, my mother called for an ambulance. They went to the hospital, and my dad had his gall bladder removed,” he explains. “I stayed home with my Uncle Jacob and waited and prayed to God to save my father. I told God that if he let my dad live, I would never shoot a gun again. That night I was sitting next to my dad; he was fine, and since that day I have never hunted again.”

  A touching story, but with one very big, gaping hole to it.

  “You’re a cop, Dad,” I say. “You carry a gun every day.”

  “A gun that doesn’t have any bullets,” he replies. “The only time I shot a gun after that was so I could pass my police exam test and get my badge.”

  I had no idea. And now that I know, I wish I didn’t. Weeping Water is hardly a hotbed for criminal activity, but we have our share of crime. A cop carrying an unloaded gun is just asking for trouble. Maybe my father is insane. But before I can convince him to go back on his word to God, he once again answers my unspoken question.

  “I made a pact, and I’m not about to break it,” he says. “Even now that this curse has come true.”

  Again with the curse!

  “Daddy, listen to yourself,” I say. “I am not a werewolf, and I’m never going to become one.”

  “That’s what I tried to tell your mother,” he says. “Suzanne, I said, it’s an old wives’ tale; our baby isn’t going to grow up to be a werewolf.”

  “Mommy knew?”

  Somehow this makes his story real.

  “She found out while she was pregnant with you,” he explains. “By that time I had forgotten about it. The man’s body was never found, so I never had to admit to anyone what I had done. I kept it a secret, and after a while I tricked myself into believing it had been nothing more than a bad dream.”

  “But Mommy,” I say. “How did she find out?”

  Unease etches across my father’s face like he’s reliving the moment my mother discovered his secret.

  “Nothing stays buried, Dominy,” he says. “I tried to forget, but the thought always nagged at me, which is why I didn’t marry until I was older and then I convinced your mother that she shouldn’t get pregnant right away, which is what she wanted to do.”

  “What made you change your mind?” I ask.

  For the first time my father looks at me and smiles. “I loved your mother,” he replies. “She wanted a child, and I couldn’t deny her such joy. The curse seemed like something in the past, something that could no longer hurt me or my firstborn, so I gave in.”

  Still not answering my question.

  “But how did Mommy find out?”

  “She had a difficult pregnancy, all throughout. About a month before she was due, she started having pains that kept her up all night, so she started to clean the house to have something to do,” he explains. “I tried to stop her, make her see that it wo
uld only make her feel worse, but doing something physical actually took her mind off of the pain. Until she found my box.”

  “Your box?”

  “When I was younger I had done research on werewolves, curses, Indians, and I had put everything I found in a metal box,” he tells me. “I thought I had gotten rid of it, but she found it in the closet in Barnaby’s room when we were using it for extra storage.”

  Once again my father is lost in the past, in a distant memory, but this time with another woman. A woman we both know and love.

  “ ‘Mason, what is this?’ ” he says, repeating my mother’s words. “ ‘Why do you have a box filled with such terrible things?’ ”

  He sits on the chair next to my desk and leans forward, his hands clasped and hanging in between his legs, as I imagine he might have done when my mother asked him those questions, when they had that first conversation.

  “It’s junk. Then why was it locked? I had to break the lock, Mason. I didn’t want you to ever find it. Why? Because I didn’t want to worry you. But you have worried me. Why do you have these things? Because I’ve been cursed. And so has our child.”

  My mother’s words to me have added meaning. Remember, Dominy, you are blessed. She completely believed the curse was real; that’s why she said that to me.

  I imagine she must have felt the way I do right now, that the man who has always been so rational, so steadfast and trustworthy, no longer exists. He’s been replaced by a liar, a rambling fool. But I’m wrong. My mother didn’t think anything he said was foolish.

  “She started to scream at me in French. I had no idea what she was saying, but I knew she hated me at that moment,” he says. “You see your mother was from a small village in France, outside Lyon. Her family was very superstitious. If I thought this curse could possibly be real, she knew it was inevitable. She went into labor right there, and on the way to the hospital she almost died.”

  I can’t believe I’ve never heard this before. My mother believed in curses and witchcraft. She almost died before I was born. Both my parents are strangers to me.