by Steve Vernon
“I am thinking that you probably had some help,” Dad-not-Dad said. “I am thinking that boy might have been telling stories on you.”
His eyes hardened just a little.
“That’s the Teller in you, coming out,” Dad-not-Dad said, looking down at the Warren-cocoon lying there in the dirt beside him.
“We’re not related,” I said. “Warren’s just my stepdad. Let him go. He isn’t anything to you.”
Dad-not-Dad laughed at that.
“You’ve been listening to the wrong kind of stories,” Dad-not-Dad said. “The fact is that fellow in that holding-cocoon has done his very best to take care of you.”
He had?
“You knew the true story all along,” Dad-not-Dad said. “You were just too busy talking to stop and listen to what your ears were trying to tell you.”
I was?
He wasn’t carrying a gun – but I still couldn’t escape the feeling that he was just about to pull one from out of his sleeve and shoot me dead, maybe three or four times fast.
“Do you know what I like to do to boys who tell too many stories?” Dad-not-Dad asked.
Bigfoot took a slow shaky step forward.
“Over my dead body,” Bigfoot said.
Out of all the phrases in the dictionary WHY did he have to pick that one?
Dad-not-Dad turned his gaze back onto Bigfoot.
“Oh I can arrange that particular development easily enough,” Dad-not-Dad said. “And this time I guarantee it’ll stay stuck.”
“What about me?” Coyote asked, stepping out of the shadows of the cave. “It seems to me that you and I have some business to discuss.”
Dad-not-Dad just grinned.
“You don’t really think that I am actually worried about what you might do or not do, little brother?” Dad-not-Dad said to Coyote.
“You ought to be worried,” Coyote replied. “I might have learned a trick or two since we last spoke.”
Dad-not-Dad smiled sadly.
“Funny,” he said. “I don’t think I ever remember speaking to you. In fact, if I had to sum your entire life story in one single word I would have to go with unmemorable.”
Coyote just growled.
“And as for you,” Dad-not-Dad went on, shifting his gaze back to Bigfoot. “Back from the dead or not, you just don’t look all that ready to be talking about teaching me any sort of a lesson.”
He had a point.
Bigfoot did NOT look half as tough as he did when I first met him. I guess being decapitated and speared to death will do that to a fellow – no matter how strong and hairy he starts out as.
“Enough talk,” Bigfoot growled.
He ran straight at Dad-not-Dad who just stood there waiting calmly as several hundred pounds of enraged Sasquatch charged in his general direction.
Bigfoot built up speed.
Dad-not-Dad still did not move.
And then at the very last moment before impact Dad-not-Dad stepped to one side, leaving his foot leaned out. It was the oldest schoolyard trick in the book and it worked perfectly. Bigfoot hit Dad-not-Dad’s stuck-out foot with his own snowshoe-sized monstrosity and performed a wondrous triple somersault in mid-air before crashing to the dirt.
Dad-not-Dad looked down at his fallen opponent and shook his head sadly.
“You really aren’t up to this sort of thing, are you?” Dad-not-Dad said. “Maybe you should have brought along some help with you?”
It wasn’t Bigfoot’s fault. He was still recovering from being decapitated and poked with spears about a hundred times or so. Still, I blamed myself for his weakness. I should have told his stories longer and stronger.
I should have done better than I had.
“He doesn’t need any help,” Coyote howled. “He’s got me!”
I had almost forgotten that Coyote was still standing beside me – only he wasn’t standing anymore. He took off running, straight at Dad-not-Dad, and for just a half of a half moment I thought that I was about to see a repeat performance of Bigfoot’s wondrous triple somersault of death.
Dad-not-Dad just stood there waiting.
I guess he was figuring the same thing as I was.
Only Coyote wasn’t interested in attempting Bigfoot’s triple somersault of death.
About halfway to touchdown Coyote spread his arms wide like a big funny-smelling shaggy eagle.
And then he flew.
Chapter Thirty Seven – A Major League World Class Grade A Butt-Kicking
I know.
I know.
Way back when I first started telling you this story I already TOLD you how it looked as if Bigfoot flew – way back when he was running down the Cape Breton mountainside, pointed directly at that Spirit Bear.
Only Coyote didn’t just LOOK like he was flying.
Coyote spread his arms wide and all at once a wonderful red and orange and sunrise colored para-glider wings – complete with bells and whistles and big red fire horns and a couple of shotgun laser gun turrets mounted on each of the para-glider wings – spread out from beneath his arms.
I recognized those wings.
Those were the very same pair of imaginary para-glider wings that I had given Coyote in my Bigfoot story, way back in the Cave of Tears.
I guess Coyote had been listening to my story all along, back in that cave.
I made a mental note to apologize to him – assuming we lived through this long enough to tell about it.
“I told you that I had learned a trick or two,” Coyote howled.
He soared upwards into the Labrador sky, banking a little to the left and then pointing his nose upwards before climbing skyward.
I guess that I had told my story well enough for him to evolve his own personal mythology out of my imagination.
You learn something new every day, I guess.
Who would have thought that there would have been so much power hidden in one seventeen year old imagination?
Coyote continued upwards.
He clearly was enjoying his brand new wings.
I was awfully glad to see that he did – especially since I had gone and invented them like I did – but I still would have rather seen him use those brand new wings and those laser gun turrets on Dad-not-Dad.
It turned out my wish was not long in coming true.
I watched closely as Coyote climbed up past the few curious seagulls who were drifting by. He climbed so high that I had to squint to see him.
For a moment I was worried that he was just going to fly away and leave me standing here, looking stupid.
Then Coyote sort of yawed himself around, turning and flattening out and sort of hanging a long slow somersault of a turn in mid-air and then roaring down directly towards my Dad-not-Dad – those laser gun turrets blasting in a full-out strafing run.
“Do it,” I said. “Blast him to pieces.”
By now I guess that you can see that I had come to think of that Dad-not-Dad as something or someone that was definitely bad news.
He wasn’t going to look after me.
He wasn’t going to talk to me like my real Dad should have talked to me.
I had decided that whatever else happened it would be a really good thing if someone – either Coyote or Bigfoot or even Old Shuck, if he ever came back – laid a major league world class serious grade A butt-kicking on Mister Dad-not-Dad.
I grinned, figuring that I was just about to see that very thing.
It turned out I was right.
Coyote bore down on Dad-not-Dad, those roaring lasers making an absolutely horrifying mess of Labrador. It turned out that Coyote could not aim any better than all of those thousands of Star Wars Imperial Stormtroopers who had never managed to hit Luke Skywalker in three straight movies.
Coyote blasted trees and tore up the grass and incinerated a half an acre of blueberry bushes and flambéed an innocently bystanding inukshuk – but as near as I could tell
he hadn’t laid so much as a single scorch-mark on Dad-not-Dad.
And then – before Coyote could work on improving his aim – Dad-not-Dad swung his right arm out in mid-air like he was trying to karate chop a mosquito. A huge solid-looking black feather shot out like some crazy bird’s idea of a ninja throwing star shot out from out of Dad-not-Dad’s extended hand and flew like a jet-propelled arrow aimed directly at Coyote.
“Ha!” Coyote barked, as he easily banked out of the flying feather’s path. “Is that the best that you can do?”
Coyote grinned about as hard as a story could ever grin, but I wasn’t all that certain that Coyote was about to deeply regret what he had just said.
Dad-not-Dad swung his left arm out in a similar mid-air karate chop and about twenty black feathers shot out from his fingertips – catching Coyote in mid-bank, still grinning.
I watched in horror as about eight of those feathers tore into Coyote’s hide.
I guess Dad-not-Dad aimed a whole better than a stormtrooper ever did.
“I know a few tricks, too,” Dad-not-Dad said – with a really mean sort of a grin.
Coyote crashed to the ground.
Bigfoot was down.
Coyote was down.
Old Shuck was nowhere in sight.
I was left all alone.
“No what am I going to do with you, boy?” Dad-not-Dad asked.
I expected that he would think of something soon enough.
Only I did not give him the chance.
“How about if I tell YOU a story?” I asked.
Then I took my first step and began to walk towards Dad-not-Dad.
Chapter Thirty Eight – One Last Dad Story
Okay – so you have got to stop for just a moment and try to comprehend just how unbelievably stupid my next move appeared – even to me.
Here I was – a seventeen year old kid armed with nothing more than a somewhat questionable attitude and a real sense of somebody-has-got-to-do-something-about-this and here I was – getting set to play flinch-chicken with a living breathing legend.
Now when I say “legend” I am not just talking about the fact that Dad-not-Dad was most likely the Raven himself, in disguise.
I am sorry. Did I just spoil that for you? I was pretty certain that you had already figured things out about six or seven chapters back – but if I did spoil it just promise me that you will do your best to squint over my mistakes and forgive me for blurting out.
You see, it didn’t really impress me all that much – the thought that I was attempting to face down the Raven.
I’m seventeen, remember?
To me, a raven is nothing more than a bird.
But this Raven looked just like my real Dad.
Talk about your living legends.
Worse yet, I wasn’t even sure if he hadn’t been my real Dad all along.
I mean just think about it.
How could I know for certain that my real Dad hadn’t been Raven in disguise all along? I mean, my Mom probably wouldn’t have known. That sort of thing happens all of the time. Just think back to all of the times that you heard somebody on television who has just found out that his next door neighbor was actually a chainsaw massacring serial killer say something along the lines of “Well, I guess I never knew that person as well as I thought I did.”
Just try and think about all of the times that YOU said that very same thing – even if you did not say it out loud to anyone but just to yourself.
People are puzzles that way.
We are complicated mechanisms.
Just when you think that you have got a certain person all figured out they go and they change on you and you have to go and start that whole figuring-out process all over again from the beginning.
I kept walking towards Dad-not-Dad.
I tried my hardest to remember some of the music from all of those John Wayne gunfighter movies that Warren had made me watch – but all I could think of was the theme music from Sponge Bob Square Pants – and you just can’t look all that tough humming to yourself.
So instead I did the very next best thing.
I opened up my mouth and said something.
“I’ve got a story to tell you,” I said to Dad-not-Dad.
“Ha!” Dad-not-Dad laughed out loud. “You came all this way out here just to tell me a story? That’s got to be one of the saddest things I have ever heard.”
“Are you done?” I asked. “Or are you just afraid to hear me tell my story?”
The way I figured things, it never hurts to throw a little double-dare into any argument that you are trying hard to win.
“I am not afraid of anything you can dish out,” Dad-not-Dad said. “But if I even think that you are going to start telling a Bigfoot story or a Coyote story or even a story about a big footed coyote then I am going to pull your tongue out and feed it to the rats.”
Truthfully, I had thought for about a half of a half of a half minute about doing just that – but the way I saw it Dad-not-Dad had already proven that he could lay a beat-down on both Coyote and Bigfoot without even breaking a sweat.
So I had to find another plan.
“Go ahead and tell your story if you feel you have to,” Dad-not-Dad said. “I’ll most likely pull your tongue out anyway, directly after you are done.”
It is awfully hard to tell a story when you are trying your hardest to keep your mouth closed and your tongue safely in your mouth – but I managed it, just the same.
“Have you ever heard the story about The Invisible Man?” I asked.
Dad-not-Dad snorted in derision.
“I not only heard the story,” Dad-not-Dad said. “But I saw the movie and read the book and you had better start telling me something new because my patience has about the limitations of a melting bowl of ice cream on a hot summer day.”
“This isn’t any story that you heard,” I told him. “This is the story of the Invisible Dad.”
And then I started telling.
“Once upon a time,” I said. “There was a woman and she married a man who told her that he was a hero but he wasn’t. He lied to that woman. Every time that she started counting on him to be somewhere where she needed him to be he was somewhere else. After a while she began to think of him as being her invisible husband.”
Dad-not-Dad was still listening but he did not look as if he was really enjoying what he was hearing – namely, the truth.
“So then one day a son was born and that invisible husband grew about fifty more shades of indistinct. Now every time that son went looking for his father that dad was always somewhere else. After a time that son began to think about his father as being something more along the lines of the Invisible Dad.”
Now Dad-not-Dad was doing his best to look in another direction.
“He was a little like some kind of a parental vampire,” I went on. “Every time that the sun came out and the boy looked around that Invisible Dad was nowhere to be seen. Now that bothered the boy’s mother because she sort of grew the feeling that it was somehow all her fault that the Dad did not want to be anywhere close to his family.”
I got a little choked up while I was telling this story but I told myself that it was a little like a spoon full of bitter cough syrup. I just had to open up and get it over with.
“So she began to tell her son stories about her Invisible Dad,” I went on. “She told how the son that his Dad was really a hero and that he HAD to be away and that he would have loved to have been able to hang around with his son but he had way too many duties that he simply had to take care of.”
I swallowed a lump that was growing inside of my throat.
I badly wanted to spit but I was worried that Dad-not-Dad might take that as an excuse to rip out my tongue like he had already threatened to.
“After a while,” I continued to tell. “That boy began to believe in all of those stories that his Mom kept on telling him about his Invisib
le Dad. Worse yet, the boy began telling brand new stories that he made up himself and after a while of telling himself these brand new Invisible Dad stories the very worst thing in the world happened.”
I looked up and stared directly into Dad-not-Dad’s eyes.
They were grey.
I’m not talking color, you understand. I am talking texture. Dad-not-Dad’s eyes had somehow taken on the character of smoky grey, like the lonely grey smoke that winds its way up from out of the ashes of a forgotten campfire.
“The boy began to believe in his Invisible Dad,” I went on. “Which was the worst thing that he could ever think of doing.”
I was telling that story to myself as much as anyone and a part of me wanted to laugh.
Another part of me wanted to cry.
The biggest part of me just did not care any longer.
“Then one day somebody else came into that boy’s mother’s life. It was another man and he met her when she needed help and he was kind enough to try to help and he wasn’t afraid one little bit of accidentally looking stupid,” I went on. “As crazy and as stupid as it sounded that other guy that had come into Mom’s life had just wanted to help.”
It almost looked to me as if Dad-not-Dad was beginning to entirely turn into that very same campfire smoke. I could see him wavering just a little and it almost looked to me as if I could see through some of the places where I shouldn’t have been able to see.
“He tried to fix her tire while she called for AAA,” I said. “He tried to dance with her and he stepped on her foot and fractured it and he sat by her bed for six straight weeks, nursing her with grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. He always remembered to put that dab of butter into the middle of the bowl of tomato soup, just the way that she liked it.”
Dad-not-Dad opened his mouth.
Then he closed it again.
As far as I could tell no words had fallen out in between.
“Something else I remember,” I went on. “Was the way that other guy was always there for Mom. The way he smiled at her when he said “good morning” like seeing her there to smile at was the single biggest most important part of making that morning a good morning. I remember him always standing up from his chair at the dinner table for Mom – even when she was just bringing the potatoes – like she was some kind of royalty.”