I Don't Get It

Where might he not look?

I see the bad moon a-rising

My father has just started up the record player.  I can always tell what he has in store for me just by paying attention to the album he chooses to play.

I see trouble on the way

Today, it's Creedence Clearwater Revival.  Not good.

I see earthquakes and lightnin'

Let's see...  last week I hid in the dog house with Gabe.  He didn't find me there.  The week before that, I hid in the tool trunk in the back of his truck.  He didn't find me there.  The week before that, I hid under my bed.  He found me there.

"Orval!"

My father has just screamed my name.  This is embarrassing.  What time it is?  Five o'clock in the afternoon?  Why me?  Why now?

There's a bad moon on the rise

I can't do this today.  Something bit me in Gabe's dog house and it wasn't a flea.  I still have a purple welt on the back of my right arm from that experience.  Okay, I'm going to go in, see what he wants.

I've entered the living room of our home, I can see he's drawn the blinds.  The volume on the stereo record player is turned all the way up.  My mother and sister are nowhere in sight.  I wonder where they're hiding.

"Orval, when I call you I expect you to get your ass in here on the double!"

His military background is evident when he speaks like this.  

"Were you listening what we talked about Charlie?"

This sounds like a trick question.  Charlie is code for viet-cong, a word the soldiers used during the Vietnam War to describe Vietnamese Communists, the enemy.  Charlie is also the name of one of his close friends, another Vietnam-Era veteran with whom my father has been spending an inordinate amount of time.  There are times when they relive their experiences over and over, sometimes for several alcohol-infused days.

Charlie also likes to stand in the middle of the Eel River, playing his fiddle.

I answer my father, "yes, dad, I was listening."

"Good, because we're surrounded, son.  We're surrounded by commies and it ain't get pretty in here."

Don't go around tonight

This is not going to be good.

"Dad," I reply, "would you like me to find Charlie?"

He takes up his drink of choice, a Hamm's Beer.  It's stiflingly hot in here.  We don't have air conditioning and my father is sweating profusely.  He smells of beer and cigarettes and he hasn't bathed in days.

Well it's bound to take your life

"You don't get it, do you?"

I don't want to remind him that I'm eight years old and there shouldn't be anything about this situation that I should "get," but I know better.  The last time I did that, he backhanded me and called me a commie.  I don't want to make excuses for him.  He's only hit me a handful of times at this point in my life.

"No, dad, I don't get it," I reply.  I know this is going to get me a talking-to.  It's going to be a talking to that revolves around his brand of cold-war politics.

"Sit down, son.  There's a lot you need to know about the people of this world, the people of this town."

I sit down in a chair, opposite him, as he begins his talk.

"Son, you know I love you."

I try to remember that whenever he hits me.

There's a bad moon on the rise

I want to run, but I don't.  I want to go somewhere, anywhere but here.  I think, just in that moment, maybe I can run next door to Mrs. Stephens.  I can usually get through her pot smoking, and even her music, but, she's been doing something other than pot these days that has her shaking, jittery, her eyes and mouth agog.  I don't want to see that either.

"You see, son, they're here and they're not going anywhere."

I'm listening.

"There ain't going to be no other way for us to get through this other than to get through them.  Do you understand me, son?"

I nod my head, but I really don't understand.

Hours have passed.

I fell asleep in the chair.  Dad is on the floor, snoring steadily.  The kitchen table is covered with beer cans.  I can hear the record player crackling with static.  It's a sign that the record stopped playing, probably hours ago.  I start to clean up the beer cans by placing them in the trash can.  There's a plastic bread bag on the table underneath the mess I've just cleared.

I'm wondering where my mother and sister are.  

For a moment, I hold the bread bag in my hands.  I look at my father, snoring peacefully on the floor.  I imagine in that moment what it might be like to place that bag over his head.  I toss it in the trash can with the rest of the beer cans.