I made a mistake, thought today was Father's Day, i.e., this piece. Here it is, anyway.
Yeah, Pinocchio. That's how today's thing, this thing, got started. You can also blame my grandson. He cuddled up and asked me to read it. Could I say no? The passages in question: "Geppetto lived with his cat Figaro and his goldfish Cleo. He had always wanted to have a little boy, and while he worked on the puppet he tried to think of a name." Passage #2: Geppetto, "I'm going to make a wish. I wish that Pinocchio would become a real live boy." The yearning. Oh, the yearning. I didn't become a father until I was 47, except, oddly, I never thought I would not someday be a father. I didn't brood on it. I rarely thought of it. Sneaky little clown. It was dormant and waiting. This will be my son's third Father's Day, my thirty-third FD. My daughter came home from pre-school one day and told me, "Annie said my father was gonna die because he has gray hair." Lucky for me, I still have all that hair.
So, of course, I got to thinking about my own father. We had one-liners, answers to questions, lived in the same house and worked in the same place, but I don't remember a single conversation, i.e., a subject tossed back and forth. He was a good and tolerant parent, but we never had a conversation. Yet, every Friday night we watched the fights sponsored by Gillette Blue Blades - the greats of that era: Joe Louis, Archie Moore, Rocky Marciano, Emile Griffith, Sugar Ray Robinson, Jake Lamotta, Two Ton Tony Galento, Max Baer. Tough men with a hard job. But, Dad and I never talked about it, not that I remember. No rehash. No analysis. I didn't even considerate it at the time. We were comfortable with each other. He was no doubt grumpy at times, but we never heard a word from him about his condition. He never complained or even mentioned it. It wasn't an issue, but it was a silent law. "Cripple" was a word forbidden in our house. You wouldn't even think it. Young and single pictures of my father show him to have been a fashionable young man, spats and all. Impeccably tailored. A bon vivant. As his disease, Paget's Condition, continued to cripple his body (At the time, there was no cure), he needed to have his suits made. Jake the tailor was the man with the needle.
He didn't know I saw him. I was just going down the stairs and the door to my parent's bedroom was open enough to see a bit inside. He was looking at himself in the mirror, dressed in his best blue, pin striped suit. Looking in the mirror. To this day I believe he was thinking, "What the hell ever happened to me?"
Cut. Dissolve. Many years later I'm in Alaska following a local trapper, Mike Potts, working his line. Mike had been born in Iowa, but a flight in his father's airplane flew low to get a good look at Alaska, just for the helluva it. Father/son. That look was enough to convince Mike, barely into his teens, to live there. When I knew him, he'd been in Alaska for, basically, a life time, married to an Athapaskan woman, had kids. That family literally lived off the land, as did most of the villagers in this remote place on the Yukon River - fishing, hunting, trapping, barter, gettin' by. You pretty much made most of your own things. Not an easy life. Not a pretty place, but still fascinating. Junk snowmobiles. Junk trucks. No paved street. No streets period. All dirt. However, the villagers, mostly Native American were very good to me, generous and open.. One young lady who was headed for secretarial school in Fairbanks was convinced I was Al Pacino. Nothing I said about that one could dissuade her. "I know you. You're famous," she said. I told her, "Not yet."
Cut. Dissolve. Mike and I are well on our way to his first cabin seventeen miles in. The trek opened with acres of tussocks. Thousands. You couldn't walk on them because there was no footing. They bent and swayed and drooped. They were slippery with moisture. You had to walk around or over them - each one surrounded by an inch or two of water - moats - the most difficult terrain I'd ever been in. Ever! I could not keep my balance. It was brutal. I could see steep, rocky terrain n the distance and begged my body to get me there. A steep climb over rocks sounded like heaven.
I'm going to tie all this together. Hang on. By the time we reached his cabin we were seventeen miles away from the village. And my feet were in shreds. Both of them. I'd been breaking in a new pair of LLBean boots by running around the track at Fairfax High in LA. Then I came down with something and had to stop, so I went to Alaska with boots not totally worn in. My first few steps I knew I was in trouble but I wasn't about to back out. So. My feet. They'd skinned me, both feet. Red and Raw.
After a day or two around the cabin, Mike took off for his next trap, maybe ten miles down the line, "You're welcome to come or not,"said Mike. I swallowed my pride. "Pass," I said. "Back in ten days," he said. So I'm now seventeen miles from civilization, and all by my lonesome. Except I wasn't lonesome.. I forced myself to explore the area. Every time I did my feet took a beating, but I didn't come to Alaska to sit still. When Mike returned I could not walk without pain, a good bit of it. The problem being that we had seventeen miles ahead of us. Mike said he'd send a helicopter out here to get me, but I said, "No. I'll get back. Send a chopper I'll hide. You go." The only way I could walk was to walk in the creek. Freeze the pain, I was sporting a fully loaded backpack that felt ton-ish. Rhymes with punish. It took me three days to get out. That cold water creek saved my butt. So, what has that got to do with my father?
Three miles from the village I picked up a "cat trail". I assumed he meant mountain lion, when Mike told me what to look for, A cat trail. it was really a track made by a bulldozer, hence, Cat as in Caterpillar, a major manufacturer. of construction equipment. Cat trail. A bulldozer, and I was looking for paw prints.
No choice. I had to leave the water to pick up the cat trail. Dry land. My feet were rated "agony". Every damn step. Why do I do this sort of thing? The doctors told us that when my father walked it was like a normal man running with a twenty-five pound pack on his back. The one I was currently carrying was near forty. I could barely walk. My father could barely walk. Both of us were determined to do it. Check out our DNA. From this distance, I see him now as I hadn't seen him then. Paget's had really done damage. His legs were bowed, his head enlarged, his chest caved in, no room for his organs, gangrene in the intestine...I never appreciated what he must have been going through until now. Was this a coincidence or am I missing something? Was I that obtuse? We could both barely walk but plodded on. With packs on our backs. Was I trying to re-create my father? Did some kind of perverse guilt force me to experience his pain? You tell me. Second thought. Don't.
One more Alaska story. It'll make you smile. We were five miles from the cabin. The sun had gone down. Mike went on ahead. I just dropped where I was. I carried a caribou skin for warmth as well as my sleeping bag, laid out the skin,, got in my bag, fired up a joint, and watched the Aurora Borealis undulate across the night sky.
I never doubted he loved me
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