Cute From A Distance
It happened in Dublin, Georgia more than twenty-five years ago. I was just a boy then — couldn’t have been older than ten — with few friends besides a cousin or two. I wasn’t some introvert and it wasn’t that I was unpopular in school. It was just the way of things in rural Georgia; farms were separated by acres upon acres of cotton and peanut, and the land between the fields was rugged, untamed forests and swamps. Don’t get me wrong, I could navigate nature as well as any fella raised in the country, but traversing that kind of terrain wasn’t something to take lightly, especially for those expected to be in the house before dark.
So, I contented myself to playing in an old, empty hog pen just on the edge of the woods beside our house. One sunny day, while in that particular hog pen, I was playing with my G.I Joe army guys. I suppose today, they’d be called “action figures,” but back then, we just called them army guys, and I always enjoyed adding an element of scorched earth when I played with them. In order to make this happen, I’d often employ the use of fireworks — M-80s, ladyfingers, cherry bombs, firecrackers, and the like — shoving them into the toy’s tiny joints here or there. That day, the carnage on the ground around me was Antietam, and Snake-Eyes, had been left a double amputee.
As I sat there amusing myself, creating fodder for some make believe VA hospital, my daddy wandered over. In the South, we never hit a point in our maturation where we call him “dad’ or “pop.” He’s always called “daddy,” even when you’re too old to trust a fart anymore, and he’s dead and buried. My daddy had his hands in the front pockets of his rugged, paint and grease-stained overalls that he always wore with that old red T-shirt and glasses thick enough to see the Himalayas from our backyard. That ensemble had become his uniform. And how could I forget those favorite cigars of his that prairie-dogged over the top of his chest pocket. Swisher Sweets — as cheap as any cigar ever made — they were comprised of a fifty-fifty ratio of tobacco and Canadian thistle. So help me God, whenever he’d light one of those things up it was as if someone had set fire to a field full of sugar cane doused in cow shit.
“Hey, bubba,” he greeted, pausing to puff one of those vile cigars. “What’re you up to over here?” I watched him survey the area around me, taking in the chaos of the day’s battle and the scattered, broken toys. His face twisted up in one of those “what-the-hell-are-you-doing-playing-in-a-rundown-hog-pen-with-a-shitload-of-broken-toys” kind of looks — you know the one. I was just hoping he didn’t notice any of the burn marks on them. Today was a good day to die for G.I. Joe, not me.
Time to apply some smoke and mirrors: “Nothin’ daddy. Just playin’ army. Are Chris and Brad and David comin’ over?” All three were cousins, and, of course, I knew they weren’t coming over.
Daddy shook his head like he was coming out of a daze. “Their momma’s got ’em all over at J.C. Penney gettin’ school clothes. They ain’t comin’ today.” He saw the frown I put on as I tried to sell him sadness; then, he tussled my hair. Smoke and mirrors. Apparently, I’d get yet another chance to blow off my tiny fingers after all. The left corner of his mouth lifted just enough to make the Swisher Sweet dip low, as that subtle smile he had touched his face. My daddy didn’t just smile out of the blue, and, when he did, you remembered it. “I’m gonna go for a walk. Wanna go?” My daddy and I’d go on walks at least once a week. It was our thing. He liked to point out the different plants in the woods and tell me about them, or he’d tell me what animal left this track or that rubbing on a tree. He seemed to know everything about…well, everything. I was a fount of questions for him, too. I’d ask doozies like “What’s the biggest animal in the world,” or “Do you think you could outrun a cheetah in our old Ford Ranchero,” or, my personal favorite, “who would win in a fight between a werewolf and a vampire?” Somehow, that man always came up with an answer.
“Okay.” I jumped up and dusted off my jeans, as he threw an arm over my shoulder, and off we went. We made our way down our trail beaten down by a thousand walks. Our conversation started per the usual: he’d ask me about my grades and I’d apply my “smoke and mirrors” technique to avoid the question. “Why spoil a good walk with a whoopin’,” I often thought. It was hard work being a class clown, and it left little time for much actual schoolwork.
Once we entered into the woods on the other side of the field, as always, it was like we’d just stepped onto another planet. The air was cooler, and the trees were noisy in their rustling, with the thrashers tweeting or the dove whooting in their boughs. The smells of pine and honeysuckle were thick and sweet, and there was a faint scent of water from the swamp less than a mile away. We walked quietly for a while, but then, we heard a soft chattering nearby that made my daddy go from man to marble.
“Looky there, boy,” my daddy whispered, pointing his pocketknife-manicured finger in the direction of the hollow at the base of an old gnarled tree. What I saw there made me gasp. I’d never seen a raccoon so close up before. I must’ve been a sight to my father, as a smile spread across my lips that would’ve rivaled any Wodaabe tribesman. The animal was curled into a ball, like he’d just woken up. He just looked at me through that black mask, with an interest that seemed to say, “Hey, I’m Woody. How the hell are ya?” I bet I could’ve walked up and patted the thing on the head, slipped a leash around his neck, and took home a brand new buddy.
“Sit still,” daddy said, as he crept up on the creature with a stealth akin to a three-legged bear with a clogged Eustachian tube.
Somehow, I’d missed the point where he’d picked up a limb, and I knew right away what was about to happen. In my head I was screaming NO, and wondering if this raccoon was tame or just plain stupid. Why wouldn’t the thing run? You know, later on in life, when I would read articles talking about babies and their attraction to movement and colors, I would often find myself comparing babies to raccoons. Still, that dumb animal just looked at my daddy like he had flowers growing out of his ears. Satisfied he was close enough, daddy raised that wooden cudgel like a headman’s axe. And, that damned raccoon just continued sitting, staring.
“Run, damn you! Run!” I screamed over and over again in my mind. If animals were supposed to have instincts, then instincts suck! How did this planet have any intelligent life on it at all with this thing as an example?
As that limb fell, my heart fell with it. The crack it made as it struck that raccoon was probably heard as far as Cedar Grove. The birds went quiet and even the leaves stopped rustling. A tear ran down my cheek, as I could only stand there mortified. I can remember as clear as if it were yesterday how I’d never hated any man in my life as much as I hated my father right then.
“Got him!” The victory in his voice made me sick to my stomach, as I watched him hoist his prize in the air by a leg and laugh. He brought it over close to me, gloating, “The fur’s twenty-five bucks and the rest is dinner!”
I watched the blood drip from one of the animal’s nostrils, and instinctively, I sniffed. “My daddy’s a killer — a cold-blooded murderer,” I thought.
The way home was quiet — on my end at least. Daddy couldn’t shut up. He kept on and on, bragging and bragging, while I walked trying with everything I had not to cry. But, it’s really funny how things always seem to work out. What I call karma today, I called “gettin’ what you deserved” back then, because, just as we reached the center of the old peanut field not two hundred yards from the house, my daddy’s hand exploded into a whirlwind of tooth, claw, and a scream so shrill I thought my head might burst. It seemed daddy had only been successful at one thing: knocking the creature unconscious. Now, I don’t know if it had a powerful headache or if it was running solely on survival, but what I do know is that the animal had blood in one eye and shit in the other, and, right then, it was payback time. A ten year-old boy or not, all I could think to utter witnessing the spectacle before me was “Oh shit!”
The two of them were locked in a primal struggle, rolling this way and that, kicking dust and peanut every which way that choked out the evening’s twilight. There was no method or strategy. There was only chaos. Between the two of them, I couldn’t tell who was howling louder. My father yelled words that would have made a sailor blush, and I’d swear that animal was throwing them right back in some odd raccoon tongue. All I could do was stand there in shock. The creature — no, the beast — was a blur as it dashed from my father’s arm to his hip, then back to the other arm, and then to a leg. The speed and ferocity of the attack was supernatural. Who would win in a fight between a werewolf and a vampire? A RACOON! Had an adult lion fresh from the Serengeti stumbled upon that brutal scene, it would’ve turned and hauled ass the other way.
Finally, as spontaneously as it all had erupted, the animal darted off, retreating to the tree line in a flash, leaving absolute silence in its wake. I could remember hearing my heartbeat in my ears. My father just laid there. Okay, I’ll admit it: I was mad at the old man, but did he really deserve to die at the paws of a scorned raccoon? And what in the hell would I tell momma? “Hurry momma, call an ambulance! I think a raccoon just killed daddy!” I was a mess of crazy thoughts as I stood there not knowing what to do.
After a short while and more worst-case scenarios playing out in my head, the quiet was broken by a wild fit of coughing and the most forlorn moan I’d ever heard. Thank God! Daddy was alive! I ran over to him and slowly helped the old man to his feet. The destruction left in the wake of the animal attack was punctuated by the torn overall strap hanging limply beneath a left breast that had become exposed through a rather large rip in his T-shirt. His breathing came rapid and heavy; his hair was a mess and he was caked in a mixture of blood, peanut plant, and dirt. With a shaking chin and his teeth chattering a little, he asked me to help him home.
I put his arm over my shoulders, acting as his little crutch, and we set off slowly. Nothing more was said as we walked, for we had both been rendered speechless by the calamity that had just unfolded. Later that evening, momma took my daddy to a crowded emergency room, but for all the wounds he accumulated that day, I believe the wound to his pride to be the worst by far, because, until his death four years ago, this story was a forbidden topic of discussion.