My Father, The Sex Educator

I stood on the front porch — or back porch, depending on whether you were talking to my father or mother, as it technically faced the back lawn, but was the porch representing the doorway into the house — and I stared out. Don’t know why I was staring out. Insipid teenage wondering. My father came up, put his hand on my shoulder, and pointed up into the boughs of the nearest tree. In that tree, on a long and robust branch, were two squirrels fucking. He clapped me on the shoulder, and said, “Always wear a rubber.” Then he walked away. That was my sex education.

My Father, The Vulcan

His hands were not huge: short, like mine, with thicker fingers and a broader palm. And yet, from those hands he could wring endless miseries from the meats of one’s shoulders. He’d come up behind you, grab hold of whatever that muscle is that connects your neck to your shoulder (the tenderloin of flesh just north of the collarbone) and he’d squeeze. Sometimes, he’d knead it, like it was bread dough or clay. It’d drop you to your knees. He’d do it to everyone. None were subject to mercy. Children. Adults. Co-workers. Family. Over time, you developed a resistance. But never an immunity.

My Father, The Antler King

It was winter time. Not far from the holidays, if I recall. We were coming back from K-Mart, and a car full of seriously pissed-off dudes were riding the bumper behind us. Flipping us off, revving the engine, all that. In the Dirty Harry or Death Wish movies, they would handily be referred to as “punks.” They kept following us. Off the main roads and onto back roads. My father, cold as an icicle, started concocting The Plan. He had no weapons in the truck, as it was a new truck. What he did have was a series of antlers rescued from the whitetail deer we raised. The Plan was, he’d pull fast into the driveway. If these punks came in right behind us, wanting to start some shit, he’d hold them off with the antlers while I went to the front door — just inside the front door was a little .410 shotgun for popping squirrels and starlings. We turned onto our road, and the car did not follow. They were saved that day, I guess, from antler stabbings and a face full of squirrel shot.

My Father, The Fishmaster

We had a pond. Every warm day, my father went to that pond and fed the fish. Bread crumbs scattered in the water, hissing as it hit. Sunfish and bass were first, but eventually the prehistoric catfish — bigger every year, mouths wide enough to swallow a softball — showed up, lazily drifting to the surface to eat. It got so that, before he even reached the water’s edge, you’d see the ripples of approaching fish. Like hundreds of little sharks zeroing in on the USS Indianapolis. They knew him. They knew his shadow, knew the way his feet fell on the ground. He had trained an entire pond’s worth of fish. Pavlov’s Pond.

My Father, The Haggler

Were my father the Devil, he’d get your soul at a deep discount. He had a way about him. He loved to haggle. He’d go and buy a new truck, and we’d always be amazed at the “extras” they’d throw in — after lowering the price to dealer’s cost. (“I bought a new truck, and they threw in this other car as an extra. Also: a chest full of pirate doubloons and a free dinner at Friendly’s.”) But the car dealerships were not his feeding ground, oh no. Those were yard sales and flea markets. He could smell them: blood in the water. The man could be driving to a funeral or a birth and if he saw a yard sale — he’d stop. He’d walk out of there with one or two new prized finds — a tool, a knife, a box of bullets, a decorative plate — and were you present to witness it, you might see the seller standing there, scratching his head, wondering where his first-born son went.

My Father, The Comedian

He caught fire once, and my uncle put him out, but that’s not really as cool as the time he crushed his pinky in a log smasher. So the story goes, they wanted to charge him for either the removal or the reconstruction of the finger. He wasn’t into that. I suppose my father always figured the pinky was the weakest of the fingers, and probably got in the way more than it helped out. So — again, as the story goes — he took a pair of bolt cutters and cut off his pinky, and then had the doctor’s cauterize the wound. Cheaper that way. He loved to play games with the missing pinky. One time, he played the “pull my finger” trick, except instead of farting, he told the little girl pulling the finger that she pulled his finger off — and then he waggled his pinky stump (an inch of the pinky still remained) at her. She screamed. He laughed. Good times.

My Father, The Cop Killah

The cops came by often. Friendly visits, as my father was tight with most of them. He sold them guns. They shot the shit. He knew most of them by name. You got stopped by a cop and you had the last name of “Wendig,” you might get off with a friendly warning — even if the hooker’s lifeless arm was flopping around out the passenger side window. He didn’t know them all, though. Sometimes, cops came by to talk about the noise from all the guns going off — we had a backstop and 16 acres, so lots of shooting went on. One time, a cop came and got a little aggro with Dad. Dad made it clear: this was his property, and the cop had to have a warrant to even be on it, and oh, did he happen to mention that it was legal to shoot trespassers? And the cop, plainly stated, was a trespasser. The cop hurried off. Later, other cops came by. They apologized to Dad for that other guy.

My Father, The Savior

I was a weird kid. I think all kids are weird in their own way, but if I was a teenager now, they’d probably put me on some kind of watch list. I didn’t bring weapons to school or anything, but I wore dark clothes and wrote bizarre-o horror fiction and whatever. One time, I wrote a story: “I Found Another Dimension In My Underpants.” It was a harmless tale — I’d written so many other stories that were infinitely worse. I wrote about a violent badger named Schmidt. I wrote about a face scrawled onto a man’s knee that could drink human blood. I wrote about serial killers and bad acid trips and — oh, of course, Shadowstories. But somehow, my mother found the one where a guy roots around in his underpants (no mentions of genitals anywhere) and finds a gateway to another dimension in his tighty-whiteys. And that drove her off the edge. She thought I was nuts. Something was wrong with my brain. She wanted to send me somewhere for counseling. She was all in a tizzy about it. My father heard her and frowned and grumbled, “He’s fine, we’re not sending him anywhere. Stop it.” And that was that. End of story. The proclamation, made. I didn’t go for counseling. I continued to write about bloodthirsty badgers and blood-drinking knee-faces. And of course, here I am today, uncounseled, probably batshit, and writing Terribleminds. So, y’know. You all owe the man some thanks.

One More

My father is iconic, mythic, a man wreathed in stories. The stories I could tell about him are endless, and the stories I don’t know about him could probably fill a small inland sea. So, when I think of him, all these tales burble and meander to the surface without asking.

So, here’s one more story.

He died two years ago, as you may know. Two years ago today. Prostate cancer. At 63. He died with family around. He died in our arms.

He went fast, hopefully without pain. Onto his happy hunting ground.

Miss you. You went too soon.

Your stories shall continue.