Moonglow (15 page)

“Daddy, please,” I say, tears falling from my eyes. “You're scaring me.”

“I'm sorry,” he says, and he almost sounds normal. “I wish I didn't know about any of this. I wish it weren't coming true, but it is.” He sits on my bed, and I pull my legs away, tuck them under myself so I'm practically sitting on my knees. We're both aware that I want to keep a wide space between us so he doesn't move any closer. “It's all happening like I knew it would.”

“What?!” I scream. “What's happening?!”

My father's lips move, but it's like I'm deaf, so I have to ask him again.

“What? Daddy, what's coming true?!”

This time I hear him loud and clear.

“The curse.”

Chapter 11

“The
what?!
”

I could not have heard what I thought I heard. My father did not just tell me that the reason I've been acting strangely lately, the reason that I don't feel like myself, the reason that Jess is dead is because of some curse. We live in Nebraska! This isn't the jungle; chickens aren't beheaded and sacrificed on Saturday nights in the town square for God's sake!

“Dad, what are you talking about?”

“I know it's hard to understand,” my father replies, sounding like one of my teachers.

“There's nothing to understand,” I shout, sounding like a very ticked-off student. “Curses aren't real.”

He shifts his body and bridges the gap that separates us by a few inches. I stop myself from leaning backwards. I'm not sure how close I want to be to my father right at this moment, but he is my father after all; he isn't really some crazy person. Is he?

“I used to think that as well,” he says, his eyes completely consumed with sorrow. “I used to believe that curses were just made up, parts of legends.” He can't or won't look at me; he's looking at something, I'm not sure what it is, but I know it's not in my room. He's looking at something from his past, a memory; whether it's real or fake, I have no idea. “But now I know I was wrong.”

My father places his hand on my bed next to my knee. He wants me to reach out to him, to clasp his hand to make a connection, but I can't. This conversation has stopped being ridiculous and is starting to become frightening. I don't want it to become sentimental as well. Have to keep my heart out of this and only listen with my mind.

“I should've prepared you; I should've warned you,” he says, the words tumbling out of his mouth angrily. “But I did nothing . . . and now the curse has come true.”

“Dad, listen to me, curses don't exist,” I start. “They turn princes into frogs and apples into lethal weapons in fairy tales. But they have nothing to do with real life.”

Ironically, my father's smile is even more patronizing than that a-hole doctor's in my mother's hospital room. He's the one claiming that curses are real, and I'm the whackjob.

“I know that you're looking for an explanation for what happened, for what's going on,” I say, keeping my voice as even and rational as possible. “But the only way we're going to do that is to logically figure out what's wrong with me.”

My father's not paying attention to me. He's looking down at the ground again, shaking his head. I have got to get him to listen.

“That's the only way we're going to be able to put an end to it,” I plead. “So nothing like this ever happens again.”

Still no response. Just his head shaking slowly from side to side and then suddenly stopping. “No,” he says finally.

His response so infuriates me that something inside of me is triggered, and I hear screams in my head that have no voice. For a split second I'm back at the hills, back with Jess when she was still alive. I'm not imagining this; it's a real memory. I see a paw covered in red fur slice through the air, slice through Jess's arm, ripping away her flesh. There was an animal; there was something with us out there. Blood gushes, Jess screams, a flood erupts in my mouth, and that taste is back. Bitter and familiar and delicious. I'm back in my room now, and I look at my father. He has to help me. Together we have to figure this out.

“The only way we're going to put an end to this is to break the curse,” my father declares.

This is how my father plans on saving me? By executing a plan to break some nonexistent curse?!

My feet pound into the floor when I jump off the bed. They keep pounding as they take me from one end of the room to the other. Once again the walls, three white, one blazing orange, are like a cage. I wish the painted wall could erupt into flames, devour the entire house and me and my father with it, let Barnaby escape. He can be a jerk, but there's no reason he should die for my crimes and my father's stupidity.

“You're drawn to it, aren't you?”

My father's question startles me out of my wish-trance, reminds me that walls can't spontaneously combust, but once again I have no idea what he's talking about. And my confusion reads all over my face.

“The wolf,” he says.

I look up at the banner on my wall and see the timberwolf, the Two W mascot, staring back at me, his paw reaching out, ferocious and tender, in a desperate attempt to make some kind of connection. He reminds me of my father.

“Seriously, Dad, you are freaking me out.”

My father looks weary, as if he's used up every trick in his arsenal and still can't make his obstinate child behave. Suddenly, he lowers himself to the floor and leans back against the footboard of my bed. Clasped hands resting in his lap, crossed legs, a sweet smile. He's the perfect daddy. Except this daddy's got a terrible secret.

“I need to tell you a story.”

 

“I was your age, just sixteen, when it started,” my father begins.

I want him to stop. I don't know where his story is going to lead, but it can't possibly have a happy ending.

“I thought I was a man, wanted to be one anyway. I was tired of being a boy, always having to do what I was told, always having to be instructed and not make my own choices, always having to wait for something exciting to happen.” He looks down at his hands resting in his lap, so I look at them too. We're both expecting them to do something magical, but nothing comes. Just ten fingers interwoven and motionless. “I had no idea that my life was about to change forever.”

This time when he looks down at his hands, his thumbs spin around each other. Slowly, they turn a few times and then reverse direction. He seems fascinated by this action, as if he's not controlling it, as if his thumbs have little thumb-minds of their own. Only when they stop moving does my father start to talk again.

“My dad and I used to go hunting,” he says, picking up the story. “Just the two of us, deep in the hills on the outskirts of town, sometimes for the weekend in the Sand Hills or near Lake McConaughy. We hunted deer mostly, on occasion pheasant or wild turkey. Once, my dad shot a moose, I have no idea what it was doing around here, must've gotten lost and strayed too far south, but my dad killed it.” Lost in his memory, my father laughs. “Whole town ate moose steaks for a month.”

Normally, the thought of eating a moose would disgust me. Now for some reason it doesn't.

“My father promised that we would go on a special hunting trip for my birthday, my sixteenth, all the way up in Montana,” he remembers. “Bucks up there weigh almost seven hundred pounds, antlers five feet wide, majestic creatures, and I couldn't wait to hunt them down with my new rifle. Show them that they were no match for me.”

The little boy still living inside my father comes out, and he sounds boastful and bold and unashamed at the prospect of teaching some innocent animal that he's the stronger species. Not because he's naturally superior, but because he's smart enough to hunt with a rifle.

“Friday after school I ran home after spending the entire day telling my friends that I wouldn't be around for the weekend because my father was taking me on a trip, just the two of us,” he says. “I knew something was wrong when I turned the corner of my block. My dad's pickup was parked in the driveway, right outside.”

My father grew up in this house, so I feel like I'm with him, standing right next to him in his memory. I get a mental picture of a dust-covered pickup truck where my father's police car is usually parked, probably a red truck, tires covered in mud, and I know exactly what my father is thinking as a kid standing in front of his house. Something has to be wrong because fathers are never home right after school.

“He came home sick from the factory with stomach pains,” my father explains. “Turned out to be a gall bladder attack, but I didn't care what it was, didn't care if it was the flu or some fatal disease. All I knew was that my dad screwed up everything and my birthday hunting trip was canceled.”

When my father laughs this time, I smile along with him. I don't find what he's saying to be funny; it's a reflex.

“But it was my birthday, and I wanted to celebrate by killing some deer,” my father remembers. “So the next morning that's what I set out to do.”

“Without your father's permission?” I ask.

“Without anyone knowing I had left,” he replies. “I took my dad's treasured Winchester though, instead of my brand new Remington, so it would feel like he was coming with me.”

It's hard for me to imagine my father being so irresponsible and reckless. I've never known him to go out hunting for food or for sport; I can't recall his ever mentioning that it was something he did with his father. I lean my head against the wall for support. This is not the man I know. Sure, my father grew up to be a hunter of sorts—he's a cop, he hunts down criminals—but that's like a peacekeeping effort, not murdering a defenseless animal.

“So you snuck out in the morning with a rifle to go hunting solo?” I ask.

“And I wasn't coming back until I had shot the biggest buck I could find,” he adds. “My family was going to have a venison feast thanks to me.”

Once again I wait for my stomach to turn as I imagine my father cooking up a deer, a meat I've never tasted, never dreamed of eating, but I find the concept natural. I'll dwell on that later; now I have to urge my dad to get to the point. “So you're out in the hills by yourself,” I repeat. “And . . .”

“And my life changed,” he says quietly.

My body shudders. And I'm not being figurative; I literally shake. It's like a ripple that starts at my toes, runs up the length of my body, and doesn't stop until it escapes out the top of my head. Whatever happened to my father all those years ago, this thing that he's labeled a curse, has affected him deeply. Now it's my turn. I look at him, and it's like I'm looking at myself. We both had similar experiences at the same time in our lives in the same place on the planet. I've got to hear more.

“Daddy, please just tell me,” I say. “How did your life change?”

He runs his fingers through his hair, revealing a thick layer of gray underneath the brown. Really, he's a lot older than I think he is.

“There was an accident.”

My father's voice has aged. It's somber. No, not somber. Scared.

“About thirty yards away I saw a beautiful deer,” he continues. “Female, sandy coat, her chest spotted dark brown, and she was standing still, looking right at me.” He's pointing straight ahead, and I swear he can see the deer in my room. “It's as if she's giving me her permission to shoot.”

His hands unclasp, and he raises them as if he's holding a rifle. Tilting his head, he shuts his left eye and looks through the little view thing in the gun, whatever it's called, and he's eyeing the deer that he saw over thirty years ago. He has no idea that he's sitting on the floor in my bedroom.

“My heart was racing,” my father says in a whisper. “I had never shot a deer without my dad by my side, and then they were young does, hardly worthy opponents, but this was going to be a huge victory, a huge kill, and my dad was going to be so proud of me.”

I've never heard my father speak so callously, so cavalierly about a life before. This is the man who helped me bury my pet hamster in the backyard when I was nine. We had a funeral for Whiskers. How did this bloodthirsty little boy grow up to be so gentle?

He fake-shoots the rifle and slightly raises his arm, which I guess is like the aftershock you feel when you pull the trigger. He repeats this movement twice more in quick succession and then after a moment's hesitation one final time. Four shots for one deer.

His hands are dangling at his side, the rifle is gone. I don't know if he's out of bullets or out of the past, but there won't be any more shooting today. A glimmer of sweat has appeared on my father's face, and he looks pale and ghostly. No, he was just out of bullets, because he's still lost in his memory, and whatever happened in the past is happening now.

“I killed him.”

Him? “I thought you said it was a female?” I ask.

“The deer got away,” my father replies. “I killed
him
.”

One bead of sweat slithers down the side of my father's face. He doesn't move a hand to wipe it away; he gives it freedom and lets it slide down his skin and fall to the floor. The natural order of things has taken over. I have to do the same thing to my voice, give it freedom and let it ask the questions it wants to.

“What do you mean killed
him?
”

“I-I didn't see him. I was focused on . . . on the deer,” my father stammers. “He . . . he must've been crouched near her, hidden in the brush, hoping to take her down the same way I was.”

Suddenly, my room shrinks in size. My father gets up; it's his turn to pace in the cage. Problem is he's bigger than me and more powerful, so it's frightening to watch him lumber from one side of the room to the other, his fists clenched and slicing the air. Every other step his head twitches to either get rid of the memory or make it come into focus.

“I tried to tell her that I didn't see him, but she wouldn't believe me!” he shouts. “I tried to tell her that it was an accident!”

He's talking to me as if I had been there, as if I understand what he's saying.

“Daddy, who?” I ask. “Who did you tell?”

“The wife . . . the wife of the man I killed!”

Briefly my father stops pacing, but watching him bent over, his hands gripping his hair, is almost worse. I get the feeling that this is the first time he's ever said these words out loud, or at least to another person.