Immortalized in my memory as the transient
smell of sweat and leather, he (my father) exists as a sort of
paradox. I think of him as a giant in his pilot uniform; as a boy,
anywhere we went in the world people knew him. I heard strangers
excitedly call his name in myriad accents, in busy international
terminals and rural gas stations alike. However I am also keenly
aware of his many vexations, demons that hounded him mercilessly for
most of his life. In the end I envied him, laying emaciated in bed
and riddled with cancer, for his inability to supplicate them.
“Come to the window, sweet is the
night air!” penned Matthew Arnold sometime around 1850. One hundred
and forty-nine years later, this lyric from my favorite verse would
parallel my most cherished experiences with dad. After my parents
divorced, we were living in Fulton County, Pennsylvania with mom and
he in Manila, Philippines. From time to time he would appear, and
stay at his sisters sprawling log/ nursing home half an hour or so
away from our trailer, and I would go join for a few days at a time.
Inevitably sometime in the cool dead of night, after the dew had
begun forming outside on the hood of the car, he- jetlagged and
unable to sleep- would wake me up. I don't remember ever getting
dressed, just that at some point we would be driving east on Route
70.
There were never any passenger cars on
the road at that time save for ours, an older Buick dad would borrow
from my Aunt with a sort of black corduroy upholstery and square
chromed seatbelt buckles. We would drive in silence at first, as I
gradually woke up in the front seat, and he would begin talking. Not
like a teacher talks to a student, or like a mother talks, but like a
man talks to another man at a campfire as it fades into the night. He
would tell me great secret things, the preposterous and unimaginable
secrets of life, as if I already knew them and he was just
acknowledging the obvious.
I would listen wide-eyed. He told me
of girlfriends he had wooed before meeting my mom, he told me to “treat niggers and retards and poor people the same as I would treat
him”, he told me about the time he stole a chicken from a neighbors
farm and plucked it and cooked it over a fire in an orange grove, and
about the time he woke up in the cockpit and thought the full moon
was another airplane heading straight at him. Sometimes he would say
“shit” or “fucking”, and I would feel very grown up.
Eventually we would reach our
destination, which was almost always Little Sandys 24-hour truck-stop
in Hancock, Maryland. It is a greasy, crumb-covered, loathsome place,
but at the time seemed cooler at least than the finest Michelin dining. We
would park our sedan somewhere amongst the gargantuan idling semis,
where fat men snored or bargained with prostitutes in their sleeper
cabs, and walk in. Imagine how my chest swelled! Being born in the
south dad loved grits, a trait I failed to acquire despite his
repeated entreaties, so I would get an omelet. The grumpy, red-eyed
aproned matriarch would bring him coffee and me hot chocolate in
thick, heavy ceramic mugs with stain rings they had probably been
serving in since the seventies.
After eating and making sure I saw him leave a
few dollars tip, we would thank the lady and exit, pausing to sit on
a bench by the door outside. Dad would smoke a cigarette and flick
the butt what seemed to me like halfway across the parking lot, while
bemoaning the latest cruelty inflicted by his latest girlfriend
(undoubtedly in response to some unmentioned cruelty on his part) and we would
drive home in silence. I don't ever remember going back to sleep.
The last time I saw him, he was mostly
bedridden. His fourth wife, younger than I, was cleaning and feeding him
daily. On one occasion he opened his eyes, and began describing in
great detail an experience from decades earlier. He had been hired to
fly cargo on a south-westerly route, and as such experienced a much
longer than usual sunset from the altitude of 27,000 feet. As he told
of skimming along the tops of the red clouds, his gray eyes watered
and his lip quivered. “I never told anyone about that”, he said simply,
his voice cracking.
It must have been beautiful.
