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Okay – so you have got to stop for just a moment and try to comprehend just how unbelievably stupid my next move appeared – even to me.
Here I was – a seventeen year old kid armed with nothing more than a somewhat questionable attitude and a real sense of somebody-has-got-to-do-something-about-this and here I was – getting set to play flinch-chicken with a living breathing legend.
Now when I say “legend” I am not just talking about the fact that Dad-not-Dad was most likely the Raven himself, in disguise.
I am sorry. Did I just spoil that for you? I was pretty certain that you had already figured things out about six or seven chapters back – but if I did spoil it just promise me that you will do your best to squint over my mistakes and forgive me for blurting out.
You see, it didn’t really impress me all that much – the thought that I was attempting to face down the Raven.
I’m seventeen, remember?
To me, a raven is nothing more than a bird.
But this Raven looked just like my real Dad.
Talk about your living legends.
Worse yet, I wasn’t even sure if he hadn’t been my real Dad all along.
I mean just think about it.
How could I know for certain that my real Dad hadn’t been Raven in disguise all along? I mean, my Mom probably wouldn’t have known. That sort of thing happens all of the time. Just think back to all of the times that you heard somebody on television who has just found out that his next door neighbor was actually a chainsaw massacring serial killer say something along the lines of “Well, I guess I never knew that person as well as I thought I did.”
Just try and think about all of the times that YOU said that very same thing – even if you did not say it out loud to anyone but just to yourself.
People are puzzles that way.
We are complicated mechanisms.
Just when you think that you have got a certain person all figured out they go and they change on you and you have to go and start that whole figuring-out process all over again from the beginning.
I kept walking towards Dad-not-Dad.
I tried my hardest to remember some of the music from all of those John Wayne gunfighter movies that Warren had made me watch – but all I could think of was the theme music from Sponge Bob Square Pants – and you just can’t look all that tough humming to yourself.
So instead I did the very next best thing.
I opened up my mouth and said something.
“I’ve got a story to tell you,” I said to Dad-not-Dad.
“Ha!” Dad-not-Dad laughed out loud. “You came all this way out here just to tell me a story? That’s got to be one of the saddest things I have ever heard.”
“Are you done?” I asked. “Or are you just afraid to hear me tell my story?”
The way I figured things, it never hurts to throw a little double-dare into any argument that you are trying hard to win.
“I am not afraid of anything you can dish out,” Dad-not-Dad said. “But if I even think that you are going to start telling a Bigfoot story or a Coyote story or even a story about a big footed coyote then I am going to pull your tongue out and feed it to the rats.”
Truthfully, I had thought for about a half of a half of a half minute about doing just that – but the way I saw it Dad-not-Dad had already proven that he could lay a beat-down on both Coyote and Bigfoot without even breaking a sweat.
So I had to find another plan.
“Go ahead and tell your story if you feel you have to,” Dad-not-Dad said. “I’ll most likely pull your tongue out anyway, directly after you are done.”
It is awfully hard to tell a story when you are trying your hardest to keep your mouth closed and your tongue safely in your mouth – but I managed it, just the same.
“Have you ever heard the story about The Invisible Man?” I asked.
Dad-not-Dad snorted in derision.
“I not only heard the story,” Dad-not-Dad said. “But I saw the movie and read the book and you had better start telling me something new because my patience has about the limitations of a melting bowl of ice cream on a hot summer day.”
“This isn’t any story that you heard,” I told him. “This is the story of the Invisible Dad.”
And then I started telling.
“Once upon a time,” I said. “There was a woman and she married a man who told her that he was a hero but he wasn’t. He lied to that woman. Every time that she started counting on him to be somewhere where she needed him to be he was somewhere else. After a while she began to think of him as being her invisible husband.”
Dad-not-Dad was still listening but he did not look as if he was really enjoying what he was hearing – namely, the truth.
“So then one day a son was born and that invisible husband grew about fifty more shades of indistinct. Now every time that son went looking for his father that dad was always somewhere else. After a time that son began to think about his father as being something more along the lines of the Invisible Dad.”
Now Dad-not-Dad was doing his best to look in another direction.
“He was a little like some kind of a parental vampire,” I went on. “Every time that the sun came out and the boy looked around that Invisible Dad was nowhere to be seen. Now that bothered the boy’s mother because she sort of grew the feeling that it was somehow all her fault that the Dad did not want to be anywhere close to his family.”
I got a little choked up while I was telling this story but I told myself that it was a little like a spoon full of bitter cough syrup. I just had to open up and get it over with.
“So she began to tell her son stories about her Invisible Dad,” I went on. “She told how the son that his Dad was really a hero and that he HAD to be away and that he would have loved to have been able to hang around with his son but he had way too many duties that he simply had to take care of.”
I swallowed a lump that was growing inside of my throat.
I badly wanted to spit but I was worried that Dad-not-Dad might take that as an excuse to rip out my tongue like he had already threatened to.
“After a while,” I continued to tell. “That boy began to believe in all of those stories that his Mom kept on telling him about his Invisible Dad. Worse yet, the boy began telling brand new stories that he made up himself and after a while of telling himself these brand new Invisible Dad stories the very worst thing in the world happened.”
I looked up and stared directly into Dad-not-Dad’s eyes.
They were grey.
I’m not talking color, you understand. I am talking texture. Dad-not-Dad’s eyes had somehow taken on the character of smoky grey, like the lonely grey smoke that winds its way up from out of the ashes of a forgotten campfire.
“The boy began to believe in his Invisible Dad,” I went on. “Which was the worst thing that he could ever think of doing.”
I was telling that story to myself as much as anyone and a part of me wanted to laugh.
Another part of me wanted to cry.
The biggest part of me just did not care any longer.
“Then one day somebody else came into that boy’s mother’s life. It was another man and he met her when she needed help and he was kind enough to try to help and he wasn’t afraid one little bit of accidentally looking stupid,” I went on. “As crazy and as stupid as it sounded that other guy that had come into Mom’s life had just wanted to help.”
It almost looked to me as if Dad-not-Dad was beginning to entirely turn into that very same campfire smoke. I could see him wavering just a little and it almost looked to me as if I could see through some of the places where I shouldn’t have been able to see.
“He tried to fix her tire while she called for AAA,” I said. “He tried to dance with her and he stepped on her foot and fractured it and he sat by her bed for six straight weeks, nursing her with grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. He always remembered to put that dab of butter into the middle of the bowl of tomato soup, just the way that she liked it.”
Dad-not-Dad opened his mouth.
Then he closed it again.
As far as I could tell no words had fallen out in between.
“Something else I remember,” I went on. “Was the way that other guy was always there for Mom. The way he smiled at her when he said “good morning” like seeing her there to smile at was the single biggest most important part of making that morning a good morning. I remember him always standing up from his chair at the dinner table for Mom – even when she was just bringing the potatoes – like she was some kind of royalty.”
Dad-not-Dad was rumbling to himself now, like he was gargling boulders in the back of his throat.
“That other guy’s name was Warren,” I said. “And he was good to me too – even though I was a bit of a jerk to him.”
“I’ll be sure to look him up the next time I’m on Facebook,” Dad-not-Dad said.
He was trying to make a comeback – trying to tell a joke and maybe get back to telling his own story and getting back up on top of this situation but I wasn’t going to give him the chance.
I kept telling my story like it was the very last story that I would tell on this good earth.
“He was good to me, too,” I repeated. “He taught me how to throw a football and how to do mathematics and how to run like the wind.”
I could see Warren now, standing there in thin mid-air, hovering behind Dad-not-Dad. I don’t know if he was some sort of a spirit come back or if he was just becoming a story himself or if I was just imagining the whole situation – but I did not let that keep me from keeping on telling.
“You keep on telling that story if you want to,” Dad-not-Dad said. “But the truth is you have been living with the Se’skwetew for too long now. This Warren-thing means nothing and you ought to know that. You are better off living with the memory of me.”
“Your memory is important to me, Dad,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t have more than one memory and more than one story. My memory of my Dad as being my hero hasn’t changed and the fact that he really was nothing more than a fellow who couldn’t figure out how to stick around long enough to actually get to his son hasn’t changed and the fact that Warren is trying his very best to be there for me and my Mom doesn’t change either.”
“So what has changed?” Dad-not-Dad asked.
“What has changed,” I said. “is the fact that I have finally figured out just WHO you really are.”
“Who?” Dad-not-Dad asked.
“No,” I said. “You are not an owl. That is not the kind of bird that you are at all, is it? And you sure as shooting aren’t my Dad.”
“Then who am I?” Not-Dad asked the space about two or three inches above my hairline on account of he suddenly could not look me in the eye.
Now, it was my turn to smile.
“Come on out,” I said. “You are not fooling anyone anymore.”
My smile widened into a big old grin.
“Come on out, Raven,” I said.