Saftey Catch

The first thing you notice when you begin to see through a person, is what’s behind them. Next, you hear what’s behind their words, the background noise. Your nose peers under their flowery scent and finds an earthy layer gone unnoticed. You try on their words for size and find a bitterness on your tongue, an aftertaste that makes you regret repeating them. Finally, when feelings fade, the intention of their touch writes itself into your skin to read clearly. You look in their eyes, and their soul dances in their pupils unashamedly.

I think the gunshot took me by surprise more because there was no ominous music leading up to it like in the movies. There was no cinematic warning. One moment we were talking and he was holding the gun, then thunderclap. I’m on the floor feeling like I’ve been gut punched with all the air knocked out of me.

He stares down at me with more calm than disbelief in his eyes. Mine are wide and staring up at him, zero calm, all disbelief. He mumbles that it was an accident. I look down and try to talk but it just comes out as breathless childish babbles. He walks around the back of me, out of sight. I feel his arms curl under my armpits and he begins dragging me to his cabin. This being my second time at his cabin, I”m not overly familiar with the walk from the forest, to his gate, to his front door. Even so, it feels surreal seeing it in reverse. Everything moving away from me, slipping past like a river of foliage and dirt, in and out of focus. Nothing’s getting closer.

We get inside, he props me up against the wall and slouches in his chair by the fire. He sits there and tells me to take it easy, like I’m overreacting.

“Take it easy,” I roll the words around in my mouth like a sunflower seed in its shell. His red jumper looks different in here. It stood out against the green of the forest a moment ago. In here, it’s like rust. I lift my hand, turn it over. I wipe the blood carelessly over the back of my other hand. Rust.

I think about the wildflowers by his front gate, knocked off their stems and trampled, for growing next to the wrong path, the path of this madman.

“You can lose a lot of blood and still be fine. It always looks like more than it is.” he says with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“I can’t stay here.”

“I’m not keeping you prisoner.”

“You know I can’t drive like this.”

“So don’t,” he says as he pokes around in the fire like that’s the thing he should have been tending to all these years, instead of me.

“Lift me onto the couch, will you? The floor’s cold.”

He leaves his seat and puts his arms under mine, and lifts me off the floor. I wince and breathe sharply through my nose. This is as close as we’ve come to a hug in decades. I can smell him. Once comforting, but now it just reminds me he’s responsible for his own laundry these days.

He drops me once I’m a few inches above the cushions. I stifle a yelp, but it pushes past my clamped lips as a moan. I hear him scoff, the back of his head shakes as he walks away.

“I need to go to the hospital.”

“You know I can’t be seen in town, and you don’t need to go anyway.”

“We both know I’ll die. Is avoiding prison honestly worth that?” I ask, trying to control the anger in my voice. He’ll just tell me to stop getting emotional.

“I said you’ll be fine.” He dropped into his chair, a hard day’s work over.

That’s his last word on the matter, so there’s no point arguing. I sit on the sunken couch, looking down at the floor past his boots. There’s a stray shoelace. I think about telling him, but what’s the difference? If he trips and cracks his head open, I can’t help him in this state. Soon I’ll be dead and definitely won’t be able to help him. Maybe he’ll join me wherever is next.

“Dad, your lace is undone.”

He looks down, grunts, and fastens it.

I lean my head back and stare at the ceiling. I shouldn’t have come here. I know the answers to my questions already. Why come here to ask him? As if hearing it from him will make some kind of difference. On second thought, this might be the only scenario he can actually be honest with me.

“You thought about what I asked last time?” I ask, like I’m changing the subject.

He gives a snort, still looking at the fire, and shakes his head slowly. “Like a dog with a bone.” He says, as if we had agreed to drop this, we didn’t.

“I mean, that’s the only reason I came back. You said we’d talk next time, this is next time.” On my way over I had thought about how this would be the last time, more right than I knew. The pain shoots in my abdomen like the bullet has gone in all over again. The room wobbles for a moment, then settles. He still says nothing.

“Who are you gonna tell?” he says in a half-joking voice. I humor him with half an attempt at a laugh. “So if there's no one to tell, why do you need to know?” he smirks.

“Really? You forget the rifle's safety catch, I’m shot, definitely dying, and you still can’t be honest with me?”

There’s a pause, the fire crackles and spits a dare at him to tell me.

“I didn’t forget it.” He says like he’s confessing to the fire and not to me. I see the corners of his mouth trying to resist the crease of a smile.

Then all the pain is simultaneously magnified and drowned out by how stupid I feel. Is my brain wired to give him the benefit of the doubt, as a default, just because he’s my dad? I feel like I’m being weighed down by a lifetime of loose change raining down on me. This wasn’t an accident. He knew I wanted to know so badly I’d come back, and that would give him time to make arrangements. I see the fire reflected in his eyes, I see his soul.