Three Fathers
Three fathers meet by chance one night on a quiet road. Based on a true story.
The road was quiet, not at all uncommon for this time of night: Sunday, 10:42 p.m., except there was an eerie aura in the emptiness of this wide stretch of four lane road. Carl didn’t notice this as he drove the 35 mile-per-hour speed limit with his window down to let in the night air. It was an unusually warm night for mid-October. Lost in his own thoughts, he barely noticed the distant headlights of a second car in his rear-view mirror.
Carl’s attention was focused on the situation at home. He was ruminating about his 2-year-old son who was suffering with a fever at home. They were out of liquid fever reducer, the reason for this trip so late in the evening. The one in the red box, his wife reminded him before he left the house. Recently, the frequency of the fevers was increasing, and the doctors were still at a loss for an explanation. Their only choice, at the moment, was fever reducing medication mixed with iced alcohol baths and hope. The second car, approaching from behind, grew nearer, drawing Carl’s attention away from his worries. Carl could see that the car was in the right lane and traveling faster than his. He signaled and moved into the right lane so the other car could pass. What Carl didn’t know was that his blinker light had burned out three days ago.
The second car continued to close the distance and began tailgating. The car’s headlights flashed angrily. Then, the car quickly moved into the left lane and barely passed Carl before darting back into the right lane and slowing, forcing Carl to put on his brakes. Carl now recognized that he was approaching the left turn for the road back to his house. He signaled and changed to the left lane to ready himself for the left turn. The second car cut him off again darting left in front of him. Carl sighed and forced himself to remain calm and keep his distance. He signaled left and moved into the left-turn lane as he approached the red traffic light. The second car suddenly did the same and came to a stop in front of Carl blocking the intersection.
Confused, Carl quickly stopped his car short leaving about twenty feet between the two cars. Both cars briefly sat motionless and alone on the road until a man burst out of the second car and ran back toward Carl. Now frightened, Carl rolled up his window, but not before this man was able to fit his fingers into the gap of the closing window. Carl stopped, leaving enough space for this man’s fingers but not his hands. His fingers were large and stubby with short fingernails; too short, as if they were stunted from being chronically bitten off.
“Don’t fuck with me! Don’t fuck with me!” the man shouted threateningly at Carl.
The man’s eyes were full of rage which was accentuated by the red glow of the intersection traffic light. Carl felt trapped and couldn’t tell what this man was going to do next. This man’s name was Doug.
One hour earlier, Doug was sitting alone at the County Hospital, head in his hands, waiting. His daughter’s drug addiction over the past two years had wreaked havoc into Doug’s struggle to live a stable life. The summer after Doug’s high school graduation, he felt hopeful. He believed the sky was his only limit until the day the police found his father in their family station wagon, along county road 19, dead from a shotgun wound; self-inflicted. His plans for college and a career in architecture suddenly took a back seat to helping his mother in her own struggle with depression that blurred into alcoholism. Out of duty and love, Doug felt driven to succeed, where his father failed, and support his mother. He went back to working as a stock boy, a job he had in high school, to help pay the bills and maybe save some money for school when circumstance might allow that in the future. A future that was now obscured in a gray fog, no sky in sight.
Doug’s daughter came as a surprise to him. One cold December morning, a woman, who Doug had an on and off relationships with, told him of her pregnancy. Doug didn’t dislike this woman, but he never imagined a future with her. What with the gray fog and all, Doug never really saw a future anymore. But, Doug believed himself to be a man of honor, and he took responsibility for the situation. He stood up through the rest of her pregnancy, through the birth of their daughter, and through this woman’s decision to abandon them the following spring.
Doug managed to struggle onward caring for his mother and now his daughter. But he wasn’t unhappy. He had a reason to get up in the morning; to care for his family and find ways to make it work. Over time, he got by with some promotions at work, a small inheritance from his mother, and a little bit of luck that always seemed to be fleeting.
His daughter grew anxious as she reached her early teen years. Doug didn’t recognize it at the time and wouldn’t have known what to do about it if he did, because Doug had his own anxiety. His was from worry about his daughter and in her change of friends. Doug didn’t like them; one or two at first, then the whole group. He couldn’t pin-point the reason for his dislike until the first time his daughter didn’t come home one night. When she dragged herself into the kitchen after sunrise the next day, Doug finally had enough. But it was too late. He had already lost her to the spiral of addiction.
Tonight, when the doctor shook his head and told Doug they couldn’t revive her from this latest overdose, he collapsed into the reality that from this point on, he was all alone. In the stupor of his deepening fog, Doug fumbled his way through the hospital paperwork, decisions about his daughter’s remains, and remembering where he last parked his car.
Once behind the wheel Doug absentmindedly drove home, or, more accurately, his car drove him home. The streets were as empty as his heart. It was a warm night for mid-October, but Doug didn’t notice because his car windows were cranked up tight, insulating him from the world and marinating him in his own despair. Doug’s car was traveling in the right lane of this wide stretch of empty four-lane road about 10 miles-per-hour over the speed limit. But who cared? Doug barely noticed the car ahead in the distance in the left lane until he was closer and the car ahead cut him off by pulling into his lane without any warning.
“Motherfucker!” Doug shouted out loud to the car ahead as he woke from his stupor. Angrily, he flashed his head lights, swerved out into the left lane, accelerated, and swerved back into the right lane close enough to teach that asshole a lesson. The other car responded by switching into the left lane. Doug couldn’t let it go. He swerved back into the left lane cutting off its ability to pass. When the other car moved farther into the left-turn lane, Doug grew even more infuriated and shouted to himself, “What’s this asshole doing!”
The traffic light at the intersection ahead was red. Doug quickly steered into the left-turn lane once again blocking the other car which now stopped about twenty feet back. Doug, falling deeper into the abyss of his despair, jumped out of his car and ran aggressively to the other car. As he approached, he could see the terror in the other man’s eyes, who franticly began to roll up his window, but Doug was unstoppable. Doug wanted this man to feel just some of the pain that was welling up inside him from depths he had long forgotten. Doug gripped the top edge of the closing window with his fingers. His strong hands pulled downward to keep the window open. Out of his mouth without even realizing it Doug pleaded, “Don’t fuck with me! Don’t fuck with me!”
At that very moment, a buck deer stepped onto the roadside, an apparition from the shadows in the alley between Jay’s Fish and Chips and Continental Dry Cleaners. He gracefully strolled across the street pausing between two cars idling in the middle of the road. Curious, the buck stood tall, his strong mature body defined by his massive shoulders, thick neck, and a head crowned by a majestic spread of antlers. He gazed through the glare of light and studied the two humans who seemed locked in a challenge of dominance. This seemed odd to him, because there were no female humans in sight. He sniffed the air. Then, he sensed the unmistakable scent of grief which unleashed in him a flood of memory.
That morning, the buck and his herd rose from their bedding area and walked along the edge of the forest to graze on the last patches of green grasses and shrubs. The air was dangerously still. So, they stuck close to the forest cautiously alert. It was a risk. But what day was without risk? The buck stood farther into the glade sniffing the air as his three does and four fawns ate. He first felt the vibration in the air before he heard the strange, brief buzz followed immediately by a distant, sharp crack that echoed through the trees. The herd instinctively bolted back into the forest for its protective cover, except for one. The buck, from the shelter of the trees, could see one of his fawns lying, quivering at the edge of the glade where she had been grazing.
The buck had no way of knowing that a quarter of a mile away an unethical and unskilled hunter had taken a long shot at him. The hunter’s bullet arrived low, missing his chest by four inches, but low enough to solidly hit the fawn grazing behind him. All the buck knew was that his fawn was bleeding-out into the grass, and he was unable to do anything to help her. He moved the remaining members of his herd deeper into the forest.
The headlights of the car illuminated the magnificent buck; a sight which magnetically attracted the attention of both men, ending their confrontation. Carl’s gaze was drawn to the buck’s hind quarters where the scars of a mountain lion attack left four distinct parallel lines in his lush brown coat. This animal has survived a lot, Carl thought. He admired how the buck stood there: proud, strong, and gentle. To Doug, the buck radiated what he could only describe as a glow from behind. Or was it from within? He wasn’t sure. But he was sure that the feeling that overcame him in that moment was something he never felt before in his life: a feeling of connection; a feeling of being seen; a feeling of being accepted as he is, scars and all. Doug let out a soft whimper followed by a flood of sobs and tears as he sank to his knees along the side of Carl’s car. With each heaving sob Doug felt lighter, a feeling which he had long forgotten: lightness, ease. The sobs kept coming.
This caught Carl off-guard. Without thinking Carl lowered the car window so he could grab Doug’s hand to keep him from falling. Doug grasped back tightly, holding on to Carl’s forearm.
The two men and the buck were briefly suspended in the eternity of this moment until the buck broke his gaze and confidently walked off to the other side of the street, flicking his tail and disappearing into the blackness of the night. Neither man noticed. Carl’s attention was on Doug. Eventually, Doug’s sobs subsided enough for him to whisper, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Carl didn’t say anything. He just held Doug’s arm until Doug could once again stand. Now on his feet, Doug looked into Carl’s eyes, and Carl looked back at Doug. They nodded silently, and Carl squeezed Doug’s hand gently. Then, Doug walked calmly back to his car. The traffic light turned green and Doug drove on. Carl turned left. Both went home changed somehow, neither knowing in what way. Yet.
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