03-OCT-99 / Before San Juan de Ortega / The Hunters
I had spent the day passing the ruins of ancient churches, always climbing through thick woods. Then, on a part of the trail that reminded me of Wisconsin’s north woods, I felt a strange sensation, a sixth sense, an exposed feeling in my gut, and I saw the first of them. Hunters! A large party, hunting boar. One of them had scoped me from the woods.
I had had that feeling before. It was a Sunday afternoon when I was 16. My girlfriend Connie and I had been to the library and then spent the rest of the afternoon parking and making out. I had borrowed my father’s Honduras-maroon Chevy convertible, promising to be home at five for Sunday dinner with the family. I was half an hour late. I walked into the dining room, and my father exploded. Calling me everything north of a no-good son-of-a-bitch, he grabbed me and pulled me out the back of the house to the shooting range where we had a trap field set up. He had snatched a shotgun from the gun rack in the den and was loading it with birdshot. He was about 20 yards from me as I stood at the trap facing him. He kept swearing at me while my mother and sisters on the back patio cried and pleaded with him to stop. He pointed the gun at my head. I turned my back, not wanting to be shot in the face. He pulled the trigger and hit me in the middle of my back. I’ve always regretted turning my back on him. I think he shot because I turned my back and showed my cowardice. I had a thick sheepskin coat on and the pellets bounced off, though a few penetrated my neck and the back of my thighs. For years I made myself believe he didn’t hurt me, though as I write this I still wince from the pain in my heart.
Years later he confessed that the reason he wanted the car that night wasn’t so that he could go to work, as he did, or told us he did, many Saturdays and Sundays, but rather so that he could visit his “other family.” He had a second family in the next town we didn’t know about, though they knew about us. Mary, a high school senior when he seduced her, had taken his name and they had a son, Matthew. My father kept this secret for more than twenty-five years. When he and my mother finally divorced, he didn’t choose to live with Mary and Matt, as he had always promised them he would, but rather with his latest fling, his secretary, Jerry. I felt sorry for my half brother, who was entirely innocent and who, maybe even more than my sisters and me, never had a father.
The men in the hunting party invited me to join them for lunch. I asked to shoulder a beautiful Fabric National rifle and was reminded of the times later in life when my father and I hunted. I’d like to concentrate on the good times we had together and the times he came through for me. He died this January. I thank Jesus for welcoming my father to our Father’s house. My father didn’t know what he didn’t know; and he thought he knew it all.
