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Tempered Son

The answering machine blinked a baleful greeting as I stalked into the house. I flipped it, and whoever had tried to reach me, the finger. Despite an exhaustive evening run in the woods that bordered my place, I remained edgy, in no mood to deal with charities, salespeople or wrong numbers. Still, I delayed my shower to stab the play button.

"Eric. This is, is Mom. Please call. Your father--"

I snatched up the telephone, hit speed dial before the message finished.

Mom answered almost immediately. I was out of the house, still sweaty but clothed, less than ten minutes later.

#

Father, as I still see him, would have looked right at home on the prow of a Viking longship. His saturnine attitude, illuminated by rare flashes of macabre humor, clouded most folks--including his only son’s—view of him. Beneath that mask, what truly scared me, was what we shared. The "temper".

Families often have codes for legacies of strange, usually unpleasant, secrets. “Migraines” can cover a multitude of sins, including a secret alcoholic’s chronic hangovers. "Work stress" can conveniently pigeonhole middle-aged angst. "A night out with the boys" or "the girls"...you get the idea.

I’d tried to understand my family’s peculiar peccadillo. Copious college coursework in Psychology and Genetics, even studies in Myth & Folklore, had provided no answers. And asking my professors had not been an option.

So, I exercised my teaching degree in a thickly forested, rural district where I could privately work off the demands of my “temper”. An aging bachelor because I refused to inflict it on a mate. Or, worse yet, pass it to another generation.

Sweat beaded my hairline despite the pickup’s a/c. Just like those times I’d run afoul of Father. That parent/child ambiguity, for he’d taught me lessons I needed and hated, even as I needed and hated him.

Near noon, I turned my old hometown’s main drag, rolled past the post office and a church whose doorway Father had never darkened on my way out.

(His version of a weekly sermon usually came as Mom was dragging me off to services. "Those good Christian folk would say I'm dammed anyway," he’d drawl. "No reason to disappoint them now. Besides," he’d add as he pretended to pick his teeth, "they're just a bunch of sheep.”)

My gut knotted tighter as I pulled into the driveway of the white frame house I'd once called home. I was on the porch before the engine stopped dieseling then paused at a muted howling sound. It couldn’t have been a dog; my father hated dogs.

I swallowed, hard, as I realized it came from inside the house.

"Mom!" I flung open the door. "I'm--"

Words died when I saw her. She slowly rocked in her chair by the fireplace, face stretched into a rictus of grief.

“The basement,” Mom whispered, eyes wide but unseeing. "He's in the basement.”

I ached to go to her, to hold her. Instead, I nodded and walked to the basement door. I wiped my hands on my jeans, then opened it into a miasma of bestial stench and emotions I refused to let distract me.

I listened to him snarl as he crashed into wooden shelves and scattered the miscellany of thirty-five years across the dank concrete floor. Grizzled gray hair awry over a misshapen skull roamed into the low wattage pool of light at the bottom of the stairs. He swayed like some blood drunk warrior unwilling, or unable, to admit the battle was over. Rheumy yellow eyes, clouded with confusion, appeared not to see me. Yet, something in the tone of his whimpers, as he staggered back into the dark, told me he knew I was there.

Back upstairs, I knelt before my mother, held her hands in mine. Tears silently coursed arroyos carved into the pallid flesh of her once plump, apple cheeked face. Gently, I led her into the kitchen. As she daubed her eyes with a paper towel, I made coffee.

"The temper," she replied at last to my unasked question as I set a cup before her. "It finally caught up with him." She paused, then focused on me, as if she could hear the curses I mentally heaped upon that inconsiderate son-of-a-bitch.

"I knew this could happen," she said clearly, "He never hid it from me."

Urgent questions gibbered in my brain. Instead, I asked, "How long…?"

"Your father has been ill for some time." A world of hurt orbited those words.

Not knowing what to say next, I asked when she’d last eaten.

She shrugged vaguely. "I've been so worried about your father..."

"We can continue after dinner," I decided. "Whyn’t you go sit a spell on the porch? I'll put us something together.”

She protested, of course. I stuck my head into the refrigerator until I heard the screen door. Then, I shut the refrigerator and opened the pantry.

The nearly bare Fenner family cupboard shocked me. We’d never had much ready cash, but we’d always had a full larder when I was growing up. An epiphany I preferred to ignore gnawed at my consciousness, so I walked outside, gave Mom a quick peck on the cheek.

"I'm going for groceries," I called as I vaulted off the porch.

She said something about getting her purse. I pretended not to hear as I spun out of the gravel drive.

Unwanted memories babbled from the back seat of my mind. Despite our acreage, Father hadn’t farmed though Mom had kept a large garden. Mostly, he’d worked as a hunting guide. Seemed like he knew every forest in the U.S. and southern Canada. He claimed to have spent most of his youth in the woods. In time, I came to understand why that had little to do with his chosen profession.

Just as I eventually realized that his insistence on teaching me woodlore was more necessity than father/son bonding.

The dreams began before my twelfth birthday. At first, unable to remember them, I’d woken sweat soaked, heart pounding against my ribs like prisoners rattled tin cups against iron bars in old movies.

Puberty robbed me of that blessed ignorance.

I still have them, particularly when the "temper" begins to rise and need for release will not long be denied. They always begin within a dark hall of mossy stone over a rush-covered floor, eerily lit by smoky torches. Whispers and shadowy figures drift through the frigid, stifling air until one steps forward.

He is tall with a rough-hewn face unsoftened by the long gray beard draped from cheek to belt. He wears furs over leathers. At his side rides a sword of dark iron. In his hand a staff, on his shoulder, a raven. A single ice blue eye seems to contain visions of eons, rage and sorrow shot through with weary resignation.

He moves forward, slowly. His destination is a great beast, a wolf, chained by a ridiculously gossamer thread. The beast snarls and slavers, unafraid even of Odin. It is Fenrir, bastard child of Loki, who will bring about Ragnarok, the End of All.

It is I he approaches.

I tried to keep the nightmares secret, even as they grew worse. I tasted flesh, gulped hot, spurting blood as my teeth tore out the old man’s throat. Woke screaming from swords slashing away my life. I tried to muffle those cries of terror. But on my thirteenth birthday, Father insisted on a weekend hunting trip in an out-of-state forest, and there demanded an explanation.

I couldn’t lie to him. I’d only ever done so once. That experience haunts me to this day when I even consider hedging the truth with anyone. So, I confessed and awaited the penance of his heavy hand and heavier sarcasm.

Instead, he’d sat in silence for a long time. Finally, he told me about our family. We were, he claimed, descendants of berserkirs, wild warriors of yore who raced into battle dressed only in fur capes and rage. An ancestor had dedicated our family as the Wolf Guard to an ancient warrior king whose sister, legend had it, was a witch incestuously devoted to her brother.

"It's in the blood, boy," he’d growled. "There's no denying your heritage."

That night my initiation into the ways of the "temper", began.

I pulled into the parking lot, took a deep breath to clear my head, then entered Cox’s Supermarket.

It was smaller than I remembered though still as dingy and poorly lit. With muttered greetings and apologies, I squeezed through aisles barely large enough to allow carts to pass one another.

Other shoppers ignored me, though I recognized many of them. Pissed me off to think of how abandoned Mom appeared. She’d always been there for them, be it funeral, wedding, birthday, illness, whatever. Maybe she’d cut herself off from the community in an attempt to protect Father, but not a one of the townsfolk so much as asked about her.

Then, a familiar voice squeaked, "Well, if it ain't old Fenner. What're you doin' 'round here?"

I looked up the aisle where Bobby Cox shoved boxes of Old Farmer's Oat Bran onto shelves while he waited for his dad to die and leave the store in his plump, sweaty hands. Personally, I figured the old bastard was just mean enough to outlive us all. Particularly his son and heir.

"Hey, Bobby."

"Haven't heard much outta your old man, lately."

"He's not been well."

"What a shame," Cox smiled without humor.

"How's your dad?" I inquired to fend off his questions.

"Still kicking."

He'd used that ragged attempt at irony frequently when we were growing up. We’d shared a dubious competition in the collection of domestic bruises. I just nodded.

"Sorry to hear about your dad," Cox said as he dumped cut up cartons into an empty cart. "But then, they all gotta go sometime.” He glanced at me sideways. “Don’t they?" With that, Cox wheeled past me and disappeared around the corner of the row.

His words continued to haunt me, even as the town disappeared from my rearview mirror.

They all gotta go sometime.

#

"You know, I don't believe your father ever learned how to cook," Mom observed.

I felt my face flush and muttered an apology around a mouthful of garlic bread.

"No," she admonished gently. "I wasn't criticizing your efforts. This was actually quite good." She stirred around the last bit of sauce on her plate.

“Learned from the best,” I smiled.

Mom blushed, the first signs of color I’d seen in her face that day. I recalled that same reaction when she’d receive effusive thanks from neighbors for her many acts of kindness. Or when Father would tease her about the same. I realized, perhaps for the first time, that only with Mom was his teasing more bemused than the cutting sarcasm he used on others, including me.

They had argued, sure, often about me, especially as I got older. But, I never saw him raise a hand to her. Looking back with twenty-twenty hindsight, I believe he did love her, alien as that emotion must have been for him. Perhaps it was her particularly gentle but unbending strength that had managed to thaw at least part of his heart.

Now, however, Mom looked frail, fearful. They all gotta go sometime. I shook my head, waited for her to speak about what crouched in the gulf between us.

She rose, instead, and began to clear the table. I helped put things away and dried the dishes as she washed. Finally, with the nervous ritual of cleaning behind us, she sat again as I started another pot of coffee.

"You did not know your father’s father," she said, at last.

I blinked at the apparent non sequitur. Actually, I'd not known any of my grandparents. Her folks had died in a car accident shortly before I was born. Father's parents, well, we never talked about them. I’d assumed they were likewise no longer among the living.

"Your grandfather lived not far from here," she continued, "in a cabin out by the lake."

I took a drink of coffee to cover my surprise. "And grandmother?"

Mom shook her head. "She left him, so the story goes, before I met your father.” She sipped her coffee. “I always hoped that was true."

I shivered at her casual, matter-of-fact tone.

"Anyway," Mom continued, "he, your grandfather, began to grow more... eccentric. Your father would go to visit and he’d just not be there. Yet, there were rumors, stories..."

I nodded. I knew about rumors and stories. Circumspect as Father and I had been, we’d crossed trails with the occasional hunter or hiker when in the throes of the “temper”. Even so, I sensed more than just rumors and stories in what Mom wasn’t telling me.

"The time came when something had to be done. Unfortunately, it was about the time you graduated from college."

Only Mom had shown up that day. I’d been hurt, angry. But, it’d been a long time ago, I told myself as I looked at her without expression.

"It couldn't have been helped. Your father tried to deny what had to be done for too long. He...had no choice."

A rush of suspicions clarified my thoughts. "The "temper"," I said softly.

"Yes, Eric. The "temper"." Mom stood, shakily, and went to refill her cup. "Evidently, with age, it becomes less...controllable."

"What happened?"

She looked at me, then away. "I don't know. Your father went up there. With a gun. When he came back," her voice remained horribly calm. "He wouldn’t talk about it."

Conflicting emotions battered me, yet my voice came out flat and distant. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Mom shook her head, wouldn’t look at me. Hair stirred at the back of my neck. My skin began to burn and itch. A fiery haze crept into my vision. I found myself on my feet, screaming, "Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

Below our feet, Father howled as if in agreement.

I trembled with rage at the horror of my father’s fall, that I would also succumb to this same madness. I wanted to run, howling, into the night, escape the awful anticipation of the inevitable by fleeing into it.

Mom stared me down, her own anger glimmering through an otherwise expressionless mask. I looked away, shrank back from her. Abruptly, I sat, for it was wrong, just wrong, to tower over her.

“Your father and I hoped it would skip him." Mom paused, then sighed. "And if not him, then you.”

My head sank into my hands. "How could you think it would just pass us by?"

"You see your father as a cold, cruel man. There's no denying he was stern," she said. "And harsh with you. Lord knows, he and I had words about that."

I remembered those heated, often mean and ugly, words drifting into my room through the furnace grate. Words that had made me vow that if Father ever struck her, as I was sometimes sure he would, I’d get his gun and shoot him like a mad dog.

Like a mad dog.

"Your grandfather, from what your father told me, relished his "temper"," I heard Mom say. "Your father did not. He fought for the self-control that made him seem so distant to you. His struggle was, monumental, at times. I know. But, Eric, it wasn’t just for himself."

I shook my head. Self-control? Father’s standard response when I violated his many, often unspoken, rules was painful and terrifying. And if I so much as let out a yelp...I shuddered to remember the bruises tattooed over my body up until the day I left for college. I learned quickly to say, "Yes, sir" and "No, sir”, obey without question, not raise my voice or my hand to, to...

Blinding revelation struck me then.

Mom nodded. "He didn’t have any idea how else to shape you so that you might, somehow, defeat the “temper”." She sighed. “There might have been other ways, but…he did the best he could.” A tear trickled down her face. “And I didn’t know how to help except let him do as he thought best.”

Something didn’t ring true about what Mom was saying, even beyond my desire to deny what she implied and despite her obvious sincerity. But confusion kept me from knowing what it was. Resentment that had served as foundation for my childhood vow to never, ever be anything like the man who had sired me suddenly had cracks in it. Cracks I did not want to see.

I sighed "And that accomplished…what? I’m as infected as he is with the "temper", Mom. I’m--"

"A teacher," Mom said stiffly. "And have you ever raised your hand to one of your students? Have you ever gone to a bar spoiling for a fight? Have you ever raped a woman or killed a man?" Her voice grew haunted, almost inaudible. “Have children ever disappeared…”

I could only stare as what I’d accepted for twenty years as the “truth” about my father and I suddenly revealed far more gruesome implications than I’d ever considered.

"No. Not him,” she answered, too quickly, the question I could not bring myself to ask. I merely nodded, for she needed the obvious lie. Just as she needed her illusions about me.

Illusions? I wondered. Mom was right. I had a spotless record as a teacher, even a reputation for being too easy on my students. Sure, there had been times in college when I'd come close to cutting loose, but, somehow, never had.

Memories of those days brought to mind lessons from Psychology classes. Theories proven all too often as I dealt with high school students and their families. The sad truth about abusers and the legacy they all too often pass on to their victims.

"He did the best he could to help you," Mom insisted again, with forced assurance.

I couldn’t bring myself to shatter her fragile faith no matter how wrong it was. Even as I looked at her and knew what she was going to say next.

"Now, you've got to help him."

#

We argued, until exhausted, into the depths of the night. Mom’s determined advocacy of what must be done hurt all the more for the love and grief--for Father and I--which had driven her to this wall.

I felt swayed, even as certainty grew that if I did as she thought I should, burdens of guilt and grief for her son and husband would break, even kill her. I could not weigh her down more by telling her what surrender to her beliefs would mean for me.

She was right about some things. Father could not remain here. That would be too dangerous for her, not to mention what might happen if he managed to escape the house, a prospect so horrifying we barely touched upon it.

And putting Father in a mental care facility was out of the question.

Finally, I complained I was too weary to think straight. Mom agreed to wait for morning to broach the subject again, but I could tell she believed I’d surrendered to the inevitable. It was not a sense of triumph, but of soul deep grief for the three of us.

After she slowly shuffled upstairs to her bedroom, I poured the last cup of coffee from the pot. It bit bitterly into my tongue.

I wandered through the house, stared at pictures and knick-knacks that seemed at once familiar and strange. Eventually, I ended up in the den, sitting at Father’s desk, my back to the oak gun cabinet.

The house grew quiet, save for an occasional whimper either from Father or Mom. I found myself staring at the gun cabinet as Cox’s song whispered in my head.

They all gotta go sometime.

It was unlocked despite Father's fanatical insistence on firearm safety. I remembered Mom was not allowed to clean in here, though she knew where Father kept the key.

The .30-.06 glinted at me, cleaning oil scent drifted out to greet me as I opened the case. I removed the rifle, thought about the times I’d fired it, felt the thrill of a true shot.

There would be no thrill this time, I vowed, and cursed myself for the lie.

Automatically, I checked the chamber. It was empty, of course. I pulled the clip and rummaged around until I found a box of shells. One by one, I loaded them and tried not to think.

Click. Click. Click.

Finished, I chambered a shell and walked to the basement door. Anger, humiliation, desire for revenge danced within me. I was, after all, my father's son. If fulfilling filial duty offered closure, even pleasure, then so much the better.

They all gotta go sometime.

I heard a faint whimper beyond the door. I imagined him there in the dark, hunched over, cowering. I closed my eyes and could imagine the fear in his, smell it in the rank animal odor that seeped under the door.

I put my hand on the knob. It felt smooth, cool, inviting. I lingered over the sensation of its nearly noiseless mechanism.

Mom had paid a terrible price for even considering, much less advocating, what must be done. And all out of a love that left me awestruck in wonder. How could I do any less? I asked myself as a deeper voice inquired, why should I?

I opened the door, waited for him to come into the light.

#

"Eric?"

I blinked slowly, tried to focus as I returned from places even the “temper” had never taken me. Mom seemed to sway as she entered the den, her face as tight clenched as her trembling hand at the front of her robe.

“Did you--,” she choked on tears. “Is he…”

I looked at the cleaning kit and disassembled rifle on the desk. It seemed like an eternity before I could answer.

Mom slumped against the wall. Her voice rose in a wailing crescendo.

I stood and walked over to her. She pounded on my chest as she sobbed, but could not curse me. Instead she gasped out again my father’s need to be released from his curse and demanded to know why I would not do that for him.

I caught her hands in mine, leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. Her eyes shone with tears and confusion.

“Because,” I smiled, “I’m not just my father’s son.”

Then, I explained my plan to her. What had to be done would be done. Just...done differently.

#

Mom protested that I was throwing my career, and life, away. She came around, eventually, for much the same reason she’d endured Father’s treatment of me. I had the “temper” and so understood it in ways she never could.

Beyond that, I think she realized, with pride, that in what I proposed, I truly was more than just my father’s son.

I promised to see her the next weekend, then left to make necessary arrangements. On the drive, I considered the false trail I’d followed to that point. Obsessed with Father’s teachings, I’d resigned myself to a life built around my “temper”. Hell, I’d even boiled it down to a couple philosophical questions I pondered at staff meetings and other odd moments. Is it the beast within that makes us so savage? Or is it the human who, finding its weak self possessed of great power, eagerly seeks seduction by the bloody side of our natures?

In doing so, I’d ignored the lessons of experience and my mom. I’d forgotten I was more than a mere vessel for the “temper”.

I tendered my resignation to the School Board with a bare minimum of explanation as to my father’s illness and my Mom’s need for my onsite help. They proposed a leave of absence, instead, though I could not promise to be back by the beginning of the new school year.

“You’re a dammed fine teacher,” the principal told me later. “And you’ve a special understanding about kids with family problems. I believe you’ve kept more than one of them from falling into the same traps, ending up in jail or worse.” Then she surprised me with a teary hug and gruff, “You come back to us, you hear?”

I reflected on that, in wonder, as I arranged for a housesitter, mail to be forwarded to Mom, that sort of thing.

On the return trip, I considered times spent with my father in the woods. Not all, I had to admit, were unpleasant of when we had both let the "temper" take us. In those hours, I believe I finally came to terms with what it meant to run free through the trees, more alive in some ways there than in a society of machines and business, the very dialectic that wars within the concept of civilization.

I left philosophy behind as Mom stepped out onto the porch and waved to me. I hugged her, handed over my keys. She looked as if she wanted to ask if I was sure about this, but instead, got into my truck and drove off. She had preparations to make for the evening, as well. And it would be best if she was away.

I rest now, see it in my mind's eye how it will go, how it must happen. I have to be focused when the sun sets. Then, I will open the basement door. Father will not come up the stairs; aversion to people surges strongly within us when we are in the "temper", unless we make conscious effort to overcome it.

I will strip and allow the "temper" to take me, undergo the familiar pain and pleasure of transformation. Then, I will descend the stairs to my father. We will fight, of course. It is inevitable. But, I will win. I am younger, faster, and I have planned this as thoroughly as possible.

Once he submits, I will lead my father up out of the sickly stench of human occupation and into the dog box on the truck my mom is even now borrowing from a neighbor. He will obey me, my father become beta, for that is our way.

Mom will drive us far away, to the place where my father first showed me what it meant to be cursed, or blessed, by the "temper".

We will run and hunt and howl with delight until Death closes his eyes. Then, will I raise my voice to mourn my father, who loved me as he could.

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