Lies from my Father

“BC, how many fucking times do I have to tell you?” My father scratched his head in agitation, sending black hair and dandruff around in his head in something like a Renaissance era artistic halo. I tried to pound the nail once more, hoping to avoid punishment. I winced as it began to bend, bracing myself for the inevitable. My father exploded in a menagerie of flailing arms and wild stomps. He looked like a cross between Tony Danza and the Tasmanian Devil.

“Don’t be a pussy!” My father commanded, before he shouldered me out of his way, grabbed my hammer, and pounded the nail. When he finished he turned to me, raising his eyebrow as if expecting an apology. I looked at my feet and murmured. My face was red with humiliation.

“What was that?” He demanded.

“I said ‘I’m sorry, dad.’” Given that I was twelve, my hammer was barely suitable for putting tacs in dry wall, and that it was the first time I had ever attempted to do anything like construction, let alone with sixteen penny nails, I was very sorry indeed. My father had already explained the way of life to me. If it happened and it was wrong, it was my fault. In less than six years his girlfriend would be involved in a car accident, which would then be blamed on me because I was driving in a different part of town, in a different car, at a different time…. but on the same day. I put my cheap hammer back in my green tool box and sighed.

“Come on, BC. Don’t get discouraged. I still need you to hand me things.”

I looked at my feet and blushed. I felt like the biggest loser in the world. Any kind of idiot could hand something to someone.

“Oh come on, honey. It’s not your fault. Everyone from your generation is a pussy.” I nodded. My grandpa wasn’t a pussy. He was from what to my twelve year old mind was the mythic time in America where every man woman and child had been responsible for the death of at least 30 Nazis and the conquering of a minimum of one island under MacArthur. Looking at my bent nail I couldn’t help but think World War II would have had a different outcome if I had been sent to fight the Nazis.

“Did I ever tell you about the time the Hell’s Angels came through Aberdeen?”

I shook my head. Hell’s Angels? They sounded like fiery demons from the underworld, wielding swords made of red hot black coal. I winced at the thought. It was so like me to ascribe fantastical powers to a figment of my imagination. My imagination was always getting me into trouble. I was sure my father and grandfather had no imaginations at all.

“Fourth of July weekend, 1967!” My father began, his voice booming. The Harbor is a place of hale and hearty men who tell stories almost as curses in the face of the almighty, and each sentence seems punctuated by an angry spit in an invisible spittoon. His words tore away and murdered a thousand weakling philosophical ideas, by the force of their sheer rage. “Those sons of bitches came through this town, thinking they owned the place. Riding on their motorcycles, with chains, and knives, and pistols. That whole group is a bunch of cocksuckers if you ask me.” I nodded. If my father said the Hell’s Angels were cocksuckers, who was I to disagree? The only person who could spin a tale or state a fact better than my father was his friend Dutch.

“All they did that whole night was go from tavern to tavern talking about how they were going to head on up to Yakima and crash the Fourth of July parade. Sons of bitches thought they were tough enough to scare folks in Aber-motherfucking-deen. Well I tell you what, BC, the loggers, truckers, and us mill-workers didn’t take too kindly to that.” My father stood, fists clenching at his side. My father’s hands are even bigger and more masculine than my own. They’re like dill pickles sewn onto a pork roast. I caught myself wondering what would happen if he poked a man hard enough in the forehead. Surely it would break right through the skull.

“So the truckers, they went and got in their 18 wheelers, and drove over all the motorcycles in the tavern parking lots. Crushed ‘em to fucking bits! Wheels and gears flying everywhere!” My father roared. “So then! So then, the fucking loggers went and got their goddamn chainsaws, and I’ll tell you what, BC, when the Hell’s Angels saw those fucking Stihls they figured out right then and there that there’s nothing dumber than bringing a knife to chainsaw fight!” I nodded, eyes watering in awe.

“Then us mill workers, BC, us mill workers wanted our turn! So we went out there, our whole bodies tough and calloused from handling lumber all day, and we beat the fucking shit out of those Hell’s Angels with baseball bats and any board scrap we could lay our hands on. We drove them, bruised and bleeding, right to the county line, running so hard they didn’t look back until they were in fucking Idaho! And to this fucking day they haven’t been back!”

“So don’t you worry that you can’t live up to my generation, BC. We didn’t set the bar very low.”

My mouth hung open, the immense glory of the tale spinning awe inspiring tapestries on the spindle of my imagination. “Dad, that’s….” I wanted to say awesome. I wanted to say that it gave me hope that one day I’d have eyes that gleamed like brass, fists that could tear down heaven, and a belly full of fire. Then something happened. The pussy side of my mind kicked in. The part of my mind that just wouldn’t “shut the fuck up” as my father put it.

“Dad… weren’t you twelve years in old in 1967?”