Wyatt, Richard

by Fathers of Myth

  “I found your note. Why didn’t you wake me?

  “I didn’t think you wanted to wake up at five in the morning, so I left you a note and took a taxi. I got coffee and donuts to go, on the way here. I think I just about got things ready. Are you ready to go?” he asks excitedly.

  “I’m ready to go. Let’s get out of here.”

  From the dock, I throw my backpack onto the boat. Grabbing onto the sail rigging, I carefully step down into the boat.

  “What’s in the backpack?” Dad asks.

  “I brought a little lunch for us, a small Jack Daniel’s, and a little work from The Herald,” I tell him reluctantly.

  “I thought you’ve got the day off? Why don’t you forget about work and let’s just go sailing?”

  “It’s just something to read when we are taking a break or stopping for lunch, I promise.”

  We ease out into the river until we can feel the current pull us in tow. As Dad raises the main sail, I go forward and unfurl the jib, raise it, and pull it taunt. I look aft and already Dad is at the helm, holding on to the tiller. We are sailing.

  “East by Northeast is our course, Captain,” I shout out, like an exhilarated twelve-year-old-boy, my outstretched arm pointing the way.

  The Osprey is like a beautiful thoroughbred horse. With the wind in our face, we hold on and enjoy the ride.

  After a couple of hours of hard sailing up the river, we come to a little river islet called Dewy Island, situated in the middle of the river. Like two great arms, the river flow wraps its embrace around each side of the island. We pull into a little cove on the up-river end of the island, drop our sails and anchor.

  We find ourselves on a sailboat in the middle of the Columbia River, anchored in a place that is known to few. The experience is stirring, yet tranquil. It is as if we have been transported to another dimension, away from reality.

  “Are you feeling relaxed yet?” Dad asks, aware of our unique rendezvous with life.

  “It just doesn’t get any better than this,” I declare.

  “Are you hungry? There are some fresh donuts in the bag over there, if you’re interested.”

  “No thanks. I think I’ll just have one of the sandwiches that I brought with me this morning.”

  The sun is getting high in the sky, and I begin to feel the warmth of it on my back, just like that deep penetrating warmth you feel, when backing up to an old wood stove in the wintertime.

  At times like this, it seems that even food tastes better. Even the sandwich I threw together this morning while I was still half-asleep, tastes like something ordered from the finest restaurant.

  I open my mouth to ask Dad about how he has been doing and such, when I look over and see he is lying back with his feet up on the tiller, and has already fallen asleep.

  I pull out the pint of Jack Daniel’s to wash the sandwich down, and take a big swallow. I close my eyes and feel the warmth of the drink travel all the way down to my very soul. I exhale and feel that pleasurable peaceful warmth, escape out through my nostrils.

  Suddenly, I remember the pictures and notes I brought with me from The Herald. Taking another swallow of Jack, I pull them out of the backpack, lie down on the deck, and start sorting through them once again.

  After a while, my father wakes up from his catnap and sits up. Leaning his arm and head on the tiller, he begins to watch me being engrossed in reading. After a short while, he grows tired of my intense silence.

  “You’re reading those papers as if it meant your life, Matt.”

  “Well you finally woke up, huh? I have been trying to solve a puzzle.”

  “What kind of puzzle are you trying to solve?”

  I think for a moment how to explain the mysterious man Kelly and I have encountered earlier.

  “My co-worker, Kelly and I, keep seeing this same strange man wherever we go on assignment. We saw him at an airplane crash, and then almost the next day, we saw him up in the woods dressed in a Forest Service Ranger’s uniform,” I explain to him.

  “What’s so mysterious about that?” Dad frowns.

  “Nothing, if that was all there was to it. The problem is he is also the same guy we saw in a 1937 newspaper clipping, about the crash of the Hindenburg.”

  “Well, it’s still possible for someone that saw the Hindenburg crash in 1937, to be alive today.”

  “That may be true, but the guy in the 1937 newspaper picture was in his early twenties. The guy we keep bumping into everywhere is also in his early twenties.

  “The two fellows may look alike, but you know as well as I do that couldn’t possibly be the same man. They just simply look alike.” Dad was now pleased that he had solved my upsetting quandary.

  “Look Dad, I have been studying this old photo over and over. I’m sure that this is the same guy. That night after the airplane crash, when I found the old Hindenburg photo, I figured it had to be just a coincidence. Then I saw him the very next day in the Hood River forest, dressed like a Forest Ranger. I knew then that it was the very same person that we saw at the airplane crash and who I found in that old Hindenburg photo. I don’t know how, but somehow, some way, it’s the same guy!”

  “Let me have a look at this mysterious man.” He reaches out to look at the photo, not at all impressed with my story.

  As my Dad looks at the photo, I see his lighthearted unbelieving sneer quickly disappear. In its place now, I see horror beginning to emerge. Immediately, he stands straight up and for a moment he only opens and closes his mouth, as if he can not make his voice engage. His eyes open wider and wider, the lines and creases on his forehead become bunched.

  “How could this be?”

  “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost, Dad, what’s wrong?”

  “This can’t be. Not here, not now, not today!” He is visibly startled and taken totally by surprise.

  “What’s wrong, Dad? Don’t tell me you recognize this guy too!”

  After what seems like an eternity of silence, my father recovers his composure, and sits down. After a moment of staring at the photo, he slowly raises his head and looks up at me. He then begins to reveal one of his dark hidden secrets from his days as a secret service agent.

  “It’s been over forty years,” he begins. He pauses to shake the disbelief from his head. I wait anxiously for his further explanation.

  “I first laid eyes on this gentleman forty four years ago.”

  “How could you possibly recognize someone you saw over forty years ago?”

  “You tend to remember someone that was involved in the assassination of the President of the United States of America.”

  “Assassination? What assassination? What president are you talking about?”

  “Think about it, son. Who was the President forty four years ago?”

  Even though forty years ago was before my time, it only takes me a couple seconds to think of one of the most popular presidents of the twentieth century; John F. Kennedy.

  “You think this man had something to do with the assassination of President Kennedy?”

  “I was there on that November day in Dallas. I was assigned to crowd surveillance.” He goes silent once again, as if something in the past has disabled his thought process for a moment. He then continues.

  “Like hundreds of other people, when the shots rang out, I hit the ground. The shots seemed to be coming from right behind me.” He looks off into space

  “I looked over at the President’s car and saw the spectacle of horror in front of me. I pushed myself up off the ground and immediately got up and looked around behind me to where the sounds of gunfire seemed to have come from. I saw a man standing behind a picket fence just behind that famous grassy knoll, with a high powered rifle pointed right at the motorcade.

  “I ran towards him as fast as I could, but it seemed like I was running in slow motion. Before I could reach him, he fired what turned out to be the lethal head shot at President Kennedy. I pulled my gun and yelled at him to drop his weapon a
nd surrender. No one else seemed to notice this guy. Everyone was too busy screaming and falling to the ground.”

  “As I slowly walked towards him, I couldn’t help but notice his unusual eyes and unmistakable face. When I got within twenty feet of him, he just calmly looked down at my gun that I had pointed at him, and then he looked up at me and smiled. I’ll never forget that smile. It was the same kind of smile you find on the face of a mischievous bad child that is thoroughly enjoying his mischief, because he knows that there is such little chance of getting caught.

  “Suddenly, when I got about ten feet away, he quickly turned around and in an instant he was gone. It happened so fast. I froze; I guess I just froze.

  “I failed the President that day, totally failed.” His lips begin to quiver and his hands slightly tremble.

  “Now Dad, you didn’t fail. You did your best. Besides, you weren’t the only officer on the job that day. If you failed, that means everybody failed. You did your best; you always do your best,” I tell him consolingly. After a moment or two passes, I continue.

  “What happened to him after that?”

  “What happened? Well, I jumped over the fence and started to look for him. I looked under every leaf and behind every rock. On the other side of the fence there were train tracks that stretched for a mile in each direction. I searched in both directions, but he had vanished. I searched everywhere I could search, but he was gone. How he disappeared so suddenly, I’ll never know.”

  “I know it sounds crazy. It sounds crazy because it is crazy. That’s one reason why I’ve never said anything about it to you, to your mother, or anybody else. That and because there are others that want it to be kept quiet.

  “You remember when the Cold War was over and everything was declassified, made public?”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “Well, this is one thing that is still classified. Probably no one will ever know the truth about it, except you and me and a few others that work in the dark and behind the scenes back in Washington.”

  Both of us sail back down the broad Columbia River in a bewildered deep state of mind, arriving at the marina right at sunset.

  The very idea of this man showing up in both our lives is unbelievable. My father seems to have aged a few years on the trip back to the marina, and I am left with a strange unexplained cold empty feeling.

  When we are finished at the dock and are walking to the car, my Dad turns around and smiles at me.

  “Son, I was really looking forward to spending this weekend with you.”

  “It has been great, Dad. It was a nice day.”

  “I think I am going to fly back in the morning. I hope that won’t make you mad or mess up your plans,” he chooses his words sheepishly.

  “That’s fine; whatever you want to do. I was looking forward to spending this weekend with you, but if you want to fly back home in the morning, I’m not going to yell at you or anything. Whatever you want to do is fine.”

  I can tell that the effects of the day have left my father with more than just the bad bizarre feeling I was dealing with. It hit him hard.

  I wonder if there is more to the story he is not revealing to me.

  §

  FIVE

  Saying good-bye at the airport the next morning seemed to be a little harder than usual. My Dad looked helpless. I don’t ever remember him looking helpless.

  Something inside was telling me to take him home and take care of him, whether he liked it or not. However, care for his dignity and my respect for him, replace my feelings of sentiment. We hug for a moment, shake hands, and then he is gone.

  Somewhere back in my childhood, I remember my father and I coming home late one night, cruising along in an old 64 Chevy pickup. All of a sudden, a huge buck deer lunged onto the road in front of us. I remember it so well. The deer appeared so sudden and abrupt, as if it were trying to grab and demand our complete attention.

  This unknown stranger that mysteriously keeps popping up everywhere I go, reminds me of that night many years ago. It is so hard to think of anything else. He has leaped out into the front of my life, demanding my attention and demanding answers to so many raised questions.

  Typically on a Sunday morning I sleep in until at least 10am, and then I eat a giant bowl of cornflakes and watch TV till late afternoon.

  Due to the many questions this stranger has brought to my mind and because I am a little worried how my father is doing, I am wide-awake at six o’clock on this Sunday morning.

  With my mind racing, I jump out of bed and take a shower. Wrapping up in a towel, I venture down the hall to the kitchen, hopefully to scavenge up some kind of breakfast. Cashew squawks for his breakfast, so I fill his dish up with a pile of birdseeds.

  Feeling hungry myself, I open the refrigerator and take a short inventory of my provisions. Let’s see; there is one half gallon of milk, one old opened can of pork and beans, and three twelve ounce bottles of Heineken. With little choice, I decide to go down to the corner store for sustenance.

  With the light of dawn to guide me, I step down the stairs of the apartment and onto the sidewalk. It is sprinkling a little and looks as though it has rained heavily during the night.

  The streetlights are still on, shining on the wet paved streets below, causing them to display a glossy-like finish. For some reason it reminds me of when my mother would wax the kitchen floor back home when I was a boy. The kitchen floor looked just like this glossy wet street. Yeah, my mom could sure make a floor shine, I think to myself.

  After walking for a block and a half, I arrive at the Dot-N-Dash, our little neighborhood store. Walking inside, I notice Ray its owner, sitting behind the counter.

  “Good morning, Ray,” I greet him. He smiles in reply and nods his head in my direction.

  I get everything I need and a few things I don’t, and then go to the counter and wait in line. As I wait, I watch Ray at work. He is a short round, bald man that works very hard at making sure he does not have to get up off of his large padded stool he sits on.

  As my turn at the counter arrives, I watch Ray in amazement. I am amused at how much he can accomplish just by using his hands and arms, doing it all without getting off that padded stool of his even once. Ray could probably make it in the circus, I laugh to myself. I give Ray a smile and a nod.

  “Thanks Ray. Have a great day,” I bid him a farewell. Ray replies with a nod and a smile.

  Now that I think about it, I don’t think I have ever heard Ray say a single word in all the time I have been coming to this little store.

  As I walk back to the apartment, my thoughts turn again to my father. I can’t stop thinking about him. I decide I will give him a phone call when I get home and see how he is doing.

  I begin to read the sports section of the newspaper I bought at the Dot-N-Dash market as I walk along the sidewalk to my apartment building. I get so engrossed in reading the paper that I just about miss the walkway to the apartment complex. Shaking my head, I smile at myself for being a little too preoccupied.

  Amused with myself; I nonchalantly look up and notice a man across the street who’s wearing a heavy overcoat and a 1940s-style hat.

  At first, I think nothing of the man and continue on my way to my apartment. Then for some unknown reason, I look back again at the man across the street that seems to be standing there for no reason. There is no bus stop, no cross walk, and no park bench. He just stands there with his hands in his coat pockets looking at me, as immobile as a billboard.

  As I continue to walk toward my apartment, I think of a movie I had recently seen on TV. Wherever the main character went, the FBI or the CIA, or some other kind of secret agency was behind every corner and bush, keeping watch on every move he made.

  After allowing my mind to wander in this direction for a moment, I decide that I must have a little too much creative imagination.

  Sitting down in my big easy chair back at the apartment, I open up the package of jelly rolls and a bag of barbec
ued potato chips. I turn on the TV to ESPN. Jelly rolls, potato chips, and ESPN. Life is good.

  Just as I bite into my first jelly roll, the phone rings. My feathered companion Cashew bobs his head and masterfully imitates the sound of the phone. I decide to let it ring, but then change my mind.

  “Hello, Matt here.”

  “Matt, this is Kelly. I hope you are having a wonderful Sunday.”

  “Good morning. Yes, I’m eating a little breakfast and watching an exciting car race on ESPN.

  “I hate to bother you on your Sunday morning, but Lloyd asked me to call you about an assignment he is sending us on tomorrow. He wants us to fly to Montana.”

  “Montana, what in the world is in Montana?” I ask, with irritation.

  “Some scientists found a few large dinosaur footprint fossils.”

  “What is so newsworthy about stupid dinosaur footprints?” I complain. “There are a million of them all over the world. How do I write a decent story about footprints?”

  “You didn’t let me finish. These Montana dinosaur footprints are different, a lot different.”

  “Why; is it because the dinosaurs are still standing in them?” I purposely am sarcastic. Now even I was beginning to tire of my attitude. “Sorry; I’m a jerk, go ahead.”

  “These ten million-year-old dinosaur footprints are different, because they have ten million-year-old human footprints right along with them.”

  At hearing her words, I sit up erect from my slouch, then quickly stand up out of my chair, and wipe the excess jelly donut from my mouth with my tee shirt.

  “You mean the human footprints are actually as old as the dinosaur footprints?”

  “I thought that would get your attention. Yes, human footprint fossils from ten million years ago.

  Our flight leaves in the morning at 10:45. How about I meet you at Delta Airlines terminal around 9:30 Am?” she suggests.

  “I’ll be there. And I promise I will come with a better attitude,” I assure her.

  “What are you talking about Matt; you sound the same as you always do? See you in the morning.”