The Family Game I Never Wanted to Win
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Tiptoe by Laird Barron
I was a child of the 1960s. Three network stations or fresh air; take your pick. No pocket computers for entertainment in dark-age suburbia. We read our comic books ragged and played catch with Dad in the backyard. He created shadow puppets on the wall to amuse us before bed. Elephants, giraffes, and foxes. The classics. He also made some animals I didn’t recognize. His hands twisted to form these mysterious entities, which he called Mimis. Dad frequently traveled abroad. Said he’d learned of the Mimis at a conference in Australia. His double-jointed performances wowed me and my older brother, Greg. Mom hadn’t seemed as impressed.
Then I discovered photography.
Mom and Dad gave me a camera. Partly because they were supportive of their children’s aspirations; partly because I bugged them relentlessly. At six years old, I already understood my life’s purpose.
Landscapes bore me, although I enjoy celestial photography—high-resolution photos of planets, hanging in partial silhouette; blazing white fingertips emerging from a black pool. People aren’t interesting either, unless I catch them in candid moments to reveal a glimmer of their hidden selves. Wild animals became my favorite subjects. Of all the variety of animals, I love predators. Dad approved. He said, Men revile predators because they shed blood. What an unfair prejudice. Suppose garden vegetables possessed feelings. Suppose a carrot squealed when bitten in two . . . Well, a groundhog would go right on chomping, wouldn’t he?
If anybody knew the answer to such a question, it’d be my old man. His oddball personality might be why Mom took a shine to him. Or she appreciated his potential as a captain of industry. What I do know is, he was the kind of guy nobody ever saw coming.
My name is Randall Xerxes Vance. Friends tease me about my signature—RX and a swooping, offset V. Dad used to say, Ha-ha, son. You’re a prescription for trouble! As a pro wilderness photographer, I’m accustomed to lying or sitting motionless for hours at a stretch. Despite this, I’m a tad jumpy. You could say my fight or flight reflex is highly tuned. While on assignment for a popular magazine, a technician—infamous for his pranks—snuck up, tapped my shoulder, and yelled, Boo! I swung instinctively. Wild, flailing. Good enough to knock him on his ass into a ditch.
Colleagues were nonplussed at my overreaction. Me too. That incident proved the beginning of a rough, emotional ride: insomnia; nightmares when I could sleep; and panic attacks. It felt like a crack had opened in my psyche. Generalized anxiety gradually worked its claws under my armor and skinned me to raw nerves. I committed to a leave of absence, pledging to conduct an inventory of possible antecedents. Soul searching pairs seductively with large quantities of liquor.
A soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend offered to help. She opined that I suffered from deep-rooted childhood trauma. I insisted that my childhood was actually fine. My parents had provided for me and my brother, supported our endeavors, and paid for our education; the whole deal.
There’s always something if you dig, she said. Subsequent to a bunch more poking and prodding, one possible link between my youth and current troubles came to mind. I told her about a game called Tiptoe Dad taught me. A variation of ambush tag wherein you crept behind your victim and tapped him or her on the shoulder or goosed them, or whatever. Pretty much the same as my work colleague had done. Belying its simple premise, there were rules, which Dad adhered to with solemnity. The victim must be awake and unimpaired. The sneaker was required to assume a certain posture—poised on the balls of his or her feet, arms raised and fingers pressed into a blade or spread in an exaggerated manner. The other details and prescriptions are hazy.
As far as odd family traditions go, this seemed fairly innocuous. Dad’s attitude was what made it weird.
Tiptoe went back as far as I could recall, but my formal introduction occurred at age six. Greg and I were watching a nature documentary. Dad wandered in late, still dressed from a shift at the office and wearing that coldly affable expression he put on along with his hat and coat. The documentary shifted to the hunting habits of predatory insects. Dad sat between us on the couch. He stared intently at the images of mantises, voracious Venezuelan centipedes, and wasps. During the segment on trapdoor spiders, he smiled and pinched my shoulder. Dad was fast for an awkward, middle-aged dude. I didn’t even see his arm move. People say sneaky as a snake, sly as a fox, but spiders are the best hunters. Patient and swift. I didn’t give it a second thought.
One day, soon after, he stepped out of a doorway, grabbed me, and started tickling. Then he snatched me into the air and turned my small body in his very large hands. He pretended to bite my neck, arms, and belly. Which part shall I devour first? Eeny, meeny, miny moe! I screamed hysterical laughter. He explained that tickling and the reaction to tickling were rooted in primitive fight or flight responses to mortal danger.
Tiptoe became our frequent contest, and one he’d already inflicted on Greg and Mom. The results seldom amounted to more than the requisite tap, except for the time when Dad popped up from a leaf pile and pinched me so hard it left a welt. You bet I tried to return the favor—on countless occasions, in fact—and failed. I even wore camo paint and dressed in black down to my socks, creeping closer, ever closer, only for him to whip his head around at the last second and look me in the eye with a tinge of disappointment. Heard you coming from the other end of the house, son. Are you thinking like a man or a spider? Like a fox or a mantis? Keep trying.
Another time, I walked into a room and caught him playing the game with Mom as victim. Dad gave me a sidelong wink as he reached out, tiptoeing closer and closer. Their silhouettes flickered on the wall. The shadows of his arms kept elongating; his shadow fingers ended in shadow claws. The optical illusion made me dizzy and sick to my stomach. He kissed her neck. She startled and mildly cussed him. Then they laughed, and once more he was a ham-fisted doofus, innocently pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
As with many aspects of childhood, Tiptoe fell to the wayside for reasons that escaped me until the job incident brought it crashing home again. Unburdening to my lady friend didn’t help either of us as much as we hoped. She acknowledged that the whole backstory was definitely fucked up and soon found other places to be. Probably had a lot to do with my drinking, increasingly moody behavior, and the fact that I nearly flew out of my skin whenever she walked into the room.
The worst part? This apparent mental breakdown coincided with my mother’s health tribulations. A double whammy. After her stroke, Mom’s physical health gradually went downhill. She’d sold the house and moved into a comfy suite at the retirement village where Grandma resided years before.
The role of a calm, dutiful son made for an awkward fit, yet there wasn’t much choice, considering I was the last close family who remained in touch. Steeling my resolve, I shaved, slapped on cologne to disguise any lingering reek of booze, and drove down from Albany twice a week to hit a diner in Port Ewing. Same one we’d visited since the 1960s. For her, a cheeseburger and a cup of tea. I’d order a sandwich and black coffee and watch her pick at the burger. Our conversations were sparse affairs—long silences peppered with acerbic repartee.
She let me read to her at bedtime. Usually, a few snippets from Poe or his literary cousins. I’ve gotten morbid, she’d say. Give me some of that Amontillado, hey? Or, A bit of M.R. James, if you please. Her defining characteristics were intellectual curiosity and a prickly demeanor. She didn’t suffer fools—not in her prime, nor in her twilight. Ever shrewd and guarded, ever close-mouthed regarding her interior universe. Her disposition discouraged “remember-whens” and utterly repelled more probing inquiries into secrets.
Nonetheless, one evening I stopped in the middle of James’ The Ash Tree and shut the book. “Did Aunt Vikki really have the gift?”
Next to Mom and Dad, Aunt Vikki represented a major authority figure of my childhood. She might not have gone to college like my parents, but she wasn’t without her particular abilities. She performed what skeptics (my mother) dismissed as parlor tricks. Stage magician staples like naming cards in someone’s hand, or locating lost keys or wallets. Under rare circumstances, she performed hypnotic regression and “communed” with friendly spirits. Her specialty? Astral projection allowed her to occasionally divine the general circumstances of missing persons. Whether they were alive or dead and their immediate surroundings, albeit not their precise location. Notwithstanding Dad’s benign agnosticism and Mom’s blatant contempt, I assumed there was something to it—the police had allegedly enlisted Vikki’s services on two or three occasions. Nobody ever explained where she acquired her abilities. Mom and Dad brushed aside such questions and I dared not ask Aunt Vikki directly given her impatience with children.
“I haven’t thought of that in ages.” Mom lay in the narrow bed, covers pulled to her neck. A reading lamp reflected against the pillow and illuminated the shadow of her skull. “Bolt from the blue, isn’t it?”
“I got to thinking of her the other day. Her magic act. The last time we visited Lake Terror . . . .”
“You’re asking whether she was a fraud.”
“Nothing so harsh,” I said. “The opposite, in fact. Her affinity for predictions seemed uncanny.”
“Of course it seemed uncanny. You were a kid.”
“Greg thought so.”
“Let’s not bring your brother into this.”
“Okay.”
She eyed me with a glimmer of suspicion, faintly aware that my true interest lay elsewhere; that I was feinting. “To be fair, Vikki sincerely believed in her connection to another world. None of us took it seriously. God, we humored the hell out of that woman.”
“She disliked Dad.”
“Hated John utterly.” Her flat, unhesitating answer surprised me.
“Was it jealousy? Loneliness can have an effect . . . .”
“Jealousy? C’mon. She lost interest in men after Theo kicked.” Theo had been Aunt Vikki’s husband; he’d died on the job for Con Edison.
I decided not to mention the fact that she’d twice remarried since. Mom would just wave them aside as marriages of convenience. “And Dad’s feelings toward her?”
“Doubtful he gave her a second thought whenever she wasn’t right in front of his nose. An odd duck, your father. Warm and fuzzy outside, cold tapioca on the inside.”
“Damn, Mom.”
“Some girls like tapioca. What’s with the twenty questions? You have something to say, spill it.”
Should I confess my recent nightmares? Terrible visions of long-buried childhood experiences? Or that Dad, an odd duck indeed, starred in these recollections and his innocuous, albeit unnerving, Tiptoe game assumed a sinister prominence that led to my current emotional turmoil? I wished to share with Mom; we’d finally gotten closer as the rest of our family fell by the wayside. Still, I faltered, true motives unspoken. She’d likely scoff at my foolishness in that acerbic manner of hers and ruin our fragile bond.
She craned her neck. “You haven’t seen him around?”
“Who?” Caught off guard again, I stupidly concluded, despite evidence to the contrary, that her thoughts were fogged with rapid onset dementia. Even more stupidly, I blurted, “Mom, uh, you know Dad’s dead. Right?”
“Yeah, dummy,” she said. “I meant Greg.”
“The guy you don’t want to talk about?” Neither of us had seen my brother in a while. Absence doesn’t always make the heart grow fonder.
“Smart-ass.” But she smiled faintly.
In the wee hours, alone in my studio apartment, I woke from a lucid nightmare. Blurry, forgotten childhood images coalesced with horrible clarity. Aunt Vikki suffering what we politely termed an episode; the still image of a missing woman on the six o’clock news; my father, polishing his glasses and smiling cryptically. Behind him, a sun-dappled lake, a stand of thick trees, and a lost trail that wound into the Catskills . . . or Purgatory. There were other, more disturbing recollections that clamored for attention, whirling in a black mass on the periphery. Gray, gangling hands; a gray, cadaverous face . . . .
I poured a glass of whiskey and dug into a shoebox of loose photos; mainly snapshots documenting our happiest moments as a family. I searched those smiling faces for signs of trauma, a hint of anguish to corroborate my tainted memories. Trouble is, old, weathered pictures are ambiguous. You can’t always tell what’s hiding behind the patina. Nothing, or the worst thing imaginable.
Whatever the truth might be, this is what I recall about our last summer vacation to the deep Catskills:
During the late 1960s, Dad worked at an IBM plant in Kingston, New York. Mom wrote colorful, acerbic essays documenting life in the Mid-Hudson Valley; sold them to regional papers, mainly, and sometimes slick publications such as The New Yorker and the Saturday Evening Post. We had it made. House in the suburbs, two cars, and an enormous color TV. I cruised the neighborhood on a Schwinn ten-speed with the camera slung around my neck. My older brother, Greg, ran cross-country for our school. Dad let him borrow the second car, a Buick, to squire his girlfriend into town on date night.
The Vance clan’s holy trinity: Christmas; IBM Family Day; and the annual summer getaway at a cabin on Lake Terron. For us kids, the IBM Family Day carnival was an afternoon of games, Ferris wheel rides, running and screaming at the top of our lungs, and loads of deep-fried goodies. The next morning, Dad would load us into his Plymouth Suburban and undertake the long drive through the mountains. Our lakeside getaway tradition kicked off when I was a tyke—in that golden era, city folks retreated to the Catskills to escape the heat. Many camped at resorts along the so-called Borscht Belt. Dad and his office buddies, Fred Mercer and Leo Schrader, decided to skip the whole resort scene. Instead, they went in together on the aforementioned piece of lakefront property and built a trio of vacation cabins. The investment cost the men a pretty penny. However, nearby Harpy Peak was a popular winter destination. Ski bums were eager to rent the cabins during the holidays and that helped Dad and his friends recoup their expenses.
But let’s stick to summer. Dreadful hot, humid summer that sent us to Lake Terron and its relative coolness. Me, Greg, Mom, Dad, Aunt Vikki, and Odin, our dog; supplies in back, a canoe strapped up top. Exhausted from Family Day, Greg and I usually slept for most of the trip. Probably a feature of Dad’s vacation-management strategy. Then he merely had to contend with Mom’s chain-smoking and Aunt Vikki bitching about it. Unlike Mom and Dad, she didn’t do much of anything. After her husband was electrocuted while repairing a downed power line, she collected a tidy insurance settlement and moved from the city into our Esopus home. Supposedly a temporary arrangement on account of her nervous condition. Her nerves never did improve—nor did anyone else’s, for that matter.
We made our final pilgrimage the year before Armstrong left bootprints on the Moon. Greg and I were seventeen and twelve, respectively. Our good boy Odin sat between us. He’d outgrown his puppy ways and somehow gotten long in the tooth. Dad turned onto the lonely dirt track that wound a mile through heavy forest and arrived at the lake near sunset. The Mercers and Schraders were already in residence: a whole mob of obstreperous children and gamely suffering adults collected on a sward that fronted the cabins. Adults had gotten a head start on boilermakers and martinis. Grill smoke wafted toward the beach. Smooth and cool as a mirror, the lake reflected the reddening sky like a portal to a parallel universe.
Smooth and cool as a mirror, the lake reflected the reddening sky like a portal to a parallel universe.
Lake Terron—or Lake Terror, as we affectionally called it—gleamed at the edge of bona fide wilderness. Why Lake Terror? Some joker had altered the N on the road sign into an R with spray-paint and it just stuck. Nights were pitch black five paces beyond the porch. The dark was full of insect noises and the coughs of deer lurching around in the brush.
Our cabin had pretty rough accommodations—plank siding and long, shotgun shack floor plan with a washroom, master bedroom, and a loft. Electricity and basic plumbing, but no phone or television. We lugged in books, cards, and board games to fashion a semblance of civilized entertainment. On a forest ranger’s advice, Dad always propped a twelve-gauge shotgun by the door. Black bears roamed the woods and were attracted to the scents of barbecue and trash. And children! Mom would say. The barbecue set the underlying tone; friendly hijinks and raucous laughter always prevailed those first few hours. Revived from our torpor, kids gorged on hotdogs and cola while parents lounged, grateful for the cool air and peaceful surroundings—except for the mosquitos. Everybody complained about them. Men understood shop talk was taboo. Those who slipped up received a warning glare from his better half. Nor did anyone remark upon news trickling in via the radio, especially concerning the Vietnam War; a subject that caused mothers everywhere to clutch teenaged sons to their bosoms. “Camp Terror” brooked none of that doomy guff. For two weeks, the outside world would remain at arm’s length.
Mr. Schrader struck a bonfire as the moon beamed over Harpy Peak. Once the dried cedar burned to coals, on came the bags of marshmallows and a sharpened stick for each kid’s grubby mitt. I recall snatches of conversation. The men discussed the Apollo program, inevitably philosophizing on the state of civilization and how far we’d advanced since the Wright brothers climbed onto the stage.
“We take it for granted,” Mr. Mercer said.
“What’s that?” Mr. Schrader waved a marshmallow flaming at the end of his stick.
“Comfort, safety. You flip a switch, there’s light. Turn a key, a motor starts.”
“Electricity affords us the illusion of self-sufficiency.”
“Gunpowder and penicillin imbue us with a sense of invincibility. Perpetual light has banished our natural dread of the dark. We’re apes carrying brands of fire.”
“Okay, gents. Since we’re on the subject of apes. We primates share a common ancestor. Which means we share a staggering amount of history. You start dwelling on eons, you have to consider the implications of certain facts.”
Mr. Mercer shook his head as he lit a cigarette. “I can only guess where this is going.”
“Simulation of human features and mannerisms will lead the field into eerie precincts,” Dad said.
“Uh-oh,” Mr. Schrader said. “This sounds suspiciously close to opshay alk-tay.”
“Thank goodness we’re perfecting mechanical arms to handle rivet guns, not androids. Doesn’t get more mundane.”
“Mark it in the book. Heck, the Japanese are already there.”
“Whatever you say, John.”
“Researchers built a robot prototype—a baby with a lifelike face. Focus groups recoiled in disgust. Researchers came back with artificial features. Focus groups oohed and ahhed. Corporate bankrolled the project. We’ll hear plenty in a year or two.”
“Humans are genetically encoded to fear things that look almost like us, but aren’t us.”
“Ever ask yourself why?”
“No, can’t say I’ve dedicated much thought to the subject,” Mr. Mercer said. “So, why are we allegedly fearful of, er, imitations?”
“For the same reason a deer or a fowl will spook if it gets wind of a decoy. Even an animal comprehends that a lure means nothing good.” Dad had mentioned this periodically. Tonight, he didn’t seem to speak to either of his colleagues. He looked directly at me.
“Shop talk!” Mom said with the tone of a referee declaring a foul.
Mrs. Schrader and Mrs. Mercer interrupted their own conversation to boo the men.
“Whoops, sorry!” Mr. Mercer gestured placatingly. “Anyway, how about those Jets?”
Later, somebody suggested we have a game. No takers for charades or trivia. Finally, Mrs. Mercer requested a demonstration of Aunt Vikki’s fabled skills. Close magic, prestidigitation, clairvoyance, or whatever she called it. My aunt demurred. However, the boisterous assembly would brook no refusal and badgered her until she relented.
That mystical evening, performing for a rapt audience against a wilderness backdrop, she was on her game. Seated lotus on a blanket near the fire, she affected trancelike concentration. Speaking in a monotone, she specified the exact change in Mr. Schrader’s pocket, the contents of Mrs. Mercer’s clutch, and the fact that one of the Mercer kids had stolen his sister’s diary. This proved to be the warmup routine.
Mr. Mercer said, “John says you’ve worked with the law to find missing persons.”
“Found a couple.” Her cheeks were flushed, her tone defiant. “Their bodies, at any rate.”
“That plane that went down in the Adirondacks. Can you get a psychic bead on it?”
Aunt Vikki again coyly declined until a chorus of pleas “convinced” her to give it a shot. She swayed in place, hands clasped. “Dirt. Rocks. Running water. Scattered voices. Many miles apart.”
“Guess that makes sense,” Mr. Mercer said to Mr. Schrader. “Wreck is definitely spread across the hills.”
Mrs. Schrader said under her breath to Dad, “Eh, what’s the point? She could say anything she pleases. We’ve no way to prove her claim.” He shooshed her with a familiar pat on the hip. Everybody was ostensibly devout in those days. Mrs. Schrader frequently volunteered at her church and I suspect Aunt Vikki’s occult shenanigans, innocent as they might’ve been, troubled her. The boozing and flirtation less so.
The eldest Mercer girl, Katie, asked if she could divine details of an IBM housewife named Denise Vinson who’d disappeared near Saugerties that spring. Nobody present knew her husband; he was among the faceless legions of electricians who kept the plant humming. He and his wife had probably attended a company buffet or some such. The case made the papers.
“Denise Vinson. Denise Vinson . . . .” Aunt Vikki slipped into her “trance.” Moments dragged on and an almost electric tension built; the hair-raising sensation of an approaching thunderstorm. The adults ceased bantering. Pine branches creaked; an owl hooted. A breeze freshened off the lake, causing water to lap against the dock. Greg and I felt it. His ubiquitous smirk faded, replaced by an expression of dawning wonderment. Then Aunt Vikki went rigid and shrieked. Her cry echoed off the lake and caused birds to dislodge from their roosts in the surrounding trees. Her arms extended, fingers and thumbs together, wrists bent downward. She rocked violently, cupped hands stabbing the air in exaggerated thrusts. Her eyes filled with blood. My thoughts weren’t exactly coherent, but her posture and mannerisms reminded me of a mantis lashing at its prey. Reminded me of something else, too.
Her tongue distended as she babbled like a Charismatic. She covered her face and doubled over. Nobody said anything until she straightened to regard us.
“Geez, Vikki!” Mr. Mercer nodded toward his pop-eyed children.
“I mean, geez Louise!”
“What’s the fuss?” She glanced around, dazed.
Mom, in a display of rare concern, asked what she’d seen. Aunt Vikki shrugged and said she’d glimpsed the inside of her eyelids. Why was everybody carrying on? Dad lurked to one side of the barbecue pit. His glasses were brimmed with the soft glow of the coals. I couldn’t decipher his expression.
Mood dampened, the families said their goodnights and drifted off to bed. Mom, tight on highballs, compared Aunt Vikki’s alleged powers of clairvoyance to those of the famous Edgar Cayce. This clash occurred in the wee hours after the others retired to their cabins. Awakened by raised voices, I hid in shadows atop the stairs to the loft, eavesdropping like it was my job.
“Cayce was as full of shit as a Christmas goose.” Aunt Vikki’s simmering antipathy boiled over. “Con man. Charlatan. Huckster.” Her eyes were bloodshot and stained from burst capillaries. Though she doggedly claimed not to recall the episode earlier that evening, its lingering effects were evident.
“Vikki,” Dad said in the placating tone he deployed against disgruntled subordinates. “Barbara didn’t mean any harm. Right, honey?”
“Sure, I did . . . not.” From my vantage I saw Mom perched near the cold hearth, glass in hand. The drunker she got, the cattier she got. She drank plenty at Lake Terror.
Aunt Vikki loomed in her beehive-do and platform shoes. “Don’t ever speak of me and that . . . that fraud in the same breath. Cayce’s dead and good riddance to him. I’m the real McCoy.”
“Is that a fact? Then, let’s skip the rest of this campout and head for Vegas.” Mom tried to hide her sardonic smile with the glass.
“Ladies, it’s late,” Dad said. “I sure hope our conversation isn’t keeping the small fry awake.” His not-so-subtle cue to skedaddle back to my cot left me pondering who was the psychic—Aunt Vikki or Dad? Maybe he can see in the dark was my last conscious thought. It made me giggle, albeit nervously.
Greg jumped me and Billy Mercer as we walked along the trail behind the cabins. Billy and I were closest in age. Alas, we had next to nothing in common and didn’t prefer one another’s company. Those were the breaks, as the youth used to say. The path forked at a spring before winding ever deeper into the woods. To our left, the path climbed a steep hill through a notch in a stand of shaggy black pine. Mom, the poet among us, referred to it as the Black Gap. Our parents forbade us to drink from the spring, citing mosquito larvae. Predictably, we disregarded their command and slurped double handfuls of cool water at the first opportunity. As I drank, Greg crept upon me like an Apache.
He clamped my neck in a grip born of neighborhood lawn-mowing to earn extra bucks for gas and date-night burgers. “Boo!” He’d simultaneously smacked Billy on the back of his head. The boy yelped and tripped over his own feet trying to flee. Thus, round one of Tiptoe went to my insufferably smirking brother. Ever merciless in that oh-so-special cruelty the eldest impose upon their weaker siblings, I nonetheless detected a sharper, savage inflection to his demeanor of late. I zipped a rock past his ear from a safe distance—not that one could ever be sure—and beat a hasty retreat into the woods. Greg flipped us the bird and kept going without a backward glance.
The reason this incident is notable? Billy Mercer complained to the adults. Dad pulled me aside for an account, which I grudgingly provided—nobody respects a tattletale. Dad’s smirk was even nastier than Greg’s. Head on a swivel, if you want to keep it, kiddo. He put his arm around my brother’s shoulders and they shared a laugh. Three days in, and those two spent much of it together, hiking the forest and floating around the lake. The stab of jealousy hurt worse than Greg squeezing my neck.
Near bedtime, we set up tents in the backyard, a few feet past the badminton net and horseshoe pit. The plan was for the boys to sleep under the stars (and among the swarming mosquitos). Mrs. Schrader protested weakly that maybe this was risky, what with the bears. Mr. Schrader and Mr. Mercer promised to take watches on the porch.
Odin stayed with me; that would be the best alarm in the world. No critter would get within a hundred yards without that dog raising holy hell. And thus it went: Odin, Billy Mercer, a Schrader boy, and me in one tent, and the rest of them in the other. We chatted for a bit. Chitchat waned; I tucked into my sleeping bag, poring over an issue of Mad Magazine by flashlight until I got sleepy.
I woke to utter darkness. Odin panted near my face, growling softly. I lay at the entrance. Groggy and unsure of whether the dog had scented a deer or a bear, I instinctively clicked on my trusty flashlight, opened the flap, and shone it into the trees—ready to yell if I spotted danger. Nothing to corroborate Odin’s anxious grumbles. Scruffy grass, bushes, and the shapeless mass of the forest. He eventually settled. I slept and dreamed two vivid dreams. The first was of Aunt Vikki spotlighted against a void. Her eyes bulged as she rocked and gesticulated, muttering. Dream logic prevailing, I understood her garbled words: Eeny! Meany! Miny! Moe!
In the second, I floated; a disembodied spirit gazing down. Barely revealed by a glimmer of porch light, Dad crawled from under a bush and lay on his side next to the tent. He reached through the flap. His arm moved, stroking. These dreams were forgotten by breakfast. The incident only returned to me many years later; a nightmare within a nightmare.
Over blueberry pancakes, Dad casually asked whether I’d care to go fishing. At an age where a kid selfishly treasured an appointment on his father’s calendar, I filled a canteen and slung my trusty Nikon F around my neck and hustled after him to the dock. Unlike the starter camera I’d long outgrown, the Nikon was expensive and I treated it with proper reverence. Film rolls were costly as well. Manual labor, supplemented by a generous allowance and a bit of wheedling, paid the freight. Mom, a stalwart supporter of the arts, chipped in extra.
She encouraged me to submit my work to newspaper and magazine contests, in vain. Back then, the hobby was strictly personal. I wasn’t inclined to share my vision with the world just yet, although I secretly dreamed big dreams—namely, riding the savannah with the crew of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.
The sun hadn’t cleared the trees as we pushed away from the dock. Dad paddled. I faced him, clicking shots of the receding cabins and birds rising and falling from the lake and into the sky. He set aside his paddle and the canoe kept on gliding across the dark water.
“This is where we’re gonna fish?” I said.
“No fishing today.” After a pause, he said, “I’m more a fisher of men.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Time to begin reflecting on what kind of man you are.”
“Dad, I’m twelve.” I inherited my smart-Alec lip from Mom.
“That’s why I don’t expect you to decide today. Merely think on it.” He could see I wasn’t quite getting it. “Ever since you showed an interest in photography, I had a hunch . . . . ” He cupped his hands and blew into the notch between his thumbs. Took him a couple of tries to perfect an eerie, fluting whistle that rebounded off the lake and nearby hills. He lowered his hands and looked at me. “I planned to wait until next year to have this conversation. Aunt Vikki’s . . . outburst has me thinking sooner is better. Sorry if she frightened you.”
“Why did she fly off the handle? Are her eyes okay?” I hoped to sound unflappable.
“Her eyes are fine. It’s my fault. The Vinson woman was too close to home. Anyhow, your aunt is staying with us because she can’t live alone. She’s fragile. Emotionally.”
“Vikki’s crazy?”
“No. Well, maybe. She’s different and she needs her family.”
“She and Mom hate each other.”
“They fight. That doesn’t mean they hate each other. Do you hate your brother? Wait, don’t answer that.” He dipped his paddle into the water. “What’s my job at the plant?”
“You build—”
“Design.”
“You design robots.”
“I’m a mechanical engineer specializing in robotic devices and systems. It’s not quite as dramatic as it sounds. How do you suppose I landed that position?”
“Well, you went to school—”
“No, son. I majored in sociology. Any expertise I have in engineering I’ve learned on the fly or by studying at night.”
“Oh.” Confused by the turn in our conversation, I fiddled with my camera.
“Want to know the truth?”
“Okay.” I feared with all the power of my child’s imagination that he would reveal that his real name was Vladimir, a deep cover mole sent by the Russians. It’s difficult to properly emphasize the underlying paranoia wrought by the Cold War on our collective national psyche. My brother and I spied on our neighbors, profiling them as possible Red agents. We’d frequently convinced ourselves that half the neighborhood was sending clandestine reports to a numbers station.
“I bullshitted the hiring committee,” Dad said. He seldom cursed around Mom; more so Greg. Now I’d entered his hallowed circle of confidence. “That’s how I acquired my position. If you understand what makes people tick, you can always get what you want. Oops, here we are.” Silt scraped the hull as he nosed the canoe onto the shore. We disembarked and walked through some bushes to a path that circled the entire lake. I knew this since our families made the entire circuit at least once per vacation.
Dad yawned, twisting his torso around with a contortionist’s knack. He doubled his left hand against his forearm; then the right. His joints popped. This wasn’t the same as my brother cracking his knuckles, which he often did to annoy me. No, it sounded more like a butcher snapping the bones of a chicken carcass. He sighed in evident relief. “Son, I can’t tell you what a living bitch it is to maintain acceptable posture every damned minute of the day. Speaking of wanting things. You want great pictures of predators, right?” I agreed, sure, that was the idea. He hunched so our heads were closer. “Prey animals are easy to stalk. They’re prey. They exist to be hunted and eaten. Predators are tougher. I can teach you. I’ve been working with your brother for years. Getting him ready for the jungle.”
“The jungle?” I said, hearing and reacting to the latter part of his statement while ignoring the former. “You mean Vietnam?” There was a curse word. “But he promised Mom—”
“Greg’s going to volunteer for the Marines. Don’t worry. He’s a natural. He’s like me.” He stopped and laid his hand on my shoulder. Heavy and full of suppressed power. “I can count on your discretion not to tell your mother. Can’t I?”
Sons and fathers have differences. Nonetheless, I’d always felt safe around mine. Sure, he was awkward and socially off-putting. Sure, he ran hot and cold. Sure, he made lame jokes and could be painfully distant. People joke that engineers are socially maladjusted; there’s some truth to that cliché. Foibles notwithstanding, I didn’t doubt his love or intentions. Yet, in that moment, I became hyper aware of the size of his hand—of him, in general—and the chirping birds, and that we were alone here in the trees on the opposite shore of the lake. Awareness of his physical grotesqueness hit me in a wave of revulsion. From my child’s unvarnished perspective, his features transcended mere homeliness. Since he’d stretched, his stance and expression had altered. Spade-faced and gangling, toothy and hunched, yet tall and deceptively agile. A carnivore had slipped on Dad’s sporting goods department ensemble and lured me into the woods. Let’s go to Grandma’s house!
Awareness of his physical grotesqueness hit me in a wave of revulsion.
Such a witless, childish fantasy. The spit dried in my mouth anyhow. Desperate to change the subject, perhaps to show deference the way a wolf pup does to an alpha, I said, “I didn’t mean to call Aunt Vikki crazy.”
Dad blinked behind those enormous, horn-rimmed glasses. “It would be a mistake to classify aberrant psychology as proof of disorder.”
He registered my blank expression. “Charles Addams said—”
“Who’s that?”
“A cartoonist. He said, ‘What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.’ He was correct. The world is divided between spiders and flies.” He studied me intently, searching for something, then shook himself and straightened. His hand dropped away from my shoulder. Such a large hand, such a long arm. “C’mon. Let’s stroll a bit. If we’re quiet, we might surprise a woodland critter.”
We strolled.
Contrary to his stated intention of moving quietly to surprise our quarry, Dad initiated a nonstop monologue. He got onto the subject of physical comedy and acting. “Boris Karloff is a master,” he said. “And Lon Chaney Jr. The werewolf guy?”
“Yeah, Dad.” I’d recovered a bit after that moment of irrational panic. The world felt right again under my feet.
“Chaney’s facility with physiognomic transformation? Truly remarkable. Unparalleled, considering his disadvantages. Faking—it’s difficult.” One aspect I learned to appreciate about my old man’s character was the fact he didn’t dumb down his language. Granted, he’d speak slower depending upon the audience. However, he used big words if big words were appropriate. My desk-side dictionary and thesaurus were dog-eared as all get-out.
While he blathered, I managed a few good shots including a Cooper’s hawk perched on a high branch, observing our progress. The hawk leaped, disappearing over the canopy. When I lowered the camera, Dad was gone too. I did what you might expect—called for him and dithered, figuring he’d poke his head around a tree and laugh at my consternation. Instead, the sun climbed. Patches of cool shade thickened; the lake surface dimmed and brightened with opaline hardness. Yelling occasionally, I trudged back toward where we’d beached the canoe.
He caught me as I rounded a bend in the path. A hand and ropy arm extended so very far from the wall of brush. A hooked nail scraped my forehead. Look, son! See? Instead of pausing to peer into the undergrowth, I ran. Full tilt, camera strap whipping around my neck and a miracle I didn’t lose that beloved camera before I crashed through the bushes onto the beach.
Dad sat on a driftwood log, serenely studying the lake. “Hey, kiddo. There you are.” He explained his intention to play a harmless joke. “You perceive your surroundings in a different light if a guardian isn’t present. Every boy should feel that small burst of adrenaline under controlled circumstances. Head on a swivel, right, son?”
I realized I’d merely bumped into a low-hanging branch and completely freaked. By the time we paddled home, my wild, unreasoning terror had dissipated. It’s all or nothing with kids—dying of plague, or fit as a fiddle; bounce back from a nasty fall, or busted legs; rub some dirt on it and walk it off, or a wheelchair. Similar deal with our emotions as well. Dad wasn’t a monster, merely a weirdo. Aunt Vikki’s crazed behavior had set my teeth on edge. The perfect storm. My thoughts shied from outré concerns to dwell upon on Dad’s casual mention that Greg planned on going to war and how we’d best keep on the QT. Not the kind of secret I wanted to hide from Mom, but I wasn’t a squealer.
He remained quiet until we were gliding alongside the dock. He said, “Randy, I was wrong to test you. I’m sorry. Won’t happen again. Scout’s honor.”
It didn’t.
Toward the end of our stay, the whole lot of us trooped forth to conduct our annual peregrination around the entire lake. We packed picnic baskets and assembled at the Black Gap. Except for Dad, who’d gone ahead to prepare the site where we’d camp for lunch. Another barbecue, in fact. Mr. Mercer brought along a fancy camera (a Canon!) to record the vacation action. He and I had a bonding moment as “serious” photographers. Mr. Schrader, Dad, and a couple of the kids toted flimsy cheap-o tourist models. Such amateurs! Mr. Mercer arranged us with the pines for a backdrop. Everybody posed according to height. He yelled directions, got what he wanted, and joined the group while I snapped a few—first with his camera, then my own. I lagged behind as they scrambled uphill along the path.
We trekked to the campsite. Hot, thirsty, and ready for our roasted chicken. Dad awaited us, although not by much. None of the other adults said anything. However, I recall Mom’s vexation with the fact he hadn’t even gotten a fire going in the pit. She pulled him aside and asked what happened. Why was he so mussed and unkempt? Why so damned sweaty?
He blinked, pushed his glasses up, and shrugged. “I tried a shortcut. Got lost.”
“Lost, huh?” She combed pine needles out of his hair. “Likely story.”
That winter, drunken ski bums accidentally burned down the Schrader cabin. Oh, the plan was to rebuild in the spring and carry on. Alas, one thing led to another—kids shipping off to college, the Mercers divorcing, etcetera—and we never returned. The men sold off the property for a tidy profit. That was that for our Lake Terror era. Greg skipped college and enlisted with the United States Marine Corps in ’69. Mom locked herself in her study and cried for a week. That shook me—she wasn’t a weeper by any means. My brother sent postcards every month or so over the course of his two tours. Well, except for a long, dark stretch near the end when he ceased all communication. The military wouldn’t tell us anything. Judging by her peevishness and the fact she seldom slept, I suspect Mom walked the ragged edge.
One day, Greg called and said he’d be home soon. Could Dad pick him up at the airport? He departed an obstreperous child and returned a quieter, thoughtful man. The war injured the psyches of many soldiers. It definitely affected him. Greg kibitzed about shore leave and the antics of his rogue’s gallery of comrades. Conversely, he deflected intimate questions that drilled too close to where his honest emotions lay buried. Dumb kids being dumb kids, I asked if he killed anyone. He smiled and drummed his fingers on the table, one then another. That smile harked to his teenaged cruelness, now carefully submerged. More artful, more refined, more mature. He said, The neat thing about Tiptoe? It’s humane. Curbs the ol’ urges. Ordinarily, it’s enough to catch and release. Ordinarily. You get me, kid? We didn’t speak often after he moved to the Midwest. He latched on with a trucking company. The next to the last time I saw him was at Dad’s funeral in 1985. Dad’s ticker had blown while raking leaves. Dead on his way to the ground, same as his own father and older brother. Greg lurked on the fringes at the reception. He slipped away before I could corner him. Nobody else noticed that he’d come and gone.
Aunt Vikki? She joined a weird church. Her erratic behavior deteriorated throughout the 1970s, leading to a stint in an institution. She made a comeback in the ’80s, got on the ground floor of the whole psychic hotline craze. Made a killing telling people what they wanted to hear. Remarried to a disgraced avant garde filmmaker. Bought a mansion in Florida where she currently runs a New Age commune of international repute. Every Christmas, she drops a couple grand on my photography to jazz up her compound. I can’t imagine how poster photos of wolves disemboweling caribou go over with the rubes seeking enlightenment. Got to admit, watching those recruitment videos shot by her latest husband, my work looks damned slick.
And full circle at last. My coworker startled me; nightmares ensued; and creepy-crawly memories surfaced. Cue my formerly happy existence falling apart. Two AM routinely found me wide awake, scrutinizing my sweaty reflection in the bathroom mirror. I tugged the bags beneath my eyes, exposing the veiny whites. Drew down until it hurt. Just more of the same. What did I expect? That my face was a mask and I peered through slits? That I was my father’s son, through and through? If he were more or less than a man, what did that make me?
On my next visit, I decided to level with Mom as I tucked her into bed.
“We need to talk about Dad.” I hesitated. Was it even ethical to tell her the truth, here at the end of her days? Hey, Ma, I believe Pop was involved in the disappearances of several—god knows the number— people back in the sixties. I forged ahead. “This will sound crazy. He wasn’t . . . normal.”
“Well, duh,” she said. We sat that there for a while, on opposite sides of a gulf that widened by the second.
“Wait. Were you aware?”
“Of what?”
Hell of a question. “There was another side to Dad. Dark. Real dark, I’m afraid.”
“Ah. What did you know, ma’am, and when did you know it?”
“Yeah, basically.”
“Bank robbers don’t always tell their wives they rob banks.”
“The wives suspect.”
“Damned straight. Suspicion isn’t proof. That’s the beauty of the arrangement. We lasted until he died. There’s beauty in that too, these days.” Mom’s voice had weakened as she spoke. She beckoned me to lean in and I did. “We were on our honeymoon at a lodge. Around dawn, wrapped in a quilt on the deck. A fox light-footed into the yard. I whispered to your father about the awesomeness of mother nature, or wow, a fox! He smiled. Not his quirky smile, the cold one. He said, An animal’s expression won’t change, even as it’s eating prey alive. May sound strange, but that’s when I knew we fit perfectly.”
“Jesus, Mom.” I shivered. Dad and his pearls of wisdom, his icy little apothegms. Respected, admired, revered. But replaceable. A phrase he said in response to anyone who inquired after his job security at IBM. He’d also uttered a similar quote when admonishing Greg or me in connection to juvenile hijinks. Loved, but replaceable, boys. Loved, but replaceable.
“He never would’ve hurt you.” She closed her eyes and snuggled deeper into her blankets. Her next words were muffled. I’m not sure I heard them right. “At least, not by choice.”
Mom died. A handful of journalist colleagues and nurses showed up to pay their respects. Greg waited until the rest had gone and I was in the midst of wiping my tears to step from behind a decrepit obelisk, grip my shoulder, and whisper, “Boo!” He didn’t appear especially well. Gray and gaunt, raw around the nose and mouth. Strong, though, and seething with febrile energy. He resembled the hell out of Dad when Dad was around that age and not long prior to his coronary. Greg even wore a set of oversized glasses, although I got a funny feeling they were purely camouflage.
We relocated to a tavern. He paid for a pitcher, of which he guzzled the majority. Half a lifetime had passed since our last beer. I wondered what was on his mind. The funeral? Vietnam? That decade-old string of missing persons in Ohio near his last known town of residence?
“Don’t fret, little brother.” Predators have a talent for sniffing weakness. He’d sussed out that I’d gone through a few things recently, Mom’s death being the latest addition to the calculus of woe. “Dad told you—you’re not the same as us.” He wiped his lips and tried on a peaceable smile. “They gave me the good genes. Although, I do surely wish I had your eye. Mom also had the eye.” The second pitcher came and he waxed maudlin. “Look, apologies for being such a jerk to you when we were kids.”
“Forgotten,” I said.
“I’ve always controlled my worse impulses by inflicting petty discomfort. Like chewing a stick of gum when I want a cigarette so bad my teeth ache. I needle people. Associates, friends, loved ones. Whomever. Their unease feeds me well enough to keep the real craving at bay. Until it doesn’t.” He removed a photo from his wallet and pushed it across the table. Mom and Dad in our old yard. The sun was in Dad’s glasses. Hard to know what to make of a man’s smile when you can’t see his eyes. I pushed it back. He waved me off. “Hang onto that.”
“It’s yours.”
“Nah, I don’t need a memento. You’re the archivist. The sentimental one.”
“Fine. Thanks.” I slipped the photo into my coat pocket.
He stared at a waitress as she cleared a booth across the aisle. From a distance his expression might’ve passed for friendly. “My motel isn’t far,” he said. “Give me a ride? Or if you’re busy, I could ask her.” How could I refuse my own brother? Well, I would’ve loved to.
His motel occupied a lonely corner on a dark street near the freeway. He invited me into his cave-like room. I declined, said it had been great, etcetera. I almost escaped clean. He caught my wrist. Up close, he smelled of beer, coppery musk, and a hint of moldering earth.
“I think back to my classmates in high school and the military,” Greg said. “The drug addicts, the cons, and divorcees. A shitload of kids who grew up and moved as far from home as humanly possible. Why? Because their families were the worst thing that ever happened to them. It hit me.”
“What hit you?”
“On the whole, Mom and Dad were pretty great parents.”
“Surprising to hear you put it that way, Greg. We haven’t shared many family dinners since we were kids.”
“Take my absence as an expression of love. Consider also, I might have been around more than you noticed.” He squeezed.
As I mentioned, despite his cadaverous appearance, he was strong. And by that, I mean bone-crushing strong. My arm may as well have been clamped in the jaws of a grizzly. I wasn’t going anywhere unless he permitted it. “They were good people,” I said through my teeth.
“Adios, bud.”
Surely it was a relief when he slackened his grip and released me. I trudged down the stairs, across the lot, and had my car keys in hand when the flesh on my neck prickled. I spun, and there was Greg, twenty or so feet behind me, soundlessly tiptoeing along, knees to chest, elbows even with the top of his head, hands splayed wide. He closed most of the gap in a single, exaggerated stride. Then he froze and watched my face with the same intensity as he’d observed the waitress.
“Well done,” he said. “Maybe you learned something, bumbling around in the woods.” He turned and walked toward the lights of the motel. I waited until he’d climbed the stairs to jump into my car and floor it out of there.
A long trip home. You bet I glanced into my rearview the entire drive.
In the wee desolate hours, short on sleep due to a brain that refused to switch off, I killed the last of the bourbon while sorting ancient photographs. A mindless occupation that felt akin to picking at a scab or working on a jigsaw. No real mental agility involved other than mechanically rotating pieces until something locked into place. Among the many loose pictures I’d stashed for posterity were some shot on that last day at Lake Terror in ’68. The sequence began with our three families (minus Dad, who’d gone ahead) assembled at the Black Gap and waving; then a few more of everybody proceeding single-file away and up the trail.
I spread these photos on the coffee table and stared for a long, long while. I only spotted the slightly fuzzy, unfocused extra figure because of my keen vision . . . and possibly a dreadful instinct honed by escalating paranoia. Once I saw Dad, there were no take-backsies, as we used to say. Dad hung in the branches; a huge, distorted figure hidden in the background of a puzzle. Bloated and lanky, jaw unslung. Inhumanly proportioned, but unmistakably my father. His gaze fixed upon the camera as his left arm dangled and dangled, gray-black fingers plucking the hair of the kids as they hiked obliviously through the notch between the shaggy pines. His lips squirmed.
Eeny. Meeny. Miny. Moe.