Chapter One: The Prelude (Part 1)
“Del! Del! Wake up!!”
“Aw Daddy. What time … ?” I said squinting at the blurry red numbers on the clock on my nightstand. “Oh no! I’m not on nights this week. Why are you waking me up at …?!”
“Shut your mouth and get up right now Delilah Bathsheba Jezebel Nash!!”
Daddy never used all of my names, not even when he was angry at me. He hated them almost as much as I did. The fact that he had used them … all of them … woke me up faster than a bucket of ice cold water.
“Daddy?” I asked, scared despite the fact that I was twenty-one years old and well past the point where I should be acting like a scared little girl.
“Baby Girl I need you to pack everything up. Now. Grab all the food out of the kitchen; cold stuff in the coolers, everything else in the boxes and laundry baskets. Come on girl … hustle.” His command ended on a grimace and he grabbed his stomach. That scared me more than the other had.
“Daddy, what’s going on? Has … has it gotten worse? Or wait,” I said, grabbing at a straw. “Did the insurance finally give the OK for …” I asked as I followed him into the kitchen, my scuffy slippers making swishing noises on the faded linoleum of the hallway between the bedrooms and the breakfast nook.
Turning to me he took my shoulders, not roughly but not gently either. “Enough. We’ve already been through that as many times as I care to. And now … now everything has changed.”
Looking over my father’s shoulder I saw Micah already in the kitchen emptying all of the cabinets willy nilly, making my teeth hurt at the mess he was making of my immaculate and organized kitchen.
My father, catching what I was looking at, drew me into his bedroom, the only room in the house he wouldn’t let me touch when it came to cleaning; and it showed. “Listen Del and listen careful and quick because I don’t have time for everything right now. I … I overheard something down at the plant tonight. I wasn’t supposed to and a good thing that no one saw me; Kenneth and Harmon got caught listening and … and I’m not sure where they were taken to but they aren’t my responsibility, you two kids are.”
Daddy worked at the water treatment plant and had since he’d retired from the military three years ago. I turned 18 and Daddy had 20 in. I busted out of high school and he went on terminal leave from the USAF on almost the same day. Since then we’d been living in a series three-bedroom rentals while we waited for the housing market to stabilize. It might seem strange but I’d been “the woman of the house” since I was five years old, the year my brother was born. Momma’s uterus had ruptured during labor with my brother and they hadn’t been able to stop the bleeding. Daddy had been with her as she bled out and slowly lost consciousness. The doctors weren’t at fault, they did everything humanly possible, though Daddy still hated anything having to do with hospitals and health care; it was just “one of those terrible things” that no one seemed to have a satisfactory explanation for that happened to good people. Daddy had never remarried and I’d had a … well, different kind of upbringing compared to most girls my age. I was both to forever be “Daddy’s Little Girl” and at the same time his confidant and his “right hand man.” It made for an unusual father/daughter relationship, but not one I’ve ever regretted.
All of this flashed through my mind as Daddy started talking again. “I’ll explain things on the road … at least as well as I can explain them, I don’t have all the facts. Usually I adhere to ‘believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see’ but … Del, you’re going to have to trust your old man on this. I need you to just do what I say and keep everything else to yourself for a while, just like with … with my problems. Micah thinks … thinks I finally told Wilkinson off and we’re going to go visit the Aunts and maybe look for some property up there. He’s happy right now and I want to keep it that way until I’m forced to tell him otherwise.”
Micah was sixteen but the way Daddy handled him drove me crazy at least every other day. Micah was a royal brat but it wasn’t all own his fault. Daddy gave him his way as often as he could afford to, let him get away with things he never would have me just because he was a boy and was “sowing wild oats,” and coddled him way too much. Micah didn’t know how sick Daddy was, that was a secret. He didn’t know how much Daddy had given up just so he could have a car and auto insurance on his birthday just a couple of months back; that was a secret too. And Daddy was doing it again, keeping the peace rather than dealing with it head on.
I tried to keep my opinion to myself, we’d already had too many “discussions” on the subject and I’d promised myself that I would make Daddy’s time as easy as I could no matter what it cost me. But apparently something seeped through my eyes or in the tilt of my mouth.
“I know Girl, I know. And … and maybe you’ve been more right than wrong and I’ve just not wanted to … I hope that I have time enough left to set some things right. Just get a move on.”
Having Daddy admit that nearly stole the breath from my lungs but I tried to stay on track because whatever it really was … and he’d promised to explain when we got on the road so the faster we got on the road the better. “Daddy? Where are we going?”
“To your grandfather’s old hunting camp on the backside of the Aunt’s property.”
“What?!”
“Enough Del. There’s no time. Just … listen girl. Anything you want to keep you better … you better pack it up after you get the food. We … we won’t be coming back here. At least I don’t think so. Just treat it like we aren’t.”
We were walking back into the kitchen at that point and Micah was bouncing off the walls in excitement. “Del! We’re moving home!! Dad said I could skip the rest of the school year and then catch my senior year back at County Consolidated!!! Finally we are getting out of this hell hole!!!”
“Micah!!! Dad … you aren’t going to let Micah talk …”
“Enough Micah or I might just change my mind. And watch your language around your sister. We don’t use that kind of language around ladies.”
I could tell Micah wanted to make a comment about the likelihood of me being a lady pretty badly but there are one or two things that Daddy would rare up and let Micah have it over and one was letting him catch Micah treating me with anything less than respect. Again, that was if Daddy caught him. The only bad fight Daddy and Micah ever had was when he heard Micah call me a whore after … well, it wasn’t my fault I fell for a guy that had failed to tell me he was married. Nineteen year old guys weren’t normally married these days and those that were usually didn’t attend college on a full ride scholarship.
Most of our keepsakes and mementos were already at the Aunts’ place either in their attic or in the basement. We visited them at least once a year ever since Momma died; it was a stipulation of my grandfather’s will, that and the fact that we had to attend church regularly which Daddy had already promised Momma he would do anyway. A couple of times when Daddy had to go on an extended TDY we even lived with them. Mostly we bounced around so much that Daddy just found it easier to let the Aunts store all the extras we’d accumulated which left us only having to pack and move the bare essentials.
Unfortunately the last two years we’d kept all of our newest “junk” with us which meant that there was more than the usual packing to do if we were going to take it all with us. Luckily our trailer was actually an old airstream that Daddy had been “gifted” by one of our previous landlords when the guy couldn’t afford to give us back our security deposit. Daddy still laughed at how his fourteen year old daughter had wheeled and dealed that particular event into unfolding. He used to like to joke that I was a born skinflint and that I could pinch Old Copper Abe until he cried. Frankly I had to. It wasn’t always easy to find the grocery money and the rent money on just Daddy’s non-comm pay much less pay for clothes, school stuff and Little League and Daddy’s fetish for yard sales and collectible knives. Sometimes I didn’t know who was worse, Micah or Daddy.
We’d moved so many times over the years however that I had a system down pat and as soon as I got Micah settled down and had him loading boxes rather than packing them, things went smoother and faster. I had spent my own money on the large storage crates we’d used over and over throughout our many moves and each one was labeled with what was supposed to go inside it. We’d gutted the Airstream and converted it to an oversized junk hauler. We slept in the camper top on the back of Daddy’s F350. The whole system was a gas hog but with the extra tanks Daddy had installed we could go a lot farther pulling the trailer before we had to stop for fuel. It was also cheaper than any U-Haul or moving company we could ever find.
Three hours later I was down to my bedroom and Daddy’s bedroom. “Daddy, I’ve put your boxes …”
“Baby Girl, don’t worry about my room.”
“But …”
“Del.”
“Daddy, please don’t give up, not now, not when we are so close to getting the insurance company to approve that new treatment.”
“I’m not giving up Sweet Girl, I’m being realistic. I told you not to argue …”
“Yes Sir. But I’m not arguing. You haven’t told me what is going on yet. I’m having to do this all by blind faith.” Thinking quickly I added, “Besides, if you don’t want Micah to get suspicious we’ll need to get your room packed up too.”
That got me a look but he knew he’d been hoisted on his own petard, so he sighed and turned to go into his room while calling, “Micah! Get in here and help me with this.”
“Coming Dad! Dat burn Del, what was in that last box anyway?”
“My schoolbooks.”
“Books?! You and your stupid books. What do you need them for anyway? We’re moving home and there aren’t any colleges there and besides you don’t really think you’ll be able to save up enough money to …” his voice faded as Dad started ordering him to shut up and start packing.
I can still remember how angry Micah used to make me, always acting like my dreams were forever out of reach or stupid or both. Who would have thought he’d be so right only for all the wrong reasons. Daddy made too much money for me to qualify for grants since I still lived at home, and since I wasn’t too crazy about taking out a gazillion dollars in student loans only to have the government bleed me dry for the payments for the best of my working years, I was paying for school as I went. I’d been saving up for college ever since my grandfather had let me have a jar of old coins that I had dug up in his barn when I was about ten years old. Daddy used to tell me that I could be and do anything that I wanted to and I wanted to believe him very badly regardless of what anyone else thought.
I was thirteen before I realized how valuable those old coins were and by then my grandfather had died and left me the three other jars of coins that he’d found after digging the foundation out of the same corner of the barn when the old support post had rotted through and had to be replaced. When high school graduation came I still had those coins, now carefully cleaned, cataloged and sealed in tubes. My goal was to save those coins for graduate school. But before graduate school I’d need to get a bachelor’s degree and those weren’t cheap either.
I’d started babysitting by the time I was ten years old … you’d be amazed at how desperate some of the military wives on base were to just get a few minutes to run out by themselves even if it was just to the BX for milk and eggs, and by the time I was thirteen my resume had expanded to include dog walking, animal grooming, weeding, trimming, washing and folding clothes, ironing, dish washing, window cleaning, and catering. By the time I was sixteen I was actually able to apply for real jobs but I continued to prefer working “under the table” rather than paying all of the taxes that they took out in places like the Pizzeria where I worked two months as a waitress (a curse on all the families that let their kids make a horrible mess and didn’t leave me a tip to make up for having to clean up behind them) or the Bait and Tackle shop where I worked the last time I lived with the Aunts when Daddy was sent to the Middle East. It was while he was over there that his stomach problems started up and when his tour was up they put him on light duty stateside right before he went on terminal leave.
But today’s money isn’t worth as much as those old coins, nor did it go near as far; still doesn’t. I’d been forced to take the semester off when my main scholarship hadn’t renewed; the Foundation sponsoring it had been forced to cut back. I wasn’t a minority and I wasn’t going to school for any government pet project so that was all she wrote. Grades didn’t seem to matter even though mine were excellent. Only your flavor mattered and how it looked on someone’s quarterly report. I’m stubborn, but I’m realistic as well. I could defer my other scholarships for one semester and that is what I did even though it put me behind the rest of my class.
Daddy had offered to foot the bill to help out but I knew that he’d already had to dip into his retirement account to pay his medical bills since the Health Care Bill had altered his retirement benefits from the military. I said thanks but no thanks, that I wanted to do it myself. He didn’t argue which told me things were even worse than he had been letting on.
I was working three jobs trying to save up money and get ahead, one of the jobs was a nightshift at the local 24-hour Wallyworld, and I think this was partly why Micah was the way he was, on the other hand … well, I wasn’t his mother, I was his sister and it got to the point that he didn’t seem to want me to be either one.
“Del! Del! Wake up!!”
“Aw Daddy. What time … ?” I said squinting at the blurry red numbers on the clock on my nightstand. “Oh no! I’m not on nights this week. Why are you waking me up at …?!”
“Shut your mouth and get up right now Delilah Bathsheba Jezebel Nash!!”
Daddy never used all of my names, not even when he was angry at me. He hated them almost as much as I did. The fact that he had used them … all of them … woke me up faster than a bucket of ice cold water.
“Daddy?” I asked, scared despite the fact that I was twenty-one years old and well past the point where I should be acting like a scared little girl.
“Baby Girl I need you to pack everything up. Now. Grab all the food out of the kitchen; cold stuff in the coolers, everything else in the boxes and laundry baskets. Come on girl … hustle.” His command ended on a grimace and he grabbed his stomach. That scared me more than the other had.
“Daddy, what’s going on? Has … has it gotten worse? Or wait,” I said, grabbing at a straw. “Did the insurance finally give the OK for …” I asked as I followed him into the kitchen, my scuffy slippers making swishing noises on the faded linoleum of the hallway between the bedrooms and the breakfast nook.
Turning to me he took my shoulders, not roughly but not gently either. “Enough. We’ve already been through that as many times as I care to. And now … now everything has changed.”
Looking over my father’s shoulder I saw Micah already in the kitchen emptying all of the cabinets willy nilly, making my teeth hurt at the mess he was making of my immaculate and organized kitchen.
My father, catching what I was looking at, drew me into his bedroom, the only room in the house he wouldn’t let me touch when it came to cleaning; and it showed. “Listen Del and listen careful and quick because I don’t have time for everything right now. I … I overheard something down at the plant tonight. I wasn’t supposed to and a good thing that no one saw me; Kenneth and Harmon got caught listening and … and I’m not sure where they were taken to but they aren’t my responsibility, you two kids are.”
Daddy worked at the water treatment plant and had since he’d retired from the military three years ago. I turned 18 and Daddy had 20 in. I busted out of high school and he went on terminal leave from the USAF on almost the same day. Since then we’d been living in a series three-bedroom rentals while we waited for the housing market to stabilize. It might seem strange but I’d been “the woman of the house” since I was five years old, the year my brother was born. Momma’s uterus had ruptured during labor with my brother and they hadn’t been able to stop the bleeding. Daddy had been with her as she bled out and slowly lost consciousness. The doctors weren’t at fault, they did everything humanly possible, though Daddy still hated anything having to do with hospitals and health care; it was just “one of those terrible things” that no one seemed to have a satisfactory explanation for that happened to good people. Daddy had never remarried and I’d had a … well, different kind of upbringing compared to most girls my age. I was both to forever be “Daddy’s Little Girl” and at the same time his confidant and his “right hand man.” It made for an unusual father/daughter relationship, but not one I’ve ever regretted.
All of this flashed through my mind as Daddy started talking again. “I’ll explain things on the road … at least as well as I can explain them, I don’t have all the facts. Usually I adhere to ‘believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see’ but … Del, you’re going to have to trust your old man on this. I need you to just do what I say and keep everything else to yourself for a while, just like with … with my problems. Micah thinks … thinks I finally told Wilkinson off and we’re going to go visit the Aunts and maybe look for some property up there. He’s happy right now and I want to keep it that way until I’m forced to tell him otherwise.”
Micah was sixteen but the way Daddy handled him drove me crazy at least every other day. Micah was a royal brat but it wasn’t all own his fault. Daddy gave him his way as often as he could afford to, let him get away with things he never would have me just because he was a boy and was “sowing wild oats,” and coddled him way too much. Micah didn’t know how sick Daddy was, that was a secret. He didn’t know how much Daddy had given up just so he could have a car and auto insurance on his birthday just a couple of months back; that was a secret too. And Daddy was doing it again, keeping the peace rather than dealing with it head on.
I tried to keep my opinion to myself, we’d already had too many “discussions” on the subject and I’d promised myself that I would make Daddy’s time as easy as I could no matter what it cost me. But apparently something seeped through my eyes or in the tilt of my mouth.
“I know Girl, I know. And … and maybe you’ve been more right than wrong and I’ve just not wanted to … I hope that I have time enough left to set some things right. Just get a move on.”
Having Daddy admit that nearly stole the breath from my lungs but I tried to stay on track because whatever it really was … and he’d promised to explain when we got on the road so the faster we got on the road the better. “Daddy? Where are we going?”
“To your grandfather’s old hunting camp on the backside of the Aunt’s property.”
“What?!”
“Enough Del. There’s no time. Just … listen girl. Anything you want to keep you better … you better pack it up after you get the food. We … we won’t be coming back here. At least I don’t think so. Just treat it like we aren’t.”
We were walking back into the kitchen at that point and Micah was bouncing off the walls in excitement. “Del! We’re moving home!! Dad said I could skip the rest of the school year and then catch my senior year back at County Consolidated!!! Finally we are getting out of this hell hole!!!”
“Micah!!! Dad … you aren’t going to let Micah talk …”
“Enough Micah or I might just change my mind. And watch your language around your sister. We don’t use that kind of language around ladies.”
I could tell Micah wanted to make a comment about the likelihood of me being a lady pretty badly but there are one or two things that Daddy would rare up and let Micah have it over and one was letting him catch Micah treating me with anything less than respect. Again, that was if Daddy caught him. The only bad fight Daddy and Micah ever had was when he heard Micah call me a whore after … well, it wasn’t my fault I fell for a guy that had failed to tell me he was married. Nineteen year old guys weren’t normally married these days and those that were usually didn’t attend college on a full ride scholarship.
Most of our keepsakes and mementos were already at the Aunts’ place either in their attic or in the basement. We visited them at least once a year ever since Momma died; it was a stipulation of my grandfather’s will, that and the fact that we had to attend church regularly which Daddy had already promised Momma he would do anyway. A couple of times when Daddy had to go on an extended TDY we even lived with them. Mostly we bounced around so much that Daddy just found it easier to let the Aunts store all the extras we’d accumulated which left us only having to pack and move the bare essentials.
Unfortunately the last two years we’d kept all of our newest “junk” with us which meant that there was more than the usual packing to do if we were going to take it all with us. Luckily our trailer was actually an old airstream that Daddy had been “gifted” by one of our previous landlords when the guy couldn’t afford to give us back our security deposit. Daddy still laughed at how his fourteen year old daughter had wheeled and dealed that particular event into unfolding. He used to like to joke that I was a born skinflint and that I could pinch Old Copper Abe until he cried. Frankly I had to. It wasn’t always easy to find the grocery money and the rent money on just Daddy’s non-comm pay much less pay for clothes, school stuff and Little League and Daddy’s fetish for yard sales and collectible knives. Sometimes I didn’t know who was worse, Micah or Daddy.
We’d moved so many times over the years however that I had a system down pat and as soon as I got Micah settled down and had him loading boxes rather than packing them, things went smoother and faster. I had spent my own money on the large storage crates we’d used over and over throughout our many moves and each one was labeled with what was supposed to go inside it. We’d gutted the Airstream and converted it to an oversized junk hauler. We slept in the camper top on the back of Daddy’s F350. The whole system was a gas hog but with the extra tanks Daddy had installed we could go a lot farther pulling the trailer before we had to stop for fuel. It was also cheaper than any U-Haul or moving company we could ever find.
Three hours later I was down to my bedroom and Daddy’s bedroom. “Daddy, I’ve put your boxes …”
“Baby Girl, don’t worry about my room.”
“But …”
“Del.”
“Daddy, please don’t give up, not now, not when we are so close to getting the insurance company to approve that new treatment.”
“I’m not giving up Sweet Girl, I’m being realistic. I told you not to argue …”
“Yes Sir. But I’m not arguing. You haven’t told me what is going on yet. I’m having to do this all by blind faith.” Thinking quickly I added, “Besides, if you don’t want Micah to get suspicious we’ll need to get your room packed up too.”
That got me a look but he knew he’d been hoisted on his own petard, so he sighed and turned to go into his room while calling, “Micah! Get in here and help me with this.”
“Coming Dad! Dat burn Del, what was in that last box anyway?”
“My schoolbooks.”
“Books?! You and your stupid books. What do you need them for anyway? We’re moving home and there aren’t any colleges there and besides you don’t really think you’ll be able to save up enough money to …” his voice faded as Dad started ordering him to shut up and start packing.
I can still remember how angry Micah used to make me, always acting like my dreams were forever out of reach or stupid or both. Who would have thought he’d be so right only for all the wrong reasons. Daddy made too much money for me to qualify for grants since I still lived at home, and since I wasn’t too crazy about taking out a gazillion dollars in student loans only to have the government bleed me dry for the payments for the best of my working years, I was paying for school as I went. I’d been saving up for college ever since my grandfather had let me have a jar of old coins that I had dug up in his barn when I was about ten years old. Daddy used to tell me that I could be and do anything that I wanted to and I wanted to believe him very badly regardless of what anyone else thought.
I was thirteen before I realized how valuable those old coins were and by then my grandfather had died and left me the three other jars of coins that he’d found after digging the foundation out of the same corner of the barn when the old support post had rotted through and had to be replaced. When high school graduation came I still had those coins, now carefully cleaned, cataloged and sealed in tubes. My goal was to save those coins for graduate school. But before graduate school I’d need to get a bachelor’s degree and those weren’t cheap either.
I’d started babysitting by the time I was ten years old … you’d be amazed at how desperate some of the military wives on base were to just get a few minutes to run out by themselves even if it was just to the BX for milk and eggs, and by the time I was thirteen my resume had expanded to include dog walking, animal grooming, weeding, trimming, washing and folding clothes, ironing, dish washing, window cleaning, and catering. By the time I was sixteen I was actually able to apply for real jobs but I continued to prefer working “under the table” rather than paying all of the taxes that they took out in places like the Pizzeria where I worked two months as a waitress (a curse on all the families that let their kids make a horrible mess and didn’t leave me a tip to make up for having to clean up behind them) or the Bait and Tackle shop where I worked the last time I lived with the Aunts when Daddy was sent to the Middle East. It was while he was over there that his stomach problems started up and when his tour was up they put him on light duty stateside right before he went on terminal leave.
But today’s money isn’t worth as much as those old coins, nor did it go near as far; still doesn’t. I’d been forced to take the semester off when my main scholarship hadn’t renewed; the Foundation sponsoring it had been forced to cut back. I wasn’t a minority and I wasn’t going to school for any government pet project so that was all she wrote. Grades didn’t seem to matter even though mine were excellent. Only your flavor mattered and how it looked on someone’s quarterly report. I’m stubborn, but I’m realistic as well. I could defer my other scholarships for one semester and that is what I did even though it put me behind the rest of my class.
Daddy had offered to foot the bill to help out but I knew that he’d already had to dip into his retirement account to pay his medical bills since the Health Care Bill had altered his retirement benefits from the military. I said thanks but no thanks, that I wanted to do it myself. He didn’t argue which told me things were even worse than he had been letting on.
I was working three jobs trying to save up money and get ahead, one of the jobs was a nightshift at the local 24-hour Wallyworld, and I think this was partly why Micah was the way he was, on the other hand … well, I wasn’t his mother, I was his sister and it got to the point that he didn’t seem to want me to be either one.