Son of The Father

The simple, unadorned house near the wild banks of the Mississippi River, just south of the Missouri watershed, was anything but luxurious. The low-roof structure was painted an unimaginative chalky white and the chain-link fence sagged in places. The front yard boasted just enough ragged tufts of grass to cover the dirt.

When a snowstorm left our street blanketed in white, or when spring’s common chickweed and bristly foxtail blossomed, from a certain angle our tiny home almost looked cozy. But these warts didn’t change my parents’ sense of pride that came with home ownership. In their view, the house was a hallmark of divine provision. 

Divided by doctrine and religious tradition, my parents worshiped in separate churches on Sunday, yet they both believed that all good things came from the hands of an attentive and loving God. In practical terms, heavenly endowments meant that the roof didn’t leak, the water heater chugged, and the place never got too drafty during those bone-chilling Missouri winters. 

Daddy and Mom landed the house after a distant family member fell into arrears on the loan; my parents marshaled enough wherewithal to get the payments caught up. Their new house came with a modest mortgage of $69.60 a month; money would be tight sometimes for a family with three teenage girls and a late-in-life baby, but it didn’t break the bank. For my orphaned mother, and for my father, whose mother died in childbirth, leaving him and his sisters with an often absent and hardhearted father, “home” was something you simply did not take for granted.

Neither of my parents finished high school, nor could they lay claim to a profession. They were simple punch-the-clock working people. Mom’s ability with needle and thread and her much-praised dressmaking skills gave her creative streak an outlet and brought a little extra money. My father’s life was dominated by wrenching bread, gas money, doctor bills, payments to a deaf school for an older sister, and mortgages from the sweat of his brow. He was, to quote my mother, a jack-of-all-trades and master of none.  

Born in the lowlands of the Missouri Bootheel region, as a young man, Daddy had a taste for liquor and was rumored to have run moonshine in fast cars. He went footloose in those years, taking to the rails in the Great Depression. In lean times, he hit every whistlestop he could, exchanging his labor for a little money and enough grub to get him through the day—and to the next town.

Daddy worked on farms and orchards as far up as the Michigan peninsula and the Pacific Northwest. By the time he met my mother, he had returned home, sharecropping cotton near Poplar Bluff, Missouri. Both my mother and father were aching from broken marriages; they married after a few weeks of courting because, as Mom later said, he liked her biscuits. 

Mom brought a daughter to their marriage, my oldest sister. Daddy loved the girl like his own. Two more daughters followed. One of his sisters got snooty and sent Christmas presents to the two youngest. Daddy sent them back with a handwritten note that simply read, “I have three daughters.” There were no step- or half-siblings in my family. 

Difficult circumstances had taken their toll on my father—but, sick as he was with a bad heart, he was not one to sit idle. Even with a disability check landing in the mail every month, things could still get tight. No job was beneath him if it put food on the table. Side work provided a little folding money and a rainy-day fund for unexpected expenses. I was often his sidekick when he did carpentry work or swept out railcars. 

Like many in his generation, Daddy was a heavy smoker. He had turned to tobacco in his hardscrabble youth to suppress the hunger pangs of a half-filled belly. But he never shook nicotine’s hold, and eventually cancer overtook his weakened lungs.

My parents cherished their homestead, and the kitchen was the heart of our house. My mother hung a wooden doghouse plaque on the wall between the stove and the door of the bedroom she and my father shared just off the kitchen. Each one of our names was printed on the comic shamefaced pups. The mom and dad dogs bore my parent’s names. On Friday, Mom would plop the most mischievous pup of the week in the doghouse. The daddy canine ended up in the doghouse more than anyone else. I bet my father just chuckled it off.

Mom kept a tidy backyard garden and raised chickens. In summer, she broke out the CorningWare for the succulent fruits and berries she harvested and for her famous deep-fried chicken. When canning time came around, thick curtains of steam rose from Mom’s pot on the stovetop, enveloping the room with warm mist and the soft tinkle of water bubbling around the many Mason jars. I liked her jams and jellies the most. They were thick in consistency, delicious as anything you could imagine. They tasted like a cool summer evening. 

Our kitchen was also the place where neighborhood kids gathered to gab with my teenage sisters or sit and talk with my father while he played dominoes, his game of choice. Daddy was popular with the kids on our block. Maybe it was because he never talked over younger people, or because of his sense of humor. He could spin a good yarn, and the young men who lived nearby sometimes came to him for advice.

My father was fiercely loyal to his friends and protective of his family. Daddy had a short fuse and would roll up his sleeves to settle a dispute with his fists if he had to. But for those he loved, those toil-hardened hands could be as gentle as gossamer on the wind. Even today, in my mind’s eye, I can see him at the kitchen table with his rolling papers and Prince Albert tobacco pouch next to a worn set of domino tiles. Most folks on our street had only good things to say about my father and mother, Tommie and Marcella.

Before I married and started my own family, this house, later torn down to make room for modern townhomes, was the nearest thing to a home I ever had. It was also the last place I remember seeing my father.

Daddy was ill for most of the autumn; a string of doctor visits offered no hope, and by December his absence from home due to hospital stays became more frequent. I never really understood the scale of his illness. I guess my family thought that, at age four, I was too young to understand he was dying. 

One morning I jumped out of bed and ran to his room, expecting him to be dressed and ready to pile me in the truck for an errand or a side job. But his mattress was bare, and the bedding was sloshing in the washing machine. I found my sister in the kitchen, sobbing. When I asked where Daddy was, she shook her head and said he wasn’t feeling well. I was baffled by that. When I had a runny nose or fever, I never ended up in the hospital. 

The cancer spread like wildfire, and there was little hope he would make it into the new year. His doctors let him have Christmas at home.

 My mom and sisters decorated the house. The Christmas tree with silver tinsel and colored lights sparkled in the corner of the living room, towering above nicely wrapped presents. The gathering was for Daddy, but the festivities felt halfhearted and strained. Dark circles formed beneath my mother’s eyes, and she seemed distracted. It was because Daddy wasn’t really there with us. The painkillers knocked him out, and he spent the day asleep in their bedroom by the kitchen.

I was the oldest of the little kids there that morning, and before my older sisters handed out the presents, my mother admonished us to be quiet anytime we were near Daddy’s room. I received a pair of plastic ray guns; one was purple and the other was yellow. If you squeezed the trigger, they made a high-pitched whirring noise.

My bedroom was down the hall from the kitchen. I was supposed to be playing there with the other kids, but I wanted to show Daddy my ray guns. I was proud as a peach. I figured if I was quiet enough, I could sneak in with my prized gifts. The adults were in the living room near the Christmas tree, their backs to the hallway. I put the ray guns in the waistband of my pants, hunched down, and crawled on my hands and knees as quietly as I could to his room. 

The kitchen was empty, so I eased the door open and snuck inside. The curtains were drawn, but faint winter light seeped through the covered window. Daddy stirred from his sleep. The floor creaked beneath me. He smiled and motioned for me to rise, then Daddy lifted himself up, mustering every ounce of strength in his sick body. He winced in pain before settling into a more comfortable position. 

He must have seen the ray guns, because he asked me to show him what Santa brought. When I held them out for him to see, he marveled. He asked how they worked, his voice thin.

“Those surely are something,” he said at my explanation. 

I spoke in whispers because I knew if my mother heard me, there would be hell to pay. But when Daddy asked for a demonstration of how they worked, any fear of being caught by my mother vanished. Next thing I knew, I was racing around the room firing the ray guns like a drunk cowboy on a Saturday night. 

My mother heard the ruckus, and the bedroom door just about flew off its hinges when she opened it. She stood in silhouette on the threshold, her hand gripping the doorknob. When she spoke, it sounded like she was about to either shout at me for flagrant disobedience or just burst into tears at seeing Daddy so ill. I couldn’t tell which.  

“Let’s go,” she said, trying to restrain her tone. 

My father raised himself up on his elbow and lifted his hand. 

“It’s fine,” he said gently. A smile appeared on his dry lips. “Let him play.” 

These were the last words I remember my father saying. 

That Christmas, there was no Hollywood-like finale of a happy family gathered around the tree, smiling at each other in their Sunday best and preparing to feast on roasted turkey and holiday delicacies. Instead, a dull winter gloom hung like a pall in the room where my father lay dying. My mother simply turned away and left, leaving the door partially open. 

I am sure my father would have given anything to leave his sickbed and escape with me to the truck and ride through the green country, along the river, the way we used to do. But that did not happen. His former strength was all but gone. My father died three weeks later; he weighed ninety pounds.

Daddy knew he was dying. And while he certainly believed in a healing God, I think he realized he could not bargain his way out of death like some try to do. So he did the best he could do with the life remaining in him. He offered the imperfect prayers of an imperfect man seeing the embers of his life fade away. He prayed to God for his family, and for the child before him that last Christmas day of his life. A son would someday become a man.

Sometimes the memories you write about are so up close and personal, it leaves you fumbling through them. Because he died when I was so young, I tried my best to shore up the memories of my father, like a voyager lost on an unknown frontier banking fire on a cold and desolate night. Not only for the warmth, but for the illumination against the blackness.

That Christmas day remains vivid, but memories can be flawed. I am sure my sisters’ memories have a clarity that mine lack. If I took liberties with those memories, it is only because at heart, I remain a hero-worshipping son in awe of his father. 

My father’s death loomed large in my youth. But the shadow of the life he lived never strangled out the light, nor did it leave barren the soil where it fell. Instead of darkness, I found shelter. And in those shadows, faith sprouted. Daddy died, but he never left me.

The featured image, “A candle of waiting,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.

Tommy Darin Liskey

Tommy Darin Liskey was born in Missouri but spent nearly a decade working as a journalist in Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil. He is a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi. His poetry, fiction and non-fiction has appeared in The Red Truck Review, Deep South, Driftwood Press, Biostories, Spelk, Heartwood among others. His narrative and documentary photography has been published in The Museum of Americana, Change 7, The Blue Mountain Review, Cowboy Jamboree, Literary Life and Midwestern Gothic, among others. He lives in Texas with his family.

“I take a more documentary approach to photography, using the camera to explore faith in images, and hopefully, the human story, through unplanned street portraits of people I meet in my both my travels, and everyday life. As both a writer and photographer, I believe my calling is to be present. I pray that God choreographs the rest.”

www.tomdarinphoto.com/