Mean Streak

His December afternoon front porch stung his bare feet, but sequestering out on it with his grey-haired daughter felt really quite nice. When he shuffled out into the cold, grey afternoon to greet her and heard his front door latch and lock behind him, he knew was OK. She still wore a flower in her hair, over her left ear – the way she always used to like to do. She had a smile on her face, too, but something else, he knew, in her mind – the way she always used to like to do.

Interview-style, she wanted to know now how he’d been these “(how) many years?” Instead of admitting he took a fall on his basement stairs just a week ago, he bragged, “Renewed my driver’s license. Gave me until I’m ninety-two!”

            She’d started calling regularly again, asking if he’d had any more “spells”.  She wouldn’t believe he could still shove his garbage can alone up his dangerously steep driveway – where she was parked now.

            And had he done anything yet about the raccoons that’d been “infesting” his third floor “ever since mom died”? Many raccoon generations ago, his daughter’d shown up intimating she’d be glad to move in with him and “help out”. For that occasion, he wore a genuine Davy Crockett coon-skin cap he bought at the neighborhood Red, White and Blue thrift store. A professed animal lover, at the sight of the cap, she’d burst into tears – which tears reminded him of the knife she twisted in her own mother’s heart – long time ago now – when she inexplicably isolated her mother from her grandkids. All those years ago, watching tears dribble down his wife’s lonely face, creeped-out by the fact of his daughter’s heart, he felt a shiver of fear. He knew then that eventually, she’d come for his equity.

            But it wasn’t all his daughter’s fault; he always did have a natural mean streak.  He still loved to torture kids. And here she was back again now where she grew up. Hands pocketed, grinning now at her on his front porch, he told her he got a new pellet rifle – “seven-power scope and all.”

  “Thousand feet a second,” he added, “Barely sub-sonic. Really hits hard.”

 He expected to see shock on her face. He did. Outraged, she flustered to know “Father! What for!” Still grinning, he said, “Damn raccoons. Stitching coon-skin caps and selling ‘em on-line is too much work anymore. Can’t see like I used to, ya know.”

Impotent, frustrated tears again, and some foot stamping and, “Aren’t you cold, Father?” Never called him dad – nope, not dad.  

  Better not let her in , he reminded himself.

The day’s light gloomed down on his front porch. Silently, a dusting of snow sifted from the somber sky, frosting the frozen ground. Wondering before what she was thinking, he watched her pull in off the narrow, crowded street to park on his already slick, crash-dive driveway and stop about six feet from the garage door at the bottom. He noticed that her twenty-year-old headlights were occluded. Maybe her four-wheel-drive was in better shape.

Truth is, his driver’s license was a lie. Three years ago, he’d decided he was “a threat to humanity.” He sold his “Bullit” Mustang to a kid. Now, behind, its fragile old wooden roll-up door, his garage stood empty – except for his wheeled garbage can.

For a whole hour, her stamping her feet in the darkling cold, he forced his daughter to listen all about why her Father thought women’s pro softball was more interesting than Baseball – how the fast-pitch women “don’t dink around on the Mound like they do in the Majors.”

Ultimately, her frustrated “huff” said it all; she realized she couldn’t manipulate him into being hospitable. Shivering, she just lost her grip and flung her really quite well-developed quiver of expletives and epithets at him. He knew she was just trying to get control, but he stood his ground. He watched her stump stiffly down his porch steps, yank open her driver’s side door, slam it shut behind her and start her creaky old Subaru’s engine.

He didn’t wait. He turned around slowly, shoved his key in the lock and hobbled right back inside the house, straight down the hall to the door leading down to the basement. With the handle button, he locked it. Then, he shot both big barrel bolts home – barely before the house shook.

Out in the narrow street, with all the parked cars, her tow truck had a hard time of it – maneuvering to pull her old, oxy-greenish Forester back up his driveway.

But she left – the same way she got in.

Winter so close to Canada is tough on wild creatures. Reveling in the warmth inside his house, he went and got his bag of dog food. In case of another “spell” or in case he died on his ascent, he latched on the safety harness he found at the Red, White and Blue. He clipped the harness’ tether onto the stair railing. One step at a time, he started to work his way up the steep third floor stairs to feed his ‘coons.