Christmas, 2022

Jared wants to shoot wild pigs from a helicopter with a sniper rifle equipped with a special thermal scope.

But, Jared says, the pigs aren’t actually pigs. They’re wild boars. The difference is that pigs stop growing and boars don’t. Most of them are already the size of cars. And not small cars. Real, drive to work and soccer practice and the grocery store and load it up for weekend getaways kind of cars. And they could get even bigger. That’s why they have been classified as a nuisance. That’s why it’s okay to shoot them year-round.

He pulls out his phone and shows me a picture of Bradley Cooper. It’s a still from “American Sniper”. Bradley is belly down on a sandstone rooftop, holding a gun. His focus is intense. He is looking in a window fifty clicks or meters or hairsbreadths away, watching for movement.

Jared points at the gun. “That’s the gun. The exact one. I have that actual gun at home. Isn’t that crazy?”

There are videos on YouTube of the pigs getting shot from above. Jared wants to show me one of them but I don’t lean in and he doesn’t understand why. He says I’ll have to look them up, later. Totally. I will totally have to look them up later. The pigs are giant yellow and red bulbs of light and they run faster than you think. It’s like nothing you have ever seen. It’s an unsettling miracle. Then one by one, they drop.

Jared said he and Laura tried to hide the gun from their girls but they found it anyway and they had questions. So, he told them about the pigs and snipers and terrorists and Bradley Cooper and the helicopter and how the scope makes everything different colors.

They wanted to know what color the trees were. And the sky. And the pigs. They wanted to know what color they would be. And they wanted to hold the gun themselves.

At the time, Jared and Laura said no. No way. Totally, no way. But that was right after Jared got the gun; before he knew what he was doing. Since then he’s watched more videos. Now he knows how to handle it. He is comfortable. Now it’s ok for the girls to hold the gun as long as a grown-up is around.

He says the next time they come to town, we need to plan ahead so all of us can go to a shooting range together.

Can you imagine, he says, all of us in a helicopter with sniper rifles?

He looks at the only corner of the room not decorated for Christmas and lets out an audible breath. He walks to the kitchen where their girls and my son are playing tug of war with an apple even though there is a bowl full of apples on the counter right next to them. Even though the refrigerator is full of apple sauce, apple cider, and apple pie.

 

There is a scene in the movie where Bradley Cooper is cradling a baby, only it’s not a real baby. It’s very clearly a plastic doll. Everyone thought there was no way they wouldn’t fix that before the movie was released, but they didn’t. Everyone watched it anyway. It went on to be nominated for six Oscars.

 

Jared is going to shoot a pig from a helicopter, probably more than one, and I’m going to hear about it forever. I’m going to have to watch.

 

While everyone is in the next room opening apple-themed presents, I go to the kitchen and open the refrigerator and one by one I pour half gallons of cider down the sink. I pour and pour and pour until they are all gone.

 

 

Almost Fun

I was leaving for the dentist to get a tooth removed when I got an email saying my dad had died.

This would be my second visit in a week. The first was for a toothache. The x-rays said the tooth was fractured. It had to come out. The dentist gave me a prescription for painkillers and scheduled me for the following week.

 

I held off on the pills and the pain subsided on its own until it was gone altogether. I can only assume that if I had taken them, the pain would have stayed the same or gotten worse.

 

The dentist offers his condolences. He says I can stay in the chair as long as I want, then tells me about his wife and her dad. It was a similar situation. Estranged. A past of deliberate shorthand. He recommends I get an attorney, just in case.

Before I go, he wants to figure out where the pain went. It may have just been sinus pressure but we should have another look.

He pulls up the x-ray and zooms in on the roots. He points and says there should be a connection to memory right here—it usually presents in the form of a shape or a letter—but there’s nothing—no evidence there was anything there, to begin with.

He goes deep in thought, closes the x-ray, and concludes that no mistakes were made in the original diagnosis. In cases like this, all he can do is go on the symptoms.

 

Since then, I’ve endured a number of minor, unrelated ailments and they all bring that exact same tooth pain with them.

Each time, I take out the bottle of painkillers and read the warning labels. I look at the expiration date. I imagine waiting until this date has passed, then taking them all at once. I take them to prove that once something expires it can’t hurt you anymore.

But I feel them in my system. Breaking down. Going to work.

 

I call the emergency line. I tell the operator what I did and I say, “I didn’t think they were going to do anything. I thought this was a good way to get rid of them. I didn’t want to contaminate the water table.”

She tells me that that’s what we all say. She doesn’t sound like anyone I know.

 

The paramedics arrive and ask why I did this. I tell them about the water table, too. They say, what about the yard? You should have planted them like seeds. There are enough that with just a little bit of planning, I could have made a shape. Or even a letter.

 

I come to in the hospital. The first thing out of my mouth is, “Yes. I should have done that instead.”

The doctors treat this like a mystery. They encourage me to shop this line around to the people I know and get their theories on what I was answering. They have a lot of theories, and they tell me about all of them. Later on, they call and text and say we need to get lunch or coffee. They have more theories. Some about me, yes, but there is also the matter of the theories and secrets they have been keeping about themselves. They’ve been holding these things in for so long, that letting it out almost feels exciting. It’s almost like fun.

 

A box arrives in the mail. It contains a giant bottle of pills. The same prescription I had, only these belonged to my father. They don’t expire for many years—more than I’ll ever live. And there are hundreds upon hundreds of them. I was going to flush them but again–the water table.

 

The pills were not left to me in the will. They were left out of the will entirely. They were left in his house to be found by whatever lowest bidding company got hired to clean the place out. They must have found something, somewhere that said I was his son and assumed that that could only mean one thing.

 

I take one of his pills and brace myself.  Nothing happens.

 

But sometimes that can mean a lot of different things at once.

 

The next day, another pill. Still nothing.

 

Sometimes it means the opposite of family.

 

I take a pill every day now.

 

Sometimes it means holding out for things you knew you were never going to get anyway,

 

My goal is to invite the pain.

 

—like an admission,

 

And whenever the pain does arrive, no matter how bad it gets, I won’t let them take my teeth.

 

—an apology,

 

I won’t let them take anything.

 

—or a goodbye.

 

So, this will have to do and this, C, is more than enough.

 

 

 

The Swallow Necklace Your Grandmother Gave You

I may still have it here somewhere. I’m not positive, though. If I did and I knew where it was, I’d be pulling it out from time to time and holding it up to remember the way it looked resting under your neck.

There always seemed like a pattern behind when you wore it and when you didn’t, but I could never figure out what it was, so I always thought you were smarter than me; that your heart was smarter than my heart, and I’m sure that’s still true.

I’m also sure that someday I’ll run into you unexpectedly and you’ll bring up how I never answered when you asked about your necklace. You’ll be nice about it, and make it sound like a joke. I will say I sent it, but it must have gotten lost in the mail. I will pin this on the inefficiency of a government agency. Ten years from now, twenty, you’ll check the mail and it will be there.

If the necklace isn’t here somewhere, which is the most likely scenario, then I got rid of it one night when I was alone and far away. On a business trip. The trip to Missouri for the Sales Conference. There was a problem with the hotel so the airport shuttle had to kill some time. They drove us in circles around the Kansas City Royals stadium and wouldn’t stop. Most people stayed on, but a few of us jumped off to see the field. I walked to the outfield and threw your swallow necklace over the home run wall. Back on the shuttle, the driver was asking trivia questions about Royals players. No one got a single answer right.

If I do ever find your necklace, if I still have it, I will think about how there are two Kansas Cities. One in Kansas and one in Missouri and I will learn how to compartmentalize.

Years later, through circumstances completely beyond my control, I had a different job. A job with eight other people on the top floor of an otherwise empty office building. Our desks are arranged side-by-side. They form a long line that faces floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the seventy-seven overpass. We witness at least one serious car accident every day. We want to help, but we’re too far away, and the police or attorneys never come around to ask for our side of the story.

My new job requires an annual trip to Kansas City. The other Kansas City. Day one at the hotel, where we stay in a long line of side-by-side rooms, we get an email saying we’re going to a baseball game. Attendance is mandatory, so we get on a bus and we go to a stadium and sit in the cheap seats and I pray that no one hits a home run in our direction. But someone does. And I catch it.

I look in my hands.

I’m holding the metal swallow.

The team’s equipment manager comes up and says they need the ball back so the game can keep going. Things would be different if this were a Royals game, but it’s not. This is a AAA situation. I give the swallow to the manager and we all have to wait a minute while it turns back into a baseball.

Next inning, another home run straight to me. Same with the next batter, and the batter after that, and each time, the equipment manager would come out, and take the swallow, and we would have to wait for it to turn back into a baseball. It went on like this all night. As the game dragged on I could feel the crowd grow angry with me.

I changed seats. It didn’t help. More home runs, right to me.

Soon, the teams didn’t matter anymore. If a player hit a home run, the entire crowd would boo.

When the trip is over and I am packing my things, I check the room for your necklace. I like to act like I might find it anytime I leave a place, even though I know where it is. I think you do, too, but that doesn’t stop us. I will always look and you will always ask.