Fallen Idols

I was just a child then. Sitting in the front seat of my dad’s black inline-6 Jeep Renegade, the tires locked into four wheel drive and the doors off for comfort, I was a miniature of the man driving. We were mountaineers, a Buck knife on our hips and a can of chew in our back pockets. He chewed long-cut wintergreen Skoal, I chewed Bubble Tape. We wanted nothing more than to be mountain men, living in the wilderness on pine nuts and boiled spring water, a blue tarp arced into a tree for protection against the wind and the rain.

Ascents into the mountains were always at night and it was always cold, but he never put on the cover or the doors. Tonight we also had my younger twin brothers with us, they were fast asleep by now, huddled close together in the back seat.

The air was crisp and moisture permeated the air. The clouds huddled, saturated and grey, low in the night sky. They hid the starry heaven above us, but once you hit 3,000 feet they are gone. All you can see is the black blanket of night shot full of holes, exposing the glistening brightness of another hidden horizon.

We had stopped on the way to get food for the excursion. Dad was a camping gourmet chef who always made the same thing: campfire stew. This consisted of canned minestrone soup, canned corn, canned green beans, top-ramen (4), Tapatio hot sauce, canned tomato soup and anything else that happened to crawl or fall into the pot. We had this and bean and cheese burritos, oranges, trail mix and water/juice. He also bought beer and strike anywhere matches.

He said they were, “essential tools for survival and comfort in any situation.” Why he never mentioned the essential bodily need for water, I’ll never know.

I was asleep when he pulled the Jeep into the camp site. It was the same one we always used. My father knew the Campgroup supervisor and he always saved the spot for us. It was a beautiful part of the Buckhorn, the site had redwood trees two-hundred feet tall and a stream that ran next to it and shrubs that grew all around us and up the hill. To the right of us and away from the creek were more campsites and as we pulled in I noticed, after rubbing the sleep from my eyes that there was a camp fire going and people were singing and dancing in some foreign language.

The car lurched to a halt. I got out of the car and helped set of camp. My brothers, never bothered by the sound of the music or laughter or the movement of the Jeep, never broke from slumber. Finally, the tent was up and the blankets had been set. I sat down by the fire I had built in the steel fire pit in the middle of the camp.

“You’re not tired?” my father asked from behind me in the dark.

“No. I want to build a fire.”

“Alright, you need any help?” he spoke in a West Virginia twang that was hidden by his newly acquired Californian accent. I could see his cowboy hat and long hair silhouetted against the light from their fire and Coleman lanterns.

“No, I’ll be fine.”

“Ok, well I’m gonna go up the neighboring camp, I know a guy there and he wants me to come over and play some music.”

“Alright…”

“You wanna’ come up and watch?”

“Maybe later.”

He walked up the hill in his cowboy boots and tight wrangler jeans. He really wanted to be a cowboy – dreaming of horses and guitars and miles of green grassy hillsides of Southern Texas. He had his nine string guitar my mom had bought for him and a can of beer in his right hand as he strode into the light. I could hear his voice chatting loudly with all the foreign voices and strange dialects. I heard the guitar strum and sound off as it was being tuned by the magical musician, the only thing my mom missed after the divorce last year when I was nine. My brothers wouldn’t remember, only five at the time.

Burning pine-needles was getting tiresome and the melodies of my father’s voice and guitar chords strung out over the valley was putting me to sleep. I slowly walked toward the tent, stopped to piss on a tree and then unzipped the flaps to get in. I fell asleep instantly as my hot head touched the cool pillow case and I slipped into the warm blankets. He was still singing as I drifted away, “Grendaline baby you are safe-ly sleeping, beautiful girl with ringlets and curls…”



I woke up in a panic. The tent had been attacked, by a bear I was sure. I could hear it outside breathing deep gasping breaths and I could see it pawing at the tents rear window. It thought we were prey, I didn’t want to die like so many on the Discovery channel by a hoard of ravaged heathen animals gone mad on bloodlust. The thing was moving, crawling around the tent towards the front flap. There was no other noise outside. No remnants of a party of foreigners, no music to calm the nerves, just gasping and growling and loathsome cries of pain. I knew someone was being eaten alive in the darkness of the campsite, the fires had long since gone out. I looked desperately around for the lump that I knew would be him, my dad, but sadly nothing. The ferocious bear was still there, outside in the dark and violent night. Where was he, why was he not here? I was freaking out, breathing deep to stay calm, but the fear was mounting.

Then the sounds stopped and the bear seemed to lumber off into the dark. Had he eaten the entire campsite above, were they all dead? I didn’t know. I remembered my dad’s Glock, where was it? I would show that fucking bear a thing or two about fucking with people in their sleep. Found it – under the pillow. I crawled out into the night air and silence. I could hear what sounded like piss ricocheting off tin, it had been going for quite a while now; I knew I had the upper hand. I was going to sneak up behind that thing and blow its fucking head off. We would have bear for breakfast and lunch, and boy would dad be proud. I knew he would.

But, I didn’t kill the bear. I saw my father I saw leaning against an old Chevy van with porthole windows, not some wild beast. His pants were around his ankles and he was peeing on the van, muttering to himself. I watched in horror and he fumbled to zip up and then fell over turning around. He was crazy looking, a mad man with a wild grin from ear to ear. He grabbed franticly at the air as he careened into the ground again. I put the gun down and walked over. He looked like wounded animal there sprawled out on the ground.

“Dad, are you okay?” I whispered to him.

“Huh…fuckin’ japs gave me crown and coke, fuckin’ almost died comin’ down the hill there, what the fuck are you doin?”

“I thought you were a bear…”

“A fucking bear…ha ha ha… bears raid trash cans not tenting areas. Besides I hung it in a tree.”

“You peed for a long time.”

“Yeah, your old man is a mighty fine urinator – a fine professional for sure.”

“Are you going to be okay, dad?”

“Yeah, just give me a hand up. I think I pissed a bit in my jeans.”

I carried him to the tent and laid him down. His body warm and his face perspiring he lay there in quite solitude for a moment, not looking but absently gazing at nothing but the grey hue of the tent. That four person, two pole, water proof thing, we had it for five years already. It had been to the ocean and the desert, seen serene forests of green and lame yellow fields or pastures. It had been there when my mom went nuts over a BB gun and Dickie Moore caught a lizard by the tail. It was a big fuckin’ thing, but he held it too long and he finally broke free leaving the tail squirming in his hand.

Once he was asleep I went to the cooler and hid all the Fosters and Budweiser’s he had bought. There were quite a few left and took a while for me to move the load to the creek and send them floating happily downstream. Dad was snoring in the tent and I could hear it as I worked. It was done when the moon was low in the sky; I could see the faint light of the sun creeping up in the east. I couldn’t stand that man drunk and crazy, stumbling into the day-to-day like a fucking gimp. The strong mountain man reduced to a pile of shit rotting on the forest floor, I hated him then, like when I hated him for driving drunk home from a Sushi bar with me in the front seat, or the time he came drunk to a football game and got arrested for a DUI. He wasn’t driving, but sleeping under an overpass near a strip joint with a .357 and a case of beer isn’t really admired around here. I loved my father, but not when he was drunk. I’m sure he didn’t see what I saw, he couldn’t have, but he managed to grasp the picture a few years later. Being drunk and high on cocaine during Christmas and having to buy presents at the $.99 store changed things with my father. But, that was years later.

The next day he yelled about the beer I sent down the creek and he moaned about the fucking Jap’s who conned him into drinking enough to kill a big fucking donkey. He played guitar and we went for a hike downstream, where he found his beer in a pool five feet deep. When he saw them he paused and looked at me. I stood hard and sturdy as an oak there in that dense forested pass, he didn’t say a word, just picked up the beer and placed them in his pack. I could hear him curse under his breath.

“Fuckin’ kids, they’ll never understand…”

“Understand what dad!?”

“What it’s like to be a man who has lived too long…”

Sitting here in this broken down office with a fifth of brandy and a glass bulb of PCP I know what you meant so many years ago, dad. Lived so long you can’t eat or sleep, you just sit wide eyed and helplessly sullen thinking desperately of every way to counter all the terrible shit you did in your life time. Tragic memories of fallen idols and endless nights of intolerable drunken behavior, skinning cats alive, eating raw flesh, hiding in the solstice colored red with mud from the crimson clay – an introspective trip of the worst kind, miserably antagonistic and esoteric. I left that mountain colored a different shade of gloom, watching the hillsides change hue as we descended into the Los Angeles smog and confusion. The traffic could be seen as we winded down the crest, I could see the Shell station where dad bought booze and I once was forgotten.


first published by Common Ties
By: Dillon Mullenix