The War on Christianity

Taking the Fight to the Christian Right

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The Day I Shot My Dad

I lay in my sleeping bag looking up into the moonless sky, a million points of light looking back. It was a cool summer night under the trees somewhere in the Cascade mountains. The sound of the creek, a hundred feet away came and went with the shifting of the breeze. The smell of the dying campfire seemed to bring a sense of security, as I lay there serene and peaceful curled up, as if in my personal cocoon.

But that was maybe an hour ago, and all that peace and serenity were gone. I was now filled with an intense collage of mixed emotions. Anger, fear, worries, regrets, guilt, embarrassment and shame all fought for dominance deep within my being.

Can't they be more quiet, I thought, as I listened to the sounds of my father molesting my sister not six feet away.

This was nothing new. It had been going on for a year or more, since before she was thirteen. She seemed to desire and even encourage his advances. A year older than her, I felt protective, and yet there was nothing I could do. The sounds of their being together grated heavily on my nerves.

Mother was sleeping soundly in the tent on the other side of the file. There was no chance that she would wake. She had spent the evening drinking. Starting off with a half case of beer, and finishing up with a fifth of vodka. She wasn't about to hear anything.

And so, I was alone trying to deal with my mixed emotions. Trying not to hear, and yet unable to stop the sounds. Becoming ever more agitated, as the time went on, and on, and on.

Finally, it was over. I listened to the sounds of father moving back into the tent. Everything settled down, until only the sounds of the forest persisted, which somehow seemed to take on a more ominous tone. It was some time later that I finally fell into a fitful and restless sleep.

The following morning it was as though nothing had happened. With everyone busily keeping up the pretense of a happy and loving family.

Father made us breakfast over the campfire, bacon and eggs, hashbrowns and bread. The smell of the cooking brought mother out of the tent. She stumbled a little way from the camp and threw up noisily, making breakfast seem a little less tasty. Then she made herself a hangover remedy based on tomato juice, and tried to stay away from the smell of the cooking.

After breakfast, my father, my sister and I walked down to the sandbar next to the stream. The sandbar was maybe twenty feet wide and fifty feet long, narrowing to nothing downstream. We set up several empty beer cans about thirty feet away and proceeded to take turns shooting them down with a pump pellet gun. We had played this game many times before, and it would have been a lot of fun, but I was tired from lack of sleep and my heart wasn't in it.

I was terrified of my father for I had been viciously beaten by him many times in my life, and I didn't want to do anything to incur his wrath. So, I went along with whatever he wanted to do, even though I would rather have been anywhere else.

A pellet gun is not a true weapon, it's used mostly for target practice. It uses compressed air to shoot a small lead pellet, like a bb-gun, only more powerful. If you were to pump it up perhaps twenty times, you might be able to take down a rabbit at twenty-five feet, but certainly nothing larger. On that particular day, I had become lazy, and was pumping it up only six or seven times. Enough to hole one side of a beer can, leaving the pellet to rattle around inside.

About an hour of shooting at stationary targets my sister became bored. So, she went back up to camp to chit-chat with mother, who was sitting around the campfire drinking coffee and looking almost normal.

"Let's try something a little more difficult," father said. He picked up a fresh can and tossed it upstream into the creek.

"See if you can hit that," he challenged.

I zeroed in on the leading edge of the slow-moving target and gently squeezed the trigger. I missed. There was time for three or four more shots before the can was out of range. And three or four misses. Then I'd have to run down the sandbar, splash into the water and retrieve the can.

After a while I got bored, tired of pumping up the gun, tired of missing the target and tired of listening to my father berating me for not doing it right.

Whap! He slaps me upside the back of the head. "Pull the damn rifle into your shoulder," he said, grabbing the gun and shoving it into my shoulder with bruising force.

"Focus on the front sight. The rear sights should be foggy. And for God's sake try to SQUEEZE the trigger. Now shoot," he said, having tossed a new can into the creek.

I pulled the trigger, sending the pellet off after the can. And missed again.

"Listen shit-for-brains, I said squeeze, not jerk. Can't teach you anything, you stupid little twerp," he muttered in disgust, as he stomped off after the can.

As I reloaded the weapon a sense of weariness seemed to envelope me. I stood there head down, rifle dangling at arm's length pointing out towards the stream, wishing I could be somewhere else, anywhere else. But no, he was going to make a hunter and a marksman out of me if it was the last thing he did.

I had great anger at my father. I was angry at him for the molesting of my sister, angry over the occasional battering of my mother, and the vicious beatings I had been forced to take from time to time. Though, at that moment I was barely conscious of my anger, for I was also terrified of the man. And my terror took precedence.

He was waving and yelling at me, trying to get my attention from the other side of the sandbar. I couldn't hear him over the sound of the creek. I was barely conscious of anything, being hot and tired and bored. I turned toward him to try to hear better, unconsciously pointing the rifle at his belly. I had momentarily forgotten that I held it in my hands. He was screaming angrily at me, when for a split second my own anger welled up within me, and simply squeezed the trigger.

It was such a sublime thing, the squeezing of that trigger. I hardly even noticed that I had done it. But I could hardly not notice the shocked expression on my fathers' face.

A lot happened in the next three seconds. As I realized what I had done, my terror was back in full force. I judged my anger to be unloving and therefore unlovable, and shoved it as far from my being as I could, promptly forgetting that it ever existed. And I thought, oh shit, am I going to get it now! I was not worried about my father, but I was terrified for myself.

My father yanked up his shirt, he could hardly believe that he had been shot. My eyes went telescopic and I saw the pellet lodged is the skin about two inched above his belly button. He took his thumb and forefinger and pulled the pellet out. He looked at the pellet in his hand, and then looked at me. And there was rage in his eyes. He tossed the pellet away and began tromping up the beach toward I stood cringing in my terror.

As he came near, I dropped the gun and backed away. "It was an accident," I cried, tears of fear running down my face.

When he reached me, he hauled off and back handed me across the face with every ounce of strength he had in him. I had my hands up to protect myself, but this did little good. I went flying and landed in a crumpled heap in the sand.

"It was an accident," I sobbed.

He followed after me, and kicked me in the stomach. I rolled over, holding my sore belly and was kicked again in my rear end.

"It was an accident," I screamed, both from terror and the pain I was feeling.

"What have I tried to teach you about gun safety! YOU DON'T HAVE GUN ACCIDENTS! YOU STUPID LITTLE SHIT! GUN ACCIDENTS GET PEOPLE KILLED!! He screamed back at me while yanking off his belt.

Then he went berserk, beating me with the belt, the buckle digging into my thighs, back and ass, as I tried to protect my face from being hit. In his rage I thought he didn't realize that he was hitting me with the buckle. But maybe he did.

I screamed, as loud as I could with every blow, this time from pain. The buckle had cut into my skin and I was bleeding in several places, and bruised all over. He wasn't holding anything back.

Mother came out of nowhere, running like a grizzly bear defending her cubs. She ran up to my father and shoved him aside. He stumbled back a few feet.

"Leave the boy alone! He said it was an accident. Don't you think he's had enough?" She screamed getting right up into his face, outraged at what she had seen him do to me.

"Get out of my way woman!" Father yelled back.

"You're not going to hit him any more," Mother said in a low voice, with an intensity I have seldom seen matched.

Father looked at me in disgust, threw the belt into the sand, and stomped off into the woods.

Mother sat down next to me there in the sand, where I lay battered and quietly weeping. She drew me into her arms saying, "It's all right now. He's gone. Everything will be all right."

I sat there, curled up in her lap sobbing onto her breast, feeling like a four-year-old child. She gently rocked me back and forth, giving me the comfort that I needed so badly just then.

"It was an accident," I mumbled again, desperately hoping that it was true.

But was it? Really?

 

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