HIDING PLACES

           The night the police officer came to pick up my father I was in the house watching cartoons.  Through the kitchen window I could see my dad hiding his small red car in the woods behind our property.  I watched him carefully maneuver it behind a gang of tall oak trees, and then the taillights went out.  As soon as he exited the car he started running, doubled-over with his arms braced out to block stray branches, and whipping his head around like someone fleeing a forest fire.
            The front door banged shut and I could hear my father’s locomotive breathing.
            “Dad?” I said. 
            He was standing at the end of the hall, shaking.  From the look he gave me, I don’t think he knew that I was home.  “Son,” he said, “Travis.  Travis, come here.”
            I started walking toward him, but he was already talking.  “I’m going up in the attic for a little while.”  He had his hand wrapped around the doorknob.  “If anyone asks, you don’t know where I am.”  He opened the door then and I could hear him falling up the steps in the dark. 
            A few moments later, a cop car drove up and a uniformed man came to the door.  He showed his badge.  He looked down at me through one eye and cocked his head.  He stood over me with his hands on his hips and sucked his teeth.  It wasn’t long before I was crying and the heavy-footed man was making his way up the attic steps.  I’m thirteen years old and I can’t stop crying.  I hear my father groaning in agony, “No, noooooo.  Let me stay.  I didn’t do anything.”  He was sobbing.
            My mother told me that he had been caught driving under the influence for the third time in a row without his license and that he was going to be in jail for six months.  She said it very matter-of-factly.  Deep down I don’t believe that she wanted him punished that severely, but she said, “If a man gets caught three times for the same thing in eighteen weeks…”  There was a strong desire to seek improvement.
            We went to go see him every weekend.  He sat across from us at a filthy folding table in a harshly lit rec room and asked me how basketball was going.  I mostly nodded or shook my head.  He looked a little disheveled.  I wondered if they let them have electrical razors inside.  He never talked about himself.  According to one of the guards, he was now allowed to leave a few days at a time on a work permit.
            Different things reminded me of him all the time.  Every time I made a basket, I’d wonder how different it might feel if my dad was there, sitting flat on the floor along the sidelines with his back against the wall and his knees sticking up under his elbows.  That was spectator mode for a guy like him.  And he’d wear a black cotton coat, a baseball cap, and a pair of boots that my mother bought him for fishing.
            My friends were starting to get suspicious.  I told Nicholas, Johnny, and Evelyn Stewart that he went camping a lot now.  Whenever my neighbors Carl or Stanley Boone came over to play, I’d mention that my father was away on another hunting trip.  It was a very small town.  I never told a soul the truth.  If I could manage, no one would be able to make me feel bad about it.  There was nothing more important to me than secrecy.  As far as I was concerned, there wasn’t a single person outside my family who had any business.
            Basketball season was over by the time he was released.  Things were quiet and strained around the house.  My mother was skilled at keeping grudges.  Speaking up involved choosing sides.  I wasn’t capable of decoding or comprehending the battle tactics of married life.  I didn’t know why my mother went to bed an hour before he did, or why she had stopped massaging his back after dinner.  Much later, I’d understand that these weapons were made of silence and strangulation holds.  When my dad and I were alone, he’d try smiling for appearances.  My mother didn’t feel the need to pretend, maybe because she thought if I paid attention I might learn something.
            Even before the incident, my father was the type of man who liked to keep busy outdoors as much as possible.  If he didn’t have a chore to complete, he’d invent one for himself.  One afternoon he was raking stones at the bottom of the driveway.  It was the day after a big thunderstorm and he was trying to rearrange the sediment so that it wouldn’t wash out as easily next time.  I put my jacket on and walked down to meet him.  It had only been a week, and I felt the need to be close to him whenever I could.   Mr. Boone happened to be out walking his bloodhound.  He came to a halt when he saw my dad.
            “Edward!” he shouted.  “Where the hell have you been lately?  I haven’t seen you around for ages.”
            My father stopped raking.  He rested his chin on the top of the handle, propped his foot up on the bank.  And then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, he said, “Oh.  Oh, that.  Oooooh, I’ve been in jail for the past six months.”