75- Don´t laugh at me

get the call at about 11 AM that morning and it immediately throws me into a frenzy of anger. “What?”
The Douglas County sheriff sighs heavily into the phone. “He was spotted walking downtown. He had a hip flask in one hand and his shotgun in another. Then he stopped at the park near the Cherry Creek School and fired a couple of shots into the trees.”
I immediately rise and grab my keys. In no time and with the phone pressed to my ear, I’m reversing out of my driveway. “He’s detained now?”
“Yes, he is,” the sheriff replies. “We know him around here so to an extent, we have been lenient in letting him get away with a few misdemeanors but the parents from that school are coming for my job. Especially with that Walmart shooting in Cali last week. The kids all thought that he was going to attack them.”
My heart grows heavier at his report. “He said he was chasing a raccoon?”
“Yeah, that’s his story. He said he found the creature messing around in his trash can and got his shotgun to chase after it. Then it ended up in the tree. We’ve still not sighted it though.”
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes, Mark,” I say and end the call. I step on the gas pedal and speed my way towards Aurora.
The moment I arrive at the police station, I can hear my father all the way from his cell at the back.
The sheriff, Mark Liu greets me with a handshake and I listen to the man that I have known for almost twenty years.
“He’s a respected veteran in our community,” he says as he escorts me. “So, we’ve constantly tried to be as lenient with him as possible but things are getting out of hand. Especially with the drinking. If this happens again, we’re going to have to charge him.”

“I understand,” I reply and turn away from the sheriff to watch my father.
He takes off his boots and slams them against the iron bars of the holding cell in annoyance. “I know my fucking rights,” he slurs in his deep cowboy drawl, rubbed off from his earliest days growing up on a ranch between Fairplay and Jefferson. “How you gonna lock me up for holding a fucking gun? I’ve been handling guns since before you fuckers could walk.”
My head lowers as I wish it would be possible to turn a blind eye to all of this, and to him, to just walk away. Especially since, he isn’t going to welcome me let alone, listen to me.
The sheriff proceeds in releasing him while I head over to wait as he’s processed.
He gets out cursing and hollering at the men to return his gun to him and when none of them budges, he throws his boots at one of the officers.
“What the fuck!” the officer yells.
I rise to my feet to keep him from getting into a fight that his raggedy old bones cannot take. “Dad,” I call.
At the sound of my voice, he stills. Then he turns around to meet my gaze.
I haven’t seen him in seven months and in that seven months he’s lost so much weight and it pains me to see it. His back is hunched, the faded t-shirt he has on plastered to his body like a saggy second skin, his jeans are dirty and in tatters. His balding head still has some sparse density of white while the thick mustache under his nose is immensely stained with yellow.
“What the hell are you doing here?” He asks as he sees me. “It’s nice to see you too, Dad.”
He immediately starts to limp away, his hands waving in the air. “I don’t want you here. I didn’t call for you. Mark, you did this? You called this son of a bitch over?”
“Hey! Gary! That’s no way to talk to your son. You should be damn proud of him”
“I've got nothing to be proud of. I thought I raised a man but then he turns out to be a pretty weak ass metrosexual. I want nothing to do with him.”
I roll my eyes at him and ten minutes of aggravation later, he is strapped into the front seat of my SUV.
For more than half of the ride home, he remains fairly quiet. He of course, doesn’t miss the chance to let out grunts of disdain and disapproval on what I suspect is my driving, but I ignore it all. All I want to do is to ensure that he is home safe and sound and be on my way back.

He however, cannot help himself. ”Cars like this… is why you rejected the army?”
I inhale deeply, and do my utmost best to reign in my irritation. In the past, he was an incredibly loving father, but after the years and following the death of my mother, he has just degenerated into someone so bitter that I barely recognize him.
We are all aware that it has to do with a past trauma suffered during his time as a Navy Seal, but as to the details of the incident that nearly took his life, but most definitely claimed his soul, we are not aware.
So, I have grown to accept this version of him that he has agreed to share, but the deterioration almost into a killer, is getting out of hand. ‘“Your plan is to go out massacring middle school kids?” I shoot back. “That’s how you want to be remembered?”
This stuns him silent, and reveals to me that his mental state is still cognizant despite the alcohol still in his system. His voice once again becomes calm and controlled, and it allows me a glimpse into the indestructible man that I once nearly worshipped, “‘I served for forty-five years,” he says. “Gave my life and soul to protect this country... little kids? How dare you say that to me, you bastard?”
I glance at him. “Then what were you doing firing a gun near their school?”
“I was hunting that bloody raccoon!” he roars. “It’s been hollering and making a fucking racket every morning and you want me to just let it go?’
“So, you took a shotgun and chased it down?”
“Why the hell not? I’m more qualified to handle that weapon even if I had my two eyes blinded, than any of those under qualified officers over there. I could take them all out in a flash, without breaking a sweat.”
His madness is back but thankfully, we have just pulled into his trailer park in Denver Meadows, so I let out a deep sigh of relief.
I don’t say another word as I drive over to the trailer that he insisted on moving into almost a decade earlier, and which I have refused to even spend a night in. And that was the beginning of our animosity towards each other.
“You don’t have any food?” It’s another twenty minutes later and I’m moving through the filth that is his trailer. Clothes are strewn everywhere as well as endless plastic bags and styrofoam plates of stale or even rotting takeout food. I cannot believe that this is how he is living as every time I have come over, he has seemed fairly okay.
His refrigerator is also empty, only containing some cans of beer and a long expired jug of milk.

“You can go now,” he says as he walks over to his arm chair and plops down into it. I don’t need anything from you.”
“I’m not offering anything,” I retort as I slam the refrigerator door closed.
Pain is reverberating through my entire body at the state that he is currently in, and the most frustrating fact is that he keeps refusing any help whatsoever in doing something about it.
He is a bit taken aback at my outburst and for the longest time he just stares quietly at me.
It’s in these moments that I usually hope he has regained his senses and that the next word out of his mouth would be even slightly reasonable.
However yet again, he disappoints me.
“I will never be proud of you,” he states. “I raised you to be a man that would need nothing and would instead give and serve. Imagine the honor and respect you would have if you had joined the Seals. I wanted to pass down that legacy to you.”