Joyce Oates - Little Bird of Heaven

I was stunned. Too surprised to react other than to stammer foolishly—“I’m s-sorry…”

This man, this angry goatee-man whom I’d never seen before, dared to take hold of my arm. Asking again in a righteous drunken voice why had my father come here? Why’d he come back to Sparta where he sure as hell wasn’t wanted? And I tried to say, stammering and apologetic, that my father was “visiting.”

“Visiting who?”

I said I didn’t know.

Wanting to throw off the man’s hand. For my fear was, Daddy would see us. And something terrible would happen, and possibly to Daddy. I hoped that Daddy wasn’t seeing this confrontation.

“Your old man never did time, did he? For what he did to Delray Kruller’s wife? Y’know who that was—Zoe? How old are you? Why’d he bring a kid like you here? How’d he get away with what he did? Why’s he back here? ‘Visiting’—who? God-damned murderer motherfucker.”

I tried to protest. I was being jostled, pulled-at by someone else—the big doughy-faced bartender who had shaken my father’s hand. And there was another man, a friend of the goatee-man. Saying, “Shit, Mack, let the girl go. She’s got nothing to do with it. Come on.”

“Son of a bitch killed Delray’s wife, and never paid shit for it. Is that him over there, in the booth? That’s Diehl?”

I tried to protest, my father had not murdered anyone. My father had not been arrested, even. My father had not been indicted…

Spittle-mouthed Mack was pulled aside. There came someone shoving at the bartender, who grabbed him by the shirt collar as in a cartoon, shook and unsettled him and shoved him back. There were raised vehement voices. The bartender—his name was Deke—said “Chill out. C’mon chill out. Settle down”—as now the woman with the springy flyaway hair and a creased-monkey made-up face intervened: “Don’t listen to these assholes, honey! Your father has every right to drink any damn place he wants, this is the United States of America for Christ’s sake.” I was grateful to think that this woman was my friend, she wore a hot-pink satin designer blouse and tight-fitting jeans, she teetered on ridiculous high heels of a kind Zoe Kruller might have worn on the bandstand at Chautauqua Park. Her breath reeked of cheap whiskey, she was leaning into my face aggressively. “That Kruller woman what’s her name—God-damned Zoe—hot-shit ‘Zoe’—she was asking for it. Everybody knew what Zoe was. It hadn’t been one man it’d been another. ‘Get the bed you lay down in’—the bed you deserve, see?—who the fuck fault’s that?”

I escaped back to my father in the booth. It was amazing to me, Daddy had not been aware of the commotion at the bar.

In fact Daddy was sitting with his shoulders hunched, like a bear that has been wounded and is trying to summon back his strength. A few minutes alone without the pretty blond ponytail daughter, a man like Eddy Diehl can sink into a mood. A man like Eddy Diehl is a sucker for such a mood. Elbows on the scarred tabletop and his heavy jaw brooding on his fists, eyes half-shut as if he was very tired suddenly, so fucking tired. He had ordered another Coke for me and a shot glass of whiskey and a tall glass of foaming dark ale for himself. Glancing up at me with the quick Daddy-smile, as I half-fell back into the booth.

I was dazed, but I was smiling. Another Daddy might have noted the daze beneath the smile but not this Daddy who finished off half his shot glass in a single swallow. “Listen to the song I’m playing for you—know what it is?”

I tried to listen. I thought this might be important. So much commotion in the barroom, more men at the bar staring in our direction, I couldn’t concentrate very well.

Delia’s gone, one more round!

Delia’s gone

A man’s deep baritone voice—a country-and-western drawl—was this Johnny Cash? I tried, but could scarcely hear.

Strange how my father lowered his head, as if it was urgent to hear the words of the song, as if the song conveyed some special meaning to him; as if Eddy Diehl had recently been in some place (but what place could that have been?) where he hadn’t been allowed to hear such music. Or hadn’t been allowed to sit like this drinking whiskey, drinking beer, smoking a cigarette, in a luxury of sensuousness, solitude; the peculiar solitude of the drinker-in-public.

Delia oh Delia

Where you been so long?

One more round, Delia’s gone,

One more round.

Still at the bar we were under scrutiny. I could not bring myself to look but in the corner of my eye I was aware of the angry goatee-man—and others—observing Daddy and me. (But why wasn’t Daddy aware? Was Daddy drunk, or was Daddy deliberately not seeing?) I felt an absurd leap of hope, that the drunk woman in the shiny hot-pink blouse would come to our defense; she would enlist others, in support of my father.

Of course I knew that the name Diehl carried certain associations now, in Sparta. In all of Herkimer County. Maybe in all of the Adirondacks. As Zoe Kruller would be known, and the bluegrass group Black River Breakdown. Cassettes and CDs of the band’s music were passed about locally; Daddy had several in the glove compartment of the Willys Jeep, which I’d often asked him to play, when I was riding with him in that vehicle.

“Mister? Here y’are.”

A waitress brought a platter of French fries to our table, and another bottle of ale. Daddy roused himself from his music-trance to offer some fries to me—“I ordered these for just now. This isn’t our dinner yet—we’ll go somewhere special for dinner—only right now, I’m so God-damned hungry.”

He began to eat with his fingers. He’d removed his baseball cap, his hair was disheveled, dark with feathery streaks of gray, alternately thick and sparse, receding at his temples which appeared flushed and lightly beaded with sweat. It made me uneasy, that Daddy was beginning to resemble his father—Grandpa Diehl who’d always been so old —whom Daddy and his brothers had called the old man with an exasperated sort of affection— the old bastard—can’t put anything over on the old bastard. A man begins to lose his hair, his skull takes on a different shape, he begins to assume a different identity. I felt such tenderness for Daddy, I wanted to stroke Daddy’s face, that was looking so battered and leathery as if windburnt; clearly he’d been working outside. In his early forties Eddy Diehl was no longer a man for whom a fresh-laundered white cotton shirt was appropriate work-attire.

No longer a husband/father of whom his wife said boastfully he was of the managerial class.

“Krista? Have some. C’mon eat with your old man.”

“No thanks, Daddy! I don’t like fries.”

“Must be hungry, Puss, the way you were running around on that basketball court. C’mon.”

I was hungry. I was very hungry. But could not bring myself to eat the thick greasy-salty fries, reheated in a microwave oven behind the bar, doused with ketchup, the kind of food my mother was quick to perceive was likely to be leftovers from other meals, scraped off other customers’ plates.

Daddy shoved the platter of fries in my direction. I thought Ben would eat these! and so I picked up one or two fries, to break into smaller pieces and pretend to eat.

I saw that my father’s knuckles were freshly scratched, bruised. And maybe scarred, beneath. I knew he’d done treework at one time recently—working with chainsaws—I knew that there were men at Sparta Construction who’d had terrible accidents with chainsaws—I wanted to take up my father’s big, scarred hand in mine—to tell him that I loved him, and I did not believe what some people said about him, I knew it could not be true.