by Richard Lassiter
I found my dead father in a Montana dive bar. His remains were buried in Olathe, Kansas, for the last twenty-six years, yet I found him in Great Falls. At the time, I was taking a Travel Writing seminar at Washington State University and was tasked with writing an eight-to- ten-page personal narrative. The assignment gave me the agency to explore. I could have picked any destination: the corner store, the beach, Disneyland. It was open. I didn’t usually put so much effort into completing my assignments, but a calling beckoned the journey. Spring break offered the best opportunity for the excursion, so I packed a bag, kissed my wife and two sons goodbye, and drove nine hours east to look for Steve.
I called him Steve because calling him “dad” felt contrived. I’d never known him as anyone other than Steve. I’d never known him at all. Steve was killed in a helicopter accident while working on an oil surveying crew in the North Dakota Badlands in 1981. He died before I could say ‘dada’. As such, I never learned to speak that name, even when my mother married my step-father, Kevin. I called him Kev instead of Dad. Somehow K-E-V was synonymous with D-A-D. Kev was my dad, Steve was my father.
I knew my dad, but my father was a mystery–hence the nature of my journey. My travels passed through the Bitterroot Range where the highway waltzed with the Lochsa River and white snow-capped mountains cut the distant horizon–my destination lay beyond them. A bright March sun shone through the tall cedars and firs, dappling the road in golden medallions and breaking over the river.
My mother once told me a story about a river and Steve. They had run out of gas somewhere on the mountain backroads. As they walked along the river in the mid-summer heat, my mother was thirsty and wanted to drink the water.
“Your dad wouldn’t let me,” she told me. “He said you never know if there is a dead deer or something upstream.”
My mother didn’t often share such accounts, and the topic of Steve felt uncomfortable and awkward for me. All pictures of him were confined to photo albums tucked away in a cabinet. His belongings- a felt cowboy hat, a compass, a hunting knife, and other miscellanea- were stowed in a cardboard box under the stairs. My father was both gone and stored around me, hidden away. I knew where the photo albums and cowboy hat were, but seeking them felt like trespassing. I learned to articulate the discomfort I felt as guilt. I felt guilty because Kev coached my basketball team and took me fishing. Guilty because I loved Kev. Guilty because I didn’t know Steve. Part of the healing process is letting go. I sought Steve so I could also let go of that guilt–to know him as I knew Kev.
As a child I stole time with Steve in the cabinet photo albums. I knew he fished, hunted, and camped. He carried a pistol in case he encountered a bear he couldn’t punch. In the photos he wore a felt cowboy hat and dark horseshoe style mustache, like a modern-day Sundance Kid. His mustache was like a superpower, made even more impressive by his ability to pull it off without looking like a Village People disco reject.
At twenty-four, I couldn’t grow a mustache like that, I didn’t own a gun or a cowboy hat, and I tended to experience wilderness through virtual spaces like video games, watching National Geographic, or hanging out in my overgrown yard. I didn’t care to have any deer and squirrels romping through my home, and I was sure the wild creatures felt a mutual sentiment toward my presence in their forest. But the focus of my trip was to experience Steve, to do the things he’d do, to go to the places he’d go; so I stopped for a break along the river to stretch my legs and strengthen my mustache.
Parking beside a highway doesn’t embody wilderness, but short of gallivanting through the cedars, it suited my purpose. I walked to the riverbank to watch the high spring water sweeping by crusty snow patches hiding in the shady banks. Large granite pieces worn smooth with time broke the surface and swirled the water into a light foam before settling back into a ripple over dark pools. To quote Hemingway, “The river was there.” It sure was. I took a moment to chuck a few rocks into the water and wondered, Had Steve ever done this? I wanted to be cognizant of the moment, to parallel his experiences with mine, but I also wanted to reach my destination. I hadn’t allotted rock-chucking into my schedule. I turned back to my car; the road was there.
I made arrangements with my aunt to stay with her son, Mark, for the weekend. My decision was born half out of necessity for saving money on a motel room, but Mark also agreed to guide me around the area, show me the sites, and give me the experience I sought. I was acquainted with Mark through family, but he wasn’t a phone contact.
When I set up the trip, Mark didn’t understand the purpose, but he opened his home to me. He was a long time local and had known Steve. Mark’s mother and stepfather owned the Village Inn restaurant in Ulm, twenty minutes south of my birthplace, where Steve worked as a line cook before he left for Williston to work in the oil fields. It was late when I finally arrived at Mark’s single-story bungalow in Great Falls around 9:30 pm.
“Hey, you made it,” Mark greeted me as he walked into the chilled night in shorts and bare feet. “Took you a while. I expected you a couple hours ago.” Mark reminded me of the photos I’d seen of my father–or maybe that’s what I wanted to see. He was stocky, had a couple days of scruff growing on his face, and a grey soul-patch on his lower lip. He was absent a mustache and cowboy hat, but his genuine nature, his voice, gravelly from years of dedicated smoking, imbued a trust I couldn’t define. I explained my reasoning for a leisurely pace and justified the mustache-strengthening rock-chucking pit stop.
“Well, you made it anyhow,” he said. “Got dinner inside. Ain’t much, but it’s food.” I grabbed my duffel bag and followed him.
Mark’s home was a tidy piecemeal of thrift store furniture, guns, fishing poles, and a collection of wooden ducks. It smelled like dogs playing poker–not the kitschy art piece, but an actual gathering of dogs smoking their way through a hand of Texas Hold ‘Em. There were no pastels, no plants, no feminine touch; it was a bachelor pad.
Mark handed me a bowl of reheated dinner. “Elkburger stroganoff,” he said. “Ain’t much, just Hamburger Helper.”
“Speaking of cooking, are any of Steve’s old coworkers from the Village Inn still around?”
“Nope,” he said, “Cancer, all of them. They lived near the old landfill. Weren’t many regulations back then.” It was a nonchalant comment that hung in the air with his cigarette smoke. “You want a drink?”
Mark poured me a shot of Honduran rum, then he handed me a tumbler of whiskey with a splash of Coke over ice. I shot the rum and took swigs of the whiskey rather than sips, mirroring Mark while we talked. He told me about his wooden duck collection and the duty-free rum he purchased on a trip to Honduras. He asked about college and my family, but the conversation always circled back to Steve.
“I didn’t really pal around with Steve much, I was only fifteen when he lived here,” Mark said, lighting another cigarette. He explained how Steve was closer in age to his older brother Tim. Mark tagged along on some fishing trips, but he only knew Steve through that scope–the friend of his older brother. He paused, took a thoughtful drag and smiled, “he sure liked his beer.”
It wasn’t the first time I heard the remark. My aunt once told me a story about a mile-long foot race Steve ran against the other kitchen staff at the Village Inn. A case of Olympia Gold was the prize—the ultimate day-drinking beer. She showed me pictures of him lying prostrate on the road, his beer gut peeking out from under his T-shirt but not enough to roll over the top of his cut-off jean shorts as he caught his breath. He wasn’t the athletic type, and the mile run nearly killed him—but the beer incited the win.
“You up for going out a bit?” Mark asked. “I’ll show you the local nightlife.” I assumed “nightlife” meant we were going to a bar and not cow tipping.
The local nightlife was at a bricked and windowless building; red neon illuminated their breath and cigarette smoke in the graveled back alley parking lot. Inside, we sat at the bar, drank Bud Light, and yelled a conversation while a live band played an extended cover of Pearl Jam’s “Even Flow”.
“Thoughts arrive like butterflies. He don’t know so he chases them away. Someday yet, he’ll begin his life again.” The lyrics were both elusive and poignant all at once.
I drank with a purpose, determined to hold my own with Mark. I kept time with him, pacing each beer with his, watching his movements, hoping he noticed mine. We were a couple of guys out drinking; just like Steve would have done. Just like Steve would have done. I peeled the damp labels off my beer bottles.
The more I drank, the more time bridged the Beyond. My vision softened, the alcohol punching my occipital lobe until Mark became the dead mustachioed man. I saw Steve in Mark, my father knocking back another one and setting the empty bottle in line with my labeless bottles, our line of soldiers. It wasn’t a surprising switch; I went to Great Falls searching for Steve and I found him conflated in Mark. I don’t remember what we talked about, my father and I, but our conversation didn’t matter. What mattered was being there in that dive bar, yelling a conversation over the din of a live band. Just that moment. I knew Mark wasn’t Steve, but for a glimmer, a flicker in time, he was.
I looked around, trying to create a mental picture of the place so I could remember the strange juncture, but everyone kept moving. It blurred the image, I couldn’t focus. The music, the laughter and garbled conversations, sounded syrupy against my eardrums, thick and sticky. I drank with Steve, attempting to keep my father in that place, but another familiar childhood specter emerged. It dogged me across the years and followed me to Montana, its whispers audible over the dive bar cacophony. Even as a child I could never hear the words; but I knew the feelings they pronounced. Guilt. It tied a knot in my stomach and took my father away again.
Back at the bungalow, Mark wished me “goodnight” but I felt sick. I unrolled my sleeping bag onto the couch and sat down. After rum shots, whiskey chasers, and dive-bar beers, I glimpsed my father in Mark. It required those lengths to reach him, but I couldn’t elude the nauseating consequences.
I tried lying down and felt a queasy crescendo swelling in my gut. I put one foot on the floor to keep the couch from pitching and swaying like a tethered boat. Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth. My body rebelled in protest to the alcohol. A sweat broke on my forehead. I sat up. Breathe. Swallow. I needed to move.
Concentrating on each step, I bumbled my way to the bathroom and grabbed onto the sink for stability. I tried to will my body into submission. Breathe. Swallow. My mouth watered while my stomach twisted. I fixated on the toilet’s pale porcelain form while wondering, Had Steve ever done this?
In the muted darkness I could make out my image in the mirror above the sink; a silhouette, accentuated by my nose and cheeks–inky scribbles where my eyes should be. I knew there was no mustache in that reflection, but maybe there was. It was too dark to see.
I don’t know how long I stayed in the bathroom, poised and ready to vomit, but the nausea eventually passed, and I crept back to my sleeping bag, leaving the zipper open for a quick escape. I drove nine hours and almost four hundred miles searching for my father. I could have gotten shit-faced at home; but I needed the drive, I needed Mark and the dive bar, and I needed the shivering nausea. The experience caught the glimmer of a dead man, and for a moment, I drank with my father.
It was too ethereal to make sense, like a camera capturing an unexplainable whisp on film. But it was real, I felt it, what I sought. It was only the first night, but I hoped to feel Steve’s connection through Mark’s guidance in the remaining weekend. The chilly air soothed my irritated stomach while my thoughts turned to dreams, and I drifted asleep–or passed out. I couldn’t tell.
Richard Lassiter obtained both his bachelor’s and master’s in English literature from Washington State University. He recently packed his 1988 Toyota Camry and drove it across the continental US from Washington to Georgia, where he is currently a first-year creative writing MFA candidate at Georgia College & State University. Drawing on his thirteen years as a funeral director, his writing explores intersections of grief, memory, and healing.