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Chapter 3
Mother left making the arrangements for the memorial up to Jennifer. She told me that this didn’t feel right at all. I completely understood, other than the name on her paycheck she didn’t have any idea who my father was. I had no interest in helping. But somehow Jennifer pulled off an amazingly beautiful memorial and service. She spent all of three full days making phone calls and during that time I didn’t have any lessons. I considered it my bereavement break. She arranged a beautiful church for the memorial and managed to contact everyone on his friends’ lists as well as a lot of the clients that he cherished so much. I watched as she made phone call after phone call, the church, the pastor, flowers, a tombstone for the family plot even though there was nothing left to bury. She covered all of the bases and I sat with her to help with the time between phone calls. I tried to make her smile, I joked around and goofed off. It didn’t seem to help much and part of the way through day 2 she waved me away. I was a bit shocked, and kind of angry. I was trying to help her through this hard time, if she didn’t want me around she could go fuck herself. I grabbed my pellet gun from my room and my camo jacket. I was angry and wanted to kill something. I headed out to the woods and toward my fort.
I walked quietly through the woods hoping I would stumble across something that wasn’t expecting me. Thoughts of my Father kept shooting through my mind. I was lost in my head thinking about him and Jennifer and I had lost track of time. I looked ahead of myself and could see my fort sitting out in the small clearing. I must have been walking for half an hour but I couldn’t remember most of it. I thought for a quick second that I had noticed gaps like that before. Areas of time that it seemed just passed without me noticing them, but mid thought I got a really uneasy feeling. I stopped dead in my tracks and looked out across the clearing at my small fort, and I saw movement. I instantly got worried, somebody had found my hiding place. And somebody was trespassing. I crouched low and watched. Then in a blur a little body ran out of the fort, and then another. Coyotes! They must have smelled the blood. I was irate, I leveled my pellet gun and popped off a shot. I hit one of them in the hip and it yipped and ran off. The others followed right behind. I fought all of my urges to run to my fort and look at what kind of damage they caused, and I waited to make sure they were definitely gone.
I waited for fifteen minutes telling myself that I must have caught them before they got to my collection. Telling myself that I didn’t see one of them carry something off. Everything else had moved to the back of my mind and all I could think about was my friends. I started creeping slowly up on my fort, listening closely for any movement. After I was sure they were gone I broke into a sprint and ran all the way to the door. I sped around the corner and was shocked to see body parts and blood everywhere. They destroyed everything. They ate most of the flesh, the beautiful muscle, and the little heads. I was so angry, all I wanted was revenge. I left the mess and ran back to the house not stopping until I was bent over in front of the back door breathing so heavy I thought I might pass out. I composed myself enough to go inside and find Jennifer. She was sitting on the couch watching TV when I came in. I said “I think I’m going to camp out tonight.” She said “I’m not sure about that Michael, it’s chilly and I keep hearing coyotes out there at night.” “I’ll be safe, I just need to be out of the house and alone for a while. I promise I can take care of myself.” I told her. She agreed and I told her “Thank you.” And headed out. I stopped at the tool shed and grabbed a few things that I needed.
I decided I would set a trap for the coyotes, I wanted them to suffer. I went to the fort anticipating working most of the night. I dug a deep pit in the middle of my fort, using a small wheel barrow that I got from the tool shed to move the dirt out back. I kept digging until my hands hurt. I was filthy and sweating everywhere but when I finished I had a whole easily 6 feet deep and narrow, only maybe 3 feet across. It took me a few tries to pull myself up out of it. But after I got out I moved the rest of the dirt around back, it was a huge pile. I was pretty proud of myself. I went back in and laid a large tarp across the hole, it nearly covered the entire floor of the fort. I covered it in a thin layer of dirt and took what was left of my collection and laid it all around the tarp. Hopefully that will catch one of the little shits that did this. As I was spreading the last of the dirt around and trying to make it as unnoticeable as possible I realized that it had gotten light outside. I had literally worked all the way through the night. Today was my father’s memorial service and I needed to get ready. I took one last look at my work, assured myself that it was perfect, and headed back to the house.
When I got back to the house, I put all of the tools back in the shed so that the landscaper wouldn’t miss them when he came later in the week. I went inside and up the back stairs to my bedroom. I thought briefly about stopping in the storage closet but decided that it was not the right time. My bedroom was full of sunshine seeping in through the huge windows. Although a somewhat traumatic couple of days, right now, I feel pretty good. I was exhausted and filthy, but more clear headed than I had been sense the last time I peeled the skin off of a field mouse. I had hope, hope that by tomorrow this memorial would be behind me and I would have a new toy to play with. I went in to take a shower and freshen up, I had to look sharp for the service.
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