A Man Named Dave

old, but hey, his old lady can take care of him. Come on … shit happens.”
    No! I wanted to scream. You don’t understand… But before I could justify my fears, my friend became lost in the crowd of other airmen retrieving their mail and letting out whoops of joy as they clutched their prizes over their heads. I lowered my head and disappeared in the opposite direction. I wished I had never received that letter.
    I wandered outside, found a bench, and sat down. It took me more than half a dozen tries to comprehend the contents of the letter. The more I digested, the more my heart sank. Father had written that times were very tough for him. He could no longer find part-time work either washing dishes or filling in as a short-order cook. Feeling ashamed, Father gave up on asking friends to stay at their home for a few nights at a time. With no one to turn to and no money, society’s old hero was now alone with no place to live. I wanted to mail Father some money to ease some of his pain.
    Rereading both the envelope and the letter, I frantically hunted for the return address, but there was none. Father’s handwriting had always been barely legible, but this letter was almost impossible to read. Nearly every sentence was incomplete or rambled on without any conclusion. Words were either misspelled, jumbled, or ran off the page altogether. I concentrated so hard on Father’s writing that my head began to throb with pain. Suddenly it struck me: he probably had been drunk when he scrawled out the letter. That had to be the only conclusion. That would explain the condition of the soiled envelope, his penmanship, and, more important, the reason he forgot a return address.
    In the blink of an eye I became furious. I was so ashamed of the life Father was living. How, I wondered, could he be so foolish to keep drinking? He had to realize his binges – his entire lifestyle – would be the death of him. Why? I yelled at myself. Why couldn’t Father just quit once and for all? He had been so courageous as a fireman; why couldn’t he muster the will-power to deal with something so relatively simple? How hard was it to throw away the bottle?
    I closed my eyes, replaying the countless times Father had nearly passed out, literally on top of me, with his eyes blood-shot and his clothes reeking from days-old perspiration and spilled drinks. Dad had always promised that he would someday, somehow, take me away from Mother’s evil clutches. But even back then I realized it was the booze talking. As brave as Father had been on the job, he had no intention of crossing Mother. Sitting outside the air force barracks, I felt utterly helpless. To me, Father wasn’t a bad man. Maybe, I justified, Mother’s fury forced him to drink. Maybe … his drinking was his only outlet to deal with… ? “Oh, my God!” I cried out. What if Father’s boozing began as his way to escape all the hell between Mother and me? What if I was the reason for Father’s drinking problem?
    My body shuddered from humiliation. My thoughts swayed between the intense guilt of Father’s plight and wanting him to find the determination to help himself. I thought if I was the reason for Father’s alcoholic condition … then I was responsible for the family’s devastation, my parents’ separation, and for Father’s downfall at the fire station; I was the reason for his current condition. The sudden wave of shame was so overwhelming that I began to weep. In some sense, in the back of my mind I had always known this. As a child, I knew I was the bad seed. Somehow I had made everyone I had come into contact with miserable. As an adult, I had to make things right – buying a home for Father and me was not enough. Who knew what condition Father would be in by the time my enlistment was complete? I was the only one who could ease his pain, and I had to do it now.
    I decided to wire Father some money. Even if he used the funds to buy booze, I didn’t care. Who was I, my conscience argued, to judge a grown man when in so many ways I was still a pitiful child? After all the hell I had put Father through, this was the least I could do for him. If the money helped to numb his loneliness and despair for a few hours, then so be it.
    After I reached a definite decision, my fingers quit shaking. I wiped my tears away and stared at the crumpled envelope. Seconds later I shook my head in disgust after remembering that Father left no return address. “Goddammit!” I exploded. “Why?” I cried as I