Like Father, Like Son

Published by Michael Fowler at February 26, 2024

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The social worker in the office asked me how long I’d been homeless. I told him for two or three days. That was how long it had taken me to feel destitute on the street and seek help. His next question: Any relation to the man of the same name already in residence at the shelter?

Can it be? I wondered.

Father had taken root in dorm two of the shelter, the one nearest the woods, several weeks ago. After check-in, I found him in a typical posture, flat on his back in his tumbledown bed, staring at his phone. I hadn’t seen him since Mom threw him out for ruining her notion of Christmas six months ago.

“Mom’s an empty nester now,” I told him, not calling him Dad. I tried but the word lodged in my mouth. I could only think of him as Father, a name that for some reason I found more pliable. “She gave me the heave-ho after I failed to find employment on her tenth warning,” I confessed.

“She’ll never be happy with us,” Father proclaimed. “and I’m not the least surprised to find you here. But just think, I lie here in bed all day without her nagging, soaking up the free air conditioning and Wi-Fi. All the comforts of not-home.

“Yes, you wouldn’t believe it to look at this dump, these old army barracks in the woods revamped for us hobos but along with free wireless we get wide-screen TV in the rec hall, three servings of calories per day in the mess hall, unlimited hot showers sometimes by force if you let yourself get stinky, and endless medical appointments.

“And all for pretending to take Steve in the office seriously. It’s a bargain except for the rough toilet paper but I can draw on that.”

He grinned, showing his familiar broad teeth with suspicious gray and yellow spots. Father always looked happy, though, like the sheen of his teeth, his radiant expression masked rottenness.

He had been a skilled draftsman in his day, according to Mom, then a substance abuser and failed artist, then a failed everything. A bandage twined around his foot and ankle in his cut-open shoe, making a poor man’s medical boot and a thousand sticky seeds from the forest adhered to the dingy cotton gauze. His protruding bare toes were gnarled and grimy.

“I made a promise to Steve,” said Father, “one I intend to keep. When my broken foot heals and this bandage comes off in six weeks or so, I’m out of here. Heading west where the homeless community is much more thriving. Whole cities of tents with plenty of women and recreation.

“You can tell that to Steve when he asks you about me and he will. The sight of me puts his nose out of joint, that big purple snout of his with all the burst veins from wine tippling, ever since I told him I have no need of his rehab programs with their twelve that might as well be twelve-hundred steps.

“Or his employment program with its degrading minimum wage. Or any other encouragement from church or state. I’ll be gone and on my own as soon as I heal up. You tell him that for me. In fact you should come with me, partner. Together we’ll tame the west.”

I mumbled something about being my own man.

“Now to solve your problems,” Father said, ignoring my self-proclaimed independence.

“First off you need to bunk with me in dorm two. I don’t know which dorm the drudges in the office assigned you to but you tell Steve father and son need to live together as befits a family. You’ll have your counseling session with him in a day or two if he’s on schedule, so you tell him that for me.

“Also tell him that I’ll oversee your progress as a developing human being and give you instructions on everything from diet to time management. None of the under-cooked hash whites and pink chicken they serve to the unwashed masses here; my boy requires fresh fruit and vegetables as well as the chance to hang out with his father.”

Gazing up at the ramshackle ceiling of the dorm with a dreamy expression, Father warmed to the theme of my growth and development.

“And don’t let that drunken social worker talk you into performing any landscaping. Did you see those field hands outside glistening in the afternoon sun? Steve’s got bodies mowing the grass, others hoeing and plowing a garden of tomatoes and lettuce. They’re sweating out their original sin. That’s what Steve plays into, getting men to atone for their homelessness.

“But those shelter-grown articles aren’t the veggies you want; the tramps piss in them. Besides, only you and I know what your sins are and how best to get shed of them.”

A sweat-covered man with a grizzled beard came in the door and made for his bed and clothes cabinet, shoddy items at that. Father called him over.

“Barclay,” he announced proudly, “this is my son, same name as mine. Can you believe it? Good fortune has brought my son to me here.” I shook hands with Barclay, a friendly but subdued sort who silently took leave of us to go shower.

I told Father I had been assigned to dorm one, nearest the kitchen, since my last employment had been as a short order cook. The shelter needed kitchen help and the kitchen workers bunked together in that dorm to coordinate their tasks. This had been explained to me in painstaking detail.

“All you’ll get in dorm one is hepatitis C,” said Father. “The cooks all have it. It’s disgusting. I hardly eat in the mess hall and am careful about the dishes I choose when I do. I save my money for a seafood pizza downtown. I almost have enough for one now. Mmm, they’re tasty.”

I spent a restless night in dorm one, where though I was free of Father’s heckling and wheedling for a few hours, I was surrounded by coughing and snoring. I arose at six to prepare breakfast and, during this onerous duty, I was once again at Father’s beck and call.

Despite looking like death, he dragged himself into the dining room before the end of breakfast service. The first excuse I made to him was that I couldn’t quarter his strawberries instead of halving them, as he preferred, since Jacko, the head cook, told me that no one got preferential treatment.

“My big meeting with Steve is tomorrow,” I told Father. “I’ll ask about quartering your strawberries and getting assigned to your dorm, though we seem to run into each other often enough without being bunk mates.”

My sarcasm was feeble enough not to upset him. “Where do you get money for a seafood pizza?” I thought to ask. I had never known Father to have an income and a pizza slathered in lobster and crab meat couldn’t be cheap.

“People owe me for debts and various favors,” he said. “I arrived with a small amount of cash that I made sure to loan out at a favorable rate of interest, leaving me enough for a seafood pizza now and then. And now that you’ve joined me, I have additional support. The son takes care of the father, that’s only natural. I’ll need to count on you now and then.”

This cemented in place my misgivings and a buzzing grew in my ears.

“Steve will assign you to find a job, as that’s his way with the sad sacks here,” said Father.

“Keeps the camp empty and peaceful during the day and assures everyone’s too tired to make trouble at night. There’s also the rehab part and the introduction or re-introduction to the world of self-support and eventually leaving this haven.

“You’ll get bus tokens or rides in the camp van for your job searches. That’s why this place hops in the morning but is mostly deserted in the afternoons until dinner.”

Father, with his healing foot, was of course exempt from all job-seeking activity, though now and again he caught the bus downtown to indulge in one of his beloved seafood pizzas. I began to see why this might irritate Steve. In his place I would certainly suspect Father of malingering. But then Father hadn’t been completely idle, as that wasn’t his way.

“I’ve applied for disability benefits at the social security office downtown but likely won’t hear for years. It’s a racket. You have to hire a lawyer to make a successful claim – the application rules are too detailed for a layman to comprehend – and when the claim gets approved years later, the legal eagle gets one-third of your back pay, skimmed right off the top.

“A disgraceful scam, I tell you, but what can you do? A lawyer can’t go hungry.”

Steve allowed me to change dorms and reside with Father when I finally met him and outlined our family history, recalling the lengthy tragedy as best I could. The only conditions were that I update him on Father’s schemes and deeds, about which he was keenly – even abnormally – curious, and that I keep following Jacko’s lead on kitchen chores.

The new living arrangement became a comedy at the close of day when Father and I turned into our respective beds, next to each other as it turned out.

To his heartfelt “Good night, Son,” I cheerily answered, “Good night, Father,” when mandatory lights out occurred at ten. Sometimes, if neither of us could sleep, we postponed our good nights for an hour or two. A few of the other residents found this amusing and asked if other relatives might be moving in soon, meaning our wives and children.

This absurd arrangement allowed me to keep close tabs on Father. I was concerned to discover that at night he sneaked out to do battle with the raccoons that lived under our wilderness outpost.

One saw the animals crawling in and out from under the dorm after dark, and heard them scraping along the underside of our thin wooden floor. For some reason, this outraged Father, though the creatures never gained entry into our sleeping area, and after lights out I would hear raucous scuffling under my bed, and notice that Father was absent from his.

Under the moonlight and the glow of a not too distant lamppost, I found him outside sticking a broom handle under the dorm to harass the wild occupants of our underside, his face contorted in fierce concentration.

“Those are vicious beasts and maybe rabid,” I reminded him as I watched his pointless jousting. He wasn’t about to dislodge the large furry family from what were secure and comfortable quarters; instead, he was liable to get himself injured.

The sole staff member on the night shift was locked in the office a good distance away and I had no phone to contact him. Thankfully, I didn’t have to run up there and knock on the door as I permitted myself, but was able to lead Father back to bed after a few minutes. A short time later, the raccoons, too, cooperated and settled down for the night.

What had gotten into Father? He attacked the raccoons on a regular basis and, one evening, I went outside to investigate the animals’ snarls and the clattering of Father’s broomstick underneath the floor.

I was alarmed to see a large, hissing raccoon crawl out from under the floorboards. It looked remarkably like Father and, for a minute, I took it to be Father, though it carried a broomstick in its tightened claws. I think it winked at me from behind its mask. I went back inside the dorm, shaken by this vision but soon fell asleep.

Eventually Father retained some semblance of the raccoon even during the day. I would return to the dorm after prepping a meal in the kitchen, or from the bus stop after a fruitless job search downtown and find Father, his hair torn to scabs in spots and holding his artist’s pad and black pencils in his small, hairy hands.

He’d be sketching Barclay in profile as the man sat in a metal folding chair, wearing an unlaundered shirt. His beady eyes glittering, Father bent over his pad like a mangy racoon studying a scrumptious treat.

“There you are, my boy,” he cried, dismissing Barclay as his model. Barclay retreated to his bed and lay down on it in silence.

Whether Father was pleased or displeased to have his artistic occupation cut short, I couldn’t tell. “That fellow looks like a degenerate, something about his skull is subhuman,” said Father. “How about you posing for a while, son?”

Soon Father was sketching away at me as I sat on my bed nearby, after balancing his crutches against my bedside cabinet and propping up his two feet. The healing, bandaged one in its jagged half-shoe and the other in a worn-out work boot, rested on my blanket. Both shoes were filthy and I noticed that the old bandage had acquired a new coat of sticky seedlings.

I managed a glimpse at the sketch of Barclay. Father had given the man a number of rodent features, including a coiled tail and enormous buck teeth.

“You’ll turn me into a raccoon,” I said, “I know it. You’re becoming a raccoon yourself.”

“If I see you as a woodland varmint, it’s artistic license,” said Father. But he quickly changed the subject.

“I’m going to need more paper soon, and artists’ pencils. See to it, won’t you, son? I know you’re going downtown after breakfast and there’s a good art supply shop on Vine Street. The shelter won’t provide me with any, according to Steve.

“If your funds are scarce, you can sell Street Scribe Magazine on the sidewalk. Ask someone where to pick them up. You can peddle them for a buck each. And you keep one of every three dollars you take in, same as the disability lawyers.”

Around this time, I planned to get Father booted from the shelter before he claimed my every penny. Not that I had any pennies and not that I really intended to follow through with my plan. But evicting Father occupied my mind while I scraped plates in the kitchen and rode the bus back and forth.

Father somehow had money, not much but a little, and of course spent it on alcohol, his great weakness along with racoon warfare and art.

Alcohol was strictly forbidden at the shelter, as was being drunk on the premises. Yet Father had informed me that at night, after lights out in the dorm and before the store closed, a band of men hiked in secret to a late-night convenience store down the road a ways.The hike was more than a mile by the road but half that by a shortcut through the trees.

The men knew the wooded route so well they could manage it in total darkness and, for a price, would bring back bottles of diluted liquor, the strongest stuff in stock, for Father. He claimed that he longed to make the trek himself but his injured foot in its makeshift medical boot and his crutches made that impossible.

All I had to do was report to Steve that Father had cheap whiskey hidden somewhere around his bed and, though Father revealed it to me only once or twice, I knew that without fail he had a bottle close by.

But Father outwitted me, in a manner of speaking, since I lacked the nerve to report him. I even bought Father pads and pencils downtown when I had the money, though that was seldom as I never landed an ordinary job while at the shelter.

Inevitably, Father disappeared one day while I was prepping in the kitchen or downtown looking for work, vanishing on me as he had throughout my life. All day he was absent from the dorm, and when he didn’t appear for dinner or bedtime and no one could tell me where he was.

I went to the office the next morning.

“So your father has taken leave of us at last?” said Steve, his eyes lighting up with delight. “Let’s see if he calls in or shows up by dinnertime tonight. If he doesn’t, I’ll have to mark him AWOL and discharge him.” He seemed to think these trivial matters concerned me.

“I’m worried about Father,” I said. “He may be in trouble, fallen down somewhere with that foot of his.”

“That foot’s had plenty of time to heal. And if your father had been following my advice, he would have a permanent place to live by now. But you can relax. This happens all the time and it’s nothing to worry about. Likely he’s on a bender.

“Yes, I know all about his habits. If he went downtown he could stay at the emergency shelter there and contact me in the morning. I’ll consider re-admitting him but he’ll have to change his life’s practices.”

It was my dorm mate and fellow artist’s model Barclay who, the next morning, told me where Father was. I only had to promise Barclay I wouldn’t mention his name.

In the already dense humidity at sunrise, I entered the woods next to the dorms and in two or three steps found a primitive and half-finished hut, composed of sticks leaning against each other in the rough shape of a pyramid, in a sun-filled spot. A page torn from Father’s pad had been stuck at the top of the structure and bore in flowing script the word Xanadu.

I peered inside the aperture beneath the page and saw, sitting upright, the dead body of a large raccoon supported by Father’s crutches, impaled in the ground. Alarmingly, the critter wore Father’s stained bandage wrapped around its head like a bandana

It stared at me with unblinking black eyes and a smile filled with pointed teeth, clasping together its little hands like a beggar. Then I saw that the mischievous raccoon was Father, pretending not to know me. I exhaled in relief.

“Come along, Father,” I said, helping him to crawl out of the shelter and climb to his feet. He didn’t protest and his unbandaged foot, still in its toe-less shoe, looked not unreliable. Father proved this by waddling along beside me on his own two legs, leaving his crutches stuck in the soil. “We’ll let Steve know you’re safe.”

“I want a new life,” said Father. His voice was a high-pitched chittering, weakened by tiredness, but I understood his words. “I need to rule in my own kingdom.”

“Once Steve sees that you are a raccoon,” I told Father, “he’ll give us good recommendations. His type always shows mercy.”

Father sighed and kept walking, saying no more.

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