Daddy Cursed the Wind

Caitlyn was seven the first time she heard her dad swear for what seemed like no reason. He had been digging a hole in the backyard—that’s something she didn’t get right then either. Gray clouds hung low. A storm was coming, but he was out there in his work pants and a tank top with spaghetti sauce spilled on the front. Wind had begun to pick up earlier and was starting to gust when he went out, shovel in hand.

He sank the spade into the ground near the back fence. It went in easy enough. For several minutes, he scooped dirt from an ever-expanding hole. Then a strong gust struck him, knocking him off balance and sending dirt swirling in the air around him. 

“Damn the wind,” he yelled. He got back to his feet, picked the shovel up and continued to dig.

By the time he finished, it was almost dark. The clouds gave way to black ones and lightning streaked the air. Her dad went into his tool shed and came back out with something long wrapped in a gray tarp slung over his shoulder. He reached the hole, then tossed the tarp and whatever was inside in it. He took a few deep breaths, his chest heaving with each one. He wiped hair from his eyes, then buried filled in the hole, even as the wind whipped around him and the rain began, slow at first, then becoming a downpour.

Caitlyn watched all of this from the screened in back porch. It’s not that she was fascinated with what her dad was doing. She was just happy his focus was on something besides his anger with his mother and her. As he tamped down the mound that was no longer a hole with the spade end of the shovel, Caitlyn went inside. 

“Where have you been?” her mother asked. She chopped carrots at the counter for the night’s stew.

“Watching Daddy dig holes.”

Her mother looked up.

“Daddy cursed the wind,” Caitlyn said, matter-of-factly.

“Did your daddy put something in the hole?” 

“Yes.”

Her mother nodded. “Probably just your uncle Fred. He had it coming.”

Caitlyn didn’t know what this meant and didn’t ask. Uncle Fred had come by that morning, but Daddy and him left a short while later. She never saw her uncle Fred again, so there was that. 

This happened twice more over the next three years, each time with Daddy cursing something. If not the wind, then the roots of a nearby tree. If not that, then Caitlyn’s mother for making him do it, damn it.

Caitlyn was thirteen when her dad dug another hole—the final one. By then, she had a feeling where her mother had run off to and that she would not have approved of the woman Daddy brought home not long after he dug the previous hole. If she remembered correctly, Mommy and Daddy argued the night she last saw her mother. The next day, he dug a hole and Mommy … 

Like then, Daddy’s newish woman had argued with him that night. Then there was silence.

And Daddy was digging again. This time, he cursed the cold and how it made the ground hard. 

She didn’t wait for him to finish digging to find out what she thought to be true. She made her way to the toolshed, eased through the door and stared at the blue tarp on the floor. She peeled back part of it, to see the top of the woman’s head. There was blood in her hair. Though Caitlyn didn’t care about her, she knew what had happened and she was now convinced her mother was in one of the three spots he dug at before. 

She ducked out of the toolshed and hid. She waited for Daddy to go get the woman she never liked. When he did, she ran and grabbed the shovel, then hid in the bushes not too far away. 

He left the toolshed with the body slung over his shoulder. He carried it to what Caitlyn now knew was a grave, then dumped her in like she was trash being tossed away. Anger—raw and pure—swept over her as she thought of him dumping her mother in a similar hole in the same manner. 

There was no scream of rage as she left the bushes, the shovel lifted above her head. Daddy searched the ground for the shovel, cursing the dark as he did so. She brought it down as hard as her arms allowed her to. The clang of steel on the back of his head sent slivers of pain into her palms and elbows. Daddy pitched forward and tumbled into the hole, his head split open. He landed on his side with his eyes open wide. His body shook violently, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Foam spilled from his mouth. Then he stilled. 

Caitlyn cursed her father as she filled the hole in.

***

Back in 2010, Paramore released a song titled, The Only Exception. The second lyric is “And curse at the wind.” Though I’ve only recently heard of the song (within the last two years), that lyric stood out. The image of a man digging a hole in the dark while a little girl looked on came to mind. Later that day, I wrote the very short piece you just read.

A.J.