God Has Abandoned Alabama

Family vacations with my father were always tumultuous.  They were filled with both the certainty of fun and adventure but also the knowledge that when things go wrong with my father, they go wrong dramatically and violently.  Not violent in the physical, he never once beat or spanked us.  Rather violent in the emotional sense.  When shit hit the fan with our family, it slammed into the fucking fan.  Picture the sewage emitted from New York City, flowing in a mythical, mad genius like contraption that hurled it into a category 5 hurricane.  The highs were high and the lows were low.  You get the picture.

Vacations were a special time for the family.  Since the divorce time with our father had become limited. We no longer got to see him every day, to be greeted by him when we came home from school and the myriad of other little things you take for granted until there gone.  So getting to spend two whole weeks with dad and Cathy, who was his wife at the time, was fucking awesome.

And Sauceda vacations were events to be envied.   Now Cathy, who was his wife at the time, went all out with vacations, I will give her that.  It should however be noted that since my father is crazy he tends to also attract crazy women.  How he landed my mother, who is now the most wonderful person I know besides her parents, is beyond me.  Retrospection and talking with mom has led me to believe that the divorce marked a tremendous shift for my father, altering and, more or less, unfiltering the craziness that he had hidden away deep inside when he was with my mother.  He wasn’t born crazy, but his own childhood and subsequent upbringing created it.  Nature versus nurture and all that jazz.  

Cathy overall was a nice person.  Like everyone else in this world she had demons of her own, but for all intents and purposes she appeared to be ‘normal.’  Those looking from the outside in would have a hard time seeing otherwise.  But sadly, she could fight, and when a fight started she would not let it go.  Fights that average people would indulge in, say, for an hour at most would turn into two full day shouting matches between her and my father.  Again, physical violence never, ever, occurred in the house, rather verbal and emotional violence between the two.  A hurling of words; a boxing match with moments of fury and pauses for each side to regroup.  Sagas of arguing and screaming that seemed to us at the time to last forever.  Such fights were Iliad and the Odyssey long.

But all negativity aside Cathy could plan a fucking vacation.  She would spend the whole year planning.  Researching what to do, scoping out possible locations, narrowing it down.  There were itineraries, schedules and bomb ass activities to be completed every day while on the road.  Her research was meticulous and her taste in destinations impeccable.  Vacations, for us Sauceda’s, were events to be treasured and relished.  And honestly they would have been perfect, had so much potential to be perfect, if dad and Cathy could refrain from fighting with one another while we were on them.  But like God, I just knew this was impossible.  To not fight would go against who they were; fighting was the fundamental basis and foundation of how they communicated.

And this particular vacation had lead us to the okay state of Alabama.  The soil, I can remember so vividly, was blood red.  Cathy had picked us out a beautiful hotel right on the beach.  And for the first several days everything was going as wonderfully as it could.  We ate great food.  We saw cool things.  My father and Cathy looked and acted like they actually loved each other.  So far, this was shaping up to be the greatest and most peaceful vacation yet.  How naïve I was and how little did I know of the storm that was brewing yonder the horizon. 

My father, being from the South, loved Blue Bonnet ice cream.  After moving to Ohio with my mom to raise us kids he had longed for the chance to be reunited with his secret lover again.  His thirst, like a vampire, had awakened once we crossed the Mason-Dixon.  It slowly grew day by day as he waited, biding his time for the right moment.  That moment was today. 

On the way back to the hotel from a particularly forgetful meal he spots it and seizes his chance.  In the distance towering in the sky is the beautiful sign of Wal-Mart.  Like the sirens of yore it seems to herald us, beckons us into its halls full of low, low prices.  This is the moment my father has been waiting for and he will wait no longer.

The events that happened next surely were the result of some fate destined for dad, some karmic cycle that finally caught up with him for all the misdeeds of his past.  It was just too perfect not to be.  All the events prior, events that can be traced all the way back to his birth, had lead him to this moment.  Each branching path in his life which in turn lead to another, and another, always cementing the past and changing the future, had brought him to this moment, right here right now.  It was simply meant to be, and what was to come was a disaster. 

After we had pulled off the road into the parking lot the search for a spot began.  And in my father’s rush, blinded by his creamy lover that was coldly waiting for him inside, he was not paying particular attention to the yokel in his truck that was slowly, oh so slowly, backing out of his spot.  Who had the right of way in the situation?  My father.  Was either driver paying attention?  I think not.  The ensuing hit sounded to me what I think the titanic sounded like when it ran into that fateful iceberg.  The slow, deathly crunch of steel, metal buckling, as two obstinate objects giving no ground slowly scraped into one another.

What felt like forever occurred in a matter of seconds, and to better highlight what occurred I will describe it as technically as possible.  As my father was driving down the lane, flanked by parked cars on his left and right, the yokel in the beater truck slowly backed out of his spot on the right hand side.  My father, not seeing him or thinking he would stop, kept heading straight.  The yokel, not giving a fuck, kept backing up.  The yokel’s rear, steel truck bumper contacted the passenger side of our SUV, starting right behind the front wheel.  My father, for whatever reason, kept moving forward as the yokel kept slowly backing into us.  This resulted in a horrible, crumpled, scratched to fuck dent that went from the front passenger side wheel to the back.

We finally come to a stop.  Everyone is silent.  No one moves.  We are all looking at my father.  My father, who now has that thousand yard stare, knuckles white from death gripping the steering wheel, remains silent.  This silence is momentary, the peace afore the storm.  He screams FUCK.  A tirade of fucks and other colorful language erupts from his mouth as he thrashes off his seat belt before bolting from the car.  All our eyes follow him to the driver.

What happens next has been pieced together from the screaming that occurred on the way back to the hotel, after the cops came to file the report, along with watching the body language and mannerisms of our father as he heatedly exchanged words with the driver that had so slowly ran into us.  Apparently in the great state of Alabama you do not need to have insurance in order to legally operate a motor vehicle; the offending insurance-less party just gets a traffic ticket and is sent on their merry way.  My father, upon hearing this news, proceeds to freak the fuck out.  This accident, caused by and the result of the careless yokel, was going to have be fixed and covered by my father.  Even though I dislike the police greatly, I was glad they showed that day because shit was getting ready to get down.      

The drive home was miserable.  Any goodwill and hearty feeling of coming together and growing as a family on our vacation vanished the moment the bumper hit our car.  My father is seething, livid, barely keeping it together in front of his children, his babies. And ‘barely keeping it together’ is, I know, quite subjective.  One mans keeping it together can be drastically different from another’s.  At this point my dad was in partial meltdown.  More apt to Chernobyl when the scientists knew they had failed, that the core was running rampant.  Right on the verge of an explosion. 

Cathy tries to calm him down, to reason with him.  But he is a man at a moment beyond reason.  He starts questioning everything, he is inconsolable, angry.  Like a wild animal ripped from its habitat and thrown into an electrified cage.  We manage to make it up to the hotel room where he slips into a rage induced insanity.

Again, this vacation happened quite a long time ago and the events that followed remain blurry.  Whether that is due to my brain blocking it out, or at least attempting to, I shall not know.  But after thinking back and discussing this event with li bro and sis we concluded the following:  Iris, lil bro Luke and I sat in one section of the room while my father and Cathy hashed it out in another.  We could hear everything.

Much was said during this time but the two most memorable comments were when my father renounced his belief in God and threatened to jump to his death from our balcony.  Cathy, perhaps seeing the wild in his eyes and feeling the flight or fight instinct starting to kick in wisely chose flight.  Again, to her credit, she came to us, put on a brave face, and asked us if we would like to go swimming.  We said yes and were into our swim gear in record time, flying from the room.  Fly, you fools, fly.

And once we got to the pool every one acted like the events that followed had never happened.  It was dark and the pool was empty.  And we had a wonderful time blocking out what had just occurred and waiting for our father to process whatever the fuck he had to in order to come back down to reality and get a fucking grip.  And that he did.

A bit later he came back down, apologized to everyone, and in true Sauceda fashion from that moment on we acted like it didn’t even happen and went on our merry way.  Dad never did get to taste his forbidden fruit, his Blue Bonnet ice cream.