“Why didn’t you tell me about the chest, father?” she imagined asking him later at the same motel, mother with a new client by now. Father Pritchard, a different kind of father, one with a holy vest chained to a cross he never asked for; was just in the family business, his father a father, *his* father a father, so on. This is a way to exact his flesh, pound-for-pound.
He made googly eyes with this, which gave her the answer. He was thinking about the past even now.
“Ahh, so… mmm…”
“Boyys,” he issued. “I worshiped the boyys. They just made me… blow up (!).”
“Combustible. Like oxygen.”
“I suppose.” He was clear for one minute, now muddied again. The whites of his eyes had narrowed into slits like snakes.
“So you *couldn’t* be my father.”
“No,” he admitted. “No, I couldn’t be.”
Must have been *Robert*, she realized. She said this to her father who was now not her father, at least biologically. Psychically perhaps “yes” still. She hadn’t given up on him just because of the Big Reveal — opening up the chest. He was with her mother just not in a strict biblical sense. Not like Father Pritchard now. More on-the-spot irony.
“Swamp Fox, right.” We better end there.
Sunklands 