The collar of dad’s old corduroy gardening jacket was turned up and over the uneven nape of his neck where the hair grew south, like normal, on one side, and north on the other. It’s worn, olive wide-wale fabric thwarting the chill of early Spring air as he cut up twigs and tossed them into a smoldering fire built in a rusted-out metal drum. They sizzled and popped when the heat reached the damp ivory pith inside. Smoke rose in fragrant wisps my nose picked up while in the secret world of a fort brother Charles and I made of branches yet to be burned.

Six-foot-two, with size thirteen feet and hands the size of salad plates, he was a gentle giant. “Your daddy has feathers on his fingers”, a cousin once said about his hairy knuckles. He

never laid those hands on us and wasn't much for yelling. In a moment of frustration he might mix me up with my brother or the dog, stammering, “Charlie, uh, Snoopy, uh, Sande! Darn it.” But there was no scorching heat behind his admonitions.

Clark Gable handsome, he was humble, whether in paint-splattered pants working in the garage fixing the lawnmower or in suit and tie. Humanity warmed his brown eyes.

“Your father has the most beautiful ears and hands I’ve ever seen,” my mother stated frequently. I liked that she noticed these.

If you looked ever so closely, you could detect a slight bend in his back. Hidden underneath his jacket, flannel shirt and white Fruit O’ the Loom v-neck tee, a disfiguring scar ran in a deep sickle-shaped cleft down the spine and around one side just under the scapula telling tales he wanted to forget of surviving a nightmare. Eighteen years old and a guinea pig for the first tuberculosis surgeries performed in the United States. Contracted from staying home and taking care of his mother until she died. His physician had encouraged him saying that because my father trained as a boxer, and ran Lake Merit each day, he was strong and stood a chance to survive the surgery. He spent two years in a lonely Tennessee hospital fighting for his life.

“This big, black nurse,” he revealed when Mother encouraged him into telling the story. “She saved my life. Eat, Louis! You throw-up, fine. Get right back at it and eat!”

He was left with one lung, and a scar that was a coal-red branding iron of pain and embarrassment. He wore it as if it were a mark of shame. A failure, instead of a badge of triumph over death. To hug him you could feel him wince not wanting anyone to feel the disfigurement of his back.

Only on a hot day would he shed his t-shirt and wade into the shallow end of the pool. Never the deep end. He could not swim. At over six feet tall and around 200 pounds, he was cautious about one lung in deep water.

“Hug your daughter,” Mom urged as he turned away from my arms. His discomfort a small island with no dock, I dropped anchor just off shore content with his warmer shallows. Sometimes outside on a warm evening, swatting at midges, waiting for him to ask for the wrench from his long green metal toolbox as he repaired my bike. Other times at the kitchen table where we drew companionably.

“Sweetheart, draw from life, don’t copy others,” when I wanted the crutch of an artist’s work. I’d imitate him in his happy concentration with his tongue at the corner of one side of his mouth.

Large binders filled with pages of his characters. The mayor, police chief, fellow cops, he re-created cartoons of overheard conversations and witnessed politics of the county we lived in, inspired by Marvel Comics.

“Oh, it’s just for fun,” he’d smile humbly as glee broke out on my face.

“Make a card for Mrs. Jacobsen,” mom handed me fresh paper and some felt pens. “It’s her birthday this week. Then run it up the street with these.” Mom laid a paper plate with oatmeal cookies she had just baked on the kitchen table.

“Lord knows she doesn’t need them!” she would add, referring to our neighbor’s girth.

Peach trees, apple trees and fig were planted in our backyard on Birdhaven Court. My father kept them well pruned so they were easy to climb and pick the warm, juicy fruit as they ripened under the Summer sun. The thick, smooth gray bark on the limbs of the Black Mission fig was in direct contrast to the apricot. Pursuing the glowing orange Blenhiems, I had to carefully place my hands and feet ever so gingerly on the trunk and branches, minding bare knees, navigating the gnarly cracked edges of bark surrounding a canker here and there oozing sticky golden gum.

Perched up in the apricot tree I could see over the fence and into the Grothman’s yard. Messy with their weeping willow’s sheddings of green and yellow lances all over the mottled lawn and floating on the surface of their rarely cleaned pool. A spooky dark swamp swirling with cat hair and a feather or two. It was Millie Grothman’s beloved rooster who awakened the neighborhood at dawn every day, before any of us wanted to get out of bed, and about the time Millie crawled into hers.

As nocturnal as her felines, Millie’s bedroom lamp was on most nights. Occasionally I spied her outside, bra-less in a striped sleeveless shirt and shorts, feet firmly planted with arms crossed, a cigarette hanging out of the corner pocket of her bulldog face, deriding her husband, Dick.

Polar opposite, long, tall, thin Dick was Dennis the Menace’s dad’s identical twin brother. Right down to the dark, close-cropped hair, thick glasses and buttoned-down shirt. A mild man who seemed to become thinner with each blast from the furnace of Millie, he sheepishly endured her combustable temper.

One Saturday morning our doorbell rang. Left to his own devices, Dad liked to keep the curtains closed and was annoyed when his peace was disturbed. Peeking through the drapes he saw Dick standing on the red-tiled front porch next to the freshly painted white bench and a large camellia in radiant bloom in the planter Dad built out of brick. “I’ve got a problem, Louie,” he said, once my dad opened the door. Looking at his shoes, he went on to tell the tale.

.   .   .  

Dad was officially a police officer, and un-officially the kind, steady helpful man every neighbor approached with the confidence he would lend a hand or an ear to their plights, whether a missing dog or a clogged sink.

His dreams of becoming a pilot for the Marines collapsed with the diagnosis of TB. After his stint in Tennessee, he returned home to California to convalesce and try to figure out what the next step in his life would be.

His immigrant family had fled warn-torn Yugoslavia, dropping their bags and their last name at Ellis Island, Skvrce to Skuce, before making their way to Oakland, California where my Dad was born. He used to describe the neighborhood, “On one side there was the Italian quarter; on another the German. We were in an area where the Serbs and Croats gravitated. Everyone helped one another.” Although his father came along on the journey, he did not remain, returning to Yugoslavia when my father was very small. My dad never saw him again.

Mom described my paternal grandmother, Marija, as tough. Maybe she heard this from others in my dad’s family since Mom never met her. Forever etched into my memory is a sepia-toned photo in one of the many albums my father liked to keep. It was taken by a professional where my grandmother is seated, surrounded by all five children, my dad the youngest. She’s wearing a satin dress straining to hold in her stout frame, buttoned all the way up to the neck. A large, elegant hat sporting feathers is perched on her head, and she wears white kid boots.

“Where’d she get the money to buy that outfit,” Mother asked accusingly.

It was very grand for someone who did not have a husband supporting her. She never learned to speak english well, however refused to allow Croatian to be learned or spoken when the children were growing up. It was her way of forcing integration. And it was her way to support the family by encouraging the four boys to work and give their earnings to her in order to run the household.

“Yeah, she made you quit school at eleven to sell newspapers.”

“That’s not very nice, Mabel, my mother loved us and did the best she could alone in a new country.” I never heard him utter one word of complaint against her or his upbringing. He dutifully accepted the way things were.

As my father convalesced he studied for his GED and then followed one of his brothers by becoming a police office. Tall, thoughtful and kind, he was the kind of cop you’d want to show up at your door, or extradite you across state lines.

Every once in awhile, when we were young, Dad would tell Charles and me a guest was coming over, “I don’t want you two to come out into the back yard while he’s here. He’s what we call an ex-con. Served his time, but I like to check on him now and then.” And like keeping his gun up high in the clothes closet, away from any harm, he kept this fellow beyond our reach as well.

.   .   .   

“Uh, Millie’s out of town…”

Dad invited him into the confessional of our backyard and they sat at the picnic table in front of billowing hydrangeas in pink and purple. Turns out, in a rare act of defiance, pleading embarrassment and sleepless nights, Dick devised a plot to make the death of Millie’s prized rooster look like a suicide instead of a murder.

“I threw him into the pool last night. Thought he’d drown.” Unfortunately Dick missed his aim into the target of water he hoped would end all of our misery. The bird landed spread-eagle in an old black inner-tube and was very much alive. Now stuck. And squawking his fool head off.

“It’d serve Millie right to come home to that rooster drowned,” mom said, bringing out some iced tea.

“Now, Mable. Think of Dick bearing the brunt of that,” dad defended.

Dad and Dick put their heads together. They bagged the bird in one of dad’s gunny sacks used for lawn clippings and drove him up into the nearby hills where horse ranches stretched out in between grassy valleys, releasing him into a more chicken-friendly life and emancipating the neighborhood of an unwanted alarm-clock.

Millie returned later that week to a cock-a-doodle-dooless home, and soon after Dick was never seen nor heard from again. I like to think he freed himself into a better life after practicing with that rooster.