Father John

 “What a dirty old man,” Jane said looking at her husband.

As much as she would talk about him she loved her husband John. They had a unique relationship; John was into music and Jane was into exotic photography. She would get a kick out of watching John come home from work, turn on his record player and listen to Whitney Bison. She was John’s favorite singer. He would always smell like alcohol and would sit there and cry like a little baby listening to her. Outside of this, this was all they knew at the peak of their careers. John’s children would get a kick out of watching him and their mother argue but it was all genuine love. His three daughters and four sons didn’t have much but they had each other. It turns out that Jane’s passion for the exotic photography business caught up with her in a bad business deal that got her killed. Every business has its down side but John knew he had to stay strong for his children. His wife had morals but her passion for the arts somehow got her tangled in a web with the wrong people and John dealt with it for years because of his love for his family. With no wife at home, he dreaded the thought of starting over so his daughters ended up doing most of the cooking and cleaning. The men from his generation were used to women having to take care of the home and just like their mother they would watch their father come home from work and fall back in his chair with tears in his eyes listening to Whitney Bison. Back in John’s peak years life was simple and people stayed in their own lane. He hated that his wife had an odd profession but it didn’t defeat her character, she was a great woman. John would always joke around with her about how she was going to rewrite the garden story in Genesis and dreaded the fact that her passion for the purest form of art got her killed.

When John’s wife died his alcoholism got worse. He drank so much that his kids became concerned.

“Daddy, do you love us?” Lana, his older daughter asked as he sat in his dark cold room watching cowboy movies.

John looked at his daughter with his famous crazy face, “Lana, that’s a dumb ass question.”

She laughed, grabbed his basket and left the room.

John’s children knew that there was no changing their father but living in a time where bread winners kept things in motion they knew they had to keep him alive and happy or they would be separated. One night John came home so drunk that his son Billy got upset.

“Dad, you gon kill us and ‘yo self at the same time. You got to slow down,” Billy said.

John being John hugged his son, smiled as he always did when he got drunk and fell down in his chair after turning on his Whitney Bison Record.

“You remind me of ‘yo mother. You can’t fix the world Billy, it’s got to fix its self,” John said.

Billy got upset.

“Dad, I can’t keep livin’ like this. If something happen to you what’s gone happen to us?” 

John pointed to his most famous album cover on his momentous wall, “Billy, I’ll say it again, you can’t fix the world, it’s got to fix its self. Jenny Montgomery put the sun on every one of her album covers. Her highest selling song was titled: ‘As long as the sun rises we keep rising’ now take ‘yo ass to bed and let me handle my woes. Iz got a lot on my mind son, too much for ‘yo young self to handle, but I’m ‘gon get you to the finish line. I promise you that.” This was one of the first times Billy, being the youngest, had ever really heard his dad speak his peace, but it meant a lot to Billy, it was real. This was at a time when the world for him at least, almost seemed a bit too much to handle, but for some reason when father John said something, everything was alright. 

The good thing was that John kept his promise. He watched everyone of his kids grow up off of his own strength. For years John stayed in that same spot after every hard day at work and never had a bit of education outside of music. His common sense and will to work  with every musician was enough. At age 89 on Father’s Day, he, his children, and all of his grandchildren took a family photo and while at the counter paying for the photos John’s youngest daughter Tina saw a naked picture of him and their mother fall out of his wallet.

“Daddy, what the hell is this?” Tina asked, quickly picking up the photo and making sure no one was paying attention to it.

John smiled while gently taking the photo from her and placing it back into his wallet, “That’s me and ‘yo momma when we started our own baby factory that made you and everyone in our photo.”

Tina started laughing, “You a dirty old man.”

John saw her mother in her when she fed him that line, he then paid the camera man and started humming Jenny Montgomery’s song “As long as the sun rise we keep rising” while he and his family continued celebrating Father’s Day.

The End.