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Authors: Tawni O’Dell
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backward, lowers his head to show us his horns, and paws the ground several times.
Shelby grabs my arm and pulls us back from the fence.
“Oh my God,” she gasps.
I can feel her heart beating in her hands.
“Don’t move. If you don’t move, he can’t see you. We’re far enough away that we must be a blur to him.”
“Could he break through the fence?”
“It’s possible.”
He decides not to charge. He snorts a warning in our direction, then walks back into the trees, taking his time, slowly bobbing his majestic head from side to side like a king acknowledging his subjects.
“That was intense,” Shelby says.
She loosens her grip on my arm and while I watch her begin to calm down it strikes me that although fear and love can be faked like any other emotion, they are the only two, when genuinely felt, that can’t be hidden.
CHAPTER FOUR
M y brother grew up poor and determined while his son grew up rich and useless.
I’ve witnessed this phenomenon many times, and I’ve never quite understood how these dynamic, driven, visionary self-made men can fail so miserably and consistently at raising their children.
I think a large part of the problem comes from the fact that they’re torn between the values that made them capable of becoming successful and the values they’ve embraced since their success. They preach one set and act out the other set, and as everyone knows actions speak louder than words, especially when the words are critical and the actions are a never-ending stream of undeserved rewards.
Any sensible person would realize a man can’t expound upon the ethics of hard work and the necessity of making his own way in the world and then buy his son an extravagant sports car when he turns sixteen and expect the boy to care at all about making his own way. He can’t preach about moral decency and honesty and then when his son comes to him because he forced himself sexually on the underaged daughter of one of his father’s coal miners the father responds by giving the miner a great deal of hush money. Months later when evidence of the boy’s crime is gone, the father lays off the miner and blackballs him so he and his family are forced to move away. He can’t stress the importance of education, then allow his son to spend his college years drinking and whoring and barely maintaining a C average. He can’t lecture about the need to understand the world community and then lead his son to believe that a spring break spent in the Bahamas and a cruise ship stop in Cozumel constitutes “going abroad.”
But probably the most insurmountable difference between these generations is that the principle that drove the fathers the most is completely absent from their children’s lives: survival of the fittest.
My brother wasn’t a saint. He made his money on the backs of other men and was indirectly responsible for many of their deaths and directly responsible for two in particular. Yet he worked harder than any man I’ve ever known, took care of his family, and gave generously to his community.
Can killers have ethics? I believe so, just as I believe a mother—a giver of life—can have ice in her veins.
I understand that Cameron was not brought up well and that all his faults are not of his own making, but there comes a point when a boy must take on the responsibilities of manhood, and the first one he must tackle is choosing what kind of man he will become.
Cameron chose wrongly.
I’ve been blessed by his presence this evening. He and Rae Ann have just arrived.
I’m not happy about this. I suspect Shelby had a hand in it, but I’m not sure why she would want them here.
She claims this was her mother’s idea, that she suddenly realized coming to my house this evening would be a convenient opportunity for her to see Shelby, who attends a private boarding school that is a ninety-minute drive west from her parents’ home and a twenty-minute drive northeast from my own. Rae Ann has
Shelby grabs my arm and pulls us back from the fence.
“Oh my God,” she gasps.
I can feel her heart beating in her hands.
“Don’t move. If you don’t move, he can’t see you. We’re far enough away that we must be a blur to him.”
“Could he break through the fence?”
“It’s possible.”
He decides not to charge. He snorts a warning in our direction, then walks back into the trees, taking his time, slowly bobbing his majestic head from side to side like a king acknowledging his subjects.
“That was intense,” Shelby says.
She loosens her grip on my arm and while I watch her begin to calm down it strikes me that although fear and love can be faked like any other emotion, they are the only two, when genuinely felt, that can’t be hidden.
CHAPTER FOUR
M y brother grew up poor and determined while his son grew up rich and useless.
I’ve witnessed this phenomenon many times, and I’ve never quite understood how these dynamic, driven, visionary self-made men can fail so miserably and consistently at raising their children.
I think a large part of the problem comes from the fact that they’re torn between the values that made them capable of becoming successful and the values they’ve embraced since their success. They preach one set and act out the other set, and as everyone knows actions speak louder than words, especially when the words are critical and the actions are a never-ending stream of undeserved rewards.
Any sensible person would realize a man can’t expound upon the ethics of hard work and the necessity of making his own way in the world and then buy his son an extravagant sports car when he turns sixteen and expect the boy to care at all about making his own way. He can’t preach about moral decency and honesty and then when his son comes to him because he forced himself sexually on the underaged daughter of one of his father’s coal miners the father responds by giving the miner a great deal of hush money. Months later when evidence of the boy’s crime is gone, the father lays off the miner and blackballs him so he and his family are forced to move away. He can’t stress the importance of education, then allow his son to spend his college years drinking and whoring and barely maintaining a C average. He can’t lecture about the need to understand the world community and then lead his son to believe that a spring break spent in the Bahamas and a cruise ship stop in Cozumel constitutes “going abroad.”
But probably the most insurmountable difference between these generations is that the principle that drove the fathers the most is completely absent from their children’s lives: survival of the fittest.
My brother wasn’t a saint. He made his money on the backs of other men and was indirectly responsible for many of their deaths and directly responsible for two in particular. Yet he worked harder than any man I’ve ever known, took care of his family, and gave generously to his community.
Can killers have ethics? I believe so, just as I believe a mother—a giver of life—can have ice in her veins.
I understand that Cameron was not brought up well and that all his faults are not of his own making, but there comes a point when a boy must take on the responsibilities of manhood, and the first one he must tackle is choosing what kind of man he will become.
Cameron chose wrongly.
I’ve been blessed by his presence this evening. He and Rae Ann have just arrived.
I’m not happy about this. I suspect Shelby had a hand in it, but I’m not sure why she would want them here.
She claims this was her mother’s idea, that she suddenly realized coming to my house this evening would be a convenient opportunity for her to see Shelby, who attends a private boarding school that is a ninety-minute drive west from her parents’ home and a twenty-minute drive northeast from my own. Rae Ann has
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