My father had been in and out of the hospital for fifteen years. He survived three heart attacks, cancer, multiple hernias and a knee replacement. His knee replacement at seventy-five was unsuccessful. He said he signed up for the operation, not never-ending physiotherapy, and he was too damn busy to waste his time doing fancy-boy exercises with some idiot who didn’t get into medical school. That operation reinforced his lifelong belief that when confronted with an inconvenient diagnosis, the correct response was always to change doctors.
“He won’t be here forever,” my mother insisted, ignoring all contradictory indications. But the next morning, I drove north to Miller Creek, leaving brewed coffee, salads, and cell phone service behind. My mother ruled the family for fifty years as the Ayesha, She Who Must Be Obeyed. I gave no thought to ignoring her summons.
As I waited at the light for my left turn into the hospital, I thought about my new truck. Custom made for me: Donald Angus Green III, Green & Associates. Sitting up high, hearing 454 horses rumble, I loved looking down on all the lesser cars, trucks and drivers. I decided I’ll always take the truck when I visit my parents, not the Porsche or the BMW. My father had harangued both as unsuitable for a man to drive, savagely critiqued as they sat hopefully in his driveway. I wasn’t sure the new truck would even fit into his driveway, but I hoped he would approve of it.
The house in Rosedale never impressed him, nor the cottage in Muskoka, nor the condo on Siesta Key, which I bought in part so they could escape the snow and soak up all that expensive heat. But every time I invited my parents to share my success, my mother showed up alone, making excuses for him. He never forgave me for choosing the city over the farm, the climax in what he called “The Great Betrayal.” He was what my circle might have dismissed as “a simple man,” but before he died, I needed to hear him say I made the right choice, city over farm. Just once.
As I pulled into the hospital, Donald Angus Green II, Retired, sat beside the front entrance, wearing a new set of what he called his “greens.” A green T-shirt under a long-sleeved green work shirt, green pants with thick cuffs, hitched up by green suspenders. Preemptive green patches affixed to knees and elbows. Manufactured from industrial grade green rayon, his ensemble of choice retailed by the pound at finer “Farm Feed and Supply” outlets everywhere. He waved, then strutted across the driveway. He looked good. New meds? I parked and scrambled to deploy the electric side steps to help him summit the cab.
“Donny Boy! What’s new?” he said, intentionally ignoring the new truck as he climbed into it. “Surprised to see ya t’day.”
That stung. He knew I’d want his blessing for the truck as soon as he saw it. Instead, he opened with a triple twenty, straight to the heart. He was still the Dart King, finding a soft spot, cutting me deep. I felt like I was back in the milk house and eight years old, begging him to let me try his darts. Watching him practice for hours, chasing his triples, before he snuck off to the Legion to hustle small timers and escape my mother. Uncle Billy said my old man could throw a dart up a spider’s arse, but his tongue cut sharp too often, and he never had the good sense to leave a mark happy.
I closed his door, then circled back and climbed into the driver’s side. I told him to buckle up. He fumbled with his seat belt. I reached to help but couldn’t make it release.
“If the complexity of the mechanism is beyond ya, make no never mind of it. I’ve no need of yer harnesses this morning,” he said.
Ouch. Triple Nineteen. Just wheeling around the board now.
“Who did you expect, Dad?”
“Who but yer mother, ya idjit. But not yet. I was just sitting. Pondering. And ya know what came to mind…The gray team. My old team of grays. I wonder whatever became of them.”
The Gray Team. Triple Eighteen. Fuck you, old man. I hated that story. Driving back to the city later, I realized that right there, that third needless jab within five minutes of seeing him, was what finally opened my eyes.
I arrived after a difficult birth and required an extended hospital stay. According to his frequent telling of the tale, the only way he could pay the hospital bill was to sell his favorite team of gray horses, the last he owned, before shifting the farm to cattle. I’ve heard versions ending with a sale to a brewery (to pull a show cart in parades); or to a rich man in Muskoka (to pull a fancy sleigh for his grandchildren); or to a rag man in the city (to pull the wagon as he went street to street collecting used clothing). He tailored each recitation to his audience, never letting inconvenient facts interfere with his performance. But in every version, he always said he wasn’t sure he’d been wise to sell the horses and keep the baby.
“Playing dress up cowboy this morning, are we?” he said, tut-tutting, looking me up and down as I accelerated onto the highway.
Triple Seventeen. I tried hard to accommodate my current wife, far more than I had the first two. If she wanted line dancing lessons, we took line dancing lessons. The outfit was ridiculous: western shirt, rhinestones, bolo tie, stiff jeans, tight cowboy boots, black belt cinched by a buckle the size of a dinner plate. I wore it on weekends, hoping the extra washing and wearing would soften the fit for those goddamn lessons. Thank Christ I didn’t wear the hat.
“Yer mother will be at the hospital by noon to collect me. Get yer arse in gear so we can be back. I dunno how this works, but I wanna go to Reilly’s, then go see the farm.”
Typical. About to be discharged, but don’t trouble yourself with details, knowing one of us would clean up the mess. Mother hadn’t mentioned a discharge, but she was getting to an age where she wobbled, forgot and repeated. I didn’t know why he wanted to go for a ride, but playing chauffeur would discharge my promise to her.
Old-man aroma, mixed with the stink of that red liniment he wore and the tincture of fresh green rayon, swirled around the cab. Something in that smell recalled the barn in August, with the second cut packed tight under the roof, and it’s raining, and we stop for the afternoon. Memories of sweat and thistles and binder-twine and blisters and drinking cold water from the hose rushed back. I relaxed a bit.
“What did the doctor tell you when he said you could go home?”
“He said there was nothing to be done for the heart palpitations beyond continuing the current prescription regime. Quite definitive he was. A proper twat, really. He said go home, sleep more, eat better. Go for a walk. Watch less of the FOX News. Avoid the white bread, butter and salt. Less whiskey. He’s turning me out with nothing useful whatsoever. Idjit.”
I signaled and pulled into the parking lot at Reilly’s. On the ride over, I heard about soil and drainage conditions, days to maturity, and heat units required for every crop in every field we passed. He lacked the disposition or focus to succeed as a farmer; despite everything he now claimed to know about all matters agricultural. The strain of holding my tongue, while reconciling this newfound expertise with the shambles of the farming I remembered, gave me a headache.
Reilly’s used to be my father’s favorite place. He spent afternoons here, telling stories, drinking coffee and eating honeybuns, watching boats on the river. Back then, he knew everyone; people stopped at his table to pay their respects or hear a story. Now, the restaurant was full, but no one recognized him, so he sat at his old table and found his pleasure by criticizing everyone who passed.
I ordered two coffees, then slipped out to the washroom, leaving him alone, looking at the river. When I returned, he dismissed my suggestion of a honeybun with a never mind, we’re leaving.
He wanted to see the farm. His travelogue resumed as I drove. The closer we got to the farm, the richer the narrative and the sharper the burr rubbing between us became. No matter how far away I went, he always pulled me back, but never let me in. As we passed farms he had rented, no acre he worked ever yielded less than 120 bushels of corn or grew fewer than 100 bales of hay; always cut, baled, and in the barn without a drop of rain. I knew he never broke even on any of his rental schemes, so I appreciated why his stories required new facts for today’s telling.
I parked beside the gravel road on the hill and looked down at the farm where I was raised. They sold the farm and moved to town after his second heart attack. My mother engineered the sale while he lay in the hospital; that transaction was a huge victory on her side of their scorecard. Below us, the small pine tree that we strung with lights at Christmas was now thirty feet high. A man was hacking lower branches away so that his chainsaw could reach the trunk. A long cable sagged between the tree and a tractor in the driveway.
As my father described the farm below us, we saw two distinct worlds. He saw what might be, never what was. He saw the false promise of his next low-risk, labor-free fantasy, printing money to make us rich. One year, selling sod and topsoil off the hay fields to developers. Another, llamas. Milking goats. Pot-bellied pigs. Jersey cattle that all died in their first winter. Freezer beef on consignment. Chinchillas. Miniature ponies romping among the Holsteins. I saw only the trap I escaped when I was sixteen. I let him ramble on for a while, half enjoying the lies he told so well. But I knew the ending. Finally, the script approached the climax when I abandoned my birthright, debased myself, and fled to the city. But not today.
“Do ya remember the first herd?” he said. “Two Grand Champions with a smashing BCA for both butterfat and milk production. Registered purebred Holsteins. Fifteen born with our name on the pedigree. Thirty-five assembled from judicious buying trips, one or two at a time. They were to be yer herd. Ya had the gift, same as me, same as yer grandfather. Ya just never applied yourself.”
“I remember that herd. Boots and Valerie the champions. And I remember you disappearing on your buying, drinking, and whoring trips with Uncle Billy. More time terrorizing Legion Halls than not. Mother at home, oblivious, but raging at your absence and the expense, and me left alone with the chores.”
“Aach. Yer mother never had the proper appetite for risk or expansion. And ya were at least twelve when I first left ya alone. Ya started with me at six, same as me with yer grandfather. Ya loved the barn and the cattle. You’da mastered livestock if you’d not been so obsessed with books, reading and mathematics. You’ve such a mind, you’da been the best damn cattleman in the country if you’da applied yerself. But she coddled ya and ya pissed away yer gifts on education.”
I heard the chainsaw sing and watched branches fall until the trunk was naked as high as the man could reach.
“I remember starting in the barn,” I said. “I loved it then. You know why? Before that, I was invisible. Of no matter to you. But you’d talk to me in the barn. You told me all your half-ass ideas and pretended I understood. And you bitched about Mother, so I’d be sure to take your side in all those raging intramurals in the house. Of course, I loved the barn. It was the only place I could talk to you.”
Sawdust flew as the man cut a wedge out of the tree trunk. He killed the saw, then pounded the wedge out.
“I worked at it, Dad, I really did. I tried to learn breeding, pedigrees and genetics to tell the good stock from the poor, but I couldn’t. The entire time, they were nothing but black and white ciphers to me. All they did was eat, shit and kick me in the nuts when I held their tail for the vet. I hated every goddamn one of them.”
The man backed away from the tree. He waved, and a boy on the tractor eased it forward and tightened the chain until the tree bent away from the house, and the man waved again.
“Boots and Valerie? I remember. Ear tags G149 and G131. But after their tags fell out? They blended into that black and white abyss. I couldn’t identify them to save my life. Remember the first time you left me alone? I spread mastitis and infection across the herd because I couldn’t tell the dry cows from the milking. You dumped the tank when you returned, rather than risk the test results from the dairy. Did you ever know another cattleman as oblivious to his stock as I was? Never. Black and white mysteries, that’s all I ever saw.”
The saw whined as the man attacked opposite the wedge, slicing through years of growth in seconds. The tree spun, twisted, and kicked, then crashed to the ground.
“Bullshit,” he said. “I call bullshit on that. The one time ya tried, when ya devoted yerself, ya made tremendous progress. Yer innate abilities emerged. Then what does his Lordship do? He shat the bed, judging at 4H Calf Club, all cross-eyed over that little split tail. There she stood watching, batting her eyes, twisting yer brains and balls up in knots.” He looked out the window, horked deep, spat, then grinned as a green mess slid down the inside of the window.
“So, fuck you and yer fancy fucking toy truck, too.”
*
I quit school the year I turned fifteen, worn down by my father’s relentless campaign to mold an heir of his own breeding. That year, he displayed an unprecedented sense of civic responsibility, organizing a 4H Club to nurture the next generation of dairy farmers. The club comprised fifteen boys aged twelve to eighteen, eight fathers who shuttled us to meetings and one sixteen-year-old blonde ingenue named Gail Smith. That summer, all the boys and half of the fathers were in love with Gail.
Club meetings followed a county-approved curriculum. We assembled at the chosen farm at 7:00 pm on the third Thursday of the month. The host delivered a talk illuminating one sanctioned topic, which we all ignored, to the great annoyance of the fathers. Then the judging. Our host lined up four cattle of the same age, size and breed, identified with placards numbered one, two, three and four. Club members spent fifteen minutes inspecting the animals and making notes on lined cards with our names pre-inked on the front. On the back, we listed our rankings, top to bottom, for the four animals. Three of the club members then presented, which we also ignored. Unless Gail presented. Then we all hung on every word, phrase and inflection, as if Marilyn Monroe herself was whispering in our ear, wearing only a towel.
Each meeting concluded with one father presenting the “official” rankings while another rifled through the cards to select one among us as the night’s top judge. The highlight of each meeting was always the next hour, when fathers, sons and big brothers crowded around a water trough stocked with cold beer. This was serious business. We knew that having a drink with our father meant entering his world. Undergoing this ritual, absent our mothers, grew new, stronger bonds between us. For that hour, we stood shoulder to shoulder as men, not fathers and sons.
Gail never stayed after the judging. She said being anywhere near that much beer induced testosterone might make her puke, but I knew if she wanted to stay, she would have. We were two sides of the same problem: progress. I was the oldest male child of a man pressuring me to take over a farm I didn’t want. She was the only child of a man who refused to consider that his daughter might inherit and operate his farm. We all knew, even my father, that she was the best young herdsman in the county. But back then, her inheriting the family farm seemed as impossible as my inheritance being anything but inevitable.
My father arranged the schedule so that we hosted last. All year, he planned that meeting as the first step in my claiming his throne once I revealed my profound understanding of “The Holstein.” My monthly judging results improved, but only as much as my ability to read upside down and crib other people’s notes improved. The cattle remained impervious to me, black and white enigmas.
That last month, we kept the same four cows in the first four stalls inside the stable door facing the house. Each night, my father explained every intimate detail, trait and characteristic of those four unknowable beasts. I hung on every word. I studied him: how he judged, what he explained to be weak or strong qualities, and how he moved and gestured as he presented his reasons. Using those four cows, he tried to teach me everything he knew about livestock, husbandry and judging. I made pages of notes and diagrams, trying to capture every nuance. I practiced my delivery in front of a mirror. My father spent more time with me that month than at any other period in my life. We shared a beer every night when we finished. For that month, I loved him more than any other person in my life before or since.
My father opened our meeting by welcoming everyone. He gave his talk. I waited for the judging. Finally, he turned to the four cows tied along the barnyard fence and waved us forward. I created my card. After fifteen minutes, he collected the cards and asked three club members to present. When they finished, he turned, nodded to me, and welcomed me into his world.
“Tonight, my son Donald will provide your official results.”
I strode to the front of the group and delivered my masterpiece. It remains unmatched by any boardroom pitch I’ve delivered since. I saw myself scaling the heights of agriculture, Gail fawning, nubile and glowing beside me as we revolutionized dairy farming, knowing the arc of our success began the night I judged so brilliantly at 4H Calf Club.
However, as I concluded my opus, I sensed something was wrong. No one spoke. Gail had taken two steps towards me, saucer-eyed and silent. My father stood behind the group, eyes narrowed, tight-lipped, explosion brewing. Everyone knew something was off, but those two alone were smart enough, quick enough, and with a deep enough understanding of the breed to realize what had happened.
My father shattered the silence as he parted the crowd, slow clapping, radiating menace with every step he took towards me. I shivered. His cold eyes followed me like the twin barrels of a shotgun, cocked and ready, tracking the shot as he spoke.
“Wee-Slippy-Tit here fancies himself a comic. I advised against it repeatedly, but he was determined to try one of his tiresome routines for us tonight.”
Standing with his back to the crowd, his eyes pinned me in place as he recited the correct judging placements and explanation. Then he dismissed us.
“My good wife has neglected to secure refreshments, so we’re forced to adjourn for the evening. Now. Good night, all.”
He turned and disappeared as the crowd dispersed and our 4H Calf Club dissolved forever.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. My face was on fire. I couldn’t breathe. As I struggled to untie the halters and release the four cows, I saw their ear tags and realized what had happened. They were in a different order from the previous month when I copied, polished, and memorized my presentation. Speaking by rote, blind to what stood before me, I delivered my analysis and description of each of the four cattle while confidently pointing out specifics of the wrong animal.
*
I watched the man cut more branches away, exposing the fallen tree trunk. I turned and refocused on my father, who sat glaring out the window.
“What ever happened to Gail Smith?”
“She married a lunk-head from town. Banged out a litter and took over the farm. She runs the best outfit in the country now. Miking a hundred and fifty head. Purebreds. Farming a thousand acres.”
“Good for her. She was always the best of us. And whatever happened to that first herd?”
He turned to face me, eyes cold black slits.
“Fuck off with ya. Ya know exactly what happened. They perished the night after yer 4H fiasco. In the inferno ya started that wiped out the best Holsteins I ever owned.”
Game on. My pulse slowed, and blood thumped in my ears. My toes found the line, and I leaned in towards the board. I couldn’t miss.
“Old man, you forget yourself. You’ve been riding your high horse for so long you’ve lost sight of the ground. And you’ve forgotten who you’re speaking to. Yes. I left the water running. That overheated the pump and sparked the fire. I told the police I left the hose running after washing up when we finished chores that night. Together. You provided other helpful examples of my ineptitude to convince the insurance adjuster that I caused it. And I’ve owned that ever since, following me around like a bad smell; your story of the fool who incinerated your herd, turned his back on his family, then fled to the city in shame. But just this once, let’s tease out circumstances, shall we? Let’s turn over all the slimy rocks and see what’s beneath. Care to illuminate? Or shall I?”
“Fuck off.”
“Fine. Let’s begin. We’ll start with the raging brawl the night of the 4H meeting. I told you both what happened at the judging, before you trampled me into the ground in front of everyone. I swore I’d to go back to school and would never work on your farm again. Next, we heard you screaming choruses of “School will not get my boy” while mother replied with rounds of “Maybe it’s time to let him decide.” Have you any recollection of the flying dishes and the smashing furniture that continued until mother fled to her sister’s place? How about you sneaking out on a monumental bender half an hour later?”
I exhaled and continued.
“The story builds nicely, doesn’t it, old man? Not as polished as your version, but you’ve had years of practice and repetition. So now the finale approaches. Playing the good son, I did chores morning and night the next day. Mother still hiding in town. I worked alone all day, repairing the destruction in the house, bawling my eyes out. Praying for a chance to renew my vows of fealty to farming, and to you. I thought I’d ruined the family forever. Then, night approaches. The night of the fire.”
The tree trunk, trimmed clean of branches, lay naked in the yard.
“Can you feel the tension rising as I walk from house to barn at ten o’clock to check the stock before going to bed? And what do I see when I turn on the stable lights? My beloved father has returned, drunk as a skunk, arms, legs and pecker entwined with Lizzy Black. The pair of you laying buck naked, dead drunk, snoring, sprawled across a horse blanket spread out in the manger between the rows of cattle.”
“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”
“Now tell me, what’s the good son to do? I can’t bear the stink of you two fouling the barn, so I grabbed the biggest hose I can find and tried to drown you both. Finally, you woke in a flurry of snot, snapping, snarling and biting. Then, while that bitch crawled away, I knocked you on your ass twice, then thumped you with the stable broom across the yard and up to your bed while the hose lay running, forgotten. And there you slept, till four in the morning, when the light of the flames and roar of the fire woke us both.”
The chainsaw whined. The man sliced the trunk into jagged pieces short enough to drag away.
“So that’s my version of the story of the fire,” I said. “Feel free to highlight any discrepancies you’d like corrected for the record.”
He sat still, looking out the window, waves of hostility rolling off him.
“Houl yer whisht,” I said. “I’ve kept your secrets all these years, so I won’t run crying to mother now. But tell me, do you even remember what happened to that gray team? Grampa told me before he died, so don’t test me by lying now.”
He turned, and I saw in his eyes exactly what he had thought of me since I defied him at sixteen. But I knew I no longer cared.
“You lost them in a drunken game of 501 at the Legion when mother was in the hospital with me. Grampa paid the hospital bill.”
I started the truck and pulled onto the road. We drove in silence until I flipped on the turn signal, pulled into the hospital entrance, and parked by the door.
“And I’ll thank you for doing one last chore,” I said. “Take off that shirt and wipe your filth off my window. Use the bottle of water in the glove box to moisten the shirt and polish it up nicely.”
He sat rigid. White-hot, staring straight ahead. Refusing to yield.
I shut the truck off, climbed down and circled round to the passenger side, seething with murderous intent. When I reached up to open his door, I saw him glaring at me through the green smear. My world constricted to only his face. Then, just as my fist closed on the handle and I squeezed to open the door, I heard my name sung out behind me.
“Why, if it isn’t Donny Green! The prodigal son returns. How’ve you been, boyo?”
I turned to see Father Ficko, long tasked with saving my parents’ souls. Behind me I sensed activity as the glove box opened, suspenders snapped off shoulders, and my father squirmed out of his shirt. The priest strode toward me, a huge grin spreading across his face as he surveyed what I was wearing. I did not “believe,” but I loved this man. He drank like a fish, kept your secrets, and told even better stories than my old man. He grabbed me in a bear hug, squeezed me until I saw stars, then stepped back to throw first. I pre-empted with a raised finger and a smile.
“Not a word. I’ve heard my fill of opinion already today.”
There was no violence reported to mother that night. Behind me, I heard the shirt squeak on the window, then stop. The truck door opened, slammed, and my father appeared. He cut wide to avoid the priest: a route worn deep by frequent passage. Suspenders hung below his knees, his damp shirt in one hand. He acknowledged the priest with a nod and a “Morning,” then walked to the hospital entrance. As soon as the priest turned his back to talk to me, my father walked backwards through the sliding doors, shot me the bird with both hands, and mouthed “FUCK YOU” as he disappeared inside.
The good father wanted an update on adventures since we last shared a jar.
“Oh, not too much excitement, Father. I took the old man out for a drive this morning and we caught up. Talked about the old days, back on the farm. He gets weepy, so I brought him back a bit early. He’s being discharged today, you know.”
“Is he now? Fantastic. It’ll do him good to get home. I’ll visit once he gets settled. He chafes at confinement.”
“You’re shading that just a tad, Father. He resists domestication completely. You’re better served to deploy your spells and potions on behalf of my mother, who endures the brunt of him.”
“Ah, Donny, they’ve been doing that dance so long that only they know the steps. And what about you? All good at home these days?”
“Storm clouds gathering, Father. No worries, though. I’ve mastered the secret of modern disentanglements—the pre-nup. After that gets sorted, I’m going to simplify. Downsize. Do you want to buy a slightly used truck? And I’ll put this getup I’m wearing away for you. For trick or treat next year. I believe I’m less concerned about the big show to impress others than I used to be. Nothing like a good visit home to remind you where you came from, who you want to be, and what you really need.”
A water bottle exploded on the sidewalk beside me, thrown out the window of the ward four stories above.
I love him still, but I’m afraid that one day that goddamn man will be the death of us all.
*
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(Photo: Mike/flickr.com/ CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
This carefully curated collection brings together outstanding essays and short stories that delve into the landscapes, lives, and voices of rural spaces around the world.
Coming mid-November.
- A Good Visit Home by Dan Tamblyn - November 14, 2025