Dr. Ralph...
My mother divorced my father when I was five. I had to be four or five when this story happened because Mom and Dad were still together. I had a splinter in my right index finger. Dad saw that I was having a problem and offered to help. I should have hidden it better.
To this day--over thirty years later--I still get creeped out in basements. I know part of that fear stems from my sister convincing me that monsters lived in our sump pump; that a whole host of undead beasties were just waiting to kill me in the boiler room, behind the furnace, and in the crawlspace above my father's workbench. But I think the first time I ever equated basements with bad was thanks to dear old dad...
* * *
My father fancied himself a surgeon of sorts. He was terrified of doctors, opting to treat himself and family instead of seeking professional help for things bordering on big. There was no reason I needed a doctor for the splinter. While I couldn't get the splinter out, I knew by the next morning I'd wake up and it would be easily removeable, or simply gone, lost somewhere in my Yogi Bear or Snoopy sheets. But my father couldn't stand seeing his children in pain.
So it was off to the basement...where he put me through more pain than any doctor could ever hope to muster!
I remember the needle and knife tip...
I remember the flame (to keep things sterile, of course)...
I remember lots of blood (okay, it seemed like lots of blood)...
I remember lots of pain...
And I remember never wanting to go into the basement ever again!
* * *
Sometime after my mother divorced my father and he became an alcoholic who remarried and moved to Kansas, there was another incident in a creepy basement involving my father and sharp things. Fortunately, this time, I wasn't on the receiving end of the hot blade.
I recently wrote about the first time I tasted peppermint schnapps, and I mentioned that the second time involved my father as well. This is the story of that second time.
I can't remember why, but I was looking for my Dad and couldn't find him. He wasn't sitting in his chair, drinking beer and watching cable TV. He wasn't in the driveway, working on one of the three '63 - '64 Ford vans he had out there. All the cars were there, so that meant he was still around the house. That left only one place he could be: the basement.
I didn't like the smell of the basement up north, but opening the door to my father's basement in Kansas was like opening some ancient crypt. Simply cracking that door, you knew not only what spiders smelled like, but also mummies, zombies, and anything else decaying and evil. My step brother once locked me in one of the side rooms in the basement for what seemed like hours, but was really only minutes (one of the only mean things he ever did to me), and I seriously thought I was going to die from fright. But I figured my father had to be down there, so I cracked the door.
There was the underlying smell of decay, but there was also the familiar smell of unfiltered Pall Malls or Lucky Strikes (he flip-flopped brands), the smell of peppermint schnapps, and some strange smell I couldn't put my finger on.
"Dad?" I said.
"Yeah, bud."
Even though it was my father's voice, I still expected to see some hollow-eyed creature wrapped in bandages when I got to the bottom of the stairs and looked at him.
The basement was darker than usual, with only a single light above his workbench illuminating the place. The shadow on the far wall looked really strange--there was something not quite right about the feel of the basement (not that there could be a right feeling in a basement as far as I was concerned. We showered in that basement, and there was a period of time the only bathing I did one summer came from swimming pools and swimming holes because I refused to be in the basement for a shower unless my step brother or father was down there with me).
When I turned to look at my father, he covered his leg with his hand. I walked over and there was a bottle of whiskey on the workbench (Dad rarely touched the stuff), a bottle of peppermint schnapps, and a jar full of rubbing alcohol with something red in it.
"Whatcha doing?" I said.
"Just kind of busy right now, bud."
"Doing what?"
I took a better look at the jar--the red thing inside was about the size of a large marble, and it wasn't really red, but kind of white and yellow, like body fat. Fleshy protrusions sticking to the side seemed to sway back and forth in the liquid, like some kind of sea weed. I swore that whatever was in the jar even had a vein in it!
Dad motioned with his head toward the bottle of peppermint schnapps. "Want a sip?"
I really didn't, but it seemed like it was what I needed to do, so I did. Dad waited a moment and pulled his hand from his leg. There was a three inch gash that was partially stitched shut with some kind of dark, strong thread. That's when I noticed the X-Acto knife on the workbench with the darkened blade from being held in a flame before Dad went in.
He had a cyst that had been bugging him, and instead of going to a doctor to see if it even needed to be removed, under the influence of peppermint schnapps and Wild Turkey, he removed the damn thing himself!
I took sip of peppermint schnapps and Dad finished sewing his leg shut.
Looking back, it was gruesome and sad, but at the time I couldn't stop thinking that I had the coolest father in the world...