Wild Woman

October 7, 2009, Wednesday evening
Dad’s hospital room
Rain plasters the windows of my father’s hospital room, blurring the world outside until the buildings and trees look twisted and misshapen. I sit on a hard bench with my arms folded across my chest bracing against the cold.
Everything in me wants to run from this place, to escape to the wilderness, back to the land I know and love, away from these beeping machines and antiseptic smells, away from the tube that runs down my father’s throat and keeps him alive. Yet, my being here is necessary, first to affirm that life is precious but also because I am a broken woman in search of healing for myself in these last moments of my father’s life.
A torrent of bad water has passed beneath the bridge between my father and me, and I’ve been focusing on that turbulence for far too long. I know my first step in crossing that bridge is to put away bad memories, but the more I try to not think about them, the more they come to mind. I have a lot of question I would like to ask, but it doesn’t seem right to be dwelling on bad memories when my father cannot speak in his own defense.
“God, please help me think on the good,” I whisper.
When I turn from the window, Dad’s eyes are open, staring at me.
“Hi Dad,” I say, and then I continue the endless deluge of words. “Remember when we were headed to Sawyers Bar….”

1954
Fort Jones, Northern California
When I was seven years old traveling with my father on the backroads of Northern California, I had my first encounter with a mountain lion. Its fur was as black as the inside of an abandoned well. Dad called it a panther, but there were no panthers in our area, or so we were told.
We were nearing Sawyers Bar when the panther fell off the side of the mountain. It was about the size of a full-grown man and landed right in front of our truck. It must have hit something on the way down because it laid there in an unmoving heap. My dog and best friend, Nipper, went wild with barking and lunged at the windshield. Dad stopped our old pickup just in time to avoid running into the lion.
“Stay in the truck, Sandra,” he said.
He didn’t have to say that twice.
With Nipper barking frantically in my ear, I watched as Dad squeezed out of the truck, closed the door with a snap, and walked over toward the crumpled black form easily seen in the light cast by our headlights.
Panther. Just the sound of the word on my tongue conjured up horrifying stories in my mind of young children being dragged from their beds into the jungle. It didn’t take much imagination to envision the panther grabbing Dad and dragging him into the thick forest, leaving Nipper and me alone. I wasn’t sure which would be worse—to see Dad taken off by a crazed panther, or to be left alone to face Bigfoot. One thing I was sure of: that Bigfoot would come, and that Nipper was no match for him.
Dad had just passed the left headlight, causing a big shadow to spread across the road, when the panther sprang to its feet!
I never saw Dad move so fast. He went one way and the panther went another. Dad was around that truck and back in the driver’s seat before the panther’s tail disappeared into the darkness. Nipper jumped in my lap, pawing at the passenger window and barking madly.
Dad and I talked of little else for days. Everyone thought we were crazy.
“There are no panthers in our woods!” neighbors kept insisting.
But it was hard for them to argue when Dad pointed me out as an eyewitness. I reveled in my high standing for as long as I could. It wasn’t often I received my father’s praise.