She brushed her hair a hundred times, or close to it anyway, before dimming the light and sliding into bed. She pulled the Hammacher down comforter up to her chin as she nestled into her one-thousand-count Egyptian cotton sheets. She was worn by the swinging emotions and the back and forth travel. This was what happened, she thought to herself. The travel, the emotions, it was all too much. It was a rare moment of insight, perhaps ignited by a receding consciousness and prevailing set of facts.
Her mind swirled as if a small twister were forming on the Kansas plains. Suddenly she was in Kansas, but without Toto. Instead, she had a Beagle named Floppy for the hue of his nearly bare belly as a young pup out of his mother’s womb. She had been four or five, she remembered, and there were three baby Beagles lying in straw at the bottom of a box. “That one, the floppy one,” she had said, pointing. So Floppy was jumping at the door in this vision, and Captain Zach Garrett was standing up from the breakfast table.
Amanda was playing with her spoon, dipping it into and out of her Fruit Loops and milk with a devilish grin on her face.
“What?” her father asked, smiling.
Her big green eyes batted at him. “Nuffin’, Daddy.”
Floppy was jumping at the door, which meant one thing. Zach’s car pool ride was in the driveway.
“Gotta head on out of here, baby girl. Kite flying at 3 p.m.? Can you work me into your schedule?”
Amanda giggled. “I’ve got a ’pointment at free p.m.”
“Yeah, what’s that?” Zach was standing now, smiling.
“Kite flying with Daddy, silly.”
He bent down to give her a kiss
She took his face in her hands. “Later, alligator.” Then she kissed him on the cheek. “Love you, Daddy.”
“Love you, too, BG.”
Suddenly she was walking through the forest following the giant paw prints of an unknown animal.
“That way,” she said, pointing and looking at her father. She was maybe ten years old now. It was a cool day in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and Amanda was dressed accordingly in her blue Gore-Tex Northface jacket and faded light blue dungarees. Supple brown hiking boots left cloverleaf imprints as she walked through the sandy soil along the creek bed.
Zachary was following behind, letting her lead. He was close though, as the paw print might really be a bear or a mountain lion. He was quite certain it was the large Saint Bernard that the Shiffletts owned.
“Okay, let’s go that way, then,” her father whispered, as if the hunters might at any second become the hunted if they gave away their position. Amanda held a stern look on her face, using her hands to brush away the low-hanging branches of pine saplings.
“This trail is what the wild animals use to come to the stream to drink water. Animals are just like humans in that they need to drink a lot of water. And if big animals are here, what else is probably here?”
Amanda looked at him intently. This was no game in her book. They might as well have been on an African safari stalking a lion’s den. Her mind raced, searching for the right answer. She so wanted to please him by knowing. She wanted to show how smart she could be. Big, he had emphasized the word “big.” He was talking about how animals needed water. What else would they need? Food? She had it.
“Smaller animals? For food?”
Her father smiled, and she knew she had it right. Pride surged through her, and she tried to hold back a smile, but couldn’t resist. He was smiling, too.
“That’s right, baby girl. This is the chow hall.”
She could hear the South River churning to the east. Mist escaped her mouth as she breathed. She could sense her father right there behind her. His presence was comforting and reassuring… and necessary.
Her father saw it first, which is why he placed his hand on her shoulder and deftly stepped in front of her.
“Don’t move,” he whispered. He moved a step to her front and a bit to the right, it seemed, so that she could see. Drinking from the stream was what looked like a big tabby house cat. She had owned several that had either run away or died in some accident or another. She always had pets and remembered a tan Manx cat she had when she was much younger.
“Mountain lion,” he mouthed as he looked at her while placing his index finger over his lips, indicating for her to be quiet. She stared at the animal, its back to them, oblivious to their presence. A combination of a north wind and the rushing water most likely masked their approach to the typically alert feline. Then she looked at her father’s face, strong and rugged, without a trace of fear. He looked confident and assured.
She lowered to one knee, edging a shade closer to her father, resting a hand on his shoulder. They waited and watched this cat drink water, occasionally look to its left and right, and then go back to lapping at the stream.
For fifteen minutes they became lost in a trance, connecting with nature. The sun broke through for a moment and a sliver of yellow light spotlighted the animal’s silken gold coat. Then, as if the sunbeam was its cue, the mountain lion lifted itself off its rear haunches and loped harmlessly along the river bank to the east.
Now she was on the tennis court in maybe one-hundred-degree heat on a searing North Carolina July afternoon. The coach had just made the tennis camp team run four laps around the entire complex. Unsure if she could continue, she noticed someone move to her periphery and whisper in the coach’s ear.
Wiping away the sweat that was stinging her eyes, she raised herself up from resting her hands on her knees and looked toward the coach, who was nodding at her father. She saw her dad dressed in his army uniform. She wasn’t sure what all of the symbols and decorations meant, but she did know that it was her father and that he would make it all okay.
He walked away into the officers’ club which was adjacent to the tennis courts. The coach blew the whistle with a loud, ear-piercing blare and screamed, “Okay everybody, bring it in.”
Twenty girls and boys came limping over to the coach, all drenched with sweat, some seemingly on the verge of dehydration, as indicated by their vacant stares. Amanda tried to see beyond the throng now gathering, looking for her dad.
“Good job, everybody. I want you to take the rest of the day off.” A chorus of cheers erupted. “Okay, okay. Hit the locker room.”
As the tennis camp crowd entered the clubhouse and its inviting cold air, she looked up in amazement. Her father was standing in the middle of the pro shop wearing a T-shirt that said “Lifeguard” and a geeky pair of swim trunks with a mixture of red, white, and blue colors fashioned in a swirling pattern. On his feet were flip-flops, and in his hand was a sheet of paper.
“Gather around, team,” he called out, waving his arms toward the aspiring racquet masters. With some energy, they began to huddle around. Amanda was up front. This was her daddy. She stared up at him with adoring eyes. “Here’s what we’re going to do. There’s coolers of Gatorade in your locker rooms. You are all going to go drink an entire bottle and then put on your bathing suits and meet me at the swimming pool.”
A collective scream sounded from the small crowd. Amanda hugged her dad’s leg, looking up at him through her salty face, and then turned to her friends.
“That’s my daddy,” she proclaimed just like a parent might proudly say, “That’s my girl,” when she rips a line drive in a Little League game.
She was sitting now in a library in Spartanburg with her father across the table. Construction paper and photos were scattered like a magazine editor’s workplace.
“The name of this place is Wanda?” Amanda asked, eyes innocent and wide.