The Man I Never Knew

What is happening? Who has me? What is going on? There is a man dressed all in black, he is in my bedroom and he has me. He is dragging me out of my house. HELP ME!!! Where is my momma, did he get my brother too? Daddy! Daddy! Where are you? As he drags me out the front door all I see is lights and there’s people everywhere. What is going on. I am being placed in a car. Wait, this is a police car. I finally wake up enough to realize that there are police, no wait their vests say FBI, everywhere. I see my Dad; he is being placed in another car. There is my mom holding my baby brother standing with one of the FBI Agents. This has to be a nightmare, surely, I will wake up soon. Then one of the Agents is headed my way. I am 8 years old and I am scared to death. He is bringing my mom and my brother with him. He places them in the car with me. Mommy what is happening. She says it is ok baby, we are going to be OK. What do you mean we are going to be ok? I was fine sleeping in my bed. Why were we dragged out of our house? Where are they taking us? Why do they have Daddy? As tears rolled down my mom’s face, she simply said everything is going to be ok. As I sat paralyzed, I had to focus on something, anything, to settle my mind. The train station, that's it. Daddy would take me every Sunday to the train station, we would make a quick stop at locker #17 every time. I wasn't sure why but I didn't care because I knew when he closed that locker he and I would board the train and have a magical day of fun. My memory only flashed briefly as the noise of the night and my mothers sobs quickly took control back.

My father was a police officer, so this has to do with one of his cases. It must. We had to be in danger and that is why they came to get us; this is the reasoning an 8-year-old me came up with. Oh, how I wish that were true. It was not. Apparently, they had arrested my father for armed bank robbery. This is ridiculous. My daddy would never do anything like that. As time went on, I realized it was true, it was all true. My father the upstanding policeman had robbed a bank. I was mortified. No, I was devastated. This man was my hero.

I tried to forget. I blocked and pushed down so many memories. Even after he was released from prison, I still could not remember the things that happened. I had erased it all like a bad dream. I was 13 when daddy was released. He was placed in a halfway house so he would come visit on weekends. That was my normal. He would be there on the weekends, but this was not the man I remember. He was cold now. He was not the man that left when I was a little girl. I did not know this person. Yet I still craved his love and attention. I mean I was suppose to, this was my daddy.

As I got older, I would have flashes of things, like a movie playing in my mind. I didn’t know if I was going crazy or these things actually happened. I started searching for answers and realized these images that played in my mind were actually the reality I lived. I remember when I was 7, the phone ringing and the man on the other end asking for my father. I said he’s not here may I take a message. His response crippled my innocence. He said yeah, tell him I am going to kill him. I remember screaming and my mom running to me. I told her what happened, and she just held me. As I grew older and started to date, I would ride the back country roads with my boyfriend. Then it happened. He rounded a curve and I screamed STOP! He did and I ask him to turn off that road onto a remote access road. He looked puzzled, I explained, I think I know where this goes. As I gave him directions, I told him, I think there’s a stream or lake at the end of this road. Sure enough, there it was. But why did this hold so much significance for me? As we stood at that spot looking around the movies started playing in my head again. I could see my daddy slipping away leaving me standing there in the dark. This is the place he hid something but what? The images stopped coming almost as easily as they had started. I didn’t realize how much significance this memory, this place held until many years later.

My father and mother had divorced years earlier. He had married an executive with a big pharmaceutical company and moved away. She was my age so there were many issues and resentment that lingered in my heart. I loved my father, but I was so angry at him for what he had done, for the love that I yearned so hard to have and never felt like I was good enough to get. I reached out to my father so many times and we would see each other on occasion. He had become an acholic, an addict and he had a major gambling problem. Yet I still needed and wanted his love.

As time went on, I would remember bits and pieces of my childhood. Every time a memory of my father slipped into my mind he would be writing in this little black book. What was he writing? As I searched for answers, I learned that they never recovered the money that was stolen. However, I found that the people that worked on the police force with my father had answers I had been searching for. I talked to several of them. They would all tell me different stories of a man I did not know. Horrible stories of a corrupt cop. A bad man. They all mentioned the little black book he seemed to always be writing in that was never found. Some of them even told horror stories of how he treated me. I had no recollection of this. As I listened to the stories the officers would reluctantly tell me I would see those movies in my mind again. I would remember things that would eventually lead me on the right path to find out everything.

My father eventually started to come around and one day showed up on my doorstep. He said he needed a place to stay that his wife had kicked him out. I was thrilled. He chose me. He wanted my help. Yes Daddy, you can stay here, I said. However, my husband, that sweet boy from years ago that took that winding path I ask him to, did not seem so enthused that my father was back in the picture. He said we have children to think about and your father is an addict. I promised to talk to him and lay down some ground rules if he would just let him stay. He agreed but not for long. My Father did not take to kindly to being told what to do. Ultimately, I had to ask him to leave. He managed to get a run-down place about an hour away from us. He had been in and out of drug rehabs numerous times and the only time he reached out to me was to tell me that he was done with life and wanted to end it all. I would always go running to try and save him. I would put him in rehab after rehab. It was a vicious cycle. Then one night he came to me and told me he was done fighting with his demons he just wanted it all to stop. We made a plan that we would get him help the next day. He seemed to calm down, to be ok. I wanted so bad to ask my father to stay for dinner, but I knew my husband would not like that, so instead I walked him to the door and let him leave. Within 15 minutes there was an officer standing at my door. My father had pulled out in front of a train. He was gone. They said it was an accident, I did not dare tell them the conversation that we'd just had a few minutes earlier as I lay in my daddy’s arms, wishing I could make it all better for him.

I still had unanswered questions, so I searched for answers. I found out that all those years ago when the bank was robbed that he had a huge gambling problem and that in fact someone was going to kill his entire family one by one until they got their money. So, robbing the bank wasn’t the selfish act I once thought it was. He robbed the bank to save us. I kept thinking about that little black book that my father would write in. Where had that gone and was that the key to finding out who this man really was? That place by the creek bank, I remembered something, so I went back there. I remember seeing daddy digging underneath the big oak tree there. I took my shovel and off I went. As I pulled up the sun was shinning and there was a crisp breeze blowing. I headed straight to the tree. I started digging. I hit something hard, a wooden box. I opened it. It was my daddy’s little black book. I flipped through it. There were names and dates and things that didn’t make any sense to me. But the last thing in the book left me stunned. There pressed in between the pages of this little black book was a key. It had the #17 on it. I knew where I had to go, the train station, that held so many wonderful memories for me and my dad. I get to the locker and open it. I see a note and an envelope. I read the note. Daddy's words rang so loud. I hope you know that what I did, I did to save my family. I took care of what I had to but this is for you. I hope this makes up for everything. Never forget, I love you. I opened the envelope to find $20,000.00. NO, this is not what I wanted. I wanted his love, his affection. It was never the money that I wanted, yet that was all he could give me.