Chapter 16

I have not always been the mature, stable person I am now. There were periods in my life, usually after divorces, when my wild side surfaced.

Those are times I am not proud of. I drank too much, partied like a crazed person and even chased the occasional bar fly. Fortunately, I didn’t catch any of them or anything from them.

I had a pair of dachshunds once after divorce number one. They were a boy and a girl. I thought it would be cute, so their names were “Go” and “Nad”.

We were living in a small house in Broken Arrow, a suburb of Tulsa, at the time. My neighbors were not the friendliest people and I got a lot of delight in putting the dogs in the back yard then hollering at them.

“Go, Nad!” I would holler, way louder than necessary. It made it sound like I was hollering “Gonad”, as in testicals. Like I said, it was when I was younger and a little more immature.

They were great, loving dogs, but they did like to bark. I wasn’t home enough to care for them like I should, but we had a lot of fun. We went for walks, played ball, wrestled and watched a lot of television together. Go would always lay down on my left while Nad was on the right.

Life was pretty good until I came home from work one summer evening and found Go and Nad in the backyard. At least one of the neighbors had gotten tired of their yippy little barks and decided to end it by putting some rat poison in hamburger meat and feeding it to them.

They were both gone by the time I got home. I am normally not the type to want to physically attack anybody, but if I had found out who killed Go and Nad, it would have taken the Tulsa Swat squad to pull me off them.

I had some ideas who did it, but was never positive. Go and Nad were buried in the backyard with little gravemarkers. I doubt the next residents of the house kept them up, but it was like they had their own little pet cemetery.

Those were the last pets I have owned. Some people say it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. I don’t share that opinion. They obviously have never seen the agony etched forever on the faces of two dogs that were dying.

Since then, the only living things that have shared my island were the last two Mrs. Hunts. There have been some others who tried to visit, but like the stupid television show Survivor, they were voted off the island of Michael Hunt.

That is just the way I like it. Some friends from work, worried about my mental state, bought me the DVD of About a Boy two years ago. In the movie, the character played by Hugh Grant, is happy and single, doing all kinds of things to date women.

He is his own island, just like the song by Jon Bon Jovi that is mentioned in the movie. Through a series of events, Hugh’s character realizes he is living a life devoid of the interplay with others that makes life worth living. He comes to his senses, gets serious with a woman and starts to become a dork.

It was a good movie, but didn’t get me to change my ways.

Now the second of the three former Mrs. Hunts, April, was trying to change my island ways.

“Michael, I have a son,” she said. We were standing in the parking lot of Langford High School. There was a street light overhead, giving off just enough light to see each other. Her naval ring was shining brightly and I stared at it. She had both hands in her pockets and looked at me for my reaction.

I wondered how horrified I looked while realizing this was not good.

“How old is he?” I asked, dreading the answer.

It was only a couple of seconds before April answered, but it seemed like hours.

“Five.”

That was a big relief and I breathed for the first time since she told me about the boy. There was no way the little crumb grabber could be mine. It had been some ten years since we were together.

“Congratulations,” I said, not knowing anything else to say and wondering why she was telling me this.

“Thank you. His name is Michael.”

“Was that his father’s name?” I asked, then realize from her look that she doesn’t even know who the father was.

“No, I named him after you.”

“Why would you do that?”

April leaned back against her car. I have never seen her cry, but there was some heavy moisture building up in and around her eyes.

“I wanted to name him after the most kind and decent guy I know.”

There must have been another Michael in the endless stream of men she entertained.

“I named him after you,” she added. Now that was a stunner. April obviously had a higher opinion of me than she did ten years ago. “After I had Michael, I realized how badly I had messed up everything and hurt so many people, especially you.”

She certainly did that. My first wife found out she liked the company of other women over me. Then the second one liked the company of any guy she came across, not necessarily more than mine, but at least enough to share a romantic interlude.

All I could do was nod. I wasn’t going to tear into her and say how badly she hurt me. I always figured she hurt herself a lot worse.

“I need to tell you I’m sorry,” April continued, and let loose the waterworks. They must have been stored up for a long time because once the tears started, they came in torrents.

Something was wrong here, I realized. She didn’t “want” to tell me she was sorry, but needed to instead.

“It was a long time ago,” I said, trying to make her feel better.

“That’s no excuse. I promised to stay with you until the day we died and didn’t. I wasn’t even strong enough to stay away from other guys on our honeymoon.”

That was not something I needed or wanted to know. I didn’t think she started doing that until way after we got married. We went on a cruise to the Bahamas for our honeymoon, no wonder she kept disappearing.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“I need to make my peace with you and tell you how sorry I am,” she mumbled, crying badly.

“But why?” I continued. There had to be some reason. It wasn’t logical, as Spock would say.

“I did you wrong and I had to tell you that.”

I looked in my truck for some tissues, anything to help with the tears streaming down her face. There was one in the ash tray, but it was used and I didn’t think she’d like to mix her tears with my snot. I found a tee-shirt and handed it to her. She wiped away the tears.

“This shirt smells like you,” she mentioned.

I hoped the shirt was clean and it wasn’t my body odor.

“Okay, I accept your apology,” I said. “I hope you have a good life and all that but I need to go.”

I opened the door to my truck and got in. She walks over to the truck and waits for me to roll the window down.

She sticks her head inside the passenger door.

“I need your help, Michael.”

Uh oh, I think, here it goes.

“With what?” I ask, really suspicious now.

“I’m sick.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. How can I possibly help? It’s not like I’m a doctor.”

“I know that,” she replies, wiping away the tears on her shirt. “I have lymphatic cancer. The doctor thinks he can control it, but I’ll have to take chemo and all that. I’ll be really messed up for a while.”

“Again, I’m sorry to hear that. But what does that have to do with me?”

“I need somebody to take care of Michael while I’m sick.”

This was not going in a direction that I wanted to travel.

“Okay, but why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“I wanted to see if you could take care of him.”

“I can barely take care of myself. Why me?”

“You’re the only one I trust.”

“What about your parents? They always seemed to be okay.”

Actually, I always thought they were rather weird, but never shared my feelings with her.

“They won’t have anything to do with us.”

“Why?”

“Because I had Michael when I wasn’t married and they didn't approve of my lifestyle.”

“So they won’t have anything to do with their daughter or grandchild?”

“No, they won’t.”

“What about the boy’s father?” I asked.

“I don’t know who it is.”

I should have stayed in Tulsa.

“I wouldn’t be any good at this,” I protest. “I work a lot and don’t know anything about taking care of some little kid.”

“He’s not just some little kid,” she fires back. “He’s mine.”

“April, this won’t work. Surely you can find somebody else?”

“You’re the only one.”

She has a lot more faith in me than I do.

“I don’t know about this,” I add. Warning bells are going off at an alarming rate.

“Will you just meet him?”

I could do that.

“Okay,” I give in. “When?”

“Tomorrow?”

“I can’t do it,” I say. After all, that is when I am sneaking off to Tulsa with Sandy, hopefully without Trevor’s knowledge. My life is starting to be like one of the soap operas April used to watch.

“How about Sunday?” she asks.

“That would be fine,” I said, knowing I will dread this for the next two days.

“Thank you, Michael,” April adds, pulls out of the truck and starts to walk away. She stops, just before getting in her car. “I need to tell you something else.”

She tells me and I long for Tulsa and the calmness of my island.

Chapter 17