Timothy Kusterer

Dad

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2025: VOL. 40.

Dad lived on about 150 acres of what he called heaven. It was only accessible by taking I-67 for about an hour, until you come to the exit with an old truck stop named Pete’s Gas, and continue on a narrow two-lane for another thirty-forty minutes, before the road suddenly turns to gravel. Several lifetimes later, and you’ll see a flagpole flying the tattered remains of grandpa’s faded American flag. 

We never visited in winter, because there was no way I would risk getting stuck anywhere along the way, or taking some of the winding turns with ice on the pavement. Dad said living in the city made me lose whatever edge that he’d passed on to me through the gene pool. It’s a good thing he never rode in my car on the way to his place, because I’m sure he would have laughed at me slowing to take most of the turns and keeping my foot on the brake as we would descend into stomach churning valleys. Whatever the edge was that he referred to, most of the people out here possessed. With rusted pick-up trucks swinging around on the left side and blowing past me because I wasn’t going fast enough for their liking.

It often made me wonder, as I assume most people do who live in the city that find themselves driving into the sticks, why someone of their own accord chooses to live so far removed from normal society. Never speaking it aloud, I would think, how dare they live so far away, and just expect me to come and visit. They were my parents, which was now reduced to just Dad. Mom passed away some years ago, right before my first child. I wish she’d had time with a grandchild, I know that was all she wanted towards the end of her life. My taking so long to settle down was partially the reason I carry the weight of her death around with me. 

I was hoping that when the pregnancy was announced, my parents would move closer to the city to be a little more active in the life of their grandkid. That hope was met with my father telling me that they had a spare trailer on the property that we could move into to raise the kid out where God intended children to be raised. 

Dad would never understand why certain people chose to live away from the country, people like his own son. I could admit that it was breathtaking, it was. Also coming from someone who owned a house on a quarter acre lot, it was hard to imagine owning a place with what you could only describe as rolling hills. I guess I’m just a product of my time, because there was no way that I would give up my conveniences now just so that I could wake up every morning to look out at fields, and trees.

Candy, the Border Collie with one ear, met me as my car bumped over the cattle guard and chased after the car as I drove up towards the house. 

When I left home that morning to come down, I checked my front door the usual three times before finally backing out of the drive. Dad’s door, however, was unlatched how he always told us it would be. Candy left me after giving me a thorough pat down with her nose to lie down under the porch swing. 

The house was just as welcoming as it always had been. The second you step inside you forget all about your sore backside and the long drive it took to get there. Though without mom, visible signs of wear showed around the edges. 

Dad didn’t answer when I called out, and before I even spoke the farmhouse felt empty. 

I assumed that Dad was up in one of the fields with the cows, his bent frame on the back of a four-wheeler circling the herd. He always had this idea that one day I’d move down and he’d show me the ropes and I’d take over the farm. His selling point was that it was good work.

When I signed on with my first firm, I knew he was disappointed, even though in my first year alone I’d made enough after taxes to cover the down payment on a house and buy my wife and I two new cars. Dad didn’t like my house, a house paid for now after opening up my own firm. I never told Dad what I made, and he never inquired. At the end of the day it wasn’t about money with him, it was about how you felt at the end of the day. 

“If your back ain’t hurtin’, you ain’t workin’ hard’nuff.” That’s how Dad raised us. 

Dad would grunt and sigh as he moved around as though each adjustment was painful, though if you asked him how he felt he’d always reply the same, saying that he was blessed. Mom was the reasonable one, suggesting that maybe he should have a doctor look at him, then maybe he wouldn’t hurt so much all the time. There was nothing in the world that could make Dad come within spitting distance of a hospital. 

“When the Lord wants me, I’m ready,” Dad would say.

I found Dad in his chair next to where mom would sit and play the piano. The TV was still on presumably from the night before with Dad loosely grasping the remote in one hand. His flip phone was open in his other hand resting in his lap. I couldn’t see his face, only the top of his spotted, bald head. He was still wearing his boots, tough and mud caked on my mom’s carpet just like he had when I was little.

Unlike when I was a kid, and he’d startle awake if you got close to him, Dad slumped a little as I put one hand on his boney shoulder. 

“Oh, Dad…” The words leaked out of me like an old faucet as Candy pawed at the screen door.

In the following weeks as I dealt with Dad’s estate, turning the farm over to my cousin Joe and his wife, I happened to go through my dad’s old flip phone. Charging up the tired device I saw that his last call was to me. We both spoke the evening before I found him, he sounded well. I told him I was going to drop by and visit for a while if that was okay. 

“Bring the little one,” Dad said.

“She’s in school, Dad.” 

“Bring her anyway.” 

Timothy Kusterer hails from the Midwest, where he spends his days engrossed in storytelling; written and visual. He was previously published in a Spring issue of Ripples In Space for a piece titled “A Man and His Dog.” He currently resides in St. Louis, Missouri with his wife.