All fathers are myths and so is Lee Fisher’s. All fathers are myths and all mothers are actresses. Lee’s mother is an actress—a onetime actress who since she met Lee Fisher Sr. does little but stay alive and wait for her husband’s return. She assures little Lee his father is real and will return. He has a lot of money, a lot of responsibility: it is the family’s money, but people tried to take it and his father had to do certain things to keep it from them; he had to go away because of those things they made him do, and it is a lot of money, and God forgives, and he kept it safe, and one day it will be Lee’s. Your inheritance, she calls it. One day it will be up to you to keep it safe for your children too.
Lee is on the floor cross-legged playing with his soldiers. A gift, babu! From him! Five years old. His mother’s Elvis records play over and over on his bedroom’s record player. He has become deeply infatuated with Elvis Presley after seeing him on television. Violet and all the other staff have, to an individual, rounded a corner or exited a bedroom they have just finished cleaning or barged in through the service entrance of the home with crates of groceries to find the young master enthusiastically, if weirdly, shaking and convulsing for them—something approaching dancing—having waited sometimes hours to surprise them like this, alone in a dark hallway, breathless and giggling with swelling impatient anticipation. He knows many fascinating things about Elvis Presley and he will visit Elvis in Memphis, Tennessee—he has asked his mother if they could, she said yes (he had to wait to ask until she was off the phone with his father and did not have the meanness in her mouth anymore, the same meanness that is her mouth when she sits in a rocking chair at night alone in the dark staring out the window murmuring, He’s coming back, he’s coming back).
She sweeps into his room, glowing, singing. She looks young and dangerous, her white perfect teeth flashing from behind her lips that are covered in bright paint, her hair a different color and shorter now, wearing clothes he has never seen her wear, and her body sweet-smelling and fruit-smelling but strange and foreign.
—Babu, she sings. —There is someone downstairs for you!
He smells him before he sees him. He smells like the mountain. The house is now filled with the stink, dispelling the sweet scent and fruit scent of his mother. There it is, he thinks. The first time he sees him he is taking down one of their pictures from the wall—a framed photograph of his mother holding an infant Lee in New York City—and hanging a new one in its place: a scene of dusty war and Indians and white men killing the Indians in the war and fire and blood and cannons and guns and dead horses. Lee stands there halfway down the stairs watching him, scared of the new picture, hating it. His father wears jeans and a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, cigarettes in the breast pocket, his jaw grinding as he chews his tongue and straightens the new picture and stands back to admire first before turning to Lee and saying, —Well, howdy.
Lee does not answer, turns to look up at his mother on the stair above him. —Why does he say howdy?
His father says, —Just the way us cowboys talk, I reckon.
Lee silently mouths the words: Cowboys... reckon...
—Why did you take our picture down?
—Ah, well, because this is a better picture. Look at these guys. These are men. There were just twenty-three of them against four hundred Indians. They and their families faced imminent death against the enemy but did that stop them? Hell no. They kept fighting and they won. These guys are heroes. Don’t you like it?
Lee says, —No.
His mother hisses through her teeth, —Lee.
—He’s not a real cowboy.
—Lee Fisher.
His father silences her with a wave of the hand and comes over. He climbs up the stairs until he’s eye level with Lee. —Pardner, one thing about me? he says. —I’m as real as they get.
A party for him, to welcome him back. The house on the mountain is now stuffed with people. Among these intellectuals from the city with their jewelry and suits and hair and cigarettes and wine, Lee’s father looks very alone. He is polite but quiet, listening to them talking about President Nixon; he stands beside his wife in her pretty dress kissing men and women, so many she cannot keep up, talking as fast as she can, it has been so long since she has seen them, there is so much to tell about her life and to hear about theirs. At the bar Lee overhears a bald man say to another man as they pour more wine into their glasses, —Good God, when did he turn into a Klansman?
Lee’s mother is so proud of his father, Lee can tell, the way she clings to his arm. She says to him, —We need to take you shopping. Will somebody please take him shopping? Look at what he’s wearing now! Look at this! She tugs at the flannel shirt. —It’s filthy! It has sweat stains!
She and the people they stand with laugh, bending over with their drinks, Lee’s father smiling with his lips tight and watching them. —I like my shirt, he says, no one hearing but Lee.
—You have to try acupuncture, someone is now shouting, apropos of nothing.
—Oh, it’s amazing, the bald man from the bar says, joining them. —It’s Japanese.
—Chinese, Lee’s mother corrects him. She turns to Lee’s father. —You have to try it.
He shakes his head. —Not for me.
—How do you know? You haven’t tried it.
—Believe me, I know.
—Well, how do you relax then? the bald man says to him. —How do you clear your head and get centered?
—Masturbation, someone mutters.
—He hunts, someone else suggests. They all groan and roll their eyes.
—Never! Lee’s mother cries, her glass sloshing, Lee’s father catching her at the elbow to steady her. —I wouldn’t allow it.
Lee’s father shrugs and smiles blandly.
—So what’s with all the guns then? the bald man says. He turns to the man next to him. —Downstairs? In the basement? He has all these guns.
Lee’s mother is trying to silence him but he does not see her. Lee’s father says to him, serious, —When did you see my guns? Who let you down there?
She says, —Oh, I did, darling. They’re interesting. They’re dangerous. She turns to the bald man. —Weren’t they interesting and dangerous?
Maybe Lee alone is the only one who can see the darkness in his father’s face, how clearly furious he is with his mother though he is not looking at her. But the bald man, not answering Lee’s mother, is asking Lee’s father, —Well, if not animals, then what do you shoot? People?
—No, Lee’s father answers, trying to appear patient but, Lee can tell, bristling, —only targets. You know, for marksmanship.
One of the others, clearly oblivious, says, —So are you carrying one right now?
—Carrying what?
—You know, a heater! A Saturday night special!
The bald man