The stars, hidden by a thin layer of clouds, did nothing to dispel the darkness of the night of a new moon. The wood, burning inside the fire ring, gave forth a weak light that held back little of the darkness. The warmth and the small amount smoke the fire produced, was sufficient to keep the trio gathered around the fire from getting too close to it. Faces glowed softly in the light while the rest of the world disappeared in the blackness surrounding them. It created an atmosphere that allowed a reserved intimacy to emerge among those gathered there.
"It's kind of strange having your parents dating," Will said.
"I don't think so," Sarah said.
Dexter said, "It is a little strange. When we were married, we would have just called that night 'an evening out.' Now, it's a 'date.'"
"I don't remember you and mom going out, except on your anniversaries," Will said.
"We went out a couple evenings a month when you were small, then we got too busy," Dexter said.
That was the whole story. At one time, his life had been pretty good, but then he got too busy. Everyone got too busy to take care of the important things in life.
"So how was the date?" Sarah asked.
Staring into the fire, Dexter answered, "I think it went well. We ate dinner and talked. Then we went to a club, and listened to some jazz."
"Jazz?" Will asked.
"I've come to like it," Dexter said.
"I've never listened to Jazz," Sarah said.
Dexter said, "It isn't all that common, now. You don't hear it in any of the movies. We don't have a radio station that plays it. I never paid much attention to it, until I went to the jazz club. I'm not going to say that I know much about, but I like listening to it."
"You can always listen to it on the internet," Will said.
Dexter said, "That's one of the good things that the internet has brought about."
He would have said that was about the only thing good about the internet, but he didn't. Having access to information on nearly every topic under the sun wasn't bad. Of course, that didn't mean the information was of great quality. His website was part of that cacophony of information out there, too.
"All of that is interesting," Sarah said, "but what I really want to know is how your date went."
"We talked a lot. It was pleasant," Dexter said.
It had been pleasant talking to Janet. In a way, it had been a real first date with the pair of them trying to discover the interests of the other. One would think that after being married for so many years they would have known everything about the other, but that night had pointed out how far apart they had grown.
Sarah asked, "Did you connect?"
"Connect?"
"Did it feel right?"
Dexter answered, "It felt a whole lot better than my dates with Ann."
"Ann?" Sarah asked with a sudden chill in her voice. "Who's Ann?"
"She's a real estate agent I met at the place where I occasionally have breakfast," Dexter explained.
"You dog! Dating two women," Will said with a touch of pride in his voice.
"You asshole! Dating two women," Sarah said disgustedly.
"I'm not dating two women. I had two dates with Ann, and then one date with your mother," Dexter said.
"You shouldn't have dated anyone other than Mother," Sarah declared as if it was a fact that should be obvious to anyone.
"We're divorced. I can date anyone I want," Dexter said without heat.
"So are you going to go out with this 'Ann' woman again?" Sarah asked.
"No," Dexter answered.
Samantha's comments about Ann accepting his word that he was divorced despite having direct evidence to the contrary had soured his opinion on the woman. It made him wonder if she was not all that particular about the men she dated. There had also been a few hints during their first date that she would be high maintenance, particularly her comments about the restaurant where they ate. His second date with Ann had reinforced that impression.
Sarah asked, "Why not?"
Dexter held up his left hand. The gold metal, in the weak light of the fire, flashed almost too brightly against the darkness.
"Jeeze! You're still wearing your wedding ring," Sarah said staring at the gold band.
"I just can't bring myself to take it off," Dexter said.
"Whoa!"
"I guess you're not over Mother."
"Samantha pointed that out to me after I had my date with Ann. It kind of made me wonder about Ann. What was she doing dating a guy who was wearing a wedding ring, and was mostly likely married?" Dexter said.
A piece of wood in the fire settled, causing another to shift. Dexter reached out and picked up a stick. He pushed the two pieces closer together and stirred the coals to increase the fire a little. After a second, a small flame appeared.
Will asked, "How do you know how to do that?"
"Do what?" Dexter asked.
"Stir the fire," Will answered.
Dexter said, "You mean how do I know how to tend the fire?"
"I guess," Will said.
Dexter answered, "I don't really remember when I learned how to tend a fire. It's actually pretty easy. A fire needs three things: fuel, heat, and oxygen. Tending a fire is a matter of putting all three together. The fuel is kind of obvious. That's the wood. You have to keep the burning logs close enough together so that the heat from one helps the other to burn. You also have to make sure that they can get enough oxygen to keep burning."
"Neat," Will said.
Dexter said, "You were never in the boy scouts."
"That's right," Will said. "It wasn't a big thing in school."
"It's a shame. You could have learned a lot in scouts," Dexter said.
"Like what?"
"Like how to start a fire and to tend it," Dexter answered.
"What's so tough about starting a fire?" Will asked. "You take a lighter and light the starter log."
Dexter laughed. "The way I lit the fire was cheating. When I was in the scouts, we had to do it without matches, or lighters, or starter logs from the grocery store."
"You were in the scouts?" Will asked.
"Yes, I was. I'm really sorry you didn't get a chance to participate in it," Dexter said. "Being in the scouts teaches you about citizenship, honor, and duty. It teaches you about self-reliance. It teaches you about how to survive in the wilderness."
"I don't see where those things are important," Will said.
That comment nearly left Dexter speechless.
Dexter asked, "What do you mean?"
Will answered, "We learned about civil rights in school. Besides, we were born in this country, so we're automatically citizens. We don't have to 'get' citizenship. Honor and duty are basically military concepts, and we're civilians. If you can't do something for yourself, then you just hire someone to do it. And lastly, who goes in the wilderness?"
"Oh my God," Dexter exclaimed.
Sarah said, "You looked shocked."
"I'm dismayed."
"Why?" Will asked.
"Citizenship isn't about civil rights or a gift of birth based upon where you were born. Citizenship is about your conduct as a citizen of your community, state, nation, and world. It's about being active in your community and giving of yourself so that the country, and the world as a whole, is a better place. It's about volunteering to help others. It is about obeying the laws, and observing the customs of your country.
"Honor and duty are more than military concepts. Honor is about respect. Being honorable is about acting in a manner such that you are worthy of respect. It is about your word, your promise, being meaningful. It is about making promises to do the right things, and then living up to those promises to the best of your ability. Honor, once lost, can never be regained. Honor isn't consistent with moral relativism. It requires a real sense of right and wrong.
"Duty is about meeting your obligations to the best of your ability. These are not things that you want to do, but things that you have to do, because there is no one else to do them. I took upon myself an obligation to feed, cloth, shelter, and educate the two of you from the day that you were born. My duty, as your parent, meant that I had to work. No matter what else you may think of me, you will have to admit that I have done my duty to the best of my ability.
"I don't even know where to begin with the importance of self-reliance. All I know is that there will be times when you are all on your own. There will be no one there to help you. You can get a flat tire in the middle of nowhere. Self-reliance is about knowing how to change the tire yourself.
"Maybe knowing how to survive in the wilderness is a skill that most people won't need in the modern world, but that misses the point. Survival is a mindset, in which one figures out the rules of the game from scratch. Then one functions within those rules, using generic skills one has developed for survival. It is about adapting to changing circumstances, and overcoming any situation that comes your way. Knowing how to start a fire with nothing is useful in the woods. It is also useful when the power goes out in the middle of a snowstorm. That's knowing how to survive.
"There are all kinds of wildernesses out there. A wilderness is a place where the rules aren't written down so that you can study them at your leisure. Downtown is a wilderness for someone from the suburbs. So is the workplace. For that matter, so is school. There are a lot of people who fail to survive school, work, downtown, and just about every other wilderness out there."
Will was taken aback by the passion in his father's voice. It surprised him that Dexter felt so strongly about this matter.
"You really mean it," Will said.
Dexter said, "A lot of people have forgotten what citizenship means. They think it is all about what the country owes them. It isn't and we see the results of their belief in terms of how the country is becoming a worse place to live. People have stopped giving and only know how to take. They'll take until there's nothing left.
"We've forgotten what honor and duty mean. If two honorable men come to an agreement, there is no need for a lawyer or judge or law to arbitrate whether they have met their terms of the agreement. Honorable men live up to their agreements. Men without honor don't. We need laws, lawyers, and judges because so many people aren't honorable. Their word means nothing. Their promises have to be written down so that others can force them to live up to their terms of the agreement.
"At one time, we were a land of honorable people."
Sarah said, "According to my teacher, all of that historical stuff is fiction. Washington never cut down a cherry tree. We stole America from the Native Americans. We enslaved blacks. We have killed people all over the world for oil. All that stuff you said is great, but it isn't historically accurate."
"I have to agree with her," Will said.
Dexter looked at his two children. He knew that he couldn't dismiss their objections or tell them they were wrong. He had been watching dishonest people rise in power and then lie to the American People his whole life.
Dexter said. "I'm not going to argue against what you've said. I think a lot of the negatives have been emphasized and few of the positives have been admitted. I'm not going to deny the negatives. There have always been greedy and dishonest people. I'll even admit that power attracts those kinds of people much more than it does good and honest people.
"However, without good citizens, without people of honor and who will do their duty, and without self-reliant individuals who will think for themselves; I can assure you that the horrors you have been taught about, would pale in comparison.
"Yes, we dropped the bomb on Japan. Not only did we do it once, we did it twice. We killed a lot of Japanese during World War II. It was a war. We defeated Japan. We could have made it part of American as conquered territory, but we didn't. For that matter, we could have made the Japanese people our slaves, but we didn't. Instead, we helped them rebuild their cities, their industries, and their lives. We allowed them to remain an independent country and to keep their culture. We didn't have to do that.
"There are a lot of people who claim to be extremely moral and God-fearing. You'll hear them talk about how good they are. Honor isn't about the words that people say about themselves, but about their actions. When you discover that their words and actions are two different things, you may be tempted to say that everyone who says those same words will behave in the same hypocritical manner as the dishonorable person. That's an unreasonable assumption."
"So who do you believe?" Will asked.
Dexter shrugged his shoulders.
"That's it?" Sarah asked incredulous. "Your answer is to shrug your shoulders?"
Dexter said, "It is said that 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' There's a lot of truth in that. I also think that an absence of power corrupts, as well. Desperation can make a man do awful things. You either have power or you don't. As a result, there is always the chance that anyone you meet is corrupt. So, who do I believe? I guess I'm a cynic, because I don't believe many people at all."
"That's not very comforting," Will said.
"That's horrible," Sarah said.
Dexter said, "I do give people the benefit of the doubt, though. I'll give a person a chance to earn my trust. I start by trusting them with small things and work my way up to trusting them with more important things. However, if they should break my trust, then I'll never trust them again on any matter, large or small."
Although she had been looking at the fire through most of the discussion, Sarah turned her head and stared at her father. All of a sudden, she understood his actions over the past year.
"Mom broke your trust, didn't she?" Sarah asked.
"I trusted your mother to come to me if she had a problem with our marriage," Dexter said.
"'I want a divorce' isn't coming to you with a problem. It is a declaration that she doesn't want to discuss the problem," Will said. "You took her text message as a sign of disrespect."
"Right," Dexter said.
For the first time since he had received the text message from his wife, he felt that someone in the family was beginning to understand his actions. He still didn't think that Janet truly understood why he left like he had.
"Jesus! No wonder you just left!" Sarah said.
Dexter said, "I'm sure that you think I was overreacting. However, you have to understand that my ability to trust others, had been taking quite a beating, at that time."
"In what way?" Will asked.
Dexter answered, "I had discovered that every person above me in the company, had been lying to me. I'm not talking about just my boss; but about my boss's boss, and his bosses, all of the way up to the CEO of the company.
"They lied about everything. Before I was fired, I spent months gathering evidence, and documents, to expose all of their lies.
"Up until the second that I got the text message from your mother, she was the only one in the world who I truly trusted."
"That must have been a real shot in the balls," Will said.
"Oh, that's gross," Sarah said.
"It might be gross, but it is a pretty accurate description of how it felt," Dexter said with a sigh.
Sarah asked, "What about us? Did you trust us?"
"Trust you to do what?" Dexter asked.
"I don't know," Sarah answered surprised by how he had turned the question around on her.
Dexter said, "I felt your mother was obliged to explain to you what happened. I kind of hoped that you would call me and let me know that you thought your mother was wrong. But, you didn't. To tell the truth, I didn't expect you to do that. I figured that you didn't want or need me in your lives."
Will stared into the fire as he said, "You know, you were gone so much, that your absence really didn't impact our lives much. I guess I didn't think about how you would take my lack of action. I kind of thought that we weren't all that important in your life."
"Do you want to know what's the sad thing?" Dexter asked.
Sarah answered, "Yes."
"Every time my job got between me and my family, I would say to myself that I was doing it for my family," Dexter said.
Will glanced over at his sister and then said, "We didn't know."
Dexter pushed one of the burning logs with a stick to allow a little air to flow in below it. The flame from the fire grew brighter. Satisfied, he sat back with a sigh.
"That was mostly my fault. I thought that I was being a good example of a father, by supporting his family. Unfortunately, I never told you what I was doing, or why I was doing it. Your mother didn't think of telling you either, so you were left with the impression that my absence was due to a lack of interest in you on my part," Dexter said.
"I feel kind of guilty," Sarah said.
"Don't feel guilty. You didn't know. Even I wasn't aware of how badly I was failing. I should have been doing the scouting stuff with Will, and the father-daughter things with you. I was too caught up in providing food, clothing, and shelter to realize that I was failing to educate you in the important lessons in life, which were my responsibility," Dexter said.
It was quiet around the campfire while everyone watched the flames for a bit. There were sounds from other campers in the background.
Sarah asked, "Why did you ask Mom out on a date?"
"I'm not sure."
Will said, "There's got to be a reason."
"I've never stopped loving your mother. I guess that I'm trying to convince myself that your mother meant to do the right thing, but failed miserably in her execution. I keep hoping that if I can convince myself of that, that I'll be able to trust her again."
"Can't you just accept it?" Will asked.
"It is not what you believe in your head that's important, it's what you feel in your heart. There's still a lot of pain in there."
Edited By TeNderLoin