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Orel Puppington was tired.
Well, tired was an understatement. He was exhausted.
The day had long passed. The sun having slowly crept across the sky was now hanging on the edge of the horizon, making it around 5 o’clock in the evening. The orange glow seeped through the tree tops and painted itself along the sky like stained glass in a parish window.
As the sun sank lower and lower out of view it became apparent that now, it had officially been a day. A whole 24 hours that Orel has been sitting here, wide awake not once dozing off. A day that his father has been snoring and drooling obnoxiously at his side. A day since Orel’s father had shot him.
Orel’s father had shot him.
It’s been one day into their father and son outing together, and Orel wants to go home.
He tries to put energy into talking to his father when Clay finally wakes up, he really tries, but theirs none left to give. It’s all a blur as he continues to sit in the same spot, leaning on an old tree stump, as his father takes his time to carefully pack things away.
“That should do it! Now how ‘bout that hospital!” Clay chants, with a smile on his face.
It makes Orel want to cry and scream and just do anything but sit down for another minute, but he doesn’t. His father still is acting as though nothing is wrong, with a gleaming grin and chipper attitude, as though he didn’t just gun down his own son mere hours before.
The more he thinks about it, the more angry Orel gets. Now he really wants to scream. But it’s not just the anger. It’s the hurt. Everything and everywhere just hurts so bad.
He thinks that as he sits there and sits there and sits there and sits there, the pain might almost magically drift away. He’ll become numb too it. If he really doesn’t think about it, he can just imagine his leg is asleep and that he’s not bleeding out all over the forest floor. But it’s not just the physical pain that’s pulling him under, it’s the mental strain and emotional pain that’s tearing at him.
Orel wishes he wanted to hit his dad, he wishes he wanted to yell in his face and curse him and shoot him, but he doesn’t. More than anything in the world, he wants his dad. Not the man he was with last night, because Orel can’t- won’t believe that that man was his father. Thinking about it makes his head hurt.
It’s scary seeing his dad so calm, acting as though nothing has happened and everything is going according to plan.
Everything is going according to plan.
Orel stops thinking about what that might mean.
“Welp, buddy. This might hurt a little. Try to be still.”
Orel is silent as Clay scoops him into his arms and carries him to the car. His eyes fill with tears, his breath is cold and shallow, and his leg is a screaming siren of pain, but he doesn’t dare say a word.
Any other day of the year and Orel would be beaming with joy that his has father picked him up, let alone got near him, but curled up to his fathers chest couldn’t help but feel disgusting. Of course, they had both been lying in the woods for hours on end. But it wasn’t just the fact that they were both sticky and hot with the early summer air, or the fact that Orel was covered in blood and Clay reeked of alcohol, no, it was that Orel craved such a tender moment of love and care that he almost never experienced. And Clay was giving it to him. And it didn’t make sense.
Orel was too tired to think about it any longer.
When they reached the car, Clay plopped Orel down in the passenger seat and buckled him up, paying no mind to the wound on his leg that yet a day later was still heavily oozing blood and oh my gosh it hurt so bad.
The car ride to the hospital was agonizingly slow and Orel was sure his dad was hitting every bump in the road that he could.
He tried to close his eyes and breathe because the motion of the car alone made him feel woozier than he already was. He was sure the blood loss wasn’t helping.
“Just, uh, try not to get to much blood on the seats.”
______
The drive lasted a painful hour of staying wide awake and silent, with his eyes looking anywhere but at his father, before he finally caught a glimpse of the Saint Martin Luther's Protestant Hospital.
“Let’s try to make this quick, your mom’s not gonna be to happy about you costing us another medical bill. What is with you and getting hurt, kid?”
Orel was to tired, exhausted, to think, but he did know one thing. No matter what it was, a bad piece of advice, a shove in the wrong direction, or a ‘see you in my study.’ When Orel was hurt, the common denominator was always Clay.
Orel didn’t know what to do, and he yet again didn’t have the energy to bother thinking. His entire body had shut off all other of his senses besides pain.
There isn’t any point to think about what you’re going to tell your mom when you get home if you don’t even know if your going to get home.
Clay pulls into a handicap parking space, because according to his father ‘it wasn’t a sin if your foot was asleep’ and Orel can guess that this time for the current situation it is ok. His father walks around to where Orel is sitting and opens the door to unbuckle him. Before he even knows it, Orel is lifted up into his dads arms and pulled tight to his chest once again. He has no choice but to squeeze his eyes tight and give into the drowsiness, exhaustion and excruciating pain. So Orel buries his face in his fathers chest and begins to silently cry. He can feel Clay stiffen awkwardly as he cradles Orel in his arms, no doubt upset that now was he not only covered in his sons blood, but tears.
As they entered the hospital, the fluorescent lights stung even his closed eye lids causing him to curl further into his father, much to his dismay.
Orel wanted so badly, tried so hard, but he couldn’t see any way to make the situation less scary and confusing. So he did what he could. He prayed.
His lips quivering barely above a whisper, he let out a pained ‘Our Father’ and allowed it to drown out all other thoughts and feelings that may have come to mind. The feeling of embarrassment after hearing Nurse Bendy’s faint ‘oh my God’ and the steady clicking of heels that followed, the feeling of shame for curling up to and finding comfort in the man he had claimed to hate the night before, the feeling of pain that was coursing through his whole body because where was the doctor?
But more than anything in the world, the feeling of exhaustion that has plagued his body long before the hunting trip, seemingly melts away as his prayer carries on.
Forever and ever, Amen.
And with that, after a long and excruciating day, still wrapped in the embrace of his father, Orel sleeps.