“I found out from Rachel’s mother that a certain young man had asked my daughter out on her first date. The point was up for debate and still is,”
he said, smiling and winking at Rachel, “but at the time I felt very strongly that if a boy wanted to date my daughter, he needed to come and ask me first before asking her out. Call me crazy, I know,” he spoke aside to the men as they shook their heads in commiseration.
Rachel remembered being horrified that her father planned to give the third degree to the boy who had asked her out. She could look back on it with humor now but recalled being terrified that once it got around school she’d never be asked out ever again.
“So I asked her about him and discovered that he worked at the Exxon station in town. The last station in town with full-service pumps. An honorable job,” he stated in concession. “I liked that he was working already, and Rachel said he was mannerly.”
Rachel laughed. “That should have satisfied you, too. You didn’t need to go interrogate him.”
“I wanted him to know she had a daddy who cared. So I paid him a visit at the station and had a chat with him. He seemed like a nice enough guy for my daughter. I told him I’d see him when he picked her up. He seemed fine.” Her father shrugged innocently, and Rachel rolled her eyes. She could recall the rather wide-eyed look on the poor boy’s face when he told her about it the next day at school.
Eli slipped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her consolingly, obviously enjoying the tale of how her father terrorized her first date.
“So the big evening came. Rachel and her mother were upstairs for two hours doing hair, twittering, and primping. When he pulled up, I went out
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front to greet him.” Her dad lifted his hands as though he’d done nothing wrong.
“Nuh-uh, Dad,” Rachel interjected, fighting hard to not laugh. “Tell them how you greet him.”
“Did you prefer that I leave him out there?” He laughed, obviously enjoying the verbal sparring with his daughter.
“Tell them how you greeted him.”
“It couldn’t be helped. I heard him pull up from the backyard. You were upstairs. You might not have heard the doorbell. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“Tell them, Peter, before I do!” her mom said, laughing behind her hand. “Tell them how you were dressed.”
“It was deer season! How was I supposed to be dressed? I’d just gotten home from the deer lease, princess.”
Her father had arrived home only a couple of hours before from the tract of land he leased every year during deer hunting season from a good friend, two hours south of the Lopez’s ranch.
“Yes. After two days with no bath,” her mom added, giggling.
Rachel was about ready to fall out of her chair they were all laughing so hard.
Her dad continued, “I’d bagged my limit, and I needed to deal with them before it got dark. You weren’t complaining over all the deer sausage that winter, I recall.”
“You were gutting a deer, Daddy!” She turned to Eli and said through her laughter, “He came around the side of the house with his rifle in one hand and the bloody hunting knife in the other!”
They all erupted in hysterical laughter at the vivid mental image of her father greeting her nervous date in full hunting camouflage, a gun in one hand, and hunting knife in the other, stinking to high heaven. Elijah and her dad bumped fists as Kelly and Rachel looked on in disgust before bursting out in laughter again.
“I was about to put the gun back in the gun safe. Safety with firearms is a priority for me,” her dad said with all innocence, raising his hands like he was surrendering.
Rachel took up the thread of the story then. “He looked like a mass murderer. There was blood on his camos, and you know what it smells like when you gut a deer,” she said with a grimace. “The boy at the door had
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never been anywhere near a deer blind. He was new in town. He took one look at Daddy and got a whiff of him, to boot. Want to know what happened? He passed out on the porch.” The laughter erupted again over the poor city boy’s reaction. “It would have helped if you had offered an explanation for your appearance.”
“I did!” Her dad said with a snicker. “After you revived him with smelling salts.” He laughed so hard he had tears in his eyes.
Rachel wiped her own eyes as she said, “He was so embarrassed, he asked if he could leave and go home. He never did go out with me, and it took six weeks to get him to even look me in the eye, much less talk to me again.”
“Yeah, but word got out, didn’t it?” her father said, sagely nodding and raising a finger like he had a point to make.