My Body is a Cage and Other Stories

She laughs and it sounds rusty to her own ears. “No. Frankenstein.”
They decide he’ll bring all the supplies, includinghis shotgun and fishing rod, and she’ll
bring flashlights and deer cameras.
“Alright, kid. I love you.”
“Talk to you later.”
That is the third phone call she’s had with her fatherin a week. Last Sunday her
grandmother called her to tell her her father gota divorce. She asked her grandmother for his
phone number and called and then they heard each other’svoice for the first time in a decade.
She is thirty now. Her father is fifty-two.
When they meet at the Eldorado Outpost, the only gasstation for miles on the cusp of the
Uwharrie National Forest, she is still shocked tosee how much weight he’s lost. How his salt and
pepper hair is now just salt. They had gotten lunchtogether Monday, and she had cried all the
way home because this man who was her dad, who iscurrently just her father, and who may
become her dad again, isn’t how she remembers himat all. She couldn’t tell if it was from
devastation or relief.
They don’t hug, which she appreciates, but he patsher affectionately on the shoulder
when they greet each other. They buy fried chickenand potato wedges from the restaurant inside
the gas station, and then they’re on their way.
The camping site her father has picked out is nottoo isolated. Other people are camping
less than a mile away, but they aren’t in seeing orhearing distance. She turns on the little battery
radio to an 80s station and they set up the camperwith string lights and camping chairs and a
grill and fireplace and a cooler full of miller lites.They finally settle beside each other in their
respective canvas chairs, each sipping a beer andwatching the fire.