Except for funerals, our father is pretty much cut out of our lives. I see or speak to him a few times a year. My sisters and brothers live in the same town and speak to him less than I do. Some people might think it�s nice that Andrew's funeral brought us all together again, but we have good reasons to avoid him.

I was about 20 when my dad retired from the Air Force and moved back to Fort Walton. I went to live with him because I could no longer stand being under Mom�s rule. Dad had decided he was never going to work again. Stepmom worked two jobs while he stayed home and got drunk every single day. He didn�t do any housework or yardwork, because that�s what kids are for. He picked on Stepmom�s two teenage sons all the time, and my little brother Cole was terrified of him. He never gave me any shit, I could do no wrong in his eyes, but I hated the way he treated my brothers.

The next door neighors had a Christmas party that year. I brought my boyfriend Tom, but we left early to go hang out in my bedroom, and a couple of hours later we heard Dad and Stepmom come in the front door, arguing. I cracked my door a little, listening, wondering if I should interfere. Dad was in a jealous rage because Stepmom was talking to a guy at the party, a married guy who lived across the street. �What were you saying?� he kept asking and she said �Nothing! We weren't even in the same room!� They were both very drunk.

Stepmom screamed, there were crashes and thuds, and then she ran up the steps, past my door, and locked herself in the master bedroom. When I looked in the kitchen Dad was picking himself up off the floor, holding his cheek. There was blood seeping past his fingers, and blood on the counter where he hit his face when Stepmom pushed him. I tried to keep him from going upstairs, but he muscled past me. I turned to Tom and said �You need to leave. Right now. Go home!� and he reluctantly obeyed me.

As soon as Tom was out the door I went upstairs to find Dad throwing himself against the flimsy master bedroom door. My stepbrother Nathan, about 13 then, came out of his room to stop it and I caught him when Dad pushed him down the stairs. Dad soon got in the master bedroom, and was holding Stepmom down on the bed, so Nate and I started yelling at him and tried to pry him off. He hit us both, shoved us away and dragged her into their bathroom.

The window was open, and everyone at the party next door was watching and listening to us.

I didn�t know what else to do, so I called 911. As soon as I gave the woman our address and situation, I said �I have to go� and hung up. Those 911 people will try to keep you on the line until help arrives, if you let them. I shouted �the police are coming� through the bathroom door, and my stepmother screamed �help, he�s trying to break my leg!�

Stepmom struggled with my dad and managed to unlock the bathroom door from the inside, and some of the men from the party next door came in the house. With witnesses around, Dad let her go. He sternly ordered everyone to leave, acting the part of the outraged homeowner. Two large and sturdy neighbors stood in the entranceway arguing with him until the police arrived. An officer came in the door just in time to see my dad shove one of them, who happened to be the man Stepmom dared to speak to at the party. She had been in the dining room and he had been in the kitchen and they shouted small talk over the music. Dad was immediately arrested for assault, handcuffed and put in the back seat of the police car.

Stepmom, Nate, and I filled out statements for the cops. She was drunk and scared enough to be honest and wrote down the entire encounter. The neighborhood women came in the house and gathered around her, offering support. Becky, the hostess of the party next door, said to me �Wow, I always thought your mother was lying when she said he got violent with her. I can't believe it. I feel so bad.� I glared at her and barely held back from telling every person there, including Becky�s husband, that she had been fucking my dad for years, before he divorced Mom and after he married Stepmom.

Dad did a little jail time. We let him sit there for a couple of days, not knowing his cheek was actually broken, before I called a bail bondsman. A judge had already read our statements and issued a restraining order, which meant Dad had to stay with Alice for a month. Stepmom rented a house and moved out before he came back.

A few months later Dad weaseled his way back into her life again, using Cole as an excuse to visit. She started dating him and let him spend the night sometimes. During that time he slammed her hand in a door, broke her nose, and knocked my stepbrothers around more than he ever used to. I couldn�t stand it any more and I finally told her about all the times he cheated on her. Dad had always bragged to us kids about his infidelities, and we kept his secrets for a long time. When Stepmom was pregnant with Cole, Dad got Becky pregnant, too. Becky miscarried twin girls. I told Stepmom about that, and about Parker�s wife, and about the waitress at the bar Dad frequented.

That was the last straw for her. Being beaten up was one thing, but being cheated on was more than she could bear. She ended things entirely with my dad, and told him exactly why. He blames me for their divorce, and rightfully so. It�s one thing I�m proud to have accomplished.

Dad kept harassing her, though, breaking into her place and stealing or destroying things, leaving threatening notes. She and I went to the local detox hospital and had an order issued for three days of mandatory hospitalization. Dad skipped town the day they went to pick him up. He didn�t know about it, he was running from an arrest warrant for writing too many bad checks.

Dad went to Texas, where Alice and her husband had just been stationed. He stayed with her for months, drinking his retirement checks away. Alice�s husband had to go on TDY (a military business trip) for the last month, and she was left alone with Dad. He started acting as if they were married, bossing her around, arguing about the way she managed her household, following her when she escaped the house. Alice had a circle of friends in her neighborhood that included several girls and guys. Dad watched her through the windows and yelled at her when she got home about talking to other men, telling her how disappointed he was at her infidelity. He called her husband and told him all his suspicions, then wrote Alice a nasty letter accusing her of being the slut of the Air Force base.

One night she came home to find that he had spray painted graffiti on her picket fence. There were vulgar accusations written on her kitchen wall with his blood, and the letter was pinned next to it with a knife. When she confronted him, called him a crazy fucker and ordered him out of her house, he picked up her television and smashed it.

The military police escorted him off base and he stayed in a hotel until Alice�s husband came home and drove him back to Florida.

I was still willing to speak to my father, until the day he messed with Amber. My youngest sister went to his house alone one day when she was 18. She didn�t bring her friends there anymore, because Dad would hit on them and make a lot of disgusting sexual comments.

He was drunk, of course, and sitting at his computer writing his autobiography. He insisted that Amber read it and it turned out to be a history of his sexual conquests, with plenty of crazed ranting about how his wives had cheated on him first and he only strayed to get revenge.

He skipped to the chapter he wanted Amber to read, which was a story about our mother smoking pot in a van with a bunch of blonde surfers in Hawaii, and how she fucked them all and had a blonde daughter nine months later. Amber started crying and cursing at him, and he just laughed. �It�s okay, I still love you.� He said �Come sit on my lap and we�ll read the rest of it together. It gets really hot.� He tried to pull her onto the chair with him, but she got away and ran out of the house. He followed her as she got in her truck and laughed when she opened the window and threw things at him, screaming at him to get away. She drove straight home to Mom and told her about it, and Mom called me.

I wrote a nasty letter of my own that day, telling Dad that I never wanted to see him or speak to him again, and if he ever touched my sisters I would cut him into pieces and flush him down the toilet.

We didn�t speak to him again until his mother�s funeral a few years later.