The Alcoholic Father Revealed in the Film, William Faulkner: A Life on Paper :: Faulkner Moses

The Alcoholic Father Revealed in the Film, William Faulkner: A Life on Paper While listening to William Faulkner’s daughter, Jill, attempt to describe her father’s personality, I recognized the desire to defend and protect the memory of a provider who was ultimately unknowable to her. It seemed as if each phrase was tentatively spoken as a way of avoiding being untruthful. Mostly, I recognized the inability to truly know an alcoholic parent. I repeat the word ‘recognize’ intentionally. I lived with an alcoholic until I was ten. My stepfather had two personalities: Nick and Earl. Earl was the soft-spoken, earnest hard worker. He was a log cutter for a company that supplied East Texas timber to the local Georgia-Pacific Paper Mill. Each weekday morning he would arise before everyone else, load and fire-up the small woodstove in the living room so that we would awaken to a warm house. By the time my mother aroused my brother and me at 6 a.m. for school, Earl was already gone to work. We would arrive home from school before he finished working and anticipate his return. We would listen for the sound of Earl’s work truck pulling into the yard and run to meet him on the porch. Earl would crouch to greet us and sometimes swing me into the air playfully. My brother and I would follow him into the house and compete to tell him about our school day, and when Earl found his spot on the couch, we would help him unlace his work boots. He would pay us each a quarter for our deed. We would retreat to the yard to play or to our bedroom to watch television while Earl took his evening bath and ate the dinner plate my mom had put aside for him. â€Å"Nick† usually emerged shortly after dinner. He drank pints of Canadian Whiskey from the bottle with the casual speed of a chain smoker. Nick spoke often†¦in loud slurred sentences. His tone toward my mother became very disrespectful. Nearly every sentence began with â€Å"bitch† and was invariably decorated with multiple usage forms of â€Å"mother fucker.† He was not physically violent and posed no such threat. When my mother would tire of his barrage of accusations and complaints, she would sternly tell him to â€Å"shut up.† He would then stumble into their bedroom, fall across the bed fully dressed, and sink into a stupor punctuated by his snore.