As a whole, nature is wasteful, aggressive, indifferent. It uses life as a way of preserving food. It feeds the young to the old and the old to the young. It marches forward and fills every habitable crack like water on pavement, hedging every bet in the effort to hold its own against the onslaught of planetary cataclysms and extinction events. And for several billion years now, it has done quite well.

But on smaller scales nature is quite different. Individuals are cautious and flighty. Evolution has created all sorts of ways for creatures to settle conflict without actually fighting. We would rather puff up or change colors or employ any other method at our disposal than actually risk doing harm to ourselves, at least among members of our own species. Predators and prey have a different relationship.

I think back to junior high and just how many “near fights” I witnessed. I don’t recall many of these conflicts escalating to the point where anyone got punched in the face. There would be a lot of cursing, and two boys would push each other back and forth until someone backed down or someone broke it up. The threats would escalate to the point of predicting murder, but nothing ever really happened, and when it did, it was very anticlimactic and often the case that the whole incident was simply pushed forward by the hype of the crowd and ended as soon as they got a taste.

As my experience increased I learned that there are those people out there that like violence. They talk about it and use it as a tool. They intimidate, and when that doesn’t work, they carry out the deed. They fight and fight hard. These people cultivate a whole persona based on the use of violence. They develop reputations that eventually keep them out of harm’s way, at least for a time. These are the alpha males I suppose, at least in a Darwinian sense. They are quick-tempered and unpredictable. They also tend to be very emotional.

My father was one of these types. As long as I can remember, he has been larger than life. He was an industrial mechanic, a professional weightlifter, and a generally hot-headed bastard, especially when I was younger. I was terrified of him and thought of almost nothing else. He worked very long hours, and when he was home, I made myself scarce. I would be scared to death when my mother left me alone with him. It’s not that he was particularly violent with me. I mean, he was, but not that often. There were a few severe incidents but they were infrequent. He was just threatening, menacing in every way. He was a bully, whether he meant to be or not. It was his nature. And for most of my life, I hated him for it.

Lately, since I entered my thirties, and especially since I had a son of my own, I’ve wanted to get closer to my father. In doing so I learned more about his own father. My grandfather was a different type of animal entirely. He didn’t talk about what he would do or puff up in defense like most creatures. He genuinely enjoyed inflicting pain. He was a killer. He was a cold and calculated predator who fought in the Pacific and came back a sociopath. He would tie my father in the barn, stick his face in horse shit and beat him with a saddle strap. Once, he left him there for days. At thirteen, my father left home and never returned. At sixteen and living on his own for years, my father wanted to buy a car for which he mostly had the money. Being so young, he needed a parent to sign. His father told him this: “If you want a helping hand in this life, look at the end of your own fucking arm.” To my knowledge, they spoke one more time between this moment and my grandfather’s death. The moment he died my father said of him, “If that man’s in heaven there is no hell.”

As I came to understand my father’s hellish childhood, anything he had done to me seemed inconsequential. I forgave him once and for all and never looked back. We’ve become really close since then. We take long trail rides on our bikes. We go boating. We avoid religion and politics and instead talk about space and the stock market. I don’t think I could respect anyone more than my father. With a seventh-grade education, no close family, and a closet filled to the brim with skeletons, he retired at 55 a millionaire (at least before the stock market crash). He faces tragedy with a level of stoicism I can’t understand. And after a horror-story life that would leave most people addicted to drugs or in prison, he has found peace. I see it every time he looks at my son.

And for the last several weeks, every night when I go to sleep, in my dreams, we fight each other to the death.

Every night I punch him and claw at his eyes as he tries to hold me down. No one ever wins. I always wake up before that. But we are always fighting with absolute violence. We are full-grown men in the dreams. He is always his current age and so am I. I wake from this almost every morning furious and confused, and then I talk to him on the phone and we are kind and loving, and I find it hard to reconcile these two realities. Is it a sign of growing into manhood that we have to fight our fathers? Why, after so long of dealing with the anxiety and fear and then truly letting it go do I now have to fight the battle I’ve avoided for thirty years? Why now, when there is no battle left to fight?