My dad has a big, unmistakable voice he enjoys using, so you could understand I was a little distressed to hear he might lose it.

        My father doesn't talk, so much as interject. You cannot hope to out-volume him, so you end up picking your spots and trying to hit the silence at the right time, like a halfback running for daylight. He's lost a few hearing cells, too. He compensates by talking even louder.

        Whenever he can't hear you, he'll rip off a big WHAT? before you complete your thought.

        You can't stop my dad's voice. You can only hope to contain it.

        I asked him about his throat.

        “How are you feel— ”

        “WHAT?”

        “How's your throat?”

        That's when he told me about the cancer and the radiation.

        His voice had gone rough and soft, if that makes sense, the sound of sandpaper on angora. Something wasn't right. It turned out he had a bump on his vocal cord. When they cut it off and did the biopsy, it turned out to be malignant. Squeamous cell carcinoma, they called it. It was enough to make you squeam.
       

Instrument of fear

              

        When I was little, my dad's voice was an instrument of fear, full-throated and lusty, honed on the grinding wheel of his Marine Corps background.

        “Look at me when I'm talking to you!” he'd say, not politely. I'd stare a hole in him. “Don't look at me that way!”

        As I got older and knew everything, his large voice was background noise. The belch of a lawnmower, a refrigerator's hum. I could tell what he was saying at me by the tone and cadence of his words, not the words themselves. I'd nod at the appropriate times. If he ever asked me to repeat what he just said, I'd be in big trouble.

        Memory picks and chooses, comes and goes, but I'll never forget my father's voice. So when he said he might lose it, I stopped in my tracks.

        I was going to get him a DVD player for Christmas. Now he gets a Clapper.

        “So, tell me what the doc —”

        “WHAT?”

        “What about the treatment?”
       

Complicated treatment

              

        He explained it, but it was too complicated for me (I'm a sportswriter; never forget that) so I told him to write it down. He did. Because I am lazy, apathetic and have a game to watch, and because my dad tells it better than I could write it, here's his description of the radiation treatment, sent via e-mail:

        “Radiation treatments begin this afternoon and continue till my throat is toast. Then Medicare and my insurance will, hopefully, pay the bill. If not, I'm filing for Chapter 13 bankruptcy.

        “The process goes something like this: First, they get you to sign all these papers, waiving all your rights to privacy and financial solvency. Second they take you into a big room, full of big machines that hum, click and play "God Bless America.'

        “There, they fit you with a plastic-mesh face mask and tattoo your neck so that the rays from one of the big machines that hum, click and play "Nearer My God To Thee' only toast that part of the neck that needs to be toasted. They lie you down on this table, cover your face with the mask and bolt the mask to the table. That's so you can't move. If you do move, they might irradiate your brain by mistake. After they finish toasting, I get to go back periodically, so they can check to see if they got it all. How they can tell that, I don't know.

        “I appreciate your concern. However, I am not at death's door. Love, Dad.”

        The cure rate is 98 percent. Which means with any luck at all, my dad will be back talking too loudly at restaurants really soon.

        “I asked them what they did with the GUYS WITH PROSTATE CANCER,” my father interjected.

        What'd they say, Dad?

        “They said they give 'em a LEAD JOCKSTRAP.”

        Isn't it great he's still talking?
        Contact Paul Daugherty at (513) 768-8454; fax: 768-8330.
       

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