The Tank Man's Son (15 page)

T
HAT SUMMER,
Grandma Jean said I was old enough to go to Grace Bible Camp for a week and that she’d pay. She told me there would be archery, a lake to swim in, a camp store, and hundreds of kids my age. Most of that sounded okay, except for the part about the other kids. If the camp kids were anything like church kids or school kids, I’d stick out like a sore thumb.

The week before I left for camp, Mom came into my room holding a pair of blue jeans. “These are for you to take to camp, Mark. I wanted you to have new ones to wear.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

Mom walked over to my dresser and opened the bottom drawer, setting the new pants inside. I’d been worrying about what camp would be like, and I’d planned on spending most of my time swimming. Mom turned to leave, but she stopped in the doorway. It looked like she was about to say something else, but she just tried to smile at me, looked at the floor, and then left.

I couldn’t resist trying out the jeans early. I didn’t want to get them dirty outside, so whenever I was in my room I’d pull them on. After I’d looked at a book for a while, or just relaxed on my bed, I’d take them back off, fold them neatly, and return them to the drawer. After a few days of this, I noticed that the jeans, which had never been washed, had turned my best pair of underwear a light shade of blue. That wasn’t terrible news, in a way, since the hard water from our well had already stained my other underwear dark yellow.

When the time came to leave for camp, it took me about five minutes to pack. My towel, which was barely long enough to wrap around my butt and legs after a shower, didn’t take up much space. Mom got all our towels as free promotional gifts for buying a certain amount of laundry soap
 
—each box had a code on it, and Mom dutifully saved each one inside an old manila envelope, earning us three or four free towels per year. Of course, three or four free towels were equivalent to one proper, store-bought towel, and our free towels were all the color of urine. I decided that at camp, when I opened my suitcase, I’d say something like, “Aw geez, looks like my old lady packed me a yellow hand towel.”

The zipper on my sleeping bag didn’t work, so I used a length of old rope to keep it rolled. I tossed a few other things into my suitcase, pulled on my new jeans, and headed for the door. Halfway there, the suitcase popped open and everything fell out. Dad watched it happen.

“Here you go,” he said, taking off his belt and handing it to me.

I winced as I knelt in front of my suitcase, feeling the leather belt run through my fingers. Eventually I decided to use it
 
—I had to use it
 
—but I considered forgetting the belt at camp on purpose.

Mom drove me, the humid summer air pouring in through four open windows and blowing our hair. The trees grew thicker, houses fewer and farther between, and then we turned onto a dirt road and drove beneath a wooden arch that announced we’d arrived. We parked beside a long, low building made from logs.

“You’ll have a good time at camp,” she said across the front seat, “and I’m sorry I don’t have much money to give you.”

She reached into her purse and pulled out a one-dollar bill. My face must have betrayed my thoughts.

“I’m so sorry, Mark, but I just don’t have any more.”

I knew I shouldn’t, knew it was rude, but I couldn’t help staring at the neatly folded bill.

“I don’t have anything else,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

My heart dropped into my bur-covered shoes. I leaned back so I could jam the money into the pocket of my new jeans. I didn’t want to get out of the car. I wanted to drive straight back home, or better yet, to drive somewhere no one knew me. It was bad enough having stained underwear and a swim towel that was really a dish towel. Now I’d be the only kid at camp with no money.

“You’ll have a good time, honey?” her reassurance came as a question.

“Okay, I will,” I replied, not believing my own words. I climbed out, grabbed my broken suitcase, and stood on the gravel, looking through the open window at Mom.

“Bye, Mark.”

“Bye.”

She pulled away, and my eyes followed her car. I was suddenly aware of a large spot of rust near the bumper.

I watched until the car disappeared, then reached into my pocket, pulling out the one-dollar bill. I didn’t blame Mom, but it took me a long time to refold it and shove it back into my jeans. I kept thinking about all the things I couldn’t buy with it.

The first night, sometime around midnight, I crept out of my bunk and snuck across the room. Then I slipped the wallet from the pair of pants draped over the end of my cabinmate’s bed. I grabbed the wad of bills
 
—six dollars
 
—returned the wallet to the pants, returned the pants
to the bed, and snuck back to my bunk. I shoved the stolen cash into my own jeans, then climbed into my bunk to sleep.

In the morning, I woke to the sound of sobbing and a counselor trying
 
—and failing
 
—to get a word in edgewise. My victim
 
—I didn’t even know his name, but the day before I’d sized him up as a rich kid
 
—was a wreck. His eyes were puffy and red, and he kept shaking his wallet in the air as if he were trying to fling water off it.

“My money was
here
last night
 
—I
know
it! Someone
stole
it, I’m telling you!”

“Sorry to do this to you, boys,” sighed our counselor, “but I need you to turn your pockets out for me. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

All around the cabin, boys climbed out of their bunks and began complying with the counselor’s orders. I put my suitcase up on my bed and opened it, and then I took my jeans off the end of the bed where they were hanging and laid them out flat. When the counselor asked to see what was in my pockets, I reached into the left one and pulled it inside out. Empty. Then I reached into the right one, and my fist came back out with a roll of bills. I looked at the counselor and he raised one eyebrow. I unfolded the bills and laid them down.

One, two, three, four, five, six,
seven
.

“Wait, is that my six dollars? Did he steal my money?” The crying boy peered past the counselor, bouncing up and down on his feet and beginning to shout again. “Why is that
seven
dollars? Are my six dollars in that pile of money?”

The counselor calculated my net worth in a single glance. “Well,” he asked, “are they?”

I shook my head. The counselor sighed again, then moved down the line to the next bed. I turned around and pulled my new jeans on. Then I repacked everything and slid the seven dollars back into my pocket. By the time I had everything squared away, the rest of the cabin had been searched. Lots of dollar bills had been discovered, of course. The crying boy was no longer crying. Instead he was sitting on his bed, mumbling
to himself and looking through his wallet. He kept closing it and reopening it, as if on the fourth or tenth try his missing money would appear, the happy punch line to a magic trick he hadn’t wanted to volunteer for. I yanked my shoes on and left.

It was too early for anyone to be swimming, so no one else was at the lake. The surface was a mirror of the pale sky, except for where bits of mist still floated above the water. I walked to the end of the dock and sat. The sun rose all the way, and I counted the bits of mist as they burned toward zero. When the surface of the water was clear, I stood up and walked back to my cabin. Everyone was gone, and I took the six dollars and stuffed it into the back pocket of the other boy’s jeans.

That night the boy discovered his money. It was quite the camp mystery: the case of the disappearing and reappearing cash.

I wanted to disappear too
 
—and sometimes I actually managed it. For five minutes at the archery range, or an hour of swimming in the lake, or a few hours at a time in my bunk
 
—there were times when my mind went blank, and I didn’t think about anything.

But always the picture of who I really was returned to me, made clear by the other campers. They were kids who had friends, and real towels, and regular parents. Looking at everyone else, I realized I was different
 
—different in a bad way. They were all normal, but I was the Tank Man’s son, and at the end of camp my Mom would drive me back to the eleven acres I couldn’t seem to escape. At camp I wanted to crawl under a rock and disappear. At home I knew I never could.

During one activity time, I found myself sitting next to one of the camp counselors.

“What are you working on?” she asked.

“A candle,” I managed. “We’re supposed to make candles.”

“Oh, candles! Lovely!”

Her voice was so full of genuine interest that I looked up at her. She was smiling.

“I’m trying to decide what color to make mine,” I ventured.

“Well, I’ll make a yellow one,” she said brightly. “I’ve always loved candles! I really wanted to make one of my own, but I’ve never done it before.”

“I know how to make them,” I said. “My mom made them with us when we were younger.”

“You do? Would you show me?”

“Of course!” Now I was smiling. I helped her gather everything she needed to make her candle, and we chatted the whole time. When we finished, she thanked me over and over again.

“I love it. It’s beautiful. I just
love
it, Mark. I can’t tell you how much I have enjoyed doing this with you.”

She put her hand on my shoulder, and I found myself wanting her to stay beside me for the rest of camp. But that was silly
 
—I didn’t need a counselor following me around like I was a baby. The craft session ended, and I moved on to the next activity.

Helping her turned out to be the only truly enjoyable thing I did at camp, and I never saw her again after that hour we spent making candles together.

Mom tried to make up for it when I got back home. She scrounged up the cash for me to play Little League baseball. Practices were after school, so I could hitch a ride with one of the other kids, but for games I had to bum a ride from Coach
 
—Mom was always busy, either working in town or working at home, and I knew better than to ask Dad.

We made it all the way to the championship game, losing 4–7 against some rich kids from the next county over.

When we got to Coach’s truck after the game, he told me to hang on before climbing in the back, and then he leaned into the cab and dug something out of the glove box. “You earned this, son,” he said, handing me a small ribbon with a medal attached.

It was a cold ride home that night. Dad hadn’t come to a single game
all season, even though I’d told him when we made the play-offs. In the bed of the pickup, small leaves swirled in the corners and my hair whipped across my eyes. I pictured displaying my medal on top of my dresser, or maybe I would pin it to one of my bedposts so I could see it when I was falling asleep. It probably wouldn’t be allowed in the living room
 
—it was already cluttered with Dad’s LP cabinet, speakers, records, books, and guns
 
—but my medal wouldn’t take up much space. Maybe there was a chance.

It was an even colder walk home. Coach dropped me off a mile up Blakely Drive, and I carried my glove and bat over my shoulder like a hobo walking the tracks. Up our long driveway at last, I opened the door, and Dad was reading on the couch. He didn’t look up. Bat and glove in one hand, medal in the other, I closed the door behind me with my foot and stood for a minute, waiting.

When I realized that nothing was going to happen and that no words were going to be said, I walked to my room. I dropped my equipment on the floor and climbed into bed with my uniform on, still holding my medal.

“M
ARK!
S
TAND HERE, BOY.”

Dad speaks my name like it is poison
 
—like he can’t wait to spit it out of his mouth.

He hurls my name at me like a curse, and after my name come questions I can’t answer. I understand there is no right answer, even as I long to know the answer that would halt the single motion with which he removes his belt and lets it hang loose from one hand. It is a strip of pure evil, and I hate it. I am a slave in my father’s world, controlled by the bitter sound of my own name.

I know the beating that is coming. I have joined Jerry in the brotherhood of the belt, old enough now to feel the full weight of Dad’s anger. Only my sister is still innocent. The terror that rears at the sound of his words feels like a living thing, like a spider I can feel crawling across my body.
Not the belt again. Anything but the belt.
The spiders are multiplying. Their legs make my skin shiver. My neck. My forehead. The backs of my thighs where the belt likes to bite.

No, please no
 
—I’m going to soil myself. I’m supposed to be standing at attention in front of my father, but instead I’m leaning forward, bending my knees, shoving my hands sideways against my butt cheeks as hard as I can. Praying through clenched teeth that it will stay inside me. I look up and Dad is watching me, and he nods toward the bathroom. Unbearably grateful, I shuffle quickly down the hall. I’m not even seated all the way when a wave of it pours into the toilet. Then another and another. Then nothing’s left, and the only thing left to do is stand up. I don’t bother to pull up my pants.

When I finally force my fingers to pull the door handle, Dad is there, waiting. Ripples fall along the belt dangling from his left hand. His right hand floats at his side. “Didn’t I tell you to clean this place up after school today?”

“I . . . I thought that
 
—”

“Who said you could
think
, Mark? That’s your problem right there. You thought. I don’t want you to think. You’re not allowed to think. Just do what I tell you. And that’s all.”

His hand explodes toward my face, and I hear the slap before I feel it. I’m already on the floor when the pain shrieks into my skull.

“Get up!” He’s screaming now. “Not very smart, are you, kid? Get up!”

I can hear the deadly silence that follows, even over the ringing in my ear. “Bend over. Put your hands on that chair.” Dad is breathing behind me, and I know the belt is alive. The plywood floor creaks, and I know he’s digging in. A loud intake, held, and then I hear the sound of my screaming, and it doesn’t stop. Dad is screaming too
 
—that I need to shut up or he’ll really give me something to cry about
 
—but I can’t stop. It doesn’t matter that he picks and chooses his targets, alternating between my butt and thighs and back. I bite my lip and squeeze my eyes and tense every muscle and still the screams escape.

After one minute or one hour comes a new sound that is impossible to ignore. It is the scream of a creature who knows it is dying but who wants to live, primal and desperate. The sound fascinates me because it’s
coming from my own throat. It’s roaring from some deep place inside that I never knew existed. Carried by that howl of anguish, I turn and face my father. I raise one arm like a shield, my other arm covering my bare butt.

“I promise!” I scream. “I promise!” I don’t know what I’m promising, but I promise it anyway.

“You promise? What good is that, coming from you? You
disgust
me.” Dad is breathing hard, his words coming in short bursts. “Put your hands back down. Bend over.”

I can’t. For the first time in my life I’m completely unable to do what my father wants. I can’t put down my arm. Holding it up is the one thing that is keeping me from disintegrating. I know it will cost me. I want to live, but I’m going to die at age eleven, facing my father with my arm still raised.

Dad’s belt finds my face. Then my wrist. Then stomach, ear, flank, and ear again. And the sound is one long scream.

Mom’s voice comes from a great distance. “Stop it! Stop it! You’re killing him!”

I open my eyes and see her wrestling with Dad, one of her hands around Dad’s left wrist and the other clinging to the belt. Dad looks at me over Mom’s shoulder.

“Someone needs to teach this kid a lesson! He never learns! He’s
nothin
g
!”

“Enough!” Mom screams, then pleads, “Enough enough enough enough!”

She’s still white-knuckling the belt. Dad turns away from us both and drops the end of the belt he’s holding. And then he’s gone.

“Wash your face and then go to your room, Mark.” Mom’s voice is a bare whisper.

I want to pull up my pants but the effort seems impossible. I shuffle down the hall and return to the bathroom. It still smells like my bowel movement. In the sink mirror I see my face and the shape of punishment
painted in red on my skin. I pool cold water in my hands and splash it upward. I don’t dry because the towel will be too rough.

In my room, I collapse into my pillow, sobbing. Every part of me is burning. I will never learn what my father is teaching.