The Tank Man's Son (2 page)

Mom smiled to herself. The only thing her mother seemed to care about was saving money, but Mom had found a way to make money and have fun at the same time. There was so much more to life than what her parents had allowed her to experience, and if she had to leave them behind, she would. She’d found her future in my father.

Several months later, Mom walked out of the bathroom she shared with her sister and blurted out, “Janie, I’m
sick
.”

“What do you mean? Sick how?”

“
Pregnant
sick,” Mom groaned, feeling the urge to vomit again.

Her parents knew Mom had a secret life, but they didn’t know the half of it. Mom’s questions spilled out as tears streamed down her cheeks. “
Now
what am I going to do? What will Mom and Dad say? What’s going to happen?”

“You’ll need to tell them soon,” Janie said. “It won’t help any if you wait.”

A few hours later, her father arrived home from his construction job. He sat down at the kitchen table, reading the paper while he waited for his wife to finish making dinner. Janie and Mom entered the kitchen.

“She needs to talk to both of you,” Janie announced, then stepped out of the way.

Her father lowered his paper and peered at his younger daughter over his thick, black reading glasses. Her mother stopped midturn on the linoleum, holding a plate of pickled beets.

“What’s wrong?” she asked in a low tone.

Mom couldn’t speak, so her sister spoke for her. “She thinks she might be pregnant.”

Mom burst into tears, her head bobbing up and down from the great heaving sobs that swelled inside and threatened to overwhelm her.

“Well,” pronounced her father, “that’s a fine mess you’ve got yourself into.”

“I’m
so
sorry,” Mom managed, finding her father’s eyes.

“Sorry doesn’t solve the problem, now does it?” he said.

Janie moved to put her arms around Mom, hoping to console her.

“You’ll have to marry that boy,” her mother said as she resumed her dinner preparations. “If you’re pregnant, then you’re on your own. You know that. You’ve brought this on yourself. Don’t expect us to help.”

A child choosing to ruin her life was nothing an upstanding parent should stand in the way of. Mom stared at the floor, hearing the newspaper crinkle as her father went back to reading, hearing her mother at the chopping board, feeling her sister’s arms. That’s when Mom realized two things: that she’d have to marry Dad, and that it was the last thing she wanted to do.

Not that she had a choice. Ending her pregnancy wasn’t an option for her, and her parents were kicking her out, so keeping the baby at home wasn’t an option either. In 1958, in rural Michigan, independent single mothers simply didn’t exist, especially ones without a high school diploma. Over the years, her parents had made sure Mom knew that good and honest people never became pregnant out of wedlock
 
—and if they did, God forbid, they got married immediately.

That advice would have been easier to follow if her parents hadn’t made such a point of convincing her that Dad would never make a good husband.

Mom was trapped between truths, and the only way forward was a wedding. Except a wedding was impossible. None of the parents would attend or help pay for it. Mom didn’t have the emotional strength to organize even a civil marriage ceremony, so Janie took it upon herself to arrange things. She was the only one present when Dad and Mom stood in front of a justice of the peace at the courthouse in Grand Rapids and promised to love each other for better or worse, in sickness and in health, until death parted them.

Dad’s mother couldn’t bear the thought of the couple starting their married life living in a car, which is exactly what Mom and Dad would have been forced to do, so she bought them a trailer
 
—a steal at $250 because it had been damaged in a flood and the previous owners had
moved out. After the ceremony at the courthouse, Dad’s stepmom, Grandma Ginn, hosted a reception at her place: a simple cake, some photos, and an hour of awkward small talk. Then the happy couple drove back to their water-stained trailer to begin life together as man and wife.

That was late winter 1958. Dad was nineteen, and Mom was seventeen. Jerry was born just over six months later. I was born two years after that, and Sheri two years after me. We were the Boumans, a clan of five crammed into a trailer in Cannon, Michigan, trying to make our way in the world.

T
HERE WASN’T A SINGLE DAY
when Mom and Dad didn’t loathe their moldy trailer, but it was their only option, year after year. It was already a pit when Grandma Jean bought it for them
 
—it had electricity at least, but no running water
 
—and adding one, two, and then three children didn’t improve it. Neither did Dad’s habit of burning through whatever meager pay he earned. Dad was working a string of dead-end, nonunion jobs, then cashing his checks so he could treat himself to dinner and a movie. When he got fired from one job
 
—for lying about his qualifications, for insulting his boss, for bringing a pistol to work and threatening someone
 
—he’d just move on to the next.

Mom, meanwhile, was in survival mode. Besides scrounging food, lugging water, washing diapers by hand, and trying to keep track of us kids, she had her husband to care for. Since he was out winning bread, he expected Mom to keep him clothed and fed. He made rules on the fly, which she was expected to follow
 
—no matter how unreasonable
 
—or face the consequences.

Early on there was often little or no food at the trailer, so Dad and Mom would drive to Grandma Jean’s house for dinner. Dad would usually disappear into the basement by himself while Mom helped prepare the meal.

“I bought you some food,” Grandma Jean said once. “It’s in the entryway near the door, and you can take it with you tonight after dinner.”

“I don’t understand him,” Mom said, struggling not to cry. “He won’t get a job. I work all day, and he just sits around and plays. He’s either eating out or running around with his friends.”

“Well, I thought he might have some trouble being a good husband. He never learned to work hard. When he was living here, after the Navy, I told him to save money for a rainy day, but he wouldn’t listen. And now it’s pouring.”

“I wish I knew what to do. He won’t listen to me.”

“Well,” Grandma Jean said, “he didn’t listen to
me
much either.”

Despite his habit of spending his time and money however and wherever he wanted, Dad must have sensed that he needed to get his family out of that trailer
 
—or at least get himself out. He hated it every bit as much as the rest of us did, and so he schemed his way toward a real house.

His plan started with empty land, which was all my parents could afford on his typical fifty-dollars-a-week pay. After asking around for a few months, Dad was able to get eleven acres outside town in Belmont, nearly every square foot of which was covered in sand. Other than growing oak trees and a type of weed with heavy, barbed burs, the sand was useless for almost everything else. It couldn’t be cultivated, it made a poor foundation for building, and it was crisscrossed by constantly shifting ruts, dunes, and ridges. Still, land was land, and by the time Sheri was toddling around and Jerry was starting school, Mom and Dad owned eleven acres of it. Dad paid a man to jack the family trailer off the ground and tow it the fifteen miles to their new homestead. Same old trailer, same young family, both in a brand-new setting.

At first, it was an even worse setting for Mom. Not only was she farther from town, but the land had no running water, and she was immediately forced to ask the closest neighbors for help. Apparently water wasn’t something Dad had considered before relocating the trailer, or else it was something he simply assumed Mom would take care of.

And she did. Dressed in slacks and a light blouse, her long, dark hair swaying behind her, she marched down one sandy hill, up another, and through a collection of cars in need of repair, until she found herself at the front door of a typical Michigan split-level home.

“Come on in,” said the woman who answered. “Name’s Emmy. Emmy Dietz. Sit down for a minute and have a cup of tea.”

“That’s okay, I just came over to see if I can get a jug of water from your spigot. We don’t have water yet.”

Emmy gave Mom an evaluating once-over. “Of course you can use our spigot, sweetie, but first come in for a spell.”

Emmy held open the door until Mom entered, then gestured toward the kitchen table. “Just pull up a chair there and push that stuff out of the way until you can sit down.”

Mom moved a pile of magazines and some dish towels, clearing a place for herself, and Mrs. Dietz set a mug in front of her with a tea bag in it.

“The water will heat up in just a minute,” Emmy said as she cleared another place at the table, causing a few of the magazines to tumble to the floor. “So how’s things going, living out here in the boonies? It’s a bit too far from town for most people, but we like it that way. Nice and quiet.” She smiled.

“It’s quiet all right,” Mom agreed. “It’d be a whole lot easier if we had water and a phone. My husband says he’s going to get a well drilled, but we don’t have the money yet.”

“Aren’t you building a house? How do you build a house without water?” Emmy chuckled. “I thought you’re supposed to put in a well and
then
a house. What’s that husband of yours thinking?”

“I don’t know,” Mom admitted. She stared at her cup.

“Ah, he’ll figure it out!” Emmy added, rising to take the hissing kettle off the stove. She poured hot water into Mom’s cup, returned the kettle to the stove, and took a framed family photo off a shelf, placing it in front of Mom. Everyone in the picture was dressed in plaid.

“Take some sugar,” she said, plopping two cubes in the hot tea. Then she pointed with her fingertip at the children in the picture. “This is Darwin, our oldest. Then this is our daughter, Judy. Here’s Tim, and then Mike. Want a cookie?”

Mom shook her head and took a sip of her sweet tea. “You have a wonderful family,” she ventured. “Your youngest looks about the age of my boys.”

“We’re not rich, that’s for sure, but we’re a good family! We’re just trying to pay the bills like everyone else.” Emmy leaned back in her chair. “Les never finished school, so he can’t read, but my kids are going to learn and stay in school, or I’ll let them have it.” She shook her fist for emphasis.

When Mom’s tea was gone, she stood up to leave. “Thank you, but I need to get back to the house with the water.”

“No problem at all. Our well is only sixty-five feet down, but it has lots of water.”

Mrs. Dietz walked Mom to the door, then watched as she carried her plastic jug to the spigot and filled it. “You come over
any
time you need water, honey,” she called.

Mom offered a grateful smile and then turned to the task of carrying her sloshing, forty-pound load back to the trailer.

While Mom didn’t care for this new arrangement, Jerry and I loved our new land. It was a vast, sandy playground, and our favorite thing to play was army. Dad had given us a large bucket brimming with green plastic army men, and the sand made the perfect battlefield. Before each battle, we’d divvy up the soldiers. Some tossed grenades, some crouched behind machine guns or aimed rifles, and some held pistols, but my favorite was the grunt with the bazooka on his shoulder.

Once, as we dug walls and pits in the sand to protect our armies, Sheri announced that she was going to play with us. I stopped digging and looked up at her. A doll dangled from one hand, and she was scratching her hair with the other.

“You can’t play,” I informed her, returning to my important work. “You’re a girl.”

“I’m telling Mom!”

Jerry and I looked at each other and shrugged, then resumed our battle preparations. Once our fortifications were complete, combat consisted of lobbing rocks, one at a time, toward the other person’s army. Any soldier knocked over or buried by a rock was considered dead, and the battle continued until one side was completely out of commission. We had learned that it was best to spread our armies out across a wide swath of sand, thus eliminating the chance that a single well-placed rock could end the battle.

Minutes later, Mom arrived. Hands on her hips, she declared, “You boys need to include your sister when you play! She has no one else to play with out here.”

Sheri stood defiantly by Mom’s side, glaring at us. Jerry and I both sighed.

“Oh, all
right
,” I relented, motioning her over. “Come on.”

Mom left as Sheri skipped over to our battlefield. “What do I do?”

Jerry explained the game to Sheri, step by step, all the while redividing the plastic soldiers into three piles. I ground my teeth in frustration
 
—how could he be so patient? She stared at the little green men, turning them over in her hands until Jerry reached the end of his explanation.

“So what’s
this
guy?”

“He has a grenade,” Jerry answered.

“What’s
that
?”

I couldn’t take it anymore. “Don’t you know anything?”

She threw a question back at me. “What does he
do
?”

“He
throws
it,
duh
,” I said, as if every preschool girl should know
about grenades. Was she going to ask about every single weapon? “Just put them in the sand so we can start our war!”

Sheri knelt down, and after scooping out some low depressions in the sand, she placed her men in neat little rows, shoulder to shoulder.

I snorted, and she looked up at me. “Just a
minute
 
—they all gotta stand up
straigh
t
!”

When she was finished, Jerry announced that he would take the first turn. He grabbed one of our stockpiled rocks, took a step back, and pitched toward my base. His opening salvo took two of my riflemen out of action.

Sheri went next. She could hardly lift her stone, and her first throw landed harmlessly in the sand, well short of either opposing base. She stamped her foot.

“My turn,” I said, choosing my favorite rock. It was smooth and had the ability to roll after it landed, causing collateral damage. I took careful aim, wound up, and lobbed a perfect bomb into the heart of Sheri’s base. Her entire army fell like dominoes.

“Aaand . . . they’re dead,” I announced.

She stamped her foot again. “Not fair! You knocked ’em down all at once!”

“I guess you shouldn’t have put them so close together,” I said.

“But I didn’t know!”

“Well, now you do.”

“I don’t want to play your dumb army game anyway!” Sheri stormed off. I was glad to see her go, and Jerry didn’t seem to mind either. Without a word, we drafted her fallen soldiers back into our armies, preparing for the coming fight.

All three of us were united in our hatred of the sandburs, however. No matter what we did outside and how careful we were, they were like evil Velcro, attaching themselves to our shoelaces, socks, shorts,
and even the backs of our shirts and our hair. Once latched on, they’d worm their minuscule hooks deeper and deeper, irritating our skin. Our shoelaces became so intertwined with clumps of burs that we could no longer untie our shoes. Removing the burs with our fingers was painful and usually pointless. Few came out, and more would quickly take their place.

While Jerry and Sheri and I were dealing with the burs, and Mom was lugging water up and down the sandy hills, Dad plunked down a good-sized chunk of his paycheck for private flying lessons.

When his desire for a real house became strong enough, though, it overpowered many of his lazier instincts. Dad already had plenty of land, and he struck gold at a county auction when he was able to purchase two entire houses for a grand total of two dollars. They were being torn down to make room for a new highway that the state was punching through a section of Grand Rapids. Dad picked those houses clean like a crow on roadkill: lengths of lumber, partial sheets of plywood, cinder blocks, cabinets, bathroom fixtures, pipes, and even the occasional straight nail.

Soon, atop one of our sandy hills nearest the road, there was a pile of building material bigger than our trailer. Over the days, weeks, and months that followed, we watched Dad slowly transform that pile into a new house. It was a simple rectangle built from cinder block, twenty feet by forty feet, set lengthwise where the driveway ended. He mapped out a kitchen, a living room, a laundry room, one bathroom, and three small bedrooms, all of which he framed with the scavenged wood. While we continued to live in the cramped trailer, the Bouman residence steadily took shape, and with each completed step came a bit more of the feeling that better things were in store for us.