The Prince of Tides

by Pat Conroy

  My mother had packed a picnic and she laid out a white tablecloth on the summit of the largest piece of exposed granite in the world. The day was windless and clear and the tablecloth adhered to the rock like a stamp. We children playfully tussled with our father on the mountain that was ours alone. It was on top of Stone Mountain that I received a first lesson on the nature of my father’s character and how it would affect my childhood. On that day, I sprang alive and conscious to the dangers of our family.

  “Why do you have to go to the wars again, Daddy?” Savannah asked my father, who was lying back with his head flat against the stone, staring up into the blue sky. The veins in his forearms lay thick on his flesh like ropes lying on the deck on a boat.

  “I’ll be damned if I know this time, angel,” he said, lifting her into the air.

  Luke said, surveying the terrain, “I want to go back to Colleton. No shrimp here.”

  “I’ll just be gone for a year. Then we’ll go back to Colleton.”

  My mother spread out a feast of ham sandwiches, deviled eggs, and potato salad and was surprised to find a colony of ants advancing in disciplined ranks toward the food.

  “I’m gonna miss my babies,” my father said, watching her. “I’m going to write you letters every single week and seal each one with a million kisses. Except for you boys. You boys don’t want anything to do with kisses, do you?”

  “No, Daddy,” Luke and I answered simultaneously.

  “I’m raising you boys to be fighters. Right! I’m not raising my boys to be lovers,” he said, cuffing our heads roughly. “Tell me you won’t let your mother turn you into lovers when I’m away. She’s too soft on you. Don’t let her put you in dresses and take you to teas. I want you boys to promise me something. I want both of you to beat up an Atlanta boy every single day. I don’t want to come back from Korea and find you acting like big-city boys and putting on airs. Okay? Remember, you’re country boys and country boys are always fighters.”

  “No,” my mother said firmly but quietly. “My boys are going to be lovers. They’re going to be the sweetest boys who ever lived. There’s your fighter, Henry.” My mother pointed to Savannah.

  “Yeah, Daddy,” Savannah agreed. “I’m a fighter. I can beat up Tom anytime I want to. And I can almost beat up Luke when he uses only one hand.”

  “Naw, you’re a girl. Girls are always lovers. I don’t want you fighting. I want you all soft and sugary, all peaches and cream for your Daddy.”

  “I don’t want to be all soft and sugary,” Savannah said.

  “You?” I said. “You’re not.”

  Savannah, stronger and quicker than I, surprised me by punching me hard in the stomach. I began crying and ran to my mother, who enfolded me in her arms.

  “Savannah, you quit picking on Tom. You’re always picking on him,” my mother admonished.

  “See?” Savannah said, turning to face my father. “I’m a fighter.”

  “Tom, I’m ashamed of you, boy,” my father said, ignoring Savannah, looking beyond her toward me. “Crying when a little girl hits you. That’s disgusting. Boys never cry. Never. No matter what.”

  “He’s sensitive, Henry,” my mother said, stroking my hair. “So hush.”

  “Oh, sensitive,” my father teased. “Well, I wouldn’t want to say anything that might hurt someone so sensitive. Now you’d never catch Luke crying like a baby over something like that. I’ve whipped Luke with a belt and never saw a tear. He’s been a man since the day he was born. Tom, get over here and fight with your sister. Teach her a lesson.”

  “He better not or I’ll hit him again,” Savannah said, but I could tell by the sound of her voice that she was sorry for what she had caused.

  “No, Henry,” my mother said, “that’s not the way to do it.”

  “You raise the girl, Lila,” my father growled. “I’ll tend to the boys. Get over here, Tom.”

  I left my mother’s arms and crossed five yards of Stone Mountain in a walk that seemed to take forever. I stood facing my father.

  “Stop crying, baby boy,” he commanded, and I cried all the harder.

  “No, Henry,” said my mother.

  “You better stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

  “I can’t stop,” I said between sobs.

  “It’s my fault, Daddy,” Savannah cried out.

  My father slapped me across the face, knocking me to the ground.

  “I told you to stop crying, little girl,” he said, towering over me.

  My face was numbed, inflamed where he hit me. I hid my face in the mountain and bawled.

  “Don’t you touch him again, Henry,” I heard my mother say.

  “I don’t take shit from women, Lila,” he said, turning to her. “You’re a woman and nothing but a goddamn woman and you keep your goddamn mouth shut when I’m disciplining one of the boys. I don’t interfere with you and Savannah because I don’t give a shit how you raise her. But it’s important to raise a boy up right. Because there’s nothing worse on earth than a boy who ain’t been brought up right.”

  I looked up and saw my father shaking my mother, her eyes brimming with tears, with humiliation. I never loved anyone as much as I loved her at that moment. I looked at my father, his back to me, and I felt the creation of hate in one of the soul’s dark porches, felt it scream out its birth in a black forbidden ecstasy.

  “Let go of Mama,” Luke said.

  My father, all of us, turned toward Luke’s voice, and we saw him holding a small butcher knife he had found in the picnic basket.

  “No, Luke, honey, it’s all right,” my mother said.

  “It ain’t all right,” Luke said, his large eyes blazing with anger. “Let go of Mama and don’t hit my brother again.”

  My father stared at his oldest son, then began laughing. I rose and ran into my mother’s arms again as my father’s laughter pursued me across the mountain. I would run from that mocking, cheapening laughter for the rest of my life, always away from him, always toward the soft, embracing places.

  “What do you plan to do with that knife, boy?” my father said to Luke as he circled him.

  “Please stop, Luke,” Savannah screamed. “He’ll hurt you.”

  “No, Luke,” my mother pleaded. “He didn’t hurt Mama. He was just kidding.”

  “Yeah, Luke. I was just joking around,” my father said.

  “You weren’t joking,” Luke said. “You’re mean.”

  “Give me that knife,” my father ordered. “Before I tear your ass open with my belt.”

  “No,” Luke said. “Why are you so mean? Why do you have to hurt Mama? Why do you want to beat up a nice little kid like Tom?”

  “Put the knife down, Luke,” my mother pleaded, leaving me and going between my father and Luke.

  My father pushed her away roughly and said, “I don’t need a woman to protect me from a seven-year-old kid.”

  “I was protecting him from you,” my mother screamed, and her scream carried off the mountain and fell into the forest below.

  “I can take that knife away from you, Luke,” my father said, crouching low and starting to move toward his son.

  “I know you can,” Luke said, the knife glinting in his hand, “but only because I’m little.”

  My father lunged and caught Luke’s wrist and twisted it until the knife fell on stone. Then, slowly, my father removed his belt and began beating Luke’s ass and legs with a flashing, brutal movement of his great red-haired arms. My mother, Savannah, and I all huddled together, crying, terrorized, and grieving. Luke looked off the mountain toward Atlanta, endured the beating, the savagery, the humiliation, and did not shed a single tear. Shame and exhaustion, and that alone, made my father quit. He replaced his belt in the loops of his pants and surveyed the scene of the ruined picnic on his last day in America.

  Luke turned toward him and with the unbearable dignity that would be his trademark all his life said in a trembling child’s voice, “I hope you die in
Korea. I’m going to pray that you die.”

  My father went for his belt again, got it halfway off, then stopped. He looked at Luke. He looked at all of us.

  He said, “Hey, everybody. What’s all the crying about? Can’t anybody in this family take a joke?”

  Luke turned away from him and we saw the blood on his pants.

  The next day my father left for Korea and disappeared for a year into another war. He woke the three of us early in the morning. He kissed each of us roughly on the cheek. It was the last time my father ever kissed me. Luke could not walk for a week. But I took to the sidewalks of Atlanta fatherless, happy as a spaniel that he was gone.

  At night, secretly, in forbidden whispers, I prayed that his plane would be gunned down. My prayers bloomed like antiaircraft fire in the profound sleep of children. In dreams, I saw him coming out of the sky in flames, out of control, dying. These were not nightmares. These were the most pleasant dreams of a six-year-old boy who had suddenly realized he had been born into the house of his enemy.

  I have climbed Stone Mountain often since that day. Always, awaiting me at the summit, is a six-year-old boy who dreads the approach of his father; that boy, that incompleted man, lives in the memory of that mountain. I walk up that mountain and discover the invisible cuttings in the granite where I once listened to my father call me a girl. I’ll never forget my father’s words on that day, or how my face felt after he slapped me, or the sight of the blood on my brother’s pants. I did not understand, but I did know that I wanted to model myself after my mother. From that day, I renounced the part of me that was his and hated the fact I was male.

  In September school began and Savannah and I entered first grade together, our mother and grandmother walking us to the bus stop on Briarcliff Road. Luke was going into second grade and was put in charge of seeing that we got to school safely and on time. The three of us had notes pinned to our white cotton shirts. My note read, “Hi, I’m Tom Wingo, a first grader. If you find me and I’m lost, please call my mother, Lila, at the following number: BR3-7929. She’ll be very worried about me. Thank you, neighbor.”

  We carried new lunch boxes and wore brand-new saddle shoes. The first-grade teacher was a small, shy nun built like a child herself, who made our entry into the frightening realm of human knowledge as gentle and enriching as any act of love could be. My mother rode the bus with us that first day and told us we were about to learn to read and write, that we were embarking on our first adventure of the mind.

  I did not cry until she left me on the playground, slipping away quietly, unnoticed and tentative, when I looked up and saw her on the sidewalk by Courtland Avenue, watching the nun lining up the first graders. I looked around and tried to find Luke, but he was disappearing with the other second graders through a side door.

  When I cried, Savannah cried, and we both bolted from the line of suddenly motherless children and ran to our mother, our lunch boxes beating against our knees and thighs. She ran to us and knelt down to receive our charge into her arms. The three of us wept and I held her in the most passionate fury of abandonment and wanted never to be torn away from those arms.

  Sister Immaculata approached us from behind and, winking at my mother, led the three of us into her classroom, where fully half the students were crying out for their mothers. Mothers, looking like giants as they moved along the aisles of diminutive desks, consoled each other as they pried their children’s arms from around their nylon stockings. There was terribly affecting pain and sorrow loose in that room. Loss and the passage of days showed in the eyes of those gentle women. The nun ushered them from the room one by one.

  The nun showed Savannah and me the reading book we would use that year, introduced us to Dick and Jane as though they would be neighbors of ours, and placed us in a special corner to count out apples and oranges the class would have for lunch. My mother looked back at us from the door, then slipped away unseen. Sister Immaculata, with her soft white hands flowing through our hair and over our faces, began the process of creating a home away from home in her classroom. By the end of the day, Savannah had learned the alphabet by heart. I knew it up to the letter D. Savannah sang the ABC’s to the class and Sister Immaculata, touched with the wizardry of the fine, unpraised teacher, had given a poet the keys to the English language. In her first book, the poem “Immaculata” would speak of that frail, nervous woman trussed in the black drapery of her order, who made the classroom seem like a part of paradise spared. Years later, when Sister Immaculata was dying at Mercy Hospital in Atlanta, Savannah flew down from New York and read the poem to her and held her hand on the last day of Immaculata’s life.

  I did not cry again that day until I found a note in my lunch box from my mother. Sister Immaculata read it to me. It said, “I’m so proud of you, Tom. I love you and miss you so much. Mommy.” That’s all. That’s all it had to say and I wept in that good nun’s arms. And I prayed the Korean War would last forever.

  In the house on Rosedale Road, Papa John Stanopolous lay in the back bedroom, taking his own good time about dying. My mother required absolute silence from us when we were in the house and we learned to speak in whispers, to laugh noiselessly, and to play as quietly as insects when we drifted through the rooms that led to Papa John’s door.

  Each day when we returned home from school, we would eat cookies and milk in the kitchen and tell what we had learned that day. Savannah always seemed to learn twice as much as either Luke or me. Luke usually recited the latest atrocity committed in the name of Catholic education by the dread Sister Irene, and my mother would frown, disturbed and worried, by Luke’s tales of distress. Then she would lead us quietly to the back bedroom and let us visit with Papa John for a half-hour.

  Papa John rested with his head propped up on three soft pillows, and it was always dark in his room. His face would materialize out of the half-light and the Venetian blinds, half drawn, would divide the room in symmetrical chevrons of light. The room smelled of medicine and cigar smoke.

  His flesh was pale and sickly, his chest as hairless and white as a pig’s back. There were books and magazines scattered on the night table beside him. He would lean over and turn on the lamp when we entered. We would scramble onto his bed and cover his neck and face with kisses with my mother and grandmother warning us to be careful. They stood watching in soft attendance. But Papa John, his eyes luminous and bright as a retriever’s, would wave them off. He would laugh as we crawled over him and tickle us under our arms with his heroic, shadow-casting awning of a nose.

  “Be gentle with Papa John, kids,” my mother would call out from the doorway. “He’s had a heart attack.”

  “Let the children be, Lila,” he would say, caressing us.

  “Show us the nickel in your nose, Papa John,” Savannah would demand.

  With an ostentatious sleight of hand and a few magic words of Greek, he would extract a nickel from his nose and hand it to Savannah.

  “Are there any more nickels up there, Papa John?” Luke would shout, peering into his dark spacious nostrils.

  “I don’t know, Luke,” Papa John said sadly. “I blew my nose earlier today and there were nickels shooting out all over this room. But look here. I feel something funny in my ears.”

  We would search his great hairy ears and find nothing. He would repeat the Greek phrases, wave his hands theatrically, cry “Presto,” and pull two nickels from behind his fleshy lobes and place the coins into our eager hands.

  At night, before we went to bed, our mother permitted us to return to Papa John’s bedroom. Freshly bathed, clean as snow, we arranged ourselves around his pillows like three bright satellites around a new moon. We took turns each night lighting the cigars the doctor had forbidden him to smoke. Then Papa John would lean back, his face framed in a nimbus of fragrant smoke, and tell us a bedtime story.

  “Should I tell them about the time I was captured by two hundred Turks, Tolitha?” he asked my grandmother as she stood by the door.

 
; “No, don’t scare them before their bedtime,” my grandmother answered.

  “Please tell us about the turkeys,” Luke begged.

  “Turks,” Papa John corrected. “Not turkeys, Luke.”

  “They won’t sleep a wink if you tell that story, Papa John,” my mother said.

  “Please, Mama,” Savannah said. “We won’t sleep a wink if we don’t hear about the Turks.”

  Each night this thin, withered man took us on miraculous, improbable voyages around the globe where he encountered perfidious Turks attacking him in countless, inimical battalions, and each night he would devise ingenious ways to repulse them and return safely between the white sheets of his bed, where he was dying slowly, painfully, and without the companionship or intercession of Agamemnon’s soldiers, dying without honor, surrounded not by Turks but by three children as he weakened daily until the stories became as important and essential to him as they were to us. His imagination lit fires in that room in a final shimmering ignition. Papa John had never had children and these stories poured out of him in bright torrents.

  Behind us, watching and listening, were our mother and grandmother. I did not know who Papa John was or where he came from or how he was related to me and no one would explain it to any of us children. We had left my grandfather in Colleton and all of us wept as we left him. My mother and father carefully instructed us to call our grandmother by her given name and never under any circumstances reveal that she was my father’s mother. Papa John might have been a gifted storyteller, but he had nothing over my grandmother.

  At bedtime, there would be one more story. Then my mother would lead us out of his room, into the dimly lit hallway, past the door that led to the dread basement, and up the winding stairs to the large bedroom on the second floor where we, the children, made our home. If a wind was blowing, the branches of the hovering oak trees would scratch the windowpanes. There were three beds set side by side. Savannah had the middle bed, flanked by her two brothers. A small bedside lamp was the only light in the room. We cast enormous, superhuman shadows on those slanted enclosing walls.