The Tank Man's Son

by Mark Bouman

  We learned this later that afternoon. Dad shouted at us to line up in the living room. We stood side by side, a small platoon of soldiers obeying the orders of our drill sergeant.

  “Your mother and I,” he said, pacing in front of us, “are getting a divorce.” He stopped suddenly and studied our faces, starting with Sheri and ending with me. He was hoping to get a reaction out of one of us that would embarrass Mom into changing her mind. But he’d taught us all too well to never show our emotions. If Dad knew we were happy about something, he’d take it from us. If Dad knew we were afraid of something, he’d use it against us.

  And so we were stoic, save for the one emotion it was allowable to express. It began on the outside of the eye, which tightened ever so slightly. It continued in the lower lip, which pushed out and downward. It flowed through a neck too weak to support the head, which then tipped forward. And it finished in shoulders that curled like they were cringing. The emotion was defeat, and all of us spoke it fluently.

  Jerry, with the gangly six-foot-four body of a man, spoke it, from his size 14 feet all the way up to his shock of black hair.

  Sheri, looking more like Mom all the time, spoke it.

  And I’d known how to speak it for what felt like forever.

  We were defeated, so defeat was the only thing Dad found as he examined us. When Dad was studying Sheri, I stole a glance at my brother, and he looked exactly as I did. Crushed by our father.

  “Well,” Dad said, as if that explained everything.

  He walked outside. Mom and Sheri left next, headed toward their rooms. I looked at Jerry. He was still wearing his mask. But he whispered to me, looking at the floor, the same words I had been ready to whisper to him.

  “I’m glad we’re finally going to get rid of Dad.”

  PART FIVE

  AN ESCAPE

  34

  ON MOM’S ADVICE, the lawyer served Dad the divorce papers while he was at work.

  He quit coming home and sold the tank for a song. Leaving behind piles of broken junk stacked in the shed and scattered willy-nilly across the gun range and the sand, he took his collection of guns and books and records and moved into his mother’s basement, not yet twenty years after he had moved out.

  That left four of us in our house—five if you counted Zeke—and a load of fearful questions. What if Mom changed her mind? What if Dad did something crazy? He was capable of anything, and we all knew it.

  None of us dared to speak a single word about what might happen. It was as if the divorce were a house of cards that could tumble down at any moment.

  So we went to school. We did chores. We kept our heads down. And the three of us kids, despite thoughts and hopes that must have been nearly identical, lived like silent strangers under a single roof. We were holding our breath, collectively, waiting for the surprise ending where Dad came tearing back through the front door.

  It never happened. Four months later, Mom told us at dinner that the divorce was final.

  “So will we have to see Dad anymore?” Sheri asked right away.

  “It’s up to you,” Mom answered. “I’m getting the house and five acres, and I’ll sell it for whatever I can get. Your father is getting the other six acres. We won’t stay here a moment longer than we need to.”

  Jerry had recently left for college, and my sister and I silently adjusted to the news that Dad would never come back home. Our home wouldn’t even be our home for much longer. It was a lot to take in. I set the few remaining dishes in the sink, careful as ever to avoid touching the steel rim. Sometime way back, Dad had spliced some wires together during a project, and an exposed connection was touching a metal water pipe. That meant a stiff shock whenever one of us stood in the wrong spot and touched the sink. It was one of those things that had always seemed normal, like a father who drove a tank, but the idea of moving made me wonder what it would be like to live somewhere else.

  In the following weeks, Mom sold her share of the land and the house for $22,000, but the buyers put a condition on the sale: the valley of trash needed to be covered. They had found someone to haul away the junk, but the festering pile of waste—now approaching the size of a large pond—was going to get them in trouble with the county.

  Jerry, home to help with the move, shoveled beside me at the garbage pile, scattering a thousand shovelfuls of dirt across almost two decades of moldy, half-melted Bouman trash.

  “Just like old times,” I said.

  “Except no Ike to charge us when we’re finished.”

  Mom bought a small home in Grand Rapids. The day the moving truck arrived, and while the others loaded boxes and dragged out the few pieces of salvageable furniture, I slipped away with Zeke. I looked back at the house and the hills surrounding it. Everything was quiet. No roar of gunfire. No growl of a tank. Dad had left the washing machine behind, still sitting on what was once the gun range, its rusted corpse riddled with what must have been ten thousand bullet holes. A few small saplings were beginning to spring up next to the crushed trees, and some of the ruts made by the tank treads were beginning to grow weeds. The door to the shed stood open, and inside I glimpsed a scattering of sand, the only remaining testament to the tsunami that had filled it.

  I was finally leaving. Leaving the house and leaving Dad. But if I’d hoped so long for that to happen, why did part of me feel sad?

  Kneeling beside my dog, I knuckled his head. A new house, a new school, a life without my brother and my father. At least I was taking Zeke with me, the only deep-down good thing I’d ever known.

  35

  ARRIVING WITH MOM IN Grand Rapids felt like landing on another planet. Everything felt foreign from the first moment we pulled up to the tree-lined curb. Neat Cape Cod cottages stretched down the block, one after the other, and kids played catch or rode bikes while adults watered lawns and chatted in driveways. After spending my first sixteen years either moping inside a disintegrating box or wandering the acres of sand that surrounded it, the new place felt like somewhere I didn’t belong. I was a counterfeit, sure I’d be discovered and sent back to where I had come from.

  Mom took Sheri and me on a tour of the house, demonstrating in the kitchen how to turn the stove knob until—click click click fwoosh—the burner lit itself without a single match or singed fingertip. We looked at each other and grinned. My bedroom, which Jerry would share when he visited from college, had a window that could slide open, carpet on the floor, and a real desk with a real lamp—not that I’d be using it. The closet and dresser were large enough to hold all my clothes five times over, and Sheri had a similar room down the hall.

  As Mom went to her room to unpack, Sheri looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Mark, there’s nothing broken in this whole house!”

  “I know, and it’s so quiet.”

  “I can’t wait to invite friends over here,” she said. “Now I won’t always have to go to their houses.”

  That wasn’t a selling point for me, since I didn’t have any friends. I went outside to check on Zeke, who didn’t seem to love his new digs as much as Sheri and Mom did. His eleven acres had been reduced to a postage-stamp yard, fenced and grassed. He whined as I knelt beside him.

  “Don’t worry, boy, we’ll get out soon. If anyone can hunt this kind of place, it’s you.”

  I soon discovered, when Mom asked me to take out the trash for the first time, that other people paid someone to haul away their garbage, a concept that had never occurred to me.

  I also discovered, when a neighbor berated Mom through the screened front door, that I could no longer pull out my gun and shoot at something, even if the something in question was a raccoon who insisted on eating our garbage.

  Sheri and I both attended a new high school that was so close we could walk to it. She made more friends on the first day than I’d had in my life, and while she was constantly going to other girls’ houses and having friends over to ours, I remained a loner. Because I was the new kid, and painfully shy, other students assumed I
was smart and treated me accordingly. But if I had to speak with anyone—during class or at my locker between classes—the illusion would evaporate almost instantly. I quickly learned that it was best to shut my mouth and keep it closed and simply try to tough it out until graduation. What I would do after leaving high school escaped me, but I could get a job somewhere and then . . . just work, I supposed. So I’d slink from class to class, slouch in the farthest desk from the teacher, and pass the time by letting my mind wander.

  It always found memories of Zeke. Of us running in the woods back in Belmont, of the sound of his barks echoing across hills I could navigate with my eyes closed. Or of us exploring the suburban wilderness of Grand Rapids. I started taking him out every afternoon, seeking pockets of nature in which I could forget about life for a time. We discovered each secret and hidden place for miles in every direction. There were brooks that ran through backyards, unnoticed, and the farthest acres of the local cemetery were overgrown and teeming with wildlife. Sometimes we simply wandered, and other times we scouted with a purpose, running hidden traplines—highly illegal in the city limits, which I knew, though I didn’t care—and bagging critters that were bigger and fatter than anything I ever saw in the country. If we were ever seen, we were simply a boy and his dog out for a walk. But we were rarely seen, and I wished our expeditions could last forever.

  The minute those memories faded, though—when the bell rang, or the teacher called my name for the third time, or a boy rammed my shoulder on his way to the hallway—I was dumped straight back into reality. Months drifted by, and I hadn’t made a single friend.

  One day, when I was home alone, I answered a knock at the door and discovered Dad standing on the porch.

  “Hi, Dad?” I tried, waving him in and instantly regretting my choice.

  “I’ll just stand here,” he said softly.

  “What’s up?”

  “Oh, I was in the area and thought I’d stop by.” He looked through the door and listened for a minute. “Where is everybody?”

  “Jerry’s off at college, and Sheri must be out with her friends. She always is. Mom won’t be home until later. She’s taking classes after work.”

  Dad snorted dismissively. “Trying to better herself? We’ll see.”

  I said nothing.

  “I thought maybe you and me could get something to eat.”

  “Um . . . sure. Okay. Let me get my coat.” What was happening? Why was I agreeing to this? I didn’t have any experience with making my own choices, and it seemed my default was still to follow my father.

  Once we were in the car, he let loose. “Your mom brought all this on herself, you know. I’m fine, but I just feel bad for you kids. I can’t imagine she’ll be able to afford that new house for long, and then what?”

  “Mom got a job with the phone company. Union wages.”

  Dad hit the wheel with his hand. “Damn unions. Couldn’t pay me to join one.”

  His punch was perfunctory. He seemed deflated. He was talking like nothing had changed, but I knew better. I knew—somehow with absolute certainty—that he’d never lay a finger on me or Mom again. All the venom was still there, but his poison had lost its potency. Or maybe it was starting to eat away at him.

  We went to dinner together, barely saying a word. He drove me back to Mom’s place and dropped me off. I watched the man who had once been more of a prison guard than a father drive away. I was free of him.

  Physically free, anyway. I had thought that when Dad was gone, I would be free of my past. To my shame, the opposite was true.

  My past imprisoned me more completely than anything physical ever could. I carried my prison cell everywhere I walked, and when I spoke, I struggled to make myself heard through the bars.

  It wasn’t only school where I struggled. I entered stores with my head down and my feet shuffling, desperate not to be noticed, terrified I’d have to interact with someone. I might leave the market without buying what I’d come for, so unwilling was I to socialize with the cashier. I was unable to look a grown man in the eye.

  What I assumed was that each person I passed—students, teachers, strangers—knew the same truth I’d long ago internalized and accepted: I was, and always would be, a good-for-nothing imbecile.

  With everything lost, Dad tried to reinvent himself.

  He started with golf. He would march down the fairway like he was on his way to buy engine parts, hacking at the ball as soon as he reached it. It was all business, all strong-arming the ball, and his uniform—his same old white, short-sleeved, collared shirt, tan shorts, white socks, and black leather shoes—wasn’t the only thing that looked ridiculous. His new toupee did too.

  Eventually he gave up both, got himself fired from his latest dead-end job, and tumbled into a deep depression. He had burned through the money from the sale of his six acres in no time flat. The reality of what he had done began to weigh heavily upon him, and the long periods of sitting in his mother’s basement exacted a toll.

  We all avoided him. The very idea of visiting him was ludicrous: descending the basement stairs to sit on a ratty couch and chat with our father. He had no land, no tanks, nowhere to shoot his guns, no boat—the things with which he had defined himself had been taken away, probably forever, and what was left was a man filled with anger, bitterness, and fear. He was shrinking.

  That knowledge made it all the more jarring when we learned that Dad had started dating. Her name was Ann, and she was a friend of the Dietzes whom we had sometimes skated with at the rink.

  But . . . why? I thought. Who in the world would date Dad? He was at his lowest ebb, fresh off an acrimonious divorce, and still the same selfish, violent, racist jerk he’d always been, but further darkened by depression. And Ann, of all people? All I remembered about her was that she was about five feet tall and talked about Jesus a lot. What could they possibly have in common?

  Still, we were used to things not making sense when it came to Dad. He could do what he wanted as long as he didn’t want anything to do with us.

  It was only a few months later that Dad called me.

  “Mark?”

  “Dad?”

  “I want you to be in my wedding. Ann and I are getting married.”

  “Married?”

  “And you’ll be in it. Jerry too, of course.”

  I said yes because it was the first word that popped into my head, and before I could second-guess myself, Dad was already telling me the date and time, which I scribbled on the back of an envelope.

  “We’ll have something real nice for you to put on,” he said and then hung up.

  They planned the ceremony for the day I was scheduled to take the SAT. I raced through the questions, filling in bubble after bubble as quickly as I could with my pencil. Then I drove my borrowed car deep into the countryside, ignoring the speed limit, trying to find the small church where Dad and Ann were waiting to say their vows. I burst through the front door, out of breath, only to simultaneously hear the wedding march and have a tuxedo and shoes thrust into my chest.

  “Man, Mark, you’re late,” my brother hissed. “What took you so long?”

  “I got here as fast as I could—they don’t let you out early, you know!”

  “Never mind. Just put this on!”

  I ran to the dressing room, tugged on the tuxedo at flank speed, and bolted back to the sanctuary. Dad was pacing back and forth at the front, with Jerry at his side, and I hurried to join them. Seeing me, Dad leaned over and said something to the piano player. The wedding march restarted, and the ceremony commenced. Dad looked like a stranger to me in his powder-blue tuxedo, and the white bow tie perched in stark contrast to his tanned neck. But it was the same face, still certain and in command, if slightly more haggard, and the same powerful hands, sticking out of the sleeves like boxing gloves.

  Ann emerged from the back, nestled against her father’s arm, and the music swelled. Everyone stood as Ann walked slowly to the front, stepping away from her father a
nd stepping up to stand by my father’s side. She seemed smaller than a child compared to him, and I wondered if she knew what she was getting into.

  The ceremony floated past in a haze. None of it interested me. Dad was going to do what Dad was going to do, and it wouldn’t bother me. I had escaped. He would be moving into Ann’s place, several miles north of Grand Rapids, and I would scarcely be part of his life. That suited me just fine. I guessed we were all trying to start over, to move on, even if we weren’t sure which direction to go.

  Sheri found me right after the ceremony. “You sure took your time getting here. They had to start and stop the music twice!”

  Unable to tell if she was attacking me or thanking me, I simply shrugged. What did it matter? Without speaking to anyone, I walked out the back door of the church, then looped around to the front, standing at a distance. Dad had stationed himself outside the front door, and he shook guests’ hands as they exited, thanking them for coming. Ann was next to him, and she smiled and nodded, also shaking hands with some of the guests and hugging others.

  I saw Dad shaking hands with one of my uncles. I hadn’t seen my uncle for several years, since we’d been on the ship together. Dad had organized an impromptu family reunion one weekend, partly so everyone could catch up, but mostly to show off his new boat. Relatives had driven in from hours away, and we found ourselves on the water with more than four dozen people on the Patrol, motoring across Lake Michigan. When the Coast Guard pulled alongside the ship, Dad pulled me aside and said, “Mark, quick, take all the kids you can find, and hide inside the rear chain locker. And keep it quiet.” I rounded up the first ten kids I could find, and we shut ourselves in, keeping absolutely silent until we heard the Coast Guard boat motor away. When we emerged, Dad didn’t thank me—not directly—but he did brag that his idea had saved him from a hefty fine for not having enough life jackets. That meant I’d saved Dad.