Dancing with the Octopus

by Debora Harding

  Eventually I blew what I thought to be a brilliant bubble about the size of a dime.

  “Not bad,” he exclaimed. “I see you have inherent talent.” He made it clear it was important that I not mistake this coaching for an exercise in frivolity. I think he could still sense how deflated I had been and that I was in the throes of a serious adolescent crisis of identity. He wasn’t going to let me drift without a fight, though. There would be no permission from him to adopt a loser mentality. The real lesson was never to set the bar of expectations low. I had perfected the double and was practicing the triple bubble.

  After my jaw grew stiff from chewing, we were near enough to Des Moines to dial in FM radio, and Dad introduced me to National Public Radio. Finally, I spotted the exit exchange on I-35, the turn signal did its blinking, and we started navigating the wide boulevard of Grand Avenue into the city, the Taurus on its trailer bumping behind us, traffic lights punctuating our stops.

  In Which Dad Hosts His Next Chautauqua

  Interstate 80, 1977—We stopped in Des Moines for a quick visit to Katherine and Arlo’s, after which we rolled east on Interstate 80. Before long we were nearing the Quad Cities on the Mississippi River, which brought up conversations about Huck Finn and Jim making their escape on a raft two hours south of where we’d be crossing. This launched a conversation about antiheroes—“Those people were naughty,” Dad explained, “but you understand their reasons for breaking the rules.”

  It turned out that he was, in fact, prepping me for an introduction to his own crew of real-life antiheroes—truck drivers. I assumed that when we pulled into the next gas station, we were filling up, but it turned into something more than that. Dad didn’t immediately go to the pump after he turned the engine off. Instead, after he jumped out of the van he started fiddling under the back seat like a man with a serious mission. When I asked him what he was looking for, he told me to hold on, then pulled out a black box that looked like it contained explosives, came around the driver’s side, hopped in, and slipped it into an empty mount below the ashtray stuffed with Bazooka Joe comics.

  “I didn’t know if I should show you this, but I think I can trust you to understand the difference between right and wrong. And if we don’t use it, this trip is going to take twice as long.” And with that he presented me with a citizens band radio. I waited with my questions while he attached a handheld speaker by a black curly telephone-looking cord and screwed the two in tight, plugged the power into the ashtray lighter, turned the radio on, then fiddled with the dial. Static. “We’ll find buddies when we hit the road. And if we’re lucky we’ll join a few of the boys and form a convoy.”

  He then switched off the CB radio and told me he’d explain in a minute, but meanwhile I wasn’t to touch the power button—ever—when he wasn’t with me. He made me look at him and cross my heart. And with that, he went around the car and opened the fuel tank lid and stuck the nozzle in. I sat there staring at the black metal contraption. And then almost like he picked up my thoughts through the airwaves, he knocked on the window, motioning for me to roll it down.

  “I realize that wasn’t a fair thing to ask,” he said, standing there as the fuel hose got on with the job and numbers turned over on the pump. “I’m sorry, but a young girl can’t just get on that radio—as long as truckers know who’s on there, they’re polite enough, but I’ll need to introduce you first.” And then he went to finish the pumping job.

  This was new, this calling me a girl. His attitude as a father with four daughters had always been to let the world be our teacher, and at home there was no sign of gendered conditioning. He taught me to use a hammer at the age of six; a handsaw at age ten, when he let me help build our playhouse; and more recently he trusted me with the power saw when we built his office and family room in the basement. Not by myself, but still. I’d been mowing the lawn for years. He’s the one who persuaded me to go for my paper delivery route—even though I didn’t think I had a chance against the boys.

  My gripe was interrupted when I saw him coming out of the convenience store. His arms were so full of snacks and soda pop that he used his butt to push the door open, before striding over con moto to the car with a roguish grin. He motioned for me to open my door so he could drop a week’s supply of Hostess Pies and Coca-Cola on my lap. “If you want to look like me, you have to eat like me,” he sang, before two-stepping it around the front of the vehicle and hopping back into the driver’s seat. “Shall we blow this joint?”

  Once we were back at coasting speed, Dad launched into the next Chautauqua. Before the CB radio could become the portal it was to a vast underground, there was background I needed to understand, really understand, if I was to grasp the challenges of his modern-day hero. Everything from food to oil depended on the underpaid and overworked truck driver. This led to a historical cross-comparison of job descriptions between cowboys and truck drivers, an introduction to the Teamsters Union, and the weaving in of American-made steel, which Dad always found a way to mention, for it was important I never forget that pillar of patriotism.

  Impatient to turn the radio on, I tried to be polite by suggesting we were taking the long way round to the point of the story, but Dad said it was necessary. If I didn’t understand how truck drivers made their money, I wouldn’t appreciate the cultural institution he was about to induct me into or the economic genius of the contraption we were about to use.

  He introduced me to the basics of CB banter. I’d have to have my own nickname—a handle. His was Blue Bull (for the Taurus, of course), and he suggested I might like Scout, as I had been reading him excerpts from To Kill a Mockingbird. “Breaker breaker one-nine,” Dad started. “This here is the Blue Bull. Anyone out there—me and my daughter Scout are looking for a long-haul train today.”

  It took all of about thirty seconds before we heard from Bubba Ducky, who was “taking a load of spanking new cars to Columbus.” And with that, the party began. Dad was an expert at teasing stories out of the guys about their families, joking about their rigs, finding out what they were hauling and from where, and using the fake southern accent that most of them used for some reason. There was nothing more exciting than watching a driver we’d been talking to for a good hour materialize behind us. They’d cruise by, pulling the string on one of those huge horns, and I’d excitedly jump up and down while waving. Once we had a convoy of eight trucks going, but the most common size of a train was three or four. Sometimes a driver would catch up with us just to see the robot on the back of Dad’s van.

  When I inquired about whether I could be a truck driver, Dad apologized and said it just wasn’t a safe job for women, and when I said there’s no reason a woman couldn’t drive a truck, he said I was right, except it wasn’t safe and he wasn’t discussing it any further.

  As we neared Philadelphia on our fourth night, Dad suggested we go see a movie. He really wanted to see Rocky. I voted for something more exciting, something other than a two-men-punching-each-other drama, but Dad looked so disappointed I didn’t feel like I could let him down. Once we sat down with our popcorn and those huge letters R-O-C-K-Y started rolling accompanied by the sound of trumpets, Dad gave me a look, like he knew I could feel it too. They don’t warn you about movies like this. The opening music score itself about knocked us out of our seats.

  Rocky doesn’t win the fight, but he does take Apollo Creed down, and makes the full eight rounds—beating impossible odds. But even more important, we see him win in love as Adrian beats her way through the roaring crowd in the end and throws her arms around him, his face smashed to a bloody pulp, and they embrace in joy as the music melts your heart.

  Best of all were the training sequences that Dad and I were bonding over in our mutual adoration. Rocky rises before the sun, laces up his high-top sneakers, puts his gray sweats and hood on, downs a few raw eggs, and steps into a dark winter morning sky. The fear on his face is as visible as the frost on his breath. You now get it—this guy isn’t a loser: he’s massivel
y depressed.

  I couldn’t figure it out. How was it that this huge big guy, Sylvester Stallone, could make me, a thirteen-year-old girl, feel like him? Like Rocky Balboa. Dad and I ended up giving the movie a standing ovation and threw our arms around each other at the end. Whatever kind of team we were before that movie—it was nothing compared to what we were after. Before leaving Philadelphia, we took the Rocky run up the stairs of the Philadelphia Art Museum, bought ourselves a fresh pretzel, and then got serious about seeing New York City, only a couple of hours away.

  It was dark by the time I caught my first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty, from a distance over the Hudson, the Manhattan skyline glittering in the dark like a huge Christmas village. I just about hyperventilated with excitement, reacting in the way you might expect a kid who had grown up on the edge of a cornfield to react—electrified at the fabulous spectacle in front of me.

  I could tell my enthusiasm was contagious, and I started laughing so hard I became light-headed. As we entered the Holland Tunnel and then emerged in downtown proper, I bounced up and down in my seat asking Dad where we were going first. Then impressed him by firing off the list of neighborhoods I had learned by heart after ten years of watching the televised Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

  As we approached Times Square, Dad started singing, “These little town blues, are fading away . . . ,” before he stopped short, told me to cover my eyes, and when I asked him why, he said there were just some things a young woman didn’t need to see, which of course was an excuse to open my eyes and get a glimpse of what he was trying to prevent me from seeing.

  “How come you didn’t want me looking?”

  “Well, I suppose maybe thirteen years is old enough to understand, those are ladies of the evening.”

  “You mean prostitutes? I know what prostitutes are, Dad.” Actually, I had no idea what prostitutes were, as much as the moral reaction the word provoked. From the quick glimpse I managed, these ladies looked more like stars out of Broadway.

  It was the crown jewel of the trip, New York City. Dad put the hammer down as we headed back west, shaving hours off our travel time, since all the factory sales calls had been made. We planned one last stop at the world’s biggest truck stop in Walcott, Iowa. The view was impressive as we pulled in, the parking lot a massive village of semitrucks. I took my time eating my last stack of buttermilk pancakes before we hit the road back to Omaha, and felt like a mopey little monster the rest of the way home.

  As we pulled up in front of our house and climbed out of the car, my father leaned over and put his arm around my shoulder. Gave me a tight squeeze. “I’m so lucky to be your dad.” Then he ruffled my hair.

  I stored that one. Deep.

  In Which We Meet a Gas Attendant

  Omaha, 1978—Mr. K pulled into the gas station at Fiftieth and Dodge, about five minutes away from my house. I noticed the lights on the forecourt were on, and evening was beginning to fall. There were two full-service pumps.

  “Hey,” Mr. K said, like he wanted my attention and was reading my thoughts. I looked over and noticed his hand in his coat around an object. “This is a gun. Don’t do anything stupid.” The gun might have made me fearful if I hadn’t already been terrified of being stabbed. He told me to look straight out the window, and if he saw my head turn, “Then you know what.” He said it with a particular angry glare through his ski mask, like you’d tell a badly behaved dog on a lead to sit. I went numb. Nodded like we were on the same team.

  In what was the slowest minute of my life, the attendant emerged from his perch behind the register and pushed his way out the door. I watched my potential rescuer so carefully, hoping he might give a sign that he had registered the danger of my situation. Instead, he came around the front of the van to the driver’s side, approached Mr. K with an almost earnest cheerfulness, rubbed his hands and blew into his fingers as he waited for the window to go down. When Mr. K requested two dollars’ worth, he said “sure” like “hey, no problem—happy to help,” all folksy. As if the sight in front of him was normal, a guy in a balaclava sitting next to a young terrified girl.

  Mr. K rolled the window up. Turned the radio back on. My heart thumped so hard I thought I was going to cry. I eyed the door. How real was the gun? I looked over at the attendant, thought again about screaming but felt choked. I understood then. The attendant wasn’t indifferent. He was afraid. I watched desperately as he knocked on the van window, signaling he’d finished filling the tank with two dollars of gas. The window went down. Cash was handed over. “Happy Thanksgiving,” the attendant said, then waved us off with a little hand gesture. He might just as well have dropped a trap cellar door on me.

  “Now,” Mr. K said, turning the corner, “we’ve got a phone call to make.”

  In Which I Contemplate Rebellion

  Omaha, 1977—Dad returned to his normal routine after we got back from our road trip. I pined for him like a pup. His promise of being around disappeared as quickly as he did—instead of three days a week in Iowa he was spending closer to five. He’d leave on Sunday night and wouldn’t get back until late Friday. And to make matters worse, we had to put Zorro down due to old age.

  I dealt with my grief by retreating into my room on the third floor, whose location was prime real estate under the conditions. Mom could never make unannounced visits—I could always hear her coming up the stairs. She told me it would take time to heal the trust I had broken over the summer, so we hadn’t resumed our late-night study sessions. It was her second year of classes at UNO, and she had taken to drinking Coca-Cola as part of her new lifestyle, making it clear that the sugar-sweetened caffeine boost was not for us kids to drink. One day, however, I saw a nice cold glass sitting on the table in the living room with ice cubes and, being an independent thinker, or a thief, couldn’t resist helping myself to a few gulps.

  Ten minutes later, I heard her calling me from the base of the stairs. She asked if there was any chance I had helped myself to some of her Coke? Of course, I said no. Then she asked me to come down the stairs and look her in the eye, and then tell her again I didn’t drink her Coke, which I did with no problem at all, and she said, “I believe you because out of all my girls, you are the one who I know doesn’t lie.” I think she was alluding to my Christianity, and I was sure it wasn’t a compliment.

  I went back up to the third floor and shut my bedroom door, feeling anxious, not because I just lied, but because everything about her was off. She was in one of those moods—I could see it in her cold eyes.

  About half an hour later, I heard her raised voice through my floorboards. I realized she was in Jenifer’s room, and it didn’t sound good. Creeping down the stairs, I saw my two younger sisters through the half open bedroom door and froze. Mom’s belt was meeting flesh. I heard her say she’d be back in fifteen minutes and the liar better speak up. She didn’t acknowledge my presence when she finally walked by me, went into her bedroom, and shut her door.

  I went into my sisters’ room. Their cheeks were wet with tears, but they weren’t crying. Gayle was ten years old, Jenifer six. I looked at the back of their legs—Mom had flayed the skin. I went to the bathroom and threw up. Then I reached into the medicine cabinet and grabbed some hydrogen peroxide to blot the blood and fetched ice for their welts. None of us spoke. We waited for my mother to come back, but she didn’t. She stayed in her room for the rest of the evening. After my sisters fell asleep, I lay awake all night. I was so ashamed at being a coward—which might explain what happened next at school.

  In Which I Try My Hand at Boxing

  Omaha, 1977—There was a gang of five bullies who particularly enjoyed dominating the rest of us in physical education class. We divided along racial lines, as was normal. That day’s exercise entailed running up and down the length of the gym, which was two full-sized basketball courts. We had to touch the floor outside the taped line at one end, then sprint to the other side and do the same.

  One of my meeker friends, Julie,
had difficulties coordinating the speed it took to touch the floor before turning back. I was just finishing a sprint when I saw Bessie, who held the esteemed position of chief bully, trip Julie, who fell, her face hitting the floor. As she stood and picked up her broken spectacles, blood dripped down her cheek. She was being remarkably brave, but she was in tears as she left for the infirmary. The next day she arrived at school with four stitches in her cheek.

  The following week, we were told to practice volleyball serves by forming into circles and having someone stand in the center and serve the ball. As usual, the teachers then disappeared to wherever it was that they disappeared to. Bessie appointed herself as captain. She served the ball. We all took turns bumping it back, our forearms pressed together, wrists up in volleyball batting position. Things were going well until Bessie reached Mary Hobber, a girl heavier than most, with short, frizzy red hair and large round cheeks. Bessie smashed the ball at her face with a speed that even the most skilled of us would have had trouble returning, and Mary, clearly terrified, ducked. Bessie served the ball once more, harder, and again, Mary failed to make the return. This occurred several times, Bessie increasing the force with which she was throwing the ball. Giving up, Mary shielded her face, and we all stood in our fourteen-girl circle, ashamed at our cowardliness, frozen by fear to change it. I looked around for a teacher, but they were still absent. There wasn’t an adult in sight. So I blurted it out. “Haven’t you had enough fun?”

  The gym went quiet. Bessie turned around and scanned our faces. “Did someone just say something?”

  “Yes,” I said, too far in now to back out. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough fun?” One of Bessie’s friends, a small, skinny girl, slapped her knees in laughter. Bessie looked at her, then at me, then at her, and seemed to decide that yeah, it was kind of funny, so she smirked, and then threw the ball at the next person. When she came around to me, she was of friendlier demeanor. She served, I returned, and she moved on. The whistle blew, and we saw the teacher, Mrs. Flores, enter the gym to tell us that class was over.