The Tank Man's Son by Mark Bouman Read Free Book Online Page A

thing I had seen in my life. The beam of light was like a solid thing, like a bridge of brightness you might be able to walk on wherever it pointed. No object was too far away for Dad to touch: the bottom of the driveway, the stop sign down Blakely Drive, the radio tower on the far hill.
    “Don’t get in front of it,” he warned. “You will get burned.”
    He spun a small wheel with a handle attached to it, and the eye of the searchlight narrowed to a small hole. Then he spun the wheel the other way, and the light expanded.
    “Amazing,” I sighed, pulling the word out across the seconds while I followed the beam.
    I heard Mom snort behind me, and then I heard the door open and close. Dad knew he still had an audience, however, and he pointed the searchlight at the ground, then suddenly flicked it up toward the sky. The beam lanced through the night, up and up until it lit the underside of a cloud.
    A cloud . I could scarcely understand what I was seeing.
    That night, as I curled beneath my blanket in bed, I remembered what I’d seen. The searchlight seemed part of my father, as if he were really the one illuminating the distant trees. Tall and proud   —taller than nearly every other man I knew   —Dad could force the world to bend with his bare hands and wide shoulders.

    That was how time passed. Week in, week out, month in, month out. We panted through the summers and shivered through the winters. When the weather was bad enough, we drew or played board games or stared at the fireplace, and we always did whatever chores Dad assigned us: taking out the garbage, watering whichever plants were currently surviving near the house, sweeping, washing and drying dishes, washing and folding laundry, and shoveling ruts in the driveway. He assigned jobs that even we, inexperienced schoolkids, could tell were baloney. More than once he looked at Jerry and me and growled, “Get outside, and whatever’s out of place, put it back!” Since almost everything outside was either broken, messy, or out of place, and nothing we did could change that, we interpreted his instructions to mean that we should look busy until he stopped noticing us. Dad noticing us wasn’t something we particularly wanted. Better for him to do his stuff and for us to do ours.
    We bused to school and bused home, too, caring very little about what happened between the two trips. But apart from those minor interruptions, we wandered wild and free   —with an emphasis on free . Momwas always working at home or trying to work in town. She talked about making ends meet and scraping by. Dad seemed like he was always playing with guns and old vehicles at home, or working in town and then staying in town to play by himself. Almost none of the Bouman family’s meager resources of time and money trickled down to us kids.
    We lived hour by hour, not thinking about what might come next, doing as we liked and liking a decent amount of what we did. Somehow whole seasons passed that way, and I had little inkling that folks lived other ways, or that my own way of life was soon to change.

4
    O NCE THEY CLEARED the hurdle of raising three responsible, school-age kids, Mom and Dad began to leave us home alone more often. Mom would set out three bowls of food on the table   —usually plain oatmeal   —and tell us we needed to be good while they were gone. She’d say that she and Dad were going out to eat dinner in town or see a movie or play cards. Mom would always leave us with the same advice.
    “We’re going to be out late, so be sure to get everything just the way your father likes it before we get home.”
    The first few times it felt fun to stay home alone at night, but we soon changed our tune. There wasn’t really anything to do that couldn’t be done during the day, and at night we had the unwanted responsibility of predicting what counted as “perfect” in Dad’s mind. We might do nothing to clean up while Dad was away, only to have him come home