by Paul Rice
When the child had finally been pummelled into a tearful submission, his father would then encircle the boy’s neck within a giant forearm and drag him to his feet. With his windpipe crushing beneath that thick, ginger haired forearm, the child would stand shaking and wait fearfully to be told to say the words.
It always ended this way, always.
“Now… yoo tell yore Momma that yoo is sorree, and yoo tell her loud now, yoo hear me? She is uppen heaven and she needs to hear that yore sorree, boy!” Same thing every time, every time: “Say the words, an’ say ‘em loud, boy. Say em!”
The vice around his neck slackened, with mouth open he would gasp a lung full of air and then say the words, say them over and over again. “I’m sorry Momma, I’m sorry Momma – I never meant to kill you Momma. I didn’t know that I was being bad, Momma, Momma, Momma!” But his anguished shriek only fell upon the deaf ears of the old farmhouse, his father seemingly unable to hear the words, or see the abject sorrow and terror within his son. On one occasion he’d been held upright by the hair and made to say the words repeatedly for fifteen minutes, before finally being hurled to the floor with his father’s words still ringing in his ears: “Git the fuk outta my sight beforen I do somthang that I’ll regret!” Those words still haunted him to this day. They were his father’s words.
At eleven years of age the child already stood at just less than six feet tall. His broad shoulders starting to show their promise alongside the rapidly forming pectoral muscles, which strained the buttons of his old khaki shirt as it flapped above the torn and faded Wrangler jeans below. His upper body would have made many a grown man proud. Bulging biceps, gained from hours of working on the dilapidated farm, writhed down to thick, wirey forearms that ended in callused, work-hardened hands. His long, lanky legs were the only giveaway as to his real age. He was, in many ways: “A child in a man’s body, a poor boy who should be in some other place – the poor child!” That’s what old Mrs Jones down at the store had called him. She was right too, because, except for one thing, he was a poor boy, a poor boy in almost every sense of the word. His one saviour, the one treasured secret which he held close to his chest, was the total passion he felt for all the creatures that flourished in every corner of the farm. He found joy in every hidden knot hole of the barn’s wooden walls, every blade of grass and unturned stone held yet more of nature’s bounty. Mrs Jones had shown him a magazine once and the pictures within it had fired his imagination. These days the boy lived for the quiet moments of grace when his father was either in town or sleeping off the drink, which he’d gone to town for in the first place. The boy possessed an extraordinary empathy with any and all living things… except humans... and the wildlife came easily to him. Not in a spooky, horror movie sort of way, no, it was more as though they recognised the child’s inner self. They knew he meant them no harm and happily crawled, jumped or flew across his hands and arms without a care in the world. He knew of every nook and cranny where his friends hid, worked and lived, and he spent hours simply lying and watching them go about their business. Not just the insects or slugs and snails, either. He also spent many a happy time in observing much larger creatures, too. Deer, rabbits… and even wolves, all came under his caring eye. Once, whilst lying in the red dust of a seasonally dry river bed, he had been inches away from a snake. The husky lump on its tail made little rattling noises as it briefly stopped and flicked its forked black tongue in his direction.
He was so close that he could almost smell the creature.
The boy didn’t know what most of the things were called, but he had taken to sketching them whenever he could. His little brown notebook had long ago become filled with their images, and so the child had learned to find an alternative source of paper. The stack of unpaid bills, which grew in a daily mountain underneath the letter box by the back door, provided him with just what he needed. Ripping the envelopes open, he carefully used the blank reverse side of the letters to draw upon – even the big portions that were unmarked on the envelopes, were put to good use. And now, stacked neatly within the safety of his battered suitcase, the one he had never used, nor probably ever would, there lay a large pile of beautifully detailed, pencil sketches. Many a professional artist would have been more than happy to have such fine works in their portfolio. The intricate detail of each subject spoke not only of how much time it must have taken, but also of the great talent that lay hidden within the large hands of the long haired youth.
However, his father didn’t care for such nonsense; he felt that if the boy had time for such things then he obviously wasn’t being kept busy enough around the farm. Leaning forward, he clasped the child around the throat with a huge paw and drew him towards his lowered face. His son focused on the hairs springing over the chest line of his father’s dirty blue dungarees as he felt himself being pulled inexorably towards the sweating face. The smell of tobacco and beer cascaded onto him. The man had found one of the child’s sketches – a minutely detailed drawing of a centipede, which the boy had stuffed it into one of his baseball boots when his father had unexpectedly come into his sparsely furnished bedroom. The centipede’s finely sketched body was now grasped in the man’s hand, its long delicate antennae poking out from behind his thick wrist. Screwing it into a ball, he held the crumpled paper in front of the child’s face. “What’n the hell do yoo call this sheeit, boy, yoo don’t have the time for scribbling, an ifen yoo do… well then, I guess we should find sommat else for yoo to be gettin’ on with, huh?” That big hand rose high into the air.
“I ain’t bin lazy, Poppa! I jus’ see stuff sometime when I walk the land, I promise I ain’t been lazy, I promise!” He screamed as he waited for the beating to start once more. It was afterwards when the boy realised that he no longer loved the man who had ruled his life since the day he was born, in fact, he had the idea that, perhaps, he may well hate him. He wasn’t quite sure as his adolescent thoughts never really focused for too long on such things. Still, it was something he would think about later, maybe. As he sat alone in his room and massaged the pain from his thighs, the child wished he was back at school, even though he had fought and beaten almost every boy there, even the teenagers, he still craved the company. His father had stopped sending him almost a year ago. “I cain’t afford the fuel to be goin up there an back two times a day boy, we need to make sum munny here on the farm first before yoo all go an do yore fancy book studies.” That had been the end to it. The older man was adamant and had even thrown the Headmaster down off the porch when he had come to the farm and asked after the child. The man had scrabbled around on his hands and knees, frantically searching for his cracked spectacles, before running to his car – batting the dust and chicken shit from his suit as he went. His father had laughed hysterically at the man’s plight. “Next time it’ll be some buckshot in yore ass, muthfuka!” The white Chevy had roared off their land in a cloud of dust and was never seen again. Yes, it was a lonely life and a hard life, which the child endured. One day soon it would be too late, because the child would become the man his father was and then the circle would be repeated. The boy was aware of this and subconsciously his greatest fear was being like the father whom he had now began to despise. But he knew he was trapped, his voice had even started to sound like his father’s, words and phrases the older man used were starting to become firmly lodged in the boy’s everyday vocabulary. He heard himself do it and didn’t like it, but he couldn’t stop it.
Monkey see, monkey do.
As the years passed by, the child became a man. By the time he was fifteen, the child had become a man in a man’s body. A very large body it was, too. He continued to work the farm and continued to suffer the abuse of his father. The beatings had become less frequent now as he was now actually starting to get bigger than the older man. He still stoically accepted the abuse, however: “That’s the way it’s always been, it’s just the way it is.” That was the excuse he made, anything to stop the other dark thoughts from entering his mind…
He hardly ever saw the old bastard now anyway, and he was glad. Instead, his mind was filled with thoughts of joining the Army and then the CIA, or something. He had read about them whilst he’d been in the shop. On one of the rare occasions that he accompanied his father into town, the boy had been dispatched to the grocery store with the stark instruction ringing in his ear: “If’n yoo wanna eat then get to the shop, boy.” His father had held out a five dollar bill. “If I ain’t here when yore done, then yoo best had get back to the farm on yore thumb. I maybes going for a little git together with the boys…” ‘Maybes’ always meant definitely, the boy had heard that tale before, many times. Nodding, he turned and strolled back up the street to where the shop stood. His tired baseball boots, now size fourteen, kicked up some of the leaves, which the passing of winter had left. He picked up a few of them and flung the dry leaves high into the cool air, smiling in childish amusement at their twirling decent, before stepping up onto the boardwalk and entering the shop with a loud tinkle from the door bell.
Mrs Jones had made him take a seat whilst she fixed him some lemonade. “Oh my Lord’s… look at the size of you young man, where have you been, it has been months since I saw you last, are you well, how is the farm…” As usual, the questions streamed out of her wrinkled mouth. The boy sat and smiled, he didn’t mind at all as Mrs Jones was always kind to him. Besides, she made mighty fine lemonade and always had some of her ‘special cookies’ hidden away too. He guessed it must have been like that all the time for someone lucky enough to have a Momma – one that happened to be alive.
He loved being in the shop with all its neat rows of goods, bright jars of sweets, tins of soups and strange meats. Packets containing all sorts of wonderful things, things he had never even seen or heard of, never mind tasted. And the smell, oh now that was something else: fresh ham, smoked bacon, and a German sausage that came in a long, dark roll – the sausage was so spicy that it always made his eyes water. Mrs Jones used the whirring electric blade to cut slices of meat and cheese for the customers as they came and went. She would put them in paper and then slide them onto her new weighing scales. “Digital they are, my dear.” She would say to each customer, “There you go; it’s a little bit over, if you don’t mind?” Her charming smile would always get them to part with the extra cash for that ‘little bit over.’ She winked at him when they weren’t watching. Mrs Jones was a pretty smart businesswoman, he guessed. Every now and then she would give him a little off-cut from the meat and cheeses that she dispensed, they were so tasty that the boy reckoned he could quite happily sit there all day, every day, for the rest of his life...
It was whilst he sat perched at the counter, sipping on cool lemonade, that he’d laid eyes on a magazine, one that rested on the counter by the black and white Bull’s Eyes, Mrs Jones had no idea the magazine was there, and if she had of known she would never have let him see it. She knew the child and she also knew that the contents of that magazine were exactly what the boy didn’t need in his life. In fact, they were the last thing he needed. But she missed it, and more importantly she missed whoever or whatever had placed it there. The magazine had a colourful picture of a military man on the cover, picking it up, the boy leafed through the pages, mainly looking at the pictures as it had been a while since had had seen any literature, other than the stream of bills he had converted into sketches, that is. His reading was good, but he loved pictures more than words, and so he browsed for a while, flicking through the pages and making the odd polite comment in answer to Mrs Jones’ buzzing questions.
He must have been in there with her for the best part of two hours before he suddenly realised the time. Rising to his feet with a sigh, he passed the old lady the money and asked for some supplies. Five minutes later he was back on the street with a bag of tinned goods and a fresh loaf of bread – the offending magazine now firmly tucked into the back pocket of his jeans. He waved at the shop window where he could see Mrs Jones looking at him with a smile on her face. Not even bothering to look for his father, the young man turned and started the long walk back to the farm. If his luck was in then maybe he would see someone who would be good enough to give him a ride. If not, well it wouldn’t be the first time he had made the dreary trudge back home. His luck was most certainly in and not just in the ride he hitched after only five minutes of walking. He had barely extended his large thumb when, out of nowhere, an old truck appeared on the horizon in front of him. Seeing that it was going back into town, and knowing that it wouldn’t be stopping for him, he lowered his hand and continued walking along the hot road. With a slight screeching of tyres, the truck ground to halt in front of him. Its engine sounded mighty fine to the boy, he’d fixed a few in his time and this one sounded as sweet as a pussy cat. “Yes siree!” He thought as he looked up at the driver’s side.
He was greeted by a tough looking man who sat at the steering wheel. The man looked over and said, “Hello mate, you need a lift or something?” The boy didn’t recognise the accent and had no idea as to whatever a ‘mate’ was... But if it would get him a lift, then he would happily be one.
“Yessir I am, I’m going to the old place uppen about five miles back the way yoo all have jus’ come, sir?” He said as he tried really hard not to let his father’s voice come out. “Are you sure yoou don’ mind, it’s rightly outta yore way, so it is?”
The big guy grinned at him. “Nah, that’s no bother, jump on up, you’ll have to use the back I’m afraid – there’s already three of us up front.” That surprised the boy, he could have sworn the man was on his own, but there they were, another big man with jet black hair and also a woman. She sat in the middle of the men and gave him a friendly wave. He guessed that he must have missed them in the reflection from the sun as it had glinted off the windshield. With another large grin, he happily vaulted into the rear of the truck. As they drove towards his father’s farm, the boy looked into the front of the cab through the small rear window in the bulkhead. He saw the woman rest her head against the driver’s shoulder. She seemed to be very sleepy and the man kept glancing at her – he looked worried. The other man, the dark haired one, had some strange television thing. It rested on his knees and made funny pictures; as he looked, the boy could see the blue arrows and green writing, which kept zooming across its shiny screen. The boy turned away and let the breeze blow through his hair, the smell of the fields came to him and he smiled. “I sure am lucky to catch a lift of’n such fine folk.” He thought to himself. The countryside rushed by and then, without him telling them, they made the turn across the cattle grid and onto the long track, which led to the farm. The faded wooden sign that said: ‘Tolder’s Place’ must have given the game away, he guessed? The man in the passenger seat turned and gave him a reassuring smile and thumbs up sign. He returned the compliment and laughed to himself. “The world ain’t such a bad place after all!” After they had bounced their way down the track for a while, with the powerful engine throbbing sweetly beneath them, they came to the old gate posts that marked the farm’s inner boundary. Through the overhanging trees he could just make out the front of the wooden porch belonging to the house, leaning forward, the boy banged on the roof in a signal for them to stop. The truck came to a halt and grabbing his shopping, he jumped down over the side. The two men stepped out and came around the back to see him. He was bigger than both of them by at least an inch or two and they eyed him carefully. The driver had some sort of fire in his eyes and the kid decided he wasn’t someone that he would like to mess with.
The man spoke: “Well, buddy, I guess this is it, huh? I hope you weren’t too windy back there?” He held out his hand and the boy felt the steel in his grasp.
He tried to enunciate more correctly: “Thankin’ you kindly sir, I would have yoo all in for some chow only… I don’t have enuff for all of us?” He raised his meagre bag of rations in an expression of apology.
The taller man on his left, the passenger, spoke. “Hey, no worries partner, we only just
had something to eat, anyway. Maybe we’ll see you around, I hear that you have a pretty good fishing hole, perhaps we could trade you some grub for a line in the water, we’re around for a bit, so what do you think – I’m sorry, but I never got your name?” His accent was even stranger than the driver’s. He was tall and also had a mighty firm grip.
The boy grinned. “Yeah, that would be real cool, if’n yoo see the blue truck tho’… then don’t bother, my Papa he don’t like visitors all that much.” He glanced down the track behind them. “Anyhow, I gotta git as I got some chores to do and a magazeen to read, yes sir!” He grinned, and then added: “My name is Dwayne, sir – Dwayne Tolder. But most o’ my friends just call me Red, on account of my hair!” Both of the men looked at him, it was only for a second but the boy saw it in their faces. They checked him out for sure. He peered into the cab of the truck to say his good byes to the woman, but, to his surprise, she seemed to have fallen asleep. “Is she OK sir, the lady I mean, she don’t seem too good. I ain’t being nosy, but?”
The driver rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and said: “Yeah she’s OK, just got a bit of the fever. She’ll be fine tomorrow – we’ve just had a long day, that’s all.”
Red nodded. “OK, well I had best be getting inside, thank yoo kindly fer the ride, it’s much appreciated, truly it is! If’n yoo wanna come and fish, then that’ll be even finer – mighty fine, there are some real big ‘uns in that lake. I mean reeeally big fish!” He opened his arms in the typical fisherman’s gesture and the child within him suddenly jumped into full view.