The Tank Man's Son (18 page)

I
T WAS EXPENSIVE TO
run the
Patrol
. Dad ran out of cash long before he grew tired of piloting his boat from harbor to harbor, so even though we took quite a few trips early on, soon we simply lived on the ship. We docked near the coal quay in the Grand River, generally carrying on as we would have at home, apart from the surrounding hills being replaced by polluted water. We still ate boring meals, played Monopoly, argued, listened to the radio, and wandered around, trying to do nothing much but just enough to keep Dad from giving us chores.

Then, as the summer trudged on, my stars suddenly aligned. Both Mom and Dad had found nine-to-five jobs in Grand Rapids, and so weekday mornings, before seven, they’d walk down the gangway and along the shore to our Ford Custom for the long drive into town, leaving us kids alone on the ship.

It was the happiest time of my life.

Every morning I’d wake up before my brother and sister. First thing,
I’d cram my head through the single porthole, which was barely wide enough, and survey the river. Nearly always it was covered by a morning mist that beckoned me to discover what it was hiding.

The ship was quiet and peaceful, and no one ever told me to do anything, which was a state of affairs that blew my mind. After stretching and looking out the window, I’d pad down the hall from my stateroom to use the
Patro
l
’s single bathroom
 
—Dad taught us to call it “the head”
 
—which was really more like a closet. There was a shower stall, which only worked when the ship’s engine was running, and a portable toilet that squirted dark blue chemicals when it flushed. Originally the shower had been designed to have a water heater hooked up to it, but Dad never replaced the broken one after raising the ship. He had a better idea. Since the ship was designed to pump the surrounding lake water through pipes in the engine room, thus cooling the engine, Dad replumbed one of the pipes so that some of the water, after flowing through the scorching engine, came into the shower instead of returning directly to the river. It was a good plan because it created hot water for free
 
—assuming the engine was running
 
—and cooled off the diesel at the same time. It wasn’t a great plan, however, because the hot water it created was just this side of boiling. It was impossible to stand directly under the spray without being scalded. That meant there was only one way to use the shower: if I stood with my back against the wall, as far from the spray as possible, I could splash bits of water out of the spray with only mild pain in my hand, and by the time the drips reached the tender skin of my stomach or face, the heat was bearable.

Which led me to ask: Why bother to shower? By the end of most days, I’d spent hours and hours in the same river water, only outside the shower stall it was a good seventy degrees cooler. So each night, when it was time for bed, I’d simply pull off my wet clothes
 
—shoes, socks, shorts, T-shirt
 
—and throw them on the floor. The next morning, I’d shake the bits of green algae out of my damp socks and put the whole outfit back on.

Once Mom said to me, “You know, Mark, when Dad’s friend Gary comes to stay on the boat, he washes his face, brushes his teeth, and combs his hair every morning before he goes anywhere. You should do the same.”

What a clean freak!
I thought. Good for Gary, but he was the first person I’d ever heard of who did such things. Dad certainly didn’t. He constantly reeked of body odor, and it could become overpowering if we needed to spend much time in close proximity. He was sour and almost acidic
 
—the smell made me want to take a deep breath of fresh air, which wasn’t a helpful reflex if I was trapped beside him holding a wrench while he was tightening a bolt in the engine room. Dad treated his body almost as an afterthought. His teeth, which I rarely saw him brush, were yellow and usually caked with the remains of his last meal. He kept an electric razor in his car, and when we were driving, he’d grab it out of the glove box and flick it on, letting the dark trimmings drift onto his lap or even blow around the car if the windows were down. If we got somewhere before he was finished, he’d simply toss the razor back in the glove box and finish the job later. The razor couldn’t handle his plentiful nose or ear hair, so he would reach up with his index finger and thumb and rip out a few, and then flick them away
 
—in the car or on the kitchen floor or at a store, wherever he happened to be. I didn’t necessarily want to turn out like that, but Gary seemed to be taking things too far in the other direction.

With complete freedom to do anything I wanted, I usually chose to fish with Jerry and then explore along the shoreline by myself. We rarely played with Sheri. She didn’t care for fishing or exploring and always chose to stay on the boat by herself. We played Monopoly together sometimes, especially at night, but even then Jerry and I preferred to play chess against each other. Sheri hated chess. Without Mom nagging us to include our sister, Sheri spent hours and hours by herself. During those slow summer days, I suppose she played with her dolls or just waited around for time to pass
 
—but whatever she did, she did it without us.

Despite our choosing to fish, Dad never bought us any fishing tackle. “What a waste of my good money!” he’d fume. “No matter what I buy you kids, you lose it!”

Catching anything became a challenge, but we figured out how to scavenge most things and beg what we couldn’t, from hooks and lures to line and weights. There were usually a few poles around the ship, left by one of Dad’s buddies for when they came to visit. The peninsula was a popular spot for local fishermen, and it didn’t take us long to learn which underwater logs and edge-of-the-shore bushes snagged the most gear. Other fishermen seemed to have an unlimited supply of tackle, and the minute a nice hook-and-lure combo got hung up, they’d cut it loose and tie in a new one. Jerry and I would watch, and the minute they closed up shop and headed back to their cars, we’d swoop in, drag a sunken branch to the surface, and harvest its hidden treasures.

As we wandered from one fishing spot to the next, we interacted with quite a cast of characters. Rich and poor, black and white, young and old. The rich guys showed up on the weekends and left the best gear, but the black families
 
—Dad called them coons, whatever that meant
 
—were the nicest.

“Let’s head out fishing,” I’d suggest to Jerry, and nearly always I was answered by the same lament.

“We don’t have any worms.”

We had plenty of lures, but they were tricky to use. Earlier in the summer, when it was cooler and damper, we could find worms under every rock. But with the August heat, the worms had all gone deep underground, and we’d be lucky to find a single one.

“I know we don’t, but I’m going fishing anyway. Maybe we can find some along the way.”

We grabbed our gear, and after a short walk we arrived at our favorite fishing spot, near the base of a bridge.

“I’m going to check the rocks near the shore,” I said, and Jerry, who
had already split up to look elsewhere, called back, “Okay, let me know what you find.”

After a few minutes of unsuccessful searching, I realized we’d have to fish without worms. Making my way back toward Jerry, I nearly tripped over a man who was sitting near the shore. He was wearing a dirty coat, and his pole was propped up on a forked stick so that he didn’t need to hold it.

“What are you doing?” he asked. His voice sounded thick, like he was talking with a peppermint candy in his mouth.

“Looking for worms,” I answered.

“There ain’t no worms around here
 
—too hot!”

As he spoke to me, I noticed he was missing one of his front teeth. A ragged beard covered much of his face, and the skin I could see was sunburned and crisscrossed with wrinkles. “You need to
buy
yourself some worms is what you need to do,” he continued. I noticed the neck of a bottle protruding from a brown paper bag beside him. “Don’t you know anything?”

I moved past him as quickly as I could, and as I did, I heard friendly voices up ahead. I came around a bend to find a black family fishing together, all sitting in lawn chairs and holding poles.

“Junior,” the mother was saying, “help your sister with her pole.” The pole the mom held was made from bamboo and was so long that she could reach the water without casting or leaving her chair. A small red-and-white float bobbed up and down at the end of her line.

I flipped some rocks, still hoping to find a worm before rejoining my brother.

“Honey,” called the woman, “are you looking for worms?”

I glanced up, and the whole family was looking back at me.

“Yes,” I admitted, hoping I wasn’t taking their spot.

“You come right over here and get some from me,” she said immediately. She reached in her pail and pulled out a handful of worms. “Here
 
—is that enough? Why don’t you take some more?”

“Okay, ah, well . . . thanks!” I managed. I set my pole down and held
out my cupped hands, and she dropped the mass of squirming worms right into them.

“Do you have something to put them in?”

I shook my head.

“Junior, bring that cup over here.” She motioned. The young boy carried over a small white Styrofoam cup. I transferred the worms, picked up my pole, and smiled at the woman.

“Thanks. Thanks a lot!”

“No problem, and you have a good day.”

I found Jerry under the bridge. “I got a
bunch
of worms!”

“How? I looked everywhere.”

“A black lady gave me a whole pile. She was really nice.”

“Wow, lucky!”

We fished all day with those worms and still had some left over. We were able to hook a decent number of bluegill and catfish, and when we caught catfish big enough, we’d bring them back to the boat. Jerry and I would gut, fillet, and wash them, and then Mom would fry them up when she got back from work.

On our way back, we passed a man who was yelling at his son. They had fishing gear spread out all across the riverbank.

“Mark, we’ve got our worm container
 
—maybe he’d help us fill it back up.”

I agreed to check. I approached the man, waiting for a chance to ask.

“No, I’m
not
going to help you,” he was shouting. “
You
made the mess, so you can
fix
the mess. Cut the line if you have to, but I’ve told you a thousand times to keep the line tight when casting!”

His boy tugged at a snarled line, then mumbled something I couldn’t hear. I used the pause for my request.

“Mister, do you have any extra worms?” I held out the Styrofoam cup helpfully.

“Worms?” he snarled. “Can’t you get your own worms? Oh, fine, here.” He reached into a cottage cheese container and pulled out several.

“Just take these,” he said in a resigned voice. “They’re all I can spare.”

“Thank you,” I said politely. I nodded at Jerry. Now we had enough to fish with for another whole day. As I went to rejoin my brother, the argument resumed behind us.

“I still can’t get it,” the boy said.

“I
told
you. Cut. The.
Line
. How many times do I need to . . .”

I knew just how the kid felt, but what could you do? I was already thinking about keeping the worms in the fridge the next day and going exploring instead. I could only fish so much, but patrolling the river on my own was something I never seemed to tire of.

I would tell Jerry, then strike out on my own, spending the whole afternoon
 
—or even the whole day
 
—in perfect silence along the shore. For the first time in my life,
I
was the master. I was in control. I would pretend to be an explorer tasked with pushing deeper and deeper into an unknown wilderness. I would carry with me a long stick, a pocketknife, a lighter, and perhaps an apple or two, rarely bothering to return to the ship for lunch. The muddy bank was lined with empty whiskey bottles and cracked Styrofoam worm containers, and the trees had old fishing lines draped from them like spiderwebs. When I was out of sight of every other boat and fisherman, I would drop to my belly several yards from the bank and then commando-crawl, proceeding more and more slowly, until I reached the water’s edge. Lying on my stomach, chin resting on my hands, I would watch, unobserved, as giant carp rose to the surface and sucked nutrients from the fingerlike roots that reached into the water. Muskrats would pass within arm’s reach, leaving behind
V
s in the water before suddenly dipping out of sight.

I entered the water, too, taking my shoes off and wading into the algae-skimmed shallows. Moving ever so slowly, I caught snakes, painted turtles, crayfish, leopard frogs, and anything else that swam, slithered, or crawled. Before long I knew every curve and cove of the river like it was a map I’d invented myself: all the best places to hide, to fish, and to sit for a while and look at the passing water. I’d roast the crayfish over a
small fire and crack them open with my pocketknife, savoring the sweet burn. Sometimes a guy just needed to think about nothing except what was right in front of him.

My favorite animal, by far, was the painted turtle. I spent countless hours in chest-high water, sometimes wading and sometimes standing still, watching for the telltale ripple of a turtle making its way from log to log. The bright green algae would build up on my chest in thin layers as I sloshed forward, and behind me the dark surface of the water would be visible for long minutes until the algae closed back over it. The turtles weren’t much bigger than a silver dollar, and when they swam, only their tiny, dark heads were visible. There was something magical about those creatures, able to glide through the water and then, whenever they wanted, they could just disappear.

Mesmerized, I often let the turtles swim right past me, watching while they pulled themselves out of the water and into the sunlight, where the red and yellow stripes across their heads would shine brightly.