Mad Boys (5 page)

Most of the trees were about fifty years old, having grown up after a hurricane ripped through in 1938, but some sugar maples four and five feet in diameter had survived the storm, and down slope was a sugar shack. One of the maples, which must have been two hundred years old or more, had been hit by lightning maybe around the time I was born or before. The strike hadn’t killed the tree, but had weakened it, and it had fallen shortly before Father and I moved onto the property. You could still see the black gash from the lightning hit. The trunk of the tree was huge and twisted with cavities big enough for someone my size to hide in. I loved sitting on the trunk, feeling the sunlight which squeezed through the space in the forest created when the maple had fallen.

In this twenty-acre forest lot, scores of transit hippies had lived in yurts, tents, log huts, and the hulks of vehicles. The hippies were gone; the tents were gone; the yurts and log huts had fallen into themselves because of bad roofs; the hulks of vehicles had hunkered down and become part of the landscape. Small trees and bushes grew out of them. They added a lot to the beauty of the scenery. The property was on the dark north side of the hill. (Other places our “hill” would have been a mountain, but in this part of the country they liked to exaggerate in reverse.) Not a neighbor in sight. We preferred it that way. Behind a screen of trees was Father’s garden. Here he planned to grow some table vegetables next year. Meanwhile, he’d found a stash of marijuana harvested by previous occupants.

Father and I lived in a school bus with no engine and no wheels. We didn’t have indoor plumbing or electricity in the school bus home, but there was a wood stove, a couple of mattresses, chairs, a propane-gas refrigerator, and tie-dyed curtains on the windows. We had a generator to run lights and the water pump, but Father shut off the juice at bedtime and we made do with flashlights, candles, and the moon. Father never got on my case for lack of neatness.

He wangled a way to keep me out of school, not for my benefit but so he could put me to work. Still, as far as I was concerned, the benefit was mine. Father petitioned the school board for the right to educate me himself, because (he swore) organized education was against his religion. Which was almost true. He signed a paper saying he’d teach me at home. He talked a lot about education, how good it could be “outside the system,” but he never actually taught me anything by way of formal learning. Actually, I already had a pretty good handle on the basics of reading and writing, so apparently I’d learned something in the five years that we’d been separated. The main thing Father taught me was cigarette smoking. He bought me a pack every day or so, even later when we were low on cash. I thought this was a very progressive action for a parent. Father believed that nothing was more important to an individual than his addictions.

Early on I asked Father about Mother, and he whacked me. He said he didn’t want to talk about her, about family, or anybody from the old days. He had his reasons, and that was that. I figured eventually he’d have to say something more. I just had to bide my time. Meanwhile, I waited for Langdon, my guardian angel, to appear. I had a plan; the angel would tell me where to find my mother. Father and I would track her down. Father would forgive her for hurting him; she would forgive him for whatever he needed to be forgiven for; they would both forgive me for whatever I needed to be forgiven for. I didn’t need to forgive them for anything. They just needed to forgive me and each other. Once that was done, the three of us would live together happily ever after. I told Father about Langdon, but he said he was only a figment of my imagination. Maybe so, but I still remembered his visit and the wonderful idea he’d left me with: the search for truth.

I also asked Father about the facts of life that Doctor Thatcher had referred to. He explained to me the whole business about putting it in and squirting that stuff inside and babies growing up. This was information I already should have known about, Father said. He thought I was faking interest just to embarrass him, but it was all news to me. He asked me if I had the feeling yet. I asked him what he meant by the feeling. He said the feeling that you feel when you feel yourself down there. I told him I didn’t have the feeling. He said he’d lost the feeling after he’d gotten into heavy drinking. Maybe it was all for the best, he said, that neither one of us, for whatever reason, had the feeling. He surprised me, then, by crying and taking a swing at me, but I saw it coming and he missed.

The leaves exploded with colors. Late fall after the leaves were down was even better. No bugs. No humidity. No leaves blocking the sun. No tourists.

Father and I hunted, fished, and trapped for many of our meals, and sometimes just for the fun of it. Once in a while Father cooked on the wood stove and, during a spell of Indian summer, outdoors on a stone fireplace; more often, we ate our meals cold right out of cans. Local people called Father Dirty Joe; I didn’t care. I missed Nurse Wilder, but getting away from the hospital, getting away from doctors, getting away from politeness was like cutting a good fart: a big relief. For a while I was happy in the woods.

During the daytime I helped Father with his business as a freelance firewood dealer. He would hook up with a contractor who was, say, building a house or a condo. Loggers would cut down the trees and take the good sawlogs. Father would be in charge of clean-up. He’d cut the rest of the wood with his chain saw, and I would toss the sticks in the bed of the pickup. We sold the wood to a wholesaler, who split it with a hydraulic machine and seasoned it a year before selling it to homeowners for firewood. After we moved out the salable wood, we’d stack the slash on the construction site and burn it. Cutting firewood, loading it, unloading it was hard work. But burning brush, that was no work at all. Father and I would get the fires going with the help of kerosene and old tires, sit back, and smoke cigarettes. Sometimes Father drank a six-pack of beer. I didn’t like it when he started in that early, because he wouldn’t stop, and by nighttime he’d be in an ugly mood.

Father drank beer and/or smoked marijuana every night. He let me try them both, but something told me to lay off. Nicotine became my vice.

I don’t want to give the impression that everything was blissful. The problem was Father’s personality. He used to beat me up. He never punished me; he never corrected me for bad habits such as public spitting, farting, nose-picking, rudeness, back talk, or birdflipping; he never criticized my manners or my posture or my occasional swearing. It was never anything I did that triggered his anger. It was all in him. He started out cuffing me with the flats of his hands, but he sprained a thumb and after that he used a stick (except when he was being spontaneous). He was careful never to hit me in the belly, because I think he wanted to avoid any internal injuries. I was grateful for that. I had black eyes, cut lips, puffy cheeks, and bruised arms and shoulders from trying to protect myself; to this day I have a ringing in my left ear from getting whacked.

I don’t want to exaggerate. At the time I didn’t mind too much getting whipped by my old man. I thought it was just part of growing up. He handled his frustration by getting stoned and drunk, waffling the bejesus out of me, and pretending the next morning that nothing had happened. Father would never have thought of pounding on a stranger. I felt kind of exalted, knowing that if he hurt me he might feel a little less stress and frustration. If there was one thing that kept me going it was that Father needed me. He said as much: “Without you, Web, I’d be back on the streets and dead in a year.”

When Father was sober, he more or less ignored me, but when he was stoned he liked to giggle and listen to music on his battery-operated boom box. He’d talk about the 1960s and early 1970s when he was hot stuff. He’d scoff at both conservatives and liberals. They were all part of “the system.” Not Father—he was part of “the revolution”; he loved that word “revolution.” Sometimes he’d say it just to excite himself. The revolutionaries had set the country on fire. They showed what people could do living together, loving together, playing music together, planting crops together, making home brew together, discovering new highs together.

When Father was drinking, he would criticize the government and the country, which he said was rigged so that only certain people got ahead. The system was responsible for lobotomizing the brains of young people. Talking about the system got him to talking about his own father, who was “straight” and who had died without ever getting stoned. Sometimes Father’s anger would turn to sadness, and he would become weepy. It was during one of those moments, on a gray December day on a wood-cutting job, that I dared spring the subject of my mother again.

Other boys my age were buying Christmas trees with their families. Father and I were delivering a load of firewood at 19 Oak Street in the neighborhood near Greenlawn Cemetery. Snow had fallen, melted, and frozen up solid, leaving the land hard and drab in color. Our client was paying us extra to stack the wood neatly. Father was in the bed of the truck tossing me sticks, and I was on the ground stacking the wood in rows four feet tall. It was a pretty good background for a touchy conversation, because Father and I didn’t have to look at each other. At the same time, I felt energized because I was so close to the muck, the place of my second birth. I sensed it was time to pop the question that had been on my mind since the day Father had taken me from the hospital.

“I want to know more about my mother,” I said

He stopped work for a second. “Why?”

“Because she’s my mother.”

Father didn’t say anything, just kept working as if he hadn’t heard me. But I knew I’d caught him in a weak moment, so I didn’t let up.

“I want to think about her,” I said, “but I don’t know what to think about because I can’t remember her.”

“So I have to draw you a picture.”

“Do you have a picture? Can I see it?”

“I had a snapshot, but I lost it.”

“Lost it?”

“Actually, I threw it away. I got sick of remembering her.”

All I could think to say was, “Oh.”

“I suppose you deserve to know something,” Father said, and he went back to work, tossing a stick at my feet. “She looked like you, a lean body, not an ounce of fat on her. Both of you, Websters all the way.”

Something didn’t add up. “Was her maiden name Webster, too?”

Father didn’t say anything, and he wouldn’t look at me as he worked faster and faster, fast work being a rare occurrence for him.

“You weren’t related to her, were you?” I said. “She wasn’t your sister, or something weird like that?”

“No, nothing that far out. Webster is not my real last name,” he said.

“Well, what is it?”

“Can’t say.”

“Why not?”

“Back in the good old days of the revolution, I blew up a building. A couple of people accidentally bought the farm from flying debris.”

“You’re a wanted man!” I said, impressed.

“That’s right. By the FBI. I took your mother’s name to salvage my freedom. You ever tell anybody and I’ll deny you’re my son and kill you.”

“You’d really kill me?”

“Probably not, but I’d want to. See when a man feels boxed in, like his freedom’s going to be taken away, that’s when he starts killing his loved ones.”

“I won’t tell. I promise. Cross my heart. Don’t I have any Webster relatives?”

“She was the last Webster, claimed Daniel Webster as an ancestor, claimed also some Indian blood, Ompompanoosuc tribe. Also, French-Canadian. Total American, she bragged. She’d say, ‘The Webster line dies with me.’ But of course she was wrong, because now you got the name, and you might just pass it on.”

“Did she love me?”

Father didn’t answer that question right away. He tossed wood at my feet, and I stacked it. We raced to see who could out-work the other. He had the advantage. It’s easier to throw wood from a truck than to stack it nice and neat. Finally when I couldn’t keep up and Father knew he had bested me, he slowed down and said, “She had some problems—booze, LSD, anything you can ingest. Maybe that’s why you’re a little coo-coo. I don’t know if she loved you or me or anybody. I know this: I loved her.

“We used to go around together. We’d split up, get back together, split up, get back together. This went on for years. She ran with other guys, but I always forgave her. We went from commune to commune. You could do that in those days. All you had to do was be skinny and carry a guitar. We made plans. We were going to start a homestead. Then you came along. It was an accident. Everything in those days was an accident. Explosions, music, love, everything. We thought accidental was the way to go. She didn’t know what to do with a baby. If the truth be told . . .” He paused, then went on. “I’m one that thinks truth’s overrated.”

I was thinking about the search for truth, that noble idea which Langdon, my guardian angel, had given me. I caught one of the sticks Father tossed down in mid-air, and I shook it at him. Fiercely, I screamed, “I want to know. The truth. All of it.”

Father thought for a moment, and then he said, “The truth is children interfered with her life-style. The truth is she didn’t want you, I didn’t want you, nobody wanted you.”

The air went right out of my balloon. “Oh,” I said.

“After you were born, she become morose. There was more LSD; there was heroin. Real heavy. Want more truth?”

“Absolutely,” I said, but my determination was only stubbornness. In my heart, I was hoping for a soothing lie.

“She and I pretty much neglected you. Sometimes we wouldn’t see you for months at a time. You’d stayed with this or that group. In those days we thought we were a tribe, a great big American tribe. The idea was everybody took care of everybody else. There was no such thing as family or country.”

“Seems like everybody in those days was just wishing,” I said.

Father got down from the truck. He put his arm around my shoulder. “That’s what it was, ten years of wishing. I don’t regret being part of it, though. It couldn’t have been any other way. But it’s hard today to make people respect that every once in a while, folks need a time for wishing.” Father removed his arm from my shoulder. “We used to have an expression back in the revolution. Never trust anyone over thirty.” He wiped away a tear, and then his face grew hard. I knew that look, so what happened next was my own fault.