The Savage(6)

Van Dorn longed for a life with kids his own age to fish with. Talk about books and girls. Something more than the wiring of a home or the best price of copper per pound. He ran a hand through the reams of hair that hid his forehead, tickled his upper lip and the rim of his neck, unable to restrain his thoughts from Horace, and he said, “Tired of this bullshit. Wanna go back home.”

When the economy began to swirl into snuff, Van Dorn was fourteen. He remembered stepping from the Ritalin shouts of children who lined the green vinyl seating of the school bus. Walked the long stretch of gravel to a heat-bleached trailer and the pole barn Horace worked from, a stretch of land they’d resided upon since the boy’s birth.

Van Dorn’s mother had run off with another man when he was nine on what his father called the chemical path, rumor was she got clasped into a world of trading skin in truck-stop diners to afford her and her new fellow’s next fix. Tap of the vein. Taking a ride down addiction.

Van Dorn had found his father sunk into the couch that day while lipping a bottle of black-label Evan Williams, two backpacks expanded and laid out on the wooden coffee table, and he questioned, “Where we going?”

Horace swallowed hard and capped the bottle, knowing that other than the one hundred dollars in his wallet, he was flat broke. Employment had dried up, no one was spending. The furniture restoration and handyman business where he’d strip and restore antique dressers and hutches, remodel a room, build a new deck or rewire a home, had sunk. He was left with nothing but splinters, tools collecting dust, and a mouth to feed. He’d procured an idea from a regular down at the tavern who’d lipped and yammered about homes being built quicker than they could be inhabited. Their worth imploded. Now they were unable to be afforded, the materials that constructed them lay in rot. A person would be better off looting the metallic conductors from the structures and setting the rest to flame. He knew what he could do and how he could do it; the wheels of survival churned ideas in Horace’s mind.

Planting his palms on his knees, Horace stood up, leveled his singed red eyes on Van Dorn, and said, “Into the wilds of life, my son.”

“What about school? Our home?”

Van Dorn sensed his father’s tension as he grabbed one of the packs, handed it to him like an uppercut to the gut.

“The road will provide your schooling and a place to rest your eyes.”

And without contemplating consequence for his words, Van Dorn asked, “What if I don’t wanna go?”

It was the first time his father had laid hands to him. Bringing the calluses of his right palm to his face, telling him, “You have no say in the tutelage I’m demanding of you. You’re going.”

They left that day with the clothes on their backs, a tent, a gun, some tools, fishing rods, and a few books the father and the boy favored.

For Whom the Bell Tolls. The Old Man and the Sea. Tobacco Road. Wise Blood. The Sound and the Fury.

But Van Dorn’s words brought the lurch of guilt for this way of life to his father. He’d questioned Van Dorn’s quietness during their travels. His rolling of the eyes when talking scrap prices. Distant stares at other kids hanging out in the mom-and-pop groceries when gathering provisions. One thing Horace would not show was weakness. To him it meant failure as a provider and a father. He replaced it with anger. Feeling as if he was being tested and ridiculed by Dorn. One day he couldn’t take no more. Coaled the remaining tobacco from his cigarette. Flicked the butt out the window where dark passed warm and rashy as a wool blanket. Took the steering with his left. Launched his right fist into the peak of Van Dorn’s left jaw. “Dammit!” he yelled. The truck swerved off then back onto the road. Pointed out the insect-gut-sprayed windshield. Horace said, “All this here is your home. Your education. Can you not see what I’m learning you?”

Parting the hair from his eyes, Van Dorn rubbed his cheek. Felt the balm of heat. Held back the moisture that weighted his sight.

“I seen enough of this home. Of this learning. I want to go back to school, have friends. I want it to be like it once was.”

Since being on the road, they’d taken shelter amongst the dilapidated houses within the valleys of shunned vehicles on cinder blocks. Where dry-rotted tires hung from limbs and unraked leaves piled to the shade of bourbon and replaced the grass. They’d back down rutted driveways that held no hint of movement, hoping for a few hours of shut-eye. Sometimes they were met by half-mongrel hounds barking, then Horace would shift from reverse to drive and speed away as the mixed breeds gave chase. Other times they’d find a stream, set up a camp where they could bathe and fish. Cat hit at night, while bluegill or bass struck at the break of morning. They’d scale, gut, and then seer the opal meat in a cast-iron pan over an open flame. Fingering and eating the oily meat.

In Horace’s eyes, he’d educated and provided for Van Dorn the only way he knew. Passing on his skills of how a house was blueprinted, where the wiring and piping ran, and knowing where to begin cutting the bronze-colored metal. Then loading and hauling their wares to a place where they could burn the insulation from the Romex to trade weight for coin. To Horace, these learnings were an apprenticeship for persisting in a world that was becoming less and less kind to those like themselves who were skilled in a trade.

Slowing the truck as they rounded a lake, Horace noted how a few houses were plotted across what looked to have once been untrespassed acreage, more than likely willed to a family member after kin had died, then sold and sectioned off for new construction. At least that’s what Horace believed.