The Tank Man's Son Read Online Free PDF Page A

engine once, twice, and when it caught the third time, he yanked the gearshift into reverse and floored it. There was a moment when nothing happened, and then the wheels found just enough traction to propel us backward down the hill. Dad spun the wheel hard right, and Jerry, Sheri, and I were smashed into one another in a pile against the door. Then we were bouncing down the driveway, sliding out onto the road, accelerating.
    Mom stared at Dad. In a voice barely loud enough to hear, Dad answered her silent question. “It’s gone.”
    Mom began to cry into her hands. I grabbed the back of the front seat and levered myself to my feet, ready to shout one of the dozen questions I’d just thought of. Jerry did the same. Dad killed our questions before they could begin with a single gesture, his right hand coming up into a fist below the rearview mirror. We plopped down and closed our mouths.
    We drove back to Grandma Jean’s through the black night. The drone of the car was interrupted only by Mom’s sobs in the front seat. When Grandma opened the door, wearing her nightgown and holding a flashlight, she didn’t seem surprised to see us.
    The next morning, Grandma’s voice woke us, calling us to the kitchen for oatmeal.
    “Where’s Mom?” Jerry asked.
    “She and your father went to look at the house,” Grandma answered, setting three steaming bowls in front of us and handing us silver spoons.
    “But is Mom okay?” Sheri worried.
    “She’ll be fine,” Grandma answered. “And you’ll be fine if I get you some milk, hmm?” She poured it from a tall porcelain pitcher that matched our bowls.
    Jerry lifted his bowl slightly off the table, examining the delicate designs traced around its rim. “Where’d you get these, anyway?”
    “From England,” Grandma replied. “Aren’t they nice?”
    “They look like they could break.”
    “Yes, they could,” she agreed. “So we’ll be careful, won’t we?”
    We nodded, Grandma nodded, and we ate the rest of our oatmeal in silence. It wasn’t until lunchtime that Mom returned. Her face was still puffy and streaked with red. Sheri ran to her.
    “Mom, are we going home now?”
    “Yes, we’re going back. The trailer is okay.”
    Jerry frowned. “The trailer! But what about the house?”
    “It will . . .” Mom tried to answer, but stopped speaking until she could battle back a fresh round of sobs. Eventually she was able to finish. “It will be a while before we can move into the house, kids. There was a tornado.”
    Grandma walked us to the front door, and while we sat to tug on our shoes, she pressed a wad of money into Mom’s hand.
    “It’ll be okay,” she offered.
    Mom nodded, but didn’t speak. Grandma watched from the front door as we climbed back into the car and pulled away.
    Back at home, we managed to inch our way up the driveway. There was the trailer, right where it always was, looking no worse than it always did. And there, at the top of the hill, perched jumbled piles of cinder blocks, topped with splintered wood. The walls had all been blown out, as if scattered like one of the sand castles Jerry and I liked to build and then destroy. The roof was lying in the valley behind the house.
    Dad was still too stunned to say much. He kept walking around the pile of rubble, stopping now and then to touch a cinder block or a length of pipe.
    “Mostly intact,” he said more than once. “Mostly intact.”
    We kept living in our trailer. Dad had a deep well drilled near the top of the hill. And three months later, Dad announced that he was finished rebuilding the house and we could move in. The trailer stayed where it was. Dad tried to get rid of it, but no one would take it, even for free.

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    I N ONE WAY, moving into our new home drew a sharp line   —on one side were our cramped, primitive trailer days, while on the other stretched a future filled with luxuries like our own beds, running water, and a living room where we could lie on the floor