The Tank Man's Son Read Online Free PDF

and play games of Monopoly by the woodstove. In other ways, however, life went on much the same as always. A different dinner table, maybe, but the same chronic shortage of food   —and the same wandering days filled with exploration and battles and boredom and sand.
    When Jerry started school, I didn’t think much of it. While he was gone, I played by myself   —except when Mom forced me to play with my sister   —but since I slept late and the bus brought him back early, my routine remained much the same.
    I had a vague sense of the year passing by and summer arriving   —then Jerry and I both slept in   —and suddenly it was time for me to start school as well. From what Jerry had told me, school wasn’t anythingmuch: just somewhere you had to go, and when the bell rang, you had to come back home again. Lunchtime sounded like one of the only bright spots. You could get a hot meal with fish sticks and Jell-O in a little cup and mashed potatoes that they slopped onto your tray with an ice cream scoop   —for free. Recess didn’t sound bad either, since you could play on a field of grass so big that it took a whole minute to run across it, with not a sandbur to be found.
    Our refrigerator at home never had more than a few things in it: milk, a tub of leftovers from the night before   —nearly always potatoes and some dry, flavorless meat   —maybe some eggs, and a stick or two of butter. When Mom wanted to make us a treat, she’d use a boxed mix to bake a cake in a low, wide pan. She’d slide it, unfrosted, onto the bottom shelf of the fridge, and we’d use forks to scoop out however much we wanted to eat. I couldn’t wait to try the cafeteria Jell-O.
    On that first day, Dad didn’t send me down the driveway to wait for the bus with Jerry. Instead, after I dressed in the same thing I always wore   —brown corduroys, brown leather lace-up shoes, and a dirty T-shirt   —I climbed into Dad’s pickup truck. When we arrived at school, Dad led the way to my classroom, never turning to see if I was following. He walked directly to the front and interrupted the teacher, who was talking with another parent.
    “If you have any problems with him, let me know. I’ll take care of him when he gets home.”
    The teacher stammered that nothing like that would be necessary.
    “Well, if you need to slap him upside the head, that’ll be fine too. You won’t hear any complaining from me.”
    The teacher looked past Dad and found me. Then a quick glance back to my dad. “No, no, that won’t be needed, Mr. Bouman,” she managed. “Ah, thank you anyway, but . . .”
    Dad, without saying good-bye, was already out the door, forcing the incoming kids to step aside. I found my desk and sat down withmy arms crossed. Then I found the wall clock and tried to count the minutes until lunch.

    Despite starting school, though, the eleven acres of sand on Blakely Drive remained my world. Apart from school, we rarely left home, and if I wasn’t doing a chore, and if there wasn’t a blizzard or an ice storm, I spent almost all my time outside, usually with Jerry and sometimes with Sheri tagging along. Mom had a stock response to our complaints of boredom   —complaints that only increased as we grew older and the shine of living alone in the boonies faded.
    “Go outside and play ,” she’d always say, looking up from her laundry or her pressure cooker or her dustpan. “And take your sister with you!”
    Jerry and I would slouch out the door, and nearly every time Sheri would ambush us.
    “Where ya going?”
    “Nowhere.”
    “Well, can I come?”
    “We’re just gonna walk around.”
    “But I wanna come too!”
    Jerry and I would stand there, hoping she’d disappear. It wasn’t that we didn’t like our kid sister   —it was that she ruined our fun just by tagging along.
    “You know,” I’d say, “we aren’t even going anywhere.”
    “Yes you are! You already said so!”
    “Fine. Fine . We’re going