“Nineteen hours a day minimum!” the frazzled dirty father yells to us as he comes in. “It takes everything you’ve got. It absolutely kills you. I’m thirty but I look sixty. But what can you do? If you step off the treadmill for a minute you lose everything you’ve worked for!”
“Honey!” the wife yells from the steamy kitchen. “Stove’s off!”
He grabs a wad of paper and runs in and stokes the stove. Meanwhile the kids are filling our tumblers and dusting off our shoes and toting laundry down to the Canal and hanging the finished laundry on a line that keeps snapping and being mended by a teenage boy who’s wearing a tool belt and shouting orders to everyone at once. The baby starts crying and a limping child grabs a spoon and scoops up some mashed potatoes and pours on a little sugar, then sprints across the room to stuff the mixture in the baby’s mouth.
“Good work, Gretel!” the sweating mother screams from the kitchen. “Now come take this scalding hot tray away!”
The other customer is an old man with a sales case, who flinches every time something crashes to the floor. Whenever the wife rushes by in a frenzy she touches his shoulder and says she’s sorry everything’s so crazy and not very appetizing, and he nods and flinches as something else crashes to the floor and shards of whatever broke fly across the room and the older kids scurry to pick them up before the baby crawls over and puts them in her mouth.
We fill our plates and go out into the yard and sit in relative peace among baskets and baskets of potatoes and piles of car parts and a goat who keeps looking over at us and making a hacking sound. The husband rushes out with a raw potato in his mouth and starts rebuilding an engine.
“If you want something nice, you’ve got to get it for yourself,” he says around the potato. “I want a generator for my family. Lights at night. A fan in the summer. And I’m getting them!”
“Honey!” the wife yells from inside. “Come get the cat off the baby. It’s trying to eat her bib.”
“Coming, sweetie!” the husband yells, and grins and shrugs at us. “It’s always something. But I’ve got to give it everything I got. That’s my mission. My place in life. My calling. I’m no warrior. I’m no lover. I’m a plodding dad, plain and simple. But I love it!”
He sprints towards the house and trips on a bit of fence he’s been mending and falls directly into a rosebush.
“Ah well!” he says as he pulls himself out. “Nobody said it was going to be easy. And this is definitely not easy. Wow. These thorns sure hurt. But hey. You’ve got to get up and keep on going. You snooze, you lose. Ouch. Yikes. Concentrate, concentrate.”
“Honey,” the wife screams. “The cat’s standing right on the baby’s tray with his paws in her food! Please don’t dawdle! Cats have germs. Unless you don’t mind your daughter eating cat germs!”
“You’re snapping at me, love!” he shouts as he starts towards the house again. “Please don’t snap!”
“Guys, don’t fight!” one little girl cries out.
“Dad, God,” the boy with the tools says. “Mom does so much for all of us.”
“Don’t correct your father,” the mother screams.
“Don’t scream at him,” the father shouts.
“She can!” the tool boy yells. “She can scream at me if she wants! I don’t mind!”
“Ah jeez,” the father says, rolling his eyes at us.
“Daddy, goodness,” the little girl says. “Please don’t use Jesus’ name as a cuss!”
“Don’t correct your father,” the mother says.
“Family,” the father says tensely. “We have guests.”
“Not many,” the wife says. “Not nearly enough of them.”
“Are we going to lose the house?” the little girl says. “Oh no!”
“We’ve got to pull together,” the father says. “I call for a silent prayer moment.”
They huddle in the yard. They hold hands and bow their heads. We stop eating, except for Buddy, who redoubles his efforts since it’s family-style.
“Yes,” the father says tearfully once they’ve finished praying. “With love there’s always hope. With hope there’s a Ways healing. Yes. Yes.”
“Honey,” the wife calls as she goes back inside. “Shall we serve these gentlemen the dessert they paid for, or let them starve and then spread the bad word about our place up and down the Canal?”
“Yes,” the father says. “No.”
“All right then,” the mother says. “Why not get back to work like the rest of us? Perhaps I’m missing the halo over your head that disqualifies you from having to do your share.”
“This is exactly why I’m still single,” Buddy says while vigorously gumming an eighth potato and catching the drool in his palm.
That night on the barge I dream of Dad. I dream the iceballs on his cuffs and the dried blood on his face from when he fell trying to get us cornmeal from the Red Cross checkpoint. I dream him knee-deep in snow and cursing the Winstons.
When I dream it, I’m Dad.
Imagine: You’re walking through a frozen marsh. Your kids are delirious with hunger and keep speaking aloud to imaginary savior-figures. Sitting against a tree is a snowfrosted corpse. Wild dogs have been at it. Your son puts on the corpse’s coat. It’s bloody and hangs to his knees. You’re too tired to tell him take it off. Your wife sits on a rock to rest. You make the kids walk in circles to stay warm. You make them slap their hands against their thighs and recite the alphabet. You’re scared. You love them so much. If only you could keep them safe.
Then through the trees you see lights. Up on a hillside is a neon sign and a floodlit castle tower.
BOUNTYLAND, the sign says, WHERE MERIT IS KING — AND SO ARE YOU!
Under the words is a picture of a crown with facial features, smiling and snapping its fingers. The sounds from inside are jovial. You smell roasting meat and hear a girls’ choir rehearsing Bach. You run back to fetch your wife. She says she can’t go on.
“It’s all right,” you say. “We’re saved.”
You drag your tired family up the slope. Because of the snow it’s slick and the kids keep sliding down. At the gate a guard with a tattoo on his neck asks for your monthly income. You say things have been rough lately. He asks for an exact figure. You say zero. He snorts and says get lost. You start to beg.
“Christ,” he says, “I would never beg in front of my wife and kids. That’s degrading.”
You keep begging. He shuts the gate and walks away fast. You stand there a minute, then start back down the hill. The kids lag behind, staring up at the sign and hating you for being so powerless. The girl picks up a frozen clod and gnaws at it. Your wife tells her stop but she doesn’t listen. You hate your wife for being so powerless.
Kill me, God, you think, get me out of this.
Then there’s an explosion and you tackle your family into a ditch and lie in the muck looking at the sky above the place on the hilclass="underline"
Fireworks.
The fireworks get your goat and you drag the kids back up. At the retaining wall you tell them they’ll understand someday. You hug them. They’re so beautiful. Then you take the boy by an arm and a leg and heave him over the wall. He lands on the other side and shouts that his arm’s broken.
“Daddy, don’t leave me,” he screams. “Why are you doing this?”