Chapter One
posted in Novel |
Here’s the first Chapter of Lost and Found. Please don’t think this entire book is going to be about the relationship with my father. It won’t be — not by a long shot. I hope you’ll return for the unfolding of this young boy’s life.
Be well — be in peace,
Ron Rink
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I was eight years old when I made up my mind to run away from home. The idea to do it came from a guy at the bowling alley where I worked. It happened on a Thursday. It was in the summer. Since there was no school I was working full time.
The day before I made this decision I had a piano lesson right after I finished my shift at the bowling alley. I was practicing on the piano after my lesson when my father came home from work. He was furious about something. I don’t recall what it was. It was usually something to do with the house not being clean enough — or someone touching something on his desk in the basement — or dinner wasn’t ready — or something got left out of place in the garage. It didn’t seem to matter what it was. Whenever he came home in one of those moods I knew I would probably get another beating. Even though it didn’t happen every time, it was regular enough so that I would get that feeling of fear deep in the pit of my stomach when he would come storming into the house.
That Wednesday night my father had once again taken me up to the attic with his Bible in one hand and me in the other.
As I look back on it now, I had somehow come to understand that his “reasons” were nothing more than excuses for why he felt he had to do this to me. There had to be something inside of this man that caused his need to strike out. I knew of other kids that were beaten by their fathers from time-to-time, but only when their fathers were drunk, or when the kids had done something bad. Not only that, but the abuse usually went to their mothers as well. My father believed in total abstinence where alcohol was concerned, and to the best of my knowledge, he never hit my mother. His violence against me will always be a mystery since he’s no longer on the planet. Plus, I ended my relationship with him while I was still a teenager, so those questions never got asked.
This time it was worse than usual. It started out just like it did all the other times. He’d pick up his Bible off the table in the living room, then grab me by the back of my neck and shove me down the hall towards the door to the attic. He’d make me open the door because his hands were full of his Bible and me. It seemed as though he was actually lifting me by my neck as he pushed me up the stairs ahead of him. Once we were up there, he would start by just slapping me in the face and pushing me around while he kept shouting that he was going to make sure I was a good Christian boy. He’d hold his Bible up in the air and yell at me to hold my head up and look at it. Then when I looked up he’d slap me across the face again.
Usually, that was as far as he went with these sessions. I would start crying and he would keep slapping and pushing me for a while, but then he would suddenly decide to stop and tell me I could come back downstairs when I finished crying. The slaps stung, and sometimes when he pushed me I would fall to the floor or bash into the wall. It wasn’t so much that he hurt me physically; it was more the fact that he frightened me terribly.
That Wednesday evening he did something he had never done before. He always brought the Bible with him, but this time he kept sticking the Bible in my face and in a tight, vicious tone of voice, would order me to tell him what sins I had committed that day. When I would say that I hadn’t done anything bad, he would hit me in the face with his fist and yell at me to tell him the truth.
He screamed, “Don’t you know that lying is a sin? If you keep lying like this, I’ll just have to keep bringing you up here and punishing you!”
Hitting with his fist was new and it really hurt a lot. He did that several times until I fell to the floor. I wasn’t knocked out but I guess I thought that falling down would make it harder for him to keep hitting me. But he’d just tuck the Bible under his armpit, grab me by the arms, pull me back up to my feet and hit me again. I was crying uncontrollably and bleeding from my mouth and nose. I was so scared that my body was shaking uncontrollably. I didn’t know how to make him stop.
Then suddenly he did stop, and like nothing happened he said, “Clean yourself up and then come to dinner.” He tromped back downstairs and left me sobbing on the attic floor.
When I finally got up and went down to the bathroom to wash my face and hands, I could see that I had some dark marks around my eyes and one side of my face was swollen and red.
After I came to the dinner table, my mother just looked at me and never said a word.
