Lost and Found-2
posted in Novel |
Here is another segment of the prologue to my novel, “Lost and Found”. Thanks to everyone who commented either here or at Facebook. Your words were encouraging so I’ll continue on.
Also, someone asked if the picture here of the book cover was me — the answer is yes, it’s me at about a year and a half. You’ll learn more about it as we continue with this venture.
Also, if you’re new to how blogs work, they show the most recent post first, and then the preceding posts follow. So, if you’ve arrived and want to read from the beginning, you’ll have to look down at the lower right under Categories and click on Novel.
Be well — be in peace — Ron
===========================================================
My father first brought me up to the attic when I was around six or seven years old. My memory of that first time is as vivid today as it was on that day. I can still feel the fear in the pit of my stomach when I think about it. I hadn’t done anything bad that day. He just came home in a terrible, crazy mood and started yelling at my mother and me.
He was shouting things like, “I work all day and have to come home to this sloppy, messy house!”
Or, “What were you doing that kept you so busy dinner isn’t started yet?”
Or, “Why don’t you get that boy to help you instead of letting him just play around all day?”
My father was a little over six feet tall and had light, thin reddish hair, sort of a carrot color. Sometimes other men called him “Slim”. His arms were long and you could see freckles on his skin through his arm hair. His hands were large. When I was little, I would look at his hands on the steering wheel of the car and think how enormous they were as they grasped the wheel with that same reddish hair and freckles on the backs of his hands and arms.
I don’t know if calling my father anti-social would be completely accurate, but he was certainly one of the quietest, inwardly focused people you’d ever meet. There weren’t any “How was your day?” conversations in my house. About all I’d ever seen him do at home was read the newspaper or his Bible – take naps – eat dinner – or do bookwork in the basement. Occasionally he and my mother would have friends over to play cards, but even then, he didn’t make small talk—he just focused on the game. After the friends left, he’d usually complain to my mother, “I wish those people would quit jabbering so much and concentrate more on the game.”
That first awful day I tried to sneak off into my room, but he grabbed me by the arm, stared at me with venom in his eyes and snarled, “You just stay put here, boy! Don’t you go trying to sneak off somewhere while I’m talking to you!”
Then he picked up his Bible from the side table in the living room, grabbed me with his huge hand by the back of my neck and hissed, “You and me, we’re going to pay a visit up in the attic that’ll get you to understand what I’m talking about!”
He tucked the Bible under his arm and with one hand on the back of my neck and the other on the seat of my pants, he pushed me up the stairs in front of him. I tripped on the steps because he was pushing me so fast. He picked me up like I weighed only a couple of pounds and yelled, “Get on your feet, boy! What’s the matter with you falling down like that? Get on up there!”
He started shoving me around the attic space. I stumbled backwards after each shove, but he’d come after me and shove me again, jabbing at my shoulders and chest with his hand, yelling, “What’s the matter with you? Why were you sneaking off into your room when I was talking to you?”
I was so scared I wet my pants. I started to cry and pleaded with him to stop. He slapped me hard in the face.
My memory is blank about the rest of that time. I don’t need to remember it though—there were plenty of other times to keep my memory fresh, even after all these years.
———— ————
I didn’t know where to start looking – there were so many boxes. Everything was dark, dusty and smelled moldy—it reminded me of the awful Limburger cheese my father liked. One thing I did know about my parents—they’d be more likely to stash money in the house than in a bank. My father was always saying, “I don’t trust banks—what’s to stop those bank people from picking up my money and walking off with it?”
Even with the window shade up, I could barely see. I doubted either of them would be good at hiding anything. They never had to learn to be sneaky. The only thing my mother ever found that I’d hidden was a box of rubbers. I’d tucked them under some clothes in my dresser and planned to hide them better later on, but she found them before I got around to it.
“Roland,” she said in an authoritative voice shaking the small blue box in front of my face, “what in the world are these things doing in your dresser drawer?”
I didn’t know how to respond, but I think I said something weak like, “Geez, Mom, I don’t know where those came from.”
I’d never even used a rubber—but I’d sure dreamt about doing it often enough. One of the older guys in the gang had given them to me—“Just in case you ever need one,” he’d said with a smirk. My mother fussed and fumed and sputtered! She didn’t know what to say. Her face got all red and splotchy and she mumbled something about putting them into the trash and burning them. I often wondered if she really knew what they were.
I spotted a box marked “Old Papers” that wasn’t taped shut. It was a National Biscuit Company box marked Premium Crackers. My father had worked for them since he was in his teens. It’s the only job he ever had other than a paper route when he was a kid. He started out as a truck driver for them and eventually became a salesman.
I dug through the box but there was nothing in it that I was looking for – it actually contained just a bunch of boring old papers.
Even though I didn’t fear him as much in those days as I did when I was younger, I knew that if my father caught me snooping around in those boxes he’d give me another terrible beating. He’d been dragging me up in the attic for so many years that I’d learned not to show him the pain and fear. I’d just stare at him without crying, no matter how hard he’d hit me. I hoped that if he didn’t think he was hurting me, he’d just stop. I often wondered what he would do if I fought back, especially since I was a good street fighter.
Under the Old Papers box was a box marked Valuable Records. Inside were records about their house and church.
My parents were raised in the Dutch Reformed Church. This church had some of the strangest rules, especially if you were a young person. One of them was that you couldn’t do any work on Sundays—something they followed to the letter. My mother prepared the Sunday meal, usually a roast with potatoes and vegetables, on Saturday night. She’d put the whole dinner in a roaster and turn it on before we went to church. It would be done cooking when we got home. Even the dishes weren’t washed until Monday—they sat and soaked overnight. Most people got their Sunday paper on Sunday morning—my parents had the boy deliver theirs on Saturday night. My father bought his gas for the car on Saturday so he wouldn’t be the cause for the gas station guy to work on Sunday. I couldn’t figure those things out. The paperboy still had to deliver the rest of his papers on Sunday, and the gas station guy still had to be there on Sunday, regardless.
=============================================
Stay tuned — I’ll post some more tomorrow or the next day. — RR
