That One Day

There was a time before the stroke that my Dad had one of those
fear-evoking nicknames.

He got it in the Army, where he served for a few years as a corporal,
before getting his honorable discharge. He never told anyone how it
came to pass. He was so renowned for his mean streak and sense of
justice, however, that they appropriately called him "Corporal
Punishment." There was just that one day.

That's all I ever knew him as. He never talked much, other than to bark
orders. Mom did most of the public relations for the family. Dad would
just sit in front of the TV, in his faded green cotton upholstered
armchair with coffee stains scarring the cushions, watching the blank
screen. You would assume it was just broken, but my brother and I were
able to watch our cartoons whenever Dad wasn't there. I wondered what
he ever saw in the overcast reflection.

Before his stroke, Dad was the strongest man in the county. The
neighborhood kids would often come to watch him perform menial labor
tasks, just because he did them with such brute ease. They always told
me that my Dad was strong and how they were glad they weren't his kids
because of the beatings he could dole out.

It always made me angry to hear them talk like that because Dad never
hit my brother, Paul, or me once. He always exhibited exemplary control
of his temper, even when Paul broke the windshield on the car or when I
brought home an F on my report card. There was just that one
day...

Though I often wondered: was the control just a ruse? Was it a
complicated skill that all military officials learned in the boot camps
and barracks? Dad always had that temper under control, but there was
always a compulsory gleam in his eye, one that made you shudder.

Dad never hit us once. That was my credo. Any time the kids would ask
where I got my shiners, they would always assume that Dad gave them to
me. The teachers always asked me if things were going ok at home. I
always insisted that they were. No one could believe that a man of my
father's stature could be capable of being a pacifist. It just wasn't
in the general demeanor of military men. Nick Johnson's father, who
lived down the street, would scream into the night, trying to scare the
ghosts of the soldiers he killed in the war. The next morning, he'd
take it out on Nick. One day, Nick died from his injuries after a
particularly brutal beating and his father was locked away in Shady
Acres mental asylum. So that's where ideas come from.

Still, there was some explaining of all those shiners to contend
with.

Well, when Paul and I would fight, as we often did, being only two
years apart in age, Dad would set up a mini-boxing ring in the back
yard. He'd take some fishing line and four horseshoe stakes and create
an 8' by 8' square. Then, he'd wrap our hands in old sheets,
overlapping knuckles over and over. He'd carry out his old green
armchair, the one he'd watch the blank TV in, and set it ringside. He
had one of those little bells that stores have on their counters and
he'd wait for us to climb through the fishing line into the ring. Then
he'd ring the bell.

It was Paul's and my objective to beat the living snot out of one
another for as long as Dad could watch. Seeing as how he watched a
blank television screen most of his days, Dad could watch for a long
time. And we didn't dare disappoint the man. We were too afraid to, on
sheer word-of-mouth. He literally could kill us if he so chose, with
the mere flick of a wrist. He never cheered at us or said things to
scare us into fighting. There was only that gleam.

So most of my childhood was spent in the ring. My brother and I must
have fought each other over a thousand times. Sometimes I'd win.
Sometimes he would. But always, we came out looking like our father had
just beaten us. Blood would be soaked into the sheets. Welts would form
on our heads. Tears would well in our eyes.

The ordeal made me grow to respect my brother. The idea that at any
time, he and I could inflict bodily harm on the other just seemed to be
motivation enough to form this mutual agreement, which in turn, was
broken over and over, a thousand times.

But nevertheless, I respect him. And I respect my father, faults and
all. He was a good man, overall. There was just that one day.

That one day was one that would live in infamy, to quote my father's
favorite President. That was the day that I won the fight in the yard -
the last bout my brother and I ever had. Now, I didn't kill Paul, but I
hit him so hard that I sure felt like I did. And it wasn't a clean
shot, either. A car honking as it had passed had distracted him. So I
decked him. The blood shot out of his nose like a lawn sprinkler and
spattered the blades of grass. The sound of his nose breaking was like
the cracking of a walnut on Christmas Eve. He dropped immediately to
the ground and bled there, motionless.

In that eternal moment, I could see in my peripheral my Dad rise up out
of his chair and lunge towards me. He hated cheap shots. He began to
let out this growl - no, this roar, like a lion on a savanna on the
African plains. Just as his hand reached back, fist clenched, aimed at
my face, he seized up. He clutched the side of his neck and the breath
caught in his throat. I could see the pain in his eyes. It looked just
like the gleam.

As he lay there, still, beside my brother that one day, I realized that
I could never join the Army.