Family & Fatherhood

Me and the Boy

In the summer of 2005, I became the closest thing to a father I will ever be, because I loved a woman with a child

He was named, this boy, for a man who wrestled an angel, but had lived a life free of contention, free of consequence. I wished I could tell him it would always be that way, but all I could do was teach him how to bloody another little boy's nose.

"Repeat after me," I said.

"Hurt 'em quick.

"Make 'em cry.

"Go home."

Father of the year.

"What if they try to step back when you swing?" he asked.

"You try," I said, as I reached out to tap him on the head. He lurched back but could not move. I was standing on his foot.

"Oh," he said.

I told him most little boys swing wild, from the side, and don't connect with much of anything. I lost as many boyhood fights as I won, but I learned. I tried to show how to block, jab. "You punch straight ahead, like driving a nail," I said.

I could hear my father's voice in my head.

"Is it okay to cry?" the boy asked. It's not even okay to ask that question, I thought.

"Try not to," I said.

I am not, usually, an idiot. I knew I was being a little careless with the boy, the way I was with everything else. It is easy to teach someone to throw a punch in abstract, but it's hard to explain the sick feeling that precedes any violence, even playground violence.

So I told him to walk away when he could.

"Is that what you would do?" he asked.

"Not on your damn life," I said.

He was confused now.

"I have run," I explained, when I knew I couldn't win and the cause didn't seem worth the pain. But I was always sick after. You choose the sick feeling you can stand most, the one before you fight or the one after you run away. But that was complicated for a 10-year-old.

"Son," I said, "I once ran away in a Mustang." I told him that the rules of conduct, from the school, the church, his beloved mom, didn't matter much in the dirt if you were getting hurt.

"You bite," I said.

He looked amazed.

"It's fine to gouge," I said.

Then his mother walked up and I was in trouble again. She would raise a gentle boy if she had to lock me in a shed.

"He doesn't need to know," she told me. I nodded my head, hoping that might spare me.

It never has.

"He's 10 years old," she hissed.

I told her, yes, he was getting started late.

"You are 12," she said. Still, I tried to modulate my behavior around the boy. Once, he asked me how to defend himself against a bigger boy.

"Kick him in the…" and I searched my mind for a Baptist word.

"Kick him in the scrotum," I said.

"What's a scrotum?" he asked. He walked around giggling for an hour and a half. So when his mother was not looking, we boxed in the living room and sparred in the yard. But the boy wanted to be a fighter like I wanted to be a fat Italian opera singer. He smiled when he punched, he giggled, and I knew he might live his whole life, a complete life, and never strike another man in anger.

It was like she drove a tenpenny nail through the last feeble, halting heartbeat of the man I was.

"Can you pick the boy up from school?" the woman asked.

At 46, I drove car pool.

At first I was terrified I would run over half a dozen nut-job children on the way to get him, because when the bell rang, they exploded from doors as if propelled by a cannon. They all wore the same damn clothes and all looked alike to me, at least at first, and what if I got the wrong one? I was always afraid I would be late, or he would perish from the elements or get in a car with a stranger, even stranger than me.

But I always snagged him clean, and we headed for the Sonic, for his tribute. The boy, the woman instructed me, was to have only a small drink, maybe a slush of some kind, so he would not "ruin his dinner."

It was a surreal thing, to hear that, like she was emanating from the speaker of a black-and-white television from 1963.

But the best thing to do, I had learned the hard way, was to make like some bobblehead doll.

Few men get in trouble when they nod.

I know the boy liked it when I showed up. I watched for him in the rearview mirror, and when he saw it was me, he started to grin.

"Hi, Ricky," he always said. Nobody but he and my momma get to call me that.

"Let's get us a treat," I always said. The Sonic was just around the corner.

"What do you want?" I always asked the boy as I punched the magic sugar button and the voice on the other end said hello, and he dutifully gave his modest order, like the good boy he was.

One day, about nine months into our time together, I punched, waited.

Three seconds is a lifetime at the red button.

"May I help you?" the voice said.

"I would like a 44-ounce root-beer float with vanilla ice cream and a corn dog," the boy said.

I just looked at him.

"Please?" he said.

"Your momma won't let you," I said.

"Well," he said, looking around the truck, "is she here?"

I thought a minute about that.

"Well, okay," I said.

Over time we were found out—I would learn that the boy had a perverse need to confess all of his sins to his mother—and she said I had to be responsible, said her son had not inherited a stepfather but a coconspirator.

I told her I would do better.

Not long after that, another driver almost hit us as we drove through town. People in Memphis all drive like God is on their side.

"I know what Rick would say," he said from the backseat.

"What?" she asked.

"He would say, 'What the hell does that damn fool think he's doing?'*"

Then he just grinned, all proud of himself.

She stared into me.

"What?" I said.

"Don't 'What?' me," she said.

I knew I needed some vitriol here, some passion, to get out of this.

"Shame on you," I said to the boy. "Just because you hear me say things, that doesn't mean you can say them. If I were a smoker, you couldn't smoke. If I were a drinker, you couldn't drink. You're a little boy. You are not me. You are not me."

He beamed.

He had root-beer residue on his cheeks.

He had stains on his school clothes I did not want to think about.

His halo hung lopsided on his head.

And in mid-rant, I started to laugh, not at the boy in front of me, but at the boy I was such a long time ago.

From The Prince of Frogtown , by Rick Bragg, copyright 2008 by Rick Bragg. Published by Alfred A. Knopf.