Burn Down the Ground (8 page)

“Sorry, but I have to catch a flight home tonight.”

“I wanted to smoke a joint before our visit.” Dad’s favorite pastimes used to be smoking marijuana, sipping a cold beer, betting on football, and conversing with friends. I guess a slightly stoned jailhouse visit with his daughter is as close to freedom as he can get
.

Rules don’t allow for tobacco, drugs, or alcohol, so my father has quit smoking and drinking. He doesn’t usually smoke weed, either, not because of the law, but because of the cost. Complaining that five dollars buys a “tiny joint as thin as spaghetti,” he doesn’t think it’s worth it. Although he hasn’t smoked this morning, his access to weed surprises me
.

“Joint? Where did you get that?”

“Found it in the pages of a magazine at the library. Somebody must have missed it.” He shrugs and smiles. “Their loss is my gain. Did you bring a burger?”

“I wanted to but Dairy Queen wasn’t open at nine-thirty.”

Dad shakes his head, not concealing his annoyance. “See, you are too early.”

I look over my shoulder at the guard to see if it is safe for me to pass my contraband. “I have gum in my waistband.”

Dad wiggles his fingers impatiently as I dig the package out from its hiding spot. He rips open the silver foil in a flash of excitement and chomps a piece with his remaining front teeth. It takes only three or four chews for the burst of flavor to overwhelm him. He closes his eyes and leans back with his arms outstretched and palms facing outward like he is praising Jesus
.

“Long time,” Dad signs. After a few more chews a bewildered look washes over him. He inspects the package and finger-spells the words “Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit,” as if to ensure that, yes, this is the correct brand of gum. “Tastes different. Long time, I guess.”

I watch him. He looks like a little boy seeing fireworks for the first time
.

Without warning, my father slips off one of his Chuck Taylors and slides sticks of gum between the cushion and sole of the shoe before replacing it on his foot. He swiftly does the same with the other
.

“What are you doing?”

“I can sell them for a dollar a stick,” Dad tells me as he reties his laces
.

I don’t think they are well hidden, but Dad isn’t worried. I glance around to see if anyone has noticed and spot a beefy Hispanic guy. His buzz cut reveals a dented skull. He has an eye missing with the lid sewn shut and his skin looks melted. His bottom lip droops, allowing saliva to escape, and he uses a handkerchief to wipe the drool
.

ASL has its advantages, including the ability to talk without being overheard by those around us. “What happened to him?” I sign, trying not to stare
.

“He killed his wife and kids then tried to kill himself. It didn’t work,” Dad replies matter-of-factly. “Good man. Quiet.”

Quiet
, says my deaf dad. And
good
? It’s all relative, I suppose. The disfigured murderer is a good man in my father’s eyes
.

What does that say about Dad?

THE MAN OF STEEL

N
ow that we were civilized and living in a trailer, my brother and I had three rules:

1. Don’t leave the refrigerator door hanging wide open. We live paycheck to paycheck and money doesn’t grow on trees;

2. Don’t drink straight out of the milk jug because it grosses Mom out; and

3. Don’t tell anyone Mom and Dad smoke marijuana.

From the minute she enrolled me in third grade at Montgomery Elementary School and David in sixth grade at Montgomery Junior High, my mother sounded like a broken record when it came to Rule #3. “You know not to tell anyone we smoke, right?”

“I know!” I huffed. Her warnings were almost solely directed at me, as if David could be trusted and my history as a motor-mouth would get them busted.

In late July, my mother drove David and me to Weiner’s, a discount clothing store in Conroe, to put some school clothes on layaway. Leaving the store without my new jeans and shirts was an enormous disappointment, as torturous as waiting for Christmas morning after the tree had been up for two weeks. In the meantime, she let out the hems of our too-short jeans and ironed denim patches on the knees to cover the holes. Every week, she stopped by Weiner’s to make an installment payment.

Mom had found full-time work assembling electronic communications panels at HeliFlight Systems in Cut and Shoot, a town in east Montgomery County that, according to local legend, got its name in 1912 during a community dispute involving the town’s only church. During the debate, an eight-year-old boy grew frightened and supposedly cried out, “I’m going to cut around the corner and shoot through the bushes in a minute!” The boy’s statement stuck and thus the name was born.

Even with Mom’s income, money was tight, so professional haircuts were out of the question. Using salon scissors, she gave me a wedge haircut in our trailer’s kitchen. I wanted to look like
my idol, Olympic ice skater Dorothy Hamill. I was so enamored with the gold medalist that I spent hours practicing her skating moves in a corner of our living room, sliding around on the carpet in my socks and a leotard. But Mom’s chop job was unsuccessful. After nearly an hour sitting still at the kitchen table, I came out looking more like Moe from
The Three Stooges
.

My brother didn’t fare much better. He got his trim from my father. Dad must have tipped back one too many Coors Lights that day because a sober man could see that was no straight line that crossed my brother’s forehead. The edge more closely resembled the curved and jagged coastline of Texas.

Since the school bus wouldn’t come down Boars Head—the bridge built with railroad ties was too unstable—my brother and I had to walk the half mile to the hairpin turn where the wooden “Boars Head” sign hung from the tree. A homely black Lab mix named Taffy accompanied us. She became ours after a neighbor abandoned her when they moved to Dallas. Taffy flopped on her back when anyone came near, revealing swollen breasts, bumpy, pendulous nipples, and a belly full of ticks and fleas. She followed David and me to the bus stop just about every morning then disappeared into the woods, returning to the back porch a day or two later.

We had no choice but to trudge along with our heavy book bags in the oppressive heat and humidity. Unlike Houston, where our schools were within a few blocks of our home, we were now more than an hour’s drive away, longer when you added all the stops. Even in late summer, it was early enough to still be dark outside as we waited for the morning school bus with the handful of children who’d emerged from the woods. I recognized just two of the boys, Chris and Billy King. I had glimpsed them downhill from the spot where we’d planted our
garden earlier in the summer, but I’d been too busy working to make friends with them.

This would be my first time riding a bus and neither David nor I had seen our new schools—my fifth one in four years. I would soon learn that there was an unwritten hierarchy to the seating on Bus #9. The youngest kids and social rejects sat in front under the protective eye of our bus driver, Mrs. Buttercase, or Mrs. Butterball as the older kids called her behind her back. The rear seats, the most revered, allowed for privacy from her prying eyes and ears. They had the added bonus that when the bus hit one of the dirt road’s many bumps, their occupants were flung out of the green vinyl benches, sometimes high enough to hit the ceiling. The boring hour-and-a-half-long trip turned into a thrill ride, with us laughing, cheering, and begging Mrs. Buttercase to drive faster over the next big bump.

The older and more popular you were, the closer to the back you were allowed to sit. At twelve years old, David would become a member of the bus royalty, a position he held for the duration of our time on Boars Head.

The riders on the bus ranged from five to eighteen years old. Out of the fifteen, there were only two other girls: Haley Miller and Tammy Sverck. Haley was a delicate thing who looked younger than her seven years and spoke in a whisper, although she rarely talked. Tammy, David’s age, was only interested in talking about boys and baton twirling.

The King brothers were closest to my age. They sat in the seats right behind Mrs. Buttercase. They lived in a junky mobile home a few hundred yards downhill from ours, making them nearest in distance, too. Chris was older than me, but after failing two years he wound up in my class. The front part of his greasy, dirty blond
hair stuck up in a cowlick like Alfalfa from
The Little Rascals
, and he had odd facial tics, smelled like urine, and bullied kids half his age.

Billy was a scrawny, blue-eyed boy with naturally curly bright blond hair. He could be observed on Bus #9 sucking his thumb while simultaneously picking his nose with his index finger. On occasion, he’d stop to lick his index finger clean before going back to mine for more boogers.

Who was I to judge? I wasn’t known for brushing my teeth or wearing clean underwear. I had loathed washing up ever since the onset of the nightly horse trough bath and tick check ritual and did what I could to avoid bathing altogether. I showered only when commanded, which averaged about once a week. I had nobody else; the King brothers would have to do.

On my second day as a third grader, the principal sent me from class to class to teach students the ASL alphabet. David and I were proud of our Deaf heritage, and we weren’t afraid to talk about it. We’d tell people right off the bat, and we’d sign to each other on the bus. I don’t know if it was because we were in a small community, but having deaf parents made us special. Montgomery had nothing going on. We were unique.

Teaching the other kids ASL made transitioning to the new school easier. By the end of my first week, every kid knew me and asked me to help with their signing skills. I was even put in charge of teaching a group of girls an ASL version of “Silent Night” for the annual Christmas pageant. Excited to sing in sign language, just like my mother had at the Deaf bowling tournament, I practiced in front of a mirror every chance I could. Because of Mom’s
experience, I asked her to tutor me on hard phrases like “round yon virgin,” knowledge that I passed on to my pupils.

On opening night, the school cafeteria was transformed into a theater with the unfolding of a portable stage. The room was packed, with parents, students, and teachers overflowing into the hall. I took my position at center stage and led the girls in signing the hymn in ASL as a chorus sang behind us. I saw my parents standing in the back glowing. I tried not to let them distract me, seeing them so proud, but I was exhilarated to be in the spotlight. At the end they applauded the longest and loudest.

“Beautiful,” Dad signed over the crowd, as I took my bows.

Our ASL interpretation was a showstopper and was so memorable that my classmates never fail to recall the event. Thirty years later, I was in Houston and saw one of my former classmates who, without hesitation, performed the song flawlessly in ASL from start to finish.

After the show, I was excited to introduce my teacher to my parents. I wanted to hear her talk about what a great job I had done. When she discovered that my father was not working because of a knee injury, my teacher asked him to volunteer as a chaperone for our class field trip. He looked amused, but agreed. “Sure, I can do that,” he said. I squealed a pitch so high Mom thought her hearing aids were malfunctioning.

I counted down the days until the outing finally arrived. I spent the whole field trip interpreting questions for Dad from my classmates. Like paparazzi chasing a celebrity, they swarmed in a circle around us as he and I walked hand in hand. I beamed with pride.

After the trip, Dad drove my two new friends, Shana and Stacey, home. Like most new people I meet, they quizzed me about
life with a deaf parent. “My brother and I can do anything we want and my daddy won’t hear a thing,” I bragged.

Stacey seemed skeptical. “How do you know he’s really deaf? What if he’s pretending?”

“Here, watch this.” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “SHIT!”