Pride

  Dad doesn’t come in the room except to lay his clothes on the chair just inside the door. He says I can take Cannibal with me if I want. Mom has the key and locks up after us. We’re really going to walk down this little street and see the ocean. It’s been so long for me I can hardly remember what it looks like, except it’s big. Laurel says she doesn’t remember the ocean at all.

  We’ve both been swimming at League Island in Philadelphia summertimes but there’s more people than water there. We’ve also gone out to Morton pool on some really hot days in summer, but that’s almost the same thing, it’s so crowded, and it’s expensive; League Island’s free.

  Dad’s put his arm around Mom’s shoulders. She’s holding on to Laurel’s hand with her other hand and I’m behind with a towel in one hand and Cannibal in the other. I wonder what a tiny cat like Cannibal will think of a whole ocean. I’ll bet the sand on that beach will seem like the biggest sandbox in the world. That might not be so good.

  Dad lets go of Mom and spins around to see if I’m coming along. I smile. He smiles back. It’s so great to see him smiling. He points at my chest then at the K on his own.

  “Boy, Dickie, we look like the original members of those crazy Ku Klux Klan people in the South. Some niggers around here are liable to pull out knives and cut off our ears.”

  Mom looks back, waiting up for me.

  “At least I can always find all of you; you know how nervous I get when I don’t know where you are.”

  Dad turns, puts his arm around Mom again, kisses her on the shoulder.

  “We won’t have any trouble with crowds this time of year. We might even have that whole ocean to ourselves.”

  “Well, I give my part of the ocean to you, Dick. If I’m going to drown, at least I want warm water.”

  “Laura, I’ll bet the water will be warmer than it’s been any day in August. That ocean’s been soaking up sun all summer and it’s out there waiting for us. This visit to the shore might be the best thing that ever happened.”

  He musses Mom’s hair gently, slips his arm around her again. I look back.

  At least there’s practically nobody around to see them acting like lovers in some kind of lovey movie with John Boles and Greta Garbo.

  “Don’t worry about drowning, Laura honey. So far’s I know there’s never been a case yet of anybody drowning on the beach in the sand.”

  “Please don’t try to teach me swimming again, Dick, please! Let’s just enjoy ourselves.”

  “O.K., O.K. But you don’t know what you’re missing. Those kids of ours will be swimming circles around you and probably me too before this week is out.”

  And Dad means it. He shows me how to reach out from my dog paddle I learned at the Morton pool and actually swing my arms over my head as if I’m really swimming. He makes me kick my legs hard, too, all the way from the hips, not just from the knees. I swim to him every time and he catches me.

  “Now, Dickie, if you get a mouthful of water, the important thing is to be expecting it and spit it out like this.”

  He ducks his head under water and spits a long stream of water in the air like a whale or a horse in the street, pissing upside down.

  “Now you stay here and practice. I want to get Laurie swimming this year; she’s big enough now.”

  He strides in to where Laurie is playing at the edge of the water, running in and out as the waves chase her. Mom’s just above the water’s edge with our towels. I wave and she waves back. I know she’s watching me every minute; there’s no way I could ever drown, with her watching and Dad swimming the way he does; it’s better than ten lifeguards. There aren’t any real lifeguards at all; I guess they don’t have them this time of year.

  I try my new swimming a few more times. It isn’t as much fun as it is swimming to Dad because I can’t tell how far I’ve swum; the ocean is so big my little bit of swimming doesn’t matter much; but still it’s fun and I even learn to spit water the way Dad showed me. I see what Dad means. I’m beginning to feel how I’m going to enjoy the ocean all my life.

  Dad holds Laurie under the stomach and is pulling her along, telling her how to kick and swing her arms. Most of the time he holds her almost completely out of the water, but sometimes he lets her down in some so she gets water over her face.

  “Just float, Laurie, don’t struggle so. Honest, the water will hold you up if you only relax. Try just lying out on the water.”

  “Promise you won’t let me go. Promise!”

  “Don’t worry. I promise.”

  He supports her, moving her along some more, while she pulls her thin arms through the water and flutters her legs. She keeps pushing her hair back with her hands. I take another swim trying to make it ten strokes before I bring my feet down to the bottom. I’m always afraid I’ll bring my feet down and there won’t be any bottom there, and then I’ll drown.

  “See, Dickie; I’m swimming. I’m only six years old and I can swim already.”

  “Yeah, that’s great. But try it once without Daddy. You’ll see. It’s not so easy.”

  I hate myself almost before I’m finished saying that. I guess I’m jealous, jealous over nothing. Dad looks at me quickly and there’s some of the old sadness on his face.

  “You kids go up on the beach with Mom awhile. Both of you are getting blue around the lips. I’m going to take a little swim myself. You take care of Mom.”

  Dad stands there, moving slowly out into the deeper water, twisting, turning back, watching till we’re out on the sand. I turn around and watch him. He dives under a wave and seems to disappear, then comes up, his arms stroking sharp, strong cuts through the water, almost as if he’s flying. I know I’ll never be able to swim like that. I don’t think he even cares if there’s a bottom to the ocean anywhere. He doesn’t seem to worry about anything.

  “What the hell do you mean you’re quitting’, Kettleson? You can’t quit; you’re the best shop steward we’ve got.”

  “Four of them in a car handed this to one of my kids, Mr. Fabrizio. Look at it! Remember, I got a family. Find some young guy without any family for the job. My wife’s goin’ crazy an’ I can’t take these kind of chances.”

  “God damn! Them dirty bastards! Now don’t let ’em scare you, Kettleson. They ain’t gonna be hurting no kids. They’re just bluffin’. I know them SOBs.”

  “I’m not sure, Mr. Fabrizio. They weren’t bluffing when they beat me up twice; and now Jim Morris is gonna be in the hospital for a month and miss three months’ work with that broken leg they gave him.”

  “Don’t you worry none about that, Kettleson. We’re takin’ care of Morris, his hospital bills, his family, and everything.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Fabrizio. I’m not quittin’ the union or anything like that. I’m behind the whole idea, but I can’t be shop steward, that’s all.”

  “You can’t quit, Kettleson. That’s just what they want. It’ll be a real black eye for the whole union. The guys on the floor would sure think you’re lettin’ ’em down.”

  “You gotta understand, Mr. Fabrizio. This is my family! These are my kids! Those goons don’t care about anything, kids, wives, anything, just as long as they get paid for it. I can’t take the chance.”

  “Kettleson, you never know what the guys on the floor will do. You know they really look up to you. I hate to think what might happen if they feel you went yellow on ’em.”

  “Maybe I’ll have to quit this whole job, quit J.I. I’m not stuck on J.I. or the union, either, for that matter. I can start somewhere else. I hear Westinghouse is hiring.”

  “You’ll find it harder to get a job than you think, Kettleson. We don’t forget a thing like this. Think it over. Think about your family. All this crap will blow over, but eleven years’ seniority along with the pension fund and medical benefits we’re working for, you could relax the rest of your life. If you quit, besides letting everybody else down, you’d be letting your family down and letting yourself down, too. Remember that.”
/>
  “If it was just me…”

  “Listen, Kettleson. I know the company’s been thinking of making you foreman. That’s what we need, somebody going from shop steward to shop foreman. That’d make the union really look strong, give the young ones someone to look up to. I’m telling you this in private, but it’s the God’s truth.

  “Now, if you quit as shop steward and they make you foreman how’ll that look, huh? The guys’ll figure you’ve turned into a company man. Your life wouldn’t be worth dirt out on that floor, Kettleson. Think about that.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. But I can’t take the risk with my kids. Foreman’s job, shop steward, the whole works; none of it’s worth having my kids get hurt.”

  “Listen here, Kettleson. You’re just all excited. You’re not thinking clear. You got some vacation time comin’; I’ll work it out so you can take a whole week off, right now. Don’t worry, I’ll arrange it, and with full pay; give this thing a chance to cool off. You disappear for a while. Then come back to me afterwards and we’ll talk about it. Just let me work on this.”

  I stand at the edge of the water and watch. Dad’s swum straight into the ocean, almost out of sight. Then I see him roll over on his back. Mom’s come up beside me and put her warm hand on my shoulder; her hand is shaking. We stand there watching as Dad disappears, seems to go deep down into the water and not come up. I’m holding my breath for him.

  Then, just when I’m about to cry, he comes springing, flying up out of the water like a whale or a big hunting fish, splashing white way out there. He goes ducking under a few more times like a real fish, then begins stroking back toward us on the beach.

  I look up and Mom’s crying. She turns away and goes back to our blanket on the sand. I stand there at the edge of the water but Dad walks right past me without looking. He walks past Laurel, who’s building sand castles just where the sand is wet enough but not too wet. He flops down in the sand next to the blanket Mom brought.

  I go over and kneel beside Laurel. I start building a moat in front of her castle to stop the water when it comes in, and so we have soft sand for making turrets and steeples by dripping. I hear Mom even though I try not to.

  “Dick, why do you do things like that?”

  Dad doesn’t say anything. I peek over and he’s rolled over on his back. He’s taking fistfuls of sand and pouring them over his face, over his eyes. He’s all coated with sand. Then he starts lifting his arms and pouring sand so he’s covering his whole body. He’s gradually disappearing. Laurel looks up, then dashes back before I can stop her. She runs and jumps on Dad’s sand-covered stomach, straddling him in the sand as if he were a horse.

  “Come on, Daddy. Help us build a sand castle. Dickie and me are working on one but I know you can really make a beautiful castle, a palace. You can build anything.”

  I really think for a minute he might kill her. I don’t know what he’ll do. What he does is sit up, shake all that sand from his eyes and hair, then brush it off his chest. He carefully dumps Laurel onto the sand beside him. Then he rolls over onto his hands and knees and shakes some more like a dog shaking water out of its fur. He begins slowly crawling along the beach ahead of Laurel, down to where we’re building the castle. He crawls right past me into the waves, still on his hands and knees, out deeper into the water.

  Big waves break over him. He turns back and dog paddles in, crawling again in the surf, back up the beach slant and onto the sand. Laurel’s jumping up and down laughing. Dad shakes himself and water flies around exactly the way it does off a dog.

  “Come on, you two. Let’s build a castle for Cannibal. We’ll call it Cannibal Castle.”

  Dad starts digging in the wet sand with his hands, piling large loads of sand in the center while he continues my moat all around a large space.

  “Laurie, you go get your sand bucket and shovel from Mother.”

  Laurel runs up the beach, screeching as she goes. She comes back with the bucket in one hand and the other hand wobbling the shovel over her head.

  In no time, Dad has a huge pile of sand surrounded by a deep moat; the moat’s so deep you can hardly touch bottom, and it fills with water seeping in from the ocean. He shows Laurel and me how to make the castle walls, patting the sides with our shovel and using the shovel top to make windows. On the corners he builds towers, using Laurel’s buckets. He packs the buckets so full and hard he can put one on top of the other without the sand collapsing. On top of the towers and around the walls we build places where you could shoot arrows through if you lived in this castle. It looks great. I run up and get Cannibal, who’s asleep on one of the towels. I bring her down in her box but don’t put her too close to the water. She climbs out and sits there, watching, sometimes dashing forward to swing a paw at somebody’s hand or at some sand that flies near her. We’re working fast but carefully.

  Dad builds a door opening in the castle wall and a bridge over the moat. He puts towers for guards at each opening of the door. Then, inside the walls, in the middle, he builds a tower higher than the outside towers; he calls this a “keep.” He says it’s where the king and queen and all their friends go when they’re attacked. The soldiers would stand along the outside walls to shoot the enemy or pour boiling oil on them. It’s so real-looking, and Dad tells the way it is so seriously, I can almost see it. On top of the keep Dad jams a Popsicle stick for a flag.

  I get so busy helping, putting my head down on the sand to see the castle as if it’s really big, that I forget all about Cannibal. When I remember and look up, she’s down by the water. She’s rearing up on her back paws in her fighting pose, fighting waves. The waves are coming up over her feet, but she’s swinging away and hitting at the foam on the edge of the ripples. Cannibal must be the fightingest cat in the world, fighting a whole ocean.

  When we’ve finished the castle, it’s smooth and beautiful, I don’t think there was ever a more beautiful castle built in the sand anywhere. Dad could probably be the best architect in the world if he’d only had a chance to go to school.

  I’d love to live in our castle. First I’d change my name from Dickie to Richard. That’s my real name and it’s a good king name. I don’t like being called Dickie anyway, and I don’t want to be Dick Junior either because everybody starts calling you Junior. What I’d like to be called is Rich but I don’t know how to start people doing it.

  Dad’s squatting and Laurie’s nestled herself between his legs. She has two fingers in her mouth sucking on them; I don’t know how she can do it with all the sand. Dad gently pulls her fingers out of her mouth. He reaches across to me.

  “Dickie, now put our queen in her castle. Let’s see how she likes it.”

  I don’t know how Dad knows Cannibal’s a she. It stops me for a minute. Maybe he heard me calling her “her.” I pull Cannibal away from the war of the waves and put her in her box without its lid. Then I carefully lower the box into our castle courtyard just inside the doorway with its guard towers. We sit back and watch.

  For the first minutes, Cannibal only looks up at us from her box. Then she climbs out and walks around the keep and back to her box. She looks out at us again. We’re squatting around the castle and I think she’s wondering what she’s supposed to do. Then I expect she thinks it’s a sandbox because she starts scratching on the courtyard floor and goes pee-pee.

  Dad laughs so hard he falls back on his hands. After this, Cannibal walks around to the other side of the keep and lifts her front paws up onto the wall to look out. She knocks off two of the square bumps you’re supposed to shoot arrows through, then gets down again and walks around to the front. Carefully, she looks out our door, past the guard posts and across the drawbridge. When you have your head down on the sand looking at her through the door she looks monstrous, big as a lion or maybe even an elephant.

  Then she tucks her head back in and climbs up on her box and from there jumps onto the top of the keep. Some edges of sand slide off but the keep stays up O.K. Cannibal knocks
down the Popsicle stick and then, because she’s so small, settles herself down and makes herself comfortable right on top there. She tucks her little paws under her body and looks from one to the other of us. I know she’s wanting to be good, to do what we want her to do, only she doesn’t know what it is.

  Dad’s been chuckling and laughing all this time, and Laurie’s jumping up and down or running around the castle, or getting so close she almost scares Cannibal.

  Dad takes Laurie in his lap. I haven’t sat on my dad’s lap since we started building porches together. That’s one of the sad parts about growing up. And I’m too big to sit on Mom’s. Sometimes she pulls me next to her and runs her hands through my hair, puts her arms around me, but I don’t get to sit on her lap. Those things seemed to stop, to end, without my hardly noticing them. I might never sit on anybody’s lap again the rest of my life.

  Finally Dad reaches over and picks up Cannibal. She doesn’t even swing her paw at him. He puts her in the box and strokes with his big thumb between her ears. Already, after only one day not working, his hands look better, not all beaten up, maybe it’s because of the water in the ocean and then scraping them in the sand.

  Anyway, they look more like hands and not so much like animal paws. He’s wearing the gold ring with his initials Mom gave him before they were married. He can’t wear it at work because it might get caught in one of the big machines.

  I look at the castle. Water has twice come all the way up and run into the moat.

  “Gosh, Dad, the ocean’s going to wash all this away.”

  “That’s right, Dickie, the tide’s coming in.”

  “Can’t we build a sand wall and hold it back, save it somehow?”

  “There’s no way to hold back the ocean, Dickie. Our castle was fun building; we had a good time. Maybe if it stays we won’t build one again but if it gets washed away by the ocean we can build another tomorrow, even better, with secret dungeons.”