Progenitors

Fiction“The Robert” began to model himself after the president who single-handedly saved the country from itself.

For a kid his age, he watches more that his share of C-Span.

He doesn’t care about wonky issues but he likes to study powerful people. He’s especially impressed by how they call people names and use outrageous lies to humiliate them.

The boy kept his hair long so when he decided to sweep it across his forehead, all he needed was hairspray. At the same time, he began to pretend he didn’t hear kids when they called him Bobby.

I’m “The Robert,” he insisted. When a seventh-grader used his old name, he made up rumors that destroyed her. It felt good.

Strutting and bloviating – “everyone loves me” – he came to dominate his school.

As they did every Sunday, his family went to his grandparents. His aunts, uncles and cousins hooted with laughter when he launched into his Trump routine.

“Aunt Caroline’s a fat slob,” he announced as potatoes were passed. The Robert told his cousin she was a H-U-G-E loser. “Jason wimps out during gym.” He reproached his father for not having an advanced degree and taunted the housekeeper with a fake Guatemalan accent.

After dinner his grandmother invited him into the living room. She’s an adoring woman and each of her nine grandkids believe they’re her favorite.

When they were alone she pulled Bobby close and held him long enough for it to mean something. She took a step back to look at him, paused briefly and then she slapped him hard, but not as hard as she could have.

Out Among HumansWhen the boys found a car with keys, they stopped to consider the pros and cons of Grand Theft Larceny.

As soon as she realized her middle boy was missing, she started calling around. It was a relief to learn that two of his friends were also nowhere to be found.

America still held a Tom Sawyer view of boyhood. For better or worse, they didn’t think to put pictures of children on milk cartoons.

The three ran away because the parents of one them was in his face about something. The other two went along for the ride. Who would notice, really? School wouldn’t start until after Labor Day.

None of the boys had seen an ocean so they decided on California. There would definitely, absolutely, be an ocean there. They didn’t have a map but one of them was sure west was that way.

When the boys found a car with keys, they stopped to consider the pros and cons of Grand Theft Larceny. Miraculously, they decided against it. None of them had a license anyway.

They spent one night sleeping in a rusted tractor-trailer cab in a junkyard. One of them remembers the cold. They survived on snacks from filling stations and country stores. They did not steal.

The runaways had gone about 50 miles and were approaching Versailles State Park when a friendly older man stopped to gave them a ride. They were in luck. He happened to be going their way.

It wasn’t long until he pulled up to a small-town police station and told the boys he was an off-duty officer of the law. He got on the phone and told their parents the kids were here and they were safe and they seemed like nice-enough young men and you don’t need to be too hard on them.

She sent her oldest son to bring them home. He liked to drive his Mercury and she gave him gas money. None of the boys’ parents bothered to go along. There was silence on the way home.

“Your dad and I were worried sick.” his mother told him.

In return for his solemn promise never to run away again she pulled a baking sheet out of the oven. Drop Sugar Cookies — his favorite — soft, not browned. He hated when they got the slightest bit crispy on the edges. She had made them just right and he told her they were good.

Drop-Sugar Cookies For Runaways
2 cups sugar
1 cup shortening
3 eggs
¾ cup sour milk
1 tbsp baking soda in the milk
2 tbsp baking powder
2 tbsp vanilla
¾ tbsp salt
5 cups flour
Cream sugar and shortening. Beat until light/fluffy. Add eggs and mix well. Add remaining ingredients. Drop by spoonful. Bake at 375º until they look right and not a second longer.

Despite the fact that he chewed tobacco, everyone in the family agreed he was swell.

Her brothers had brought him home from the glass factory to meet their sister. That was twenty years earlier.

He was a thrifty, hard-working, unassuming, church-going man and so they married.

He was good to their boys and except for penny-ante poker, he didn’t gamble. There were no women. But it turned out he was a ‘complicated’ man — at least that’s how the doctors described him.

He had lost his mother at fourteen and was raised as an only child by aunts who scorned his father and his religion. He could be heard shouting back at them decades after they died. He couldn’t lay them to rest.

As newlyweds, they were familiar with alcohol.

The young woman had her first drink during Prohibition (her father gave dances and could pick up and bounce two drunks at a time). Her husband-to-be had ran bootleg whisky out of an elevator in a downtown hotel.

By the time their second boy came, the man’s diary described how he and his crew carried hip-flasks while sorting mail on train cars. There was a photo of him bleary eyed during a labor event. He kept a circuit of distant taverns to hide his habit.

Alcohol and undetected diabetes tricked the chemicals in his brain. His outbreaks led doctors to prescribe electric-shock therapy, and the courts signed off. There was a fall from grace – nobody knew what to say.

Don’t stop reading.

It turns out that the man was as canny in choosing a mate as she had been in choosing him.

She refused to see her good and decent man as a damaged soul. She never wavered. She made sure her boys appreciated that their father, despite his afflictions, gave them full bragging rights.

The family held.

The man outlived his wife by about a year. There was beer in the house after she was gone but now it was ice cream he turned to for comfort. He kept Eskimo Pies in the freezer.

Wolves happen to be especially dangerous because they dress like grandmothers and say things to throw you off guard.

Hungry grizzlies are just as bad. They see you coming and they start polishing up the silverware.

A few Octobers ago a Cub Scout troop descended on a campground just over the state line. The small wooded acreage brought in a little cash for a farmer who had worked at the GM plant until it closed.

Tents were pitched. A lady named Peggy grilled burgers and dogs. A bonfire was lit. The night had turned cold and various critters rustled around the tents causing some kids to climb into their parents’ sleeping bags — the older scouts wouldn’t have to know.

The air was pure oxygen the next morning and after a warm breakfast a party set out to explore the environs.

The troop leaders wanted to strike camp quickly because of the NFL game that afternoon so when the hikers got back, no one noticed one boy wasn’t with them. His father was policing the campground and didn’t realize his son was missing until everyone had driven off.

He squared his shoulders, squinted into the sun and ventured out alone.

He followed the trail that rolled to the right. Nothing. A child shorter than the undergrowth would be difficult to spot. He came to the loop where the paths intersected. Again, nothing.

He was well-aware that a nine-year-old carried away by the Chippewa would be initiated as a brave and end up on the warpath against the Great Chief in Washington, meaning that he would never be eligible for Federal Student Financial Assistance.

He tried to think what Liam Neeson would do.Tick, tick, tick.

Then on a rise worn bare by the wind, something yellow darted between the trees. The man ran to a clearing where he finally got a visual lock on his boy.

Hiding any trace of panic he approached and asked his son how he was doing.

“Can we get shakes on the way home?” the kid answered. Then he mentioned how much he liked being alone in the woods. He said it was awesome.

The dangers were imagined that Sunday morning, but the man’s fears were real. This was just the latest installment on the price of being a father. The man drove home knowing his account was current, its balance paid in full.