Note:  please, no complaints or insults from people from anywhere in the world who may disagree with me: i did purposely say - in all caps, "GENERALLY SPEAKING" - and i also said that these were merely my impressions!

There was no negotiating with Jack, no talking sense into him.  Ultimately, my only option was to tell on him.  Being a tattle-tale was not a negative thing in our family.  My parents were very strict and very restrictive, and were always looking for ways they could police us more closely and to make sure that we didn’t infringe upon the rights or privileges of the favored ones.  I went and told on him, and was sent back with a message from my father to tell John to move his stuff.  He didn’t.

I told again.  Same message.  He didn’t.

I felt I had no choice but to tell again.  Knowing my father as both John and I did, there was no mystery as to what was going to happen next.  Yet part of me was hesitant, confused.  I felt like an unwitting pawn in some sick and twisted game.  What, pray tell, was going on in John’s mind?  In any case, I couldn’t let John, who was already prone to bullying and teasing and similar obnoxious behaviors, get away with summarily pushing me out of my space.  Whatever strange dance was going on, I was now a full partner.  My father followed me back out to the camper.

We almost never got beaten because of what we did to another sibling, unless of course that sibling was the Golden Boy.  Those beatings happened frequently, because of his place in the household and how difficult it was for us to avoid displeasing His Highness.  I think those beatings were my step-mother’s favorites, since she was certain that they were well-deserved and necessary to maintaining proper household order.  I think she believed that we were jealous of him and would mistreat him for fun.  Those were downright righteous beatings.

The reality is, my siblings both knew better and we dared not.  We knew better in the sense that we knew very well the difference between his behavior and theirs, between him and them, and were smart enough and mature enough not to confuse the two and to take their behavior out on him.  Part of me thinks I shouldn’t be able to say that with a straight face, that it would have been impossible for that to be the case, but I cannot recall one instance, minor or major, of another sibling expressing jealousy toward him verbally or behaviorally.  I know that I was extremely careful not to let myself confuse the issues, and it appeared that my siblings were as well.  Sure, we would talk about how he was favored; it would have been hard not to.  That’s not the same as holding him responsible for their behavior, or taking their behavior out on him, or even wanting to be treated like he was.  In terms of the special treatment he got, I am naïve enough – and know my siblings well enough – to believe that none of us wished that for ourselves because we saw how it impacted the rest.

My father pulled John out of the camper and started berating him while pounding on him and kicking him all over the yard.  He beat him mercilessly, using his fists and his feet, and it seemed to go on for hours.  I was unaccustomed to being complicit in the beatings of others.  At the same time that I knew what was coming, I was also completely mortified and racked with guilt.  I could hardly bear the knowledge that I had John’s blood on my hands for that one.

I arranged my bed and belongings as I listened to John’s screams, and then I went back outside.  Hiding behind a corner of the main trailer where I could see into the shadows, with every blow and kick my father landed I found myself wanting to offer myself in John’s place.  Look at what I had done – was doing – to my brother!  How could I live with that?

I was torn up inside, at one point taking a step forward and then taking another step back.  The one thing that kept me from running out there was that I was absolutely terrified of what my father would do to me if I did step forward, especially in light of the fact that in his twisted mind he was beating John at my behest.  Finally my father was spent, and he stopped.  I hurried back to the camper before John could collect himself and get back there.  When he came in he seemed to have an eerie calm, peaceful, satisfied air about him.

I was afraid of my father well into my twenties, if not into my thirties.

We steadily climbed up through the social classes.  There were two reasons for that.  One was that my father steadily climbed the career ladder and thus earned more each year in salary, and the second was because each year there was one less mouth to feed as one by one my various siblings and I moved out of the house following our high school graduations.  It was only the last four kids who stayed in the house for any length of time after earning their high school diplomas, while the first four got out as soon as we hit age eighteen.

Growing up we were limited in the portions of food we could eat and the amounts of beverages we could drink at mealtimes (except water, which was what was usually on the menu unless there was orange juice available for breakfast).  Popcorn, ice cream, soda pop, candy and those kinds of things were special treats for us.  There were times when we had to improvise a meal in order to have something to eat, but there was always food on the table.  When there was nothing else, we loved the adventure of cobbling together submarine sandwiches from sliced American cheese and cold cuts on hot dog buns, and constructing personal pizzas from hamburger buns with a bit of tomato sauce and parmesan cheese on top.  On the other hand, I hated it when my step-mother bought cheap ground lamb to stretch the hamburger meat out – which she then lied about, of course, as if we were too stupid to know the difference – and when she cooked liver.  The very smell of liver still makes me nauseated, and to this day I don’t like lamb.

Shopping malls were foreign wonderlands.  My parents generally did not have money to spend on toys, and we got new clothes only when hand-me-downs and second-hands were not available and we truly needed something.  Other than the few clothes I got at Christmas and at the start of the school year and those I bought myself, I wore hand-me-downs and rummage sale clothes.  When we did go shopping for new clothes, we went to department stores where clothes were invariably cheaper than in the malls (even before the days of Walmart).  We had very little discretionary income, and less still that could be spent frivolously.  Big ticket items required months if not years of planning and saving.  Nevertheless, my step-mother was a budgetary whiz and, between their income and mine, I did not feel deprived.

We didn’t have foster children in the home strictly out of the goodness of our hearts.  It was also a way for my step-mother to contribute to the household bottom line.  Doing daycare for neighborhood working moms was another way for her to make a contribution.  We benefited handsomely from her management of the annual church rummage sale, and I’m sure she had other tricks up her sleeve, the details of which escape me at the moment.  In short, she did whatever she could to make money here and there and to stretch our funds as far as humanly possible.  Fortunately, she did it incredibly well. 

She came from simple, working class folk.  Along with her parents and siblings, many of my cousins on that side of the family didn’t finish high school either, because they got pregnant and got married or dropped out or because they didn’t feel like it and went straight to work:  blue collar jobs, of course.  There was a rudimentary yet pleasant resort area for the working class about an hour from where we lived.  My step-mother’s family had a history of going up there to camp and while away the summers, and we entered into that tradition.  At some point we moved to a suburb of the state capital about another hour away, but it remained within easy driving distance.

At first we would go out into the boondocks with a tent, no electricity and no running water, and build our own outhouse for the excursion.  Those were the days of using lanterns for light after dark, kerosene stoves and campfires for cooking, carrying in our own drinking water, bathing in the river, and huddling around the campfire for conversation and camaraderie during the cool Midwestern summer evenings.  We would be two or three or four families, in our own little woodsy world.

After a few years my parents and aunts and uncles decided to make it a more structured thing.  There was a campground nearby where one could rent campsites by the week, and the rent was cheap, maybe $5.00 per week.  We took the big tent we had and moved it over there.  I don’t know how everyone fit in the tent, really.  Do ten-person tents exist?  I know that each time we bought something new, we kept the old accommodations as a separate bedroom.  We shortly added a pup-tent to the mix.  Then we upgraded to a rudimentary camper consisting of a metal shell, plywood boards that folded out to become the wings, and a canvas top to cover it.  Then we upgraded to a fancier camper, and so on, while always hanging on to the “spare bedrooms”.

Eventually we had several options for sleeping which easily accommodated us.  To a pre-pubescent or pubescent teenager, some were more desirable than others.  For example, the camper was more comfortable but one would have to sleep in the same room as Mom and Dad, and would probably not be able to sleep in late.  The pup-tent afforded more privacy, but was small.  In short, each option had its advantages and disadvantages.  Henry, referred to by my father as “my Golden Boy”, always slept in the main quarters, the fanciest, with Mom and Dad.

We each had a beer box in which to pack our belongings for the weekend.  These were the slightly rectangular boxes in which a case of bottled beer was sold in those days.  They were sturdy and compact and readily stackable, so they were perfect for our weekend jaunts.  Virtually every Friday afternoon of every summer, we boys would pack the van that was the family car, back before mini-vans and before many people thought of using vans in this manner, though we had no choice.  We timed our departure from the house so that we arrived at my father’s office just as he walked out the door, and then we continued the drive northward.  Depending upon where we lived and traffic and weather conditions, our final destination was between an hour or two and a half hours away.

At some point on the journey, someone would call his or her space, and our weekly ritual began.  There were no rules for when the process should start, except that it couldn’t begin before we were in the car and on the way.  Another rule was that whoever was in the process of staking their claim could not be interrupted, so we would gear up to jump in with our preference as soon as the words were out of the speaker’s mouth.  Otherwise it was completely spontaneous, with different kids starting it different weeks and everyone claiming a different space each week, depending on what else had already been called.

It was in relation to this ritual, on a summer Friday evening after our eventual arrival “Up North”, that my brother got what was for me his most memorable beating.

My half-sister, Pyur – supposedly some kind of exotic Asian name, but I have never been able to find any record of it and, with our last name, I find that hard to believe – is a year and a half older than my step-sister, Aurora, and seven years older than I am.  She is a bookworm to beat all bookworms.  She wanted to do nothing but read and read and read some more, was a kind of quirky, square peg type in high school and, outwardly at least, was not much interested in socializing with her peers, whom she surely found to be largely boring, petty and trite.  She is undoubtedly at the genius level on the intelligence scale.  Aurora, in contrast, was not much into academics and wanted nothing more than to be popular.  I don’t mean that she was the brainless Barbie type, only that like most high school students it was important for her to be accepted by her fellow students and have a crowd of her peers with whom she could hang out and have fun.

My parents put constant pressure on Aurora to include Pyur in her social activities and to invite her to hang out.  Aurora resisted.  Although they had been close when my parents first married, as they grew older and came into their own personalities Aurora simply didn’t particularly enjoy Pyur’s company and didn’t like feeling as if she had to watch out for or babysit her, socially speaking.  I’m sure the feeling between the two was mutual, but I suspect that Pyur was more open to hanging out with Aurora than vice versa.

One afternoon I overheard Aurora complaining to her mother about something Pyur had done or said, or not done or said, and how she was tired of bearing the cross of her step-sister’s social awkwardness, how it embarrassed her, blah, blah, blah, blah.  I can’t recall the specifics of the conversation now, but you get the idea.  It was standard fare.  I made the grave mistake of repeating it to Pyur.  I didn’t do it to be malicious.  I felt she had a right to know.  I also had a foolish desire to protect Pyur from a lack of awareness of Aurora’s true attitude toward her and the unpleasant consequences that might thereby result.  The dynamic struggle between my half-sister and my step-sister – how to still be sisters, one grade apart and sharing the same school and same bedroom while being as different as night and day – was apparent to anyone who had eyes and ears and a brain.  It is highly improbable that Pyur was unaware of it and for me to have thought that she was must have been wholly a product of my imagination – or wishful thinking.

Pyur naively confronted Aurora about it.  Naively in the sense that she must have known on some level that Aurora would deny it, and that it would do nothing to change the situation, and that no positive outcome could come out of doing so.  Aurora did deny it, nothing changed, and what happened is that I got one of the worst beatings of my life.

My step-mother was absolutely livid.  My revelation threatened the image that she cultivated and in which Aurora actively colluded, that all was well and good between the girls and that they were the best of friends.  One didn’t expose her pretenses without paying a heavy, heavy price.  Of course, this was a sub-charade of the principal family charade, so my father was equally insulted and incensed.  This time my step-mother didn’t even have to work her magic act to set my father off.  My parents came downstairs to my room and confronted me, asserting that I had misinterpreted what I heard, or made it up, or had no business repeating it, or all of the above.  They quickly commenced the true task at hand.  I don’t know who threw the first punch.  Or was it a kick?  I was dragged by whatever hair or limb they could grab and pulled up the stairs and into the kitchen, with them beating me all the while.  I’m not sure why the kitchen was our destination.  Were they looking for more room to maneuver?  Were they concerned that if they stopped in the living room they might end up with blood on the carpet?  Or had their sick minds already plotted their next move?  I’ll never know.

As previously noted, my father was good at this monstrous business, ever the creative disciplinarian.  He decided to grab the hose from the kitchen sink, turn on the water, and add some liquid fun.  He kept the device trained on my face.  I honestly thought that they were going to drown me, that I was going to die right then and there.  I was yelling at the top of my lungs, with what I thought would be my last breaths, “I can’t breathe!  I can’t breathe!”.  I heard my father’s voice, calm, collected and cold as ice, say, “If you couldn’t breathe, you wouldn’t be screaming”.

It was nice of them to help me clean up the kitchen afterwards.