See no evil, speak no evil

What I know is that my father did something with tanks. Drove them? Maybe. I've seen him get in tractors, buses, a helicopter once. Any vehicle it takes an average person months to learn, he can operate within a couple of minutes. Maybe he navigated, or manned the guns. I don't know yet, but it was tanks, and what I do know is that one day the gun was shot off and my father was standing next to it. Sound stopped for him, silence started. He watched doctors scribble notes to him on white legal pads for the next eight days. They told him they could not help, that Jim Morrison was dead to him. They told him he would not hear his name called again, not by a woman, not by an enemy. But they did not send him home.

As an infant, later a child, I rolled. With my hands clamped over my ears, in bed at night, I rocked back and forth, I did not suck a thumb or cradle a well-worn stuffed bear. I clenched my teeth and sometimes my elbow would gently brush the wall, over and over. In the morning, my sleeve would tell with small blood stains that came out in the wash. My mother laughs that I rocked apart three cribs as an infant. Later my long dark hair would inextricably matte, knit to my skull in the mornings, beyond repair. Such silly unkempt hair was a humiliation, I cut school at 7, spent days nestled in the library. At night I hummed and danced my dance. I sang jingles, rhythms, told stories to distract. Deaf ears lead to a quiet heart, I think.

He can hear. He hears me now. But we still both talk loud to each other because at 31 my hearing is going and I press him to tell me that maybe it's genetic. We're riding down the street in his fifty year-old station wagon, restored. Maybe that gun never went off, I think. Maybe he's never ridden in a tank. This car is a replica of his mother's first, a 55 stationwagon. Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe he lied to me, didn't watch cowboys in camouflage pat down six year-olds, spit the color of shit. Maybe not. But a car's driving by and like those old jokes he says "What?" and I say "Oh, nevermind." I hum a little now, tap my toes and he can't hear it and I can't hear him and his tank is rumbling past my brain like gunfire, like a story told too loud.