The Power of Testimony

MARK BOUMAN || 23
silence, and I watched. As he worked, his arms swung heavy and slow,
slightly away from his body, as if they were too muscled to swing where
everyone else’s did. He walked differently than others did too—​he’d pick
a point ahead of him and march toward it without slowing. Tagging
along in his wake at a store or a gun shop or a swap meet, I had watched
people step aside for him, parting like grass in a strong wind. When I
walked behind him, when I watched him work, his smell was a mixture
of machine oil, sour sweat, and sunshine.
The gusting breezes ruffled Dad’s hair, up and down and up again, like
a bird’s wing. When Mom called from the trailer behind us, it didn’t seem
like Dad heard. He switched on the outside light he had recently wired
up and continued to work. I waited a minute longer, feeling the wind
pick up speed. I could hear grains of sand spattering against the wall of
the house and on the new windows. Then I turned my back on the house
and walked home to the trailer.
• • •
When Dad came back from building, he yelled at Mom. “Potatoes?
Again? Why can’t you cook some real food?”
“Because you spent your paycheck on movies in town!” she yelled
back.
Jerry and I were sitting on our bed, playing army men in the mountains
and valleys of the blanket, and Sheri was lying beside us, sucking
her thumb. I thought about how cool it would be to go to a war movie in
town with Dad, but he always went to movies alone. When Mom stuck
her head in and told us to get our jackets on, we knew all of us would
be eating dinner at Grandma Jean’s. Dad’s mom had pointy eyeglasses
and a house full of curtains and carpet. On the drive over, we rode in
silence, and I saw lightning flash in the distance.
By the time dinner was over, rain was beating down on Grandma’s roof
so loudly that we had trouble hearing one another talk. By the time Dad
had polished off the apple pie and decided it was time to brave the storm,