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Show one day the violence becomes too much for your body to contain, your child's body, the one that has yet to hit puberty, the one that knows the work of a man more than the ramblings of a boy. Then it emerges like a tidal wave and takes everything with it. As a child my father was known as "Red," a name his father continued to use late into his life, even when the red faded to a chestnut brown. Red hair, a beautiful shade of red according to my mother, separated him from his siblings and made him remarkable in the tiny town. His nickname was a point of pride; I suppose because it was given to him by his father, a man who only spoke to criticize and then more often than not chose the belt over words, the nickname the only gift other than the one that replaced childhood with a plow and complete freedom. My father has always said he was fat as a child, that the other children in the one room schoolhouse teased him for being overweight. He started school at the age of four, the youngest in a one-room schoolhouse full of bullies. His older brother, Jerry, protected him, kept him safe, at least physically. The name-calling could not be helped. What matters, I guess, is that my father saw himself on the outside of his community, both because of his hair and weight-one a mark of pride, the other of self-loathing. In adolescence, he lost his baby fat, growing into a man who stands over six feet and whose bearing makes him feel closer to ten, but my sense is that the fat boy remains with my father, the one who needed new overalls constantly, a pudgy boy in a family where physical prowess was not simply lauded but necessary for survival. 22 |