knew he was lying, but they
seemed to like him just the same. As a boy, that was what I couldn’t
understand. And there was Mother. How could she stand it? I wanted to ask
but never did. She was not the kind you asked such questions.
I’d be upstairs in my bed, in my room above the porch, and
Father would be telling some of his tales. A lot of Father’s stories
were about the Civil War. To hear him tell it, he’d been in about
every battle. He’d known Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and I don’t
know how many others. He’d been particularly intimate with
General Grant, so that when Grant went East, to take charge of all
the armies, he took Father along. “I was an orderly at headquarters, and Sam Grant said to me,
‘Irve,’ he said, ‘I’m going to take you along with me.’ ”
It seems he and Grant used to slip off sometimes and have a
quiet drink together. That’s what my father said. He’d tell about
the day Lee surrendered and how, when the great moment came,
they couldn’t find Grant. “You know,” my father said, “about General Grant’s book, his
memoirs. You’ve read of how he said he had a headache and how,
when he got word that Lee was ready to call it quits, he was
suddenly and miraculously cured.”
“Huh,” said Father. “He was in the woods with me.
“I was in there with my back against a tree. I was drinking. I had
got hold of a bottle. “They were looking for Grant. He had got off
his horse and come into the woods. he found me. He was covered
with mud. I had the bottle in my hand. What’d I care? The war was over. I
knew we had them licked.”
My father said that he was the one who told Grant about Lee. An
orderly riding by had told him, because the orderly knew how thick
he was with Grant. Grant was embarrassed.
“But, Irve, look at me. I’m all covered with mud,” he said to
Father. And then, my father said, he and Grant decided to have a drink
together. They took a couple of drinks and then, because he didn’t
want Grant to show up drunk before the immaculate Lee, he
smashed the bottle against the tree.
“Sam Grant’s dead now, and I wouldn’t want it to get out on
him,” my father said. That’s just one of the kind of things he’d tell. Of course the men
knew he was lying, but they seemed to like it just the same.
When we got broke, down and out, do you think he ever brought
anything home? Not he. If there wasn’t anything to eat in the house, he’d go off visiting around at farmhouses. They all wanted
him. Sometimes he’d stay away for weeks, Mother working to keep
us fed, and then home he’d come bringing, let’s say, a ham. He’d
got it from some farmer friend. He’d slap it on the table in the
kitchen. “You bet I’m going to see that my kids have something to
eat,” he’d say, and Mother would just stand smiling at him. She’d
never say a word about all the weeks and months he’d been away,
not leaving us a cent for food. Once I heard 

her speaking to a
woman in our street. Maybe the woman had dared to sympathize
with her. “Oh,” she said, “it’s all right. He isn’t ever dull like most
of the men in this street. Life is never dull when my man is about.” But often I was filled with bitterness, and sometimes I wished he
wasn’t my father. I’d even invent another man as my father. To
protect my mother, I’d make up stories of a secret marriage that for
some strange reason never got known. As though some man, say
the president of a railroad company or maybe a Congressman, had
married my mother, thinking his wife was dead and then it turned
out she wasn’t . So they had to hush it up, but I got born just the same. I wasn’t
really the son of my father. Somewhere in the world there was a
very dignified, quite wonderful man who was really my father. I
even made myself half believe these fancies. And then there came a certain night. Mother was away from
home. Maybe there was church that night. Father came in. He’d
been off somewhere for two or three weeks. He found me alone in
the house, reading by the kitchen table. It had been raining, and he was very wet. He sat and looked at
me for a long time, not saying a word. I was startled, for there was
on his face the saddest look I had ever seen. He sat for a time, his
clothes dripping. Then he got up.
“Come on with me,” he said. I got up and went with him out of the house. I was filled with
wonder, but I wasn’t afraid. We went along a dirt road that led
down into a valley, about a mile out of town, where there was a
pond. We walked in silence. The man who was always talking had
stopped his talking. I didn’t know what was up and had the queer feeling that I was
with a stranger. I don’t know whether my father intended it so. I
don’t think he did. The pond was quite large. It was still raining hard, and there were
flashes of lightning followed by thunder. We were on a grassy bank
at the pond’s edge when my father spoke, and in the darkness and
rain his voice sounded strange. “Take off your clothes,” he said. Still filled with wonder, I
began to undress. There was a flash of lightning, and I saw that he
was already naked. Naked, we went into the pond. Taking my hand, he pulled me in.
It may be that I was too frightened. too full of feeling of
strangeness, to speak. Before that night my father had never seemed
to pay any attention to me.“And what is he up to now?” I kept asking myself. I did not
swim very well, but he put my hand on his shoulder and struck out
into the darkness. He was a man with big shoulders, a powerful swimmer. In the
darkness I could feel the movement of his muscles. We swam to the
far edge of the pond and then back to where we had left our
clothes. The rain continued and the wind blew. Sometimes my
father swam on his back and when he did he took my hand in his
large powerful one and moved it over so that it rested always on