A Good Beating
by Bernard O’Leary
I’d been working in the garden all afternoon. My joints creaked and complained as I eased myself into a garden chair and looked at the work that still needed to be done. The garden seemed huge. The uncut lawn rolled on forever.
Most of that afternoon had been spent listening to the shouting and slamming doors on the other side of the hedge. I left them to it, as I usually did when they fought, which was often these days.
It carried on for a while, until I heard the porch door slam, followed by feet running along the patio. My hedge started thrashing around as if a wild beast was stuck in there. Ben’s little head popped out from between the tangled branches as he wriggled free and shot across my lawn. Without looking at me, he scrambled up the knotted rope into the tree house and disappeared inside. The rope squirmed like a snake as Ben dragged it up behind him.
The garden was still again. I listened to the birds singing, and then heard the gate creak as Paul entered. He was as pale as chalk and looked near fainting.
“Is he here?”
I pointed at the tree house.
“Ben,” said Paul, trying to sound calm, “please come down here and talk to me.”
“He hit me, granddad!” yelled Ben. “Don’t let him come up here!”
“Don’t tell lies about your father,” I said, but even as I was saying it, I realized Ben was telling the truth. Paul looked close to crying. “Come on,” I said to Paul, “come inside with me for a beer. It’ll give us all a chance to cool down.”
*
The tree house was made out of the bones of Paul’s own
childhood tree house. I rebuilt it when they moved in next
door, shortly after Ben’s mother ran off.
Paul had hidden from me in that tree many times when he was
Ben’s age. It was a good hiding place. Once the rope was
pulled up there was no way of getting in, and the angry
parent on the ground simply had to wait for the child to
come back down.
Of course, when Paul was a kid, I was always happy to let
him stay up there as long as he wanted. I’d devised my own
system of punishment which I considered very fair and
democratic, and which required little exertion on my part.
I would get a good detective novel from the house and read
it while waiting for Paul to come down. For every page I
read, an extra slap was added to his punishment. I’d
normally get to page five or six before he’d tentatively
lower himself down the rope, and then I’d deliver him five
or six hard smacks across the backside. Sometimes I’d
barely have read the first line before he skulked back
down. One time, he stayed up there so long that I had to go
fetch myself a second book.
I kept my word on that occasion as on all others,
delivering a smack for every single page I’d read. By the
time we finished, my arm ached and the sun was setting.
*
Paul didn’t want to drink, so I gave him water and opened a
beer for myself. Through the kitchen window, we could see
the tree house. Two little feet wearing red socks and
bright white sports shoes were dangling over the side,
swinging up and down rhythmically.
“So,” I said, “what happened to all this ‘I’m never going
to hit my kid’ stuff?”
“Knock it off, Dad.” He sounded more desperate than angry.
I regretted saying that, but didn’t apologize. We sat in
silence for a while, me occasionally sipping at my icy cold
beer, him staring intently out of the window, watching
Ben’s feet kicking up and down, up and down.
“I’m not sure I can do this anymore,” Paul said after a
while.
“Why is that?”
“Because things just get worse every day. Because I can’t
handle it. I think I’m going to crack up. Today, all I
asked was for him to vacuum the living room, and he bitched
and complained for half an hour, then when he did do it he
kept bashing the vacuum against the furniture. I told him
to stop and he sighed, and then... I just lost it.”
“Did you hurt him?”
He held up his right hand and examined it like it was a
bloody murder weapon. “No. Just scared him a little. But
you should have seen the look on his face, Dad. He looked
at me like...”
Ben was a good kid, but he liked to test the boundaries
with his father more and more each day. Plus, it was hard
on him to be without a mother. Hard on Paul too.
“Well, to me it sounds like he earned it, a little.”
Paul never replied, but I saw that he was gripping the
kitchen counter so hard, his knuckles had turned white.
*
Paul had never hit his son before. As far as I know, that
was the first time Paul had ever even really hit anyone.
No, I tell a lie – it was the second. Once, when he was
around Ben’s age, he got in a fight at school. Just boys
being boys, but Paul threw a punch that broke the other
kid’s nose.
The headmaster asked me to come down, rather than Paul’s
mother. It was the first time I’d set foot in a school
since I was a boy myself. It still smelled the same, I
remember: antiseptic and sweat. Paul was already in the
headmaster’s office when I got there, sitting in an
uncomfortable-looking chair, his feet barely touching the
ground.
“I do not allow violence in my school,” said the
headmaster. “Your son must be punished appropriately. Of
course, under the new regime, this means a suspension.”
“The new regime?” I asked.
“The new regime” meant non-corporal punishment; the belt,
the cane and the back of the hand having been banned around
the time Paul started school. The headmaster spoke
wistfully about how, in the good old days, he’d settled
matters like this with the thick leather strap that still
hung on the wall behind his desk. “But that’s no longer an
option, so I must suspend Paul instead, disrupting his
education and creating more paperwork for the school. Such
a shame.”
“Of course,” I said, “a parent, say, could still physically
punish a child.”
“Absolutely,” he said.
“And, if such a punishment was administered...”
“Why, if a child was being correctly disciplined in the
home, I would no longer feel it necessary for him to be
punished by the school.”
I asked him to leave it in my hands.
As I drove home, Paul kept asking if he was suspended. I
didn’t reply, and eventually the truth seemed to dawn on
him. He sat still, silent, his skin pale and his eyes wide,
until we got in the house and I took off my belt. He almost
started to cry, but fought it back. I paused between each
swipe of the belt, giving him time to reflect. He still
didn’t cry. I felt proud.
*
“Ben, if you come down, I’ll let you stay up late tonight.
We can get a pizza and play Xbox.”
Ben didn’t acknowledge his father. There was no sign of
life from tree house except his feet, still swinging back
and forth.
“Ben, I’m your father, and I order you to come down this
instant.”
More silence.
“Goddamn it, Ben, get down here this instant, or I’ll so
help me, I’ll cut this tree down.”
I thought I saw the rhythm of his legs quicken a little,
but apart from that there was no sign that Ben had heard
his father. Paul looked at me and shrugged. He sat down in
the chair next to me.
“You could try just talking to him,” I suggested.
“I’ve been talking to him for an hour, Dad.”
“That’s not really talking, son. Why not tell him the
truth? He’s a big boy. Tell him how you feel. Tell him how
hard your job as a single father is. Maybe even tell the
boy you’re sorry.”
Paul looked at me like I was showing early signs of
Alzheimer’s. “Yeah, right,” he said, snorting, “you’d love
me to do that. You’d love me to show what a weak parent I
am.”
“I’m just trying to help,” I said. “You’re the one raising
the boy, you do what you damn well please.”
He thought for a while, then stood up and walked back over
to the tree. He spent a while choosing his words, then
began to speak. He told Ben a lot of things, some of which
I hadn’t known. He spoke about how his ex-wife had broken
his heart, how important it was to him to do a good job as
a father, how disappointed in himself he was for what had
happened.
My son is a tall man. He stood with his back to me while he
spoke, silhouetted by the approaching dusk, and there was
something strangely heroic about him. As he spoke, I
wondered where he was finding the words, where he inherited
his eloquence from. Not from me. I’d never been able to
find words like that when I needed them.
At the end of the speech, Ben’s legs stopped swinging. He
was still for a while, then started to move. His head
popped up over the side of the tree house.
“I told you before,” he said, “I’m not coming down until
granddad calls the police. You’re crazy.”
He lay back down and started swinging his legs again.
Paul stared at me. Shrugging, I said, “Hey, when did I ever
claim to be an expert on kids?”
I had often claimed to be an expert, of course, and when
Paul was little, I talked about what a great father I was.
Firm, swift punishment, measured out with a surgical degree
of fairness. “I teach him discipline, but I also teach him
justice.” How many times had I delivered that line?
Of course, it didn’t last. I snapped one day. I’d been
drinking too much, lost my job, Paul’s mother was just
about ready to walk out on me. Paul said something he
shouldn’t have, and I popped him in the mouth. A man’s
punch. I hit him a couple more times. I almost killed him,
to tell the truth.
I didn’t ask him to lie about it, but he did anyway,
telling everyone he’d been mugged. Once, while he was still
recuperating, I was in his room after bringing him some
chicken soup, and I asked why he had covered for me.
“Because you might have gone to jail if I told anyone,” he
told me.
“What if it was fair to send me to jail?”
He considered it. “I don’t know why everybody has to be
fair all the time. Maybe sometimes people should just be
given a break,” he said before switching his attention to
the chicken soup.
A month later, his mother took him away to live on the
other side of town. We didn’t speak much after that, until
he and Ben moved back in next door.
*
Ben came down eventually, because he was cold and hungry
and there was nowhere else for him to go. He was already
acting like he’d forgotten the day’s events as he ran back
through the hedge.
“Okay,” Paul said, “now let’s see if we can get him to
bed.”
“Paul?”
“Yes?”
I stared at him, mute, until eventually I said, “I’ll get a
ladder tomorrow. So we can get into the tree house, if
needs be.”
“Probably a good idea,” he said, before following his son.
I forget now what it was that I really wanted to say to
him. I have a lot of unspoken thoughts. It’s hard to keep
track of them all.
The day was getting to the end, and the sun hung low over
the houses. I sat alone in the garden, casting a long
shadow over the untidy lawn.
Copyright
2009 by Bernard O’Leary