Iowa

            My father loved horses. Our first Christmas in America, after the evening mass, I fell asleep in the car between my sisters. I woke to my father lifting me up and carrying me in his arms to my room. He sat on the end of my bed and looked at me for a while. He did not know I was awake—I kept my eyes closed—but I could feel him looking at me. After a long time he touched my shoulder and whispered to me “Ilya, come with me.” We walked to the back paddock, where he kept Khrusczek, the stallion. I climbed up on the rail of the pen and my father jumped over the bars and pulled a short whip out of his pocket. Khrusczek pranced over and accepted an apple from my father’s hand. Then my father smiled, winked at me and waved the whip playfully in front of Khrusczek. The horse arched his neck and pranced nervously. My father let out a great yell and cracked the whip. Khrusczek wheeled and began racing around the paddock. The moon was shining on his coat and his breath was steaming in the cold air. He was tossing his head and his eyes were very white against his black face. My father was laughing and laughing, and Khrusczek kept racing around the paddock. The snow was very white in the moonlight and I was very sleepy, and I began to see Khrusczek flying. We stayed there for hours—it seemed like only minutes from the time I climbed back into bed until my sisters woke me up shouting about Christmas presents and jumping on my bed.

            About two years later Khrusczek rammed a nail and tore a long gash in his left fore. We sweated it and then wrapped it with duct tape. My father says duct tape is the best thing about America. In Poland, before we were born, you had to wrap horses with linen wraps which were not as tight and got dirty quickly. We sweated and drained Khrusczek’s leg every day but he seemed to be getting worse. My father kept me home to look after the other horses while he cared for Khrusczek. He watched Khrusczek, sweated him, drained his wound, hand-walked him, fed him a special diet. He continued to lose weight. My father reached inside his wound with his hand and cut away the diseased muscle. After that Khrusczek started to get better but he was still very thin. I had missed five days of school before he started to get better. The principal sent a guidance counselor to our home to make sure I wasn’t playing hooky. My father, when I translated that she was a lady from the school come to find out why I missed attendance, led her to Khrusczek’s pen and gestured to him and began to explain. The lady took one look at the stallion, with his gaping wound and his duct taped legs and began lecturing us severely. I tried my best to explain but I knew she had made up her mind, and a young boy and his foreign father would make no change in her thinking. Several days later policemen came and said a lot of things in unfriendly voices. I translated as best I could for my father but the officers kept their grim looks and handed us a piece of paper and told us if we didn’t do what it said the animals would be taken away. Then they drove away. My sisters and I tried our best to puzzle out what the paper said. We guessed best we could although our English was not as strong as it is now. We decided that they wanted us to take off the duct tape. We did, and a week later Khrusczek was looking much better. The policemen came back and looked around and nodded but the stern looks never left their faces. My father, wishing to show how much better the stallion was feeling, brought out his whip and began yelling and cracking the whip so Khrusczek would race around the pen and demonstrate his soundness. The policemen stopped my father, shouted at him, and rushed into the pen to try and stop the stallion from racing. He reared and the white of his eyes showed—strangers in his pen moving so suddenly made him crazy. He struck one of the officers and then the other officer talked into his radio. Soon several trailers and more police cars showed up and they took away all of our horses. All nineteen of our mares and geldings and last of all Khrusczek. My father was beet red with rage but we could not make them understand. My sisters and I were struck dumb with shock. Once all the horses were loaded, my father watched stonily as they drove away. The next day my father got a job as a janitor, and we went back to school. My mother enrolled in English classes and got a job as a receptionist in a dentist’s office.

            When I was fourteen I was crazy about cars. It wasn’t unusual for me to skip Altar Boy meetings at our Eastern Orthodox Church to cruise around in my friend Jimmy’s Camaro.  My father didn’t like Jimmy. Jimmy smoked and skipped school and mouthed off to adults. I worshipped him, not the least because of his beautiful candy-apple red Camaro. He would regularly roar up the dirt road to our farm and slide screeching to a halt in front of the house—he’d honk loudly, and that was my signal to come down for a night of aimless driving, drinking, and knocking over mailboxes. I always raced to get downstairs before my father did because if he got there first he’d stand in front of the door and tell me to have my friend come inside like a civilized human being. Then Jimmy would have to come in and make small talk with my mother and drink bitter Polish tea while my father glowered at him. If I got to the door first I was home free. I’d run to the car and hop in the front seat and Jimmy would gun it. Jimmy laughed at my father’s distrust of him. “If he only knew what we were really doing!” he’d crow while looking at me devilishly, then kissing me. It wasn’t easy to keep the secret. Finding a place where we could blow each other wasn’t the problem—endless fields of soy make good neighbors. But our other friends began to get jealous of Jimmy and me spending so much time together. They wanted to be included on our jaunts. So we stopped the solitary drives…during the day. We began sneaking out at night. Jimmy would park halfway down my driveway and walk quietly through the cabbage patch with a handful of gravel to throw at my window. I would slither out of bed, careful on the creaking boards of my room (thank god I was the only boy and so had a room to myself) and we’d go. We were always careful to be back before four, when my father got up to milk the cows. One night Jimmy was in a different mood. He was moody and a little withdrawn. One minute he was stroking my hair and telling me he never wanted to be with anyone but me, the next he was accusing me of not loving him. I didn’t know what was wrong with him. Finally he pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels and took a few swigs. Then he told me he wanted to f**k me. I was surprised and not a little nervous. Sodomy was a sin. In the back of my mind I knew what we were doing was wrong but the Bible never said anything about blow jobs. But Jimmy didn’t really wait for my response. He spit into his hands and unbuttoned my jeans and I flipped over and then he was inside me and I was out of my mind. I lost track of time. I was born to feel just this way. We fucked for hours.

         I finally came out of my ecstasy when the early morning light started creeping over the hood of the car. We jumped in and raced back to my place but it was too late. Dawn came at six. My father had been up since four. I knew I’d been found out when my sister ran out the front door and threw her arms around me crying. My mother appeared at the door, arms folded, silent. I walked morosely inside, barely even looking at Jimmy, and sitting at the kitchen table was my father, looking utterly defeated. When he heard me come in he lifted his head from his hands and I could see the tracks of tears on his dusty cheeks. I had never seen my father cry. Not at his mother’s funeral, not when his horses, his livelihood, were taken because he couldn’t speak the language of this land of opportunity. He asked me “Why did you run away from me?” I couldn’t answer him. What could I say to the man who cried when he thought he had lost me? According to his God, I was already lost.