The Carnival Papers

Swimming Lessons

As Willard Schumann stepped off the train, he searched the platform for the father he had never met.  After his mother’s funeral, he had seen his father for the first time in an album of wedding photos depicting him in a brown uniform, freshly returned from the trenches of France, a cap shadowing his face.  The young captain held his new wife’s hand with his right, while the sleeve of his left arm was folded and pinned at the elbow.

Willard held a scuffed black suitcase in his right hand and dabbed at the sweat dripping into his eyes with the vacant left cuff of his shirt.  Through the crowd on the platform, he spotted a man leaning against a brick wall with the left arm of his white shirt folded and pinned at the elbow.  The man had the loose jowls and thinning blonde hair Willard had begun to notice in the mirror and waved with his deformed left arm, bringing heat to Willard’s cheeks.  Willard put down the suitcase to extend his right hand.  “Are you Johan Schumann?” Willard asked.

“You can call me Papa,” Johan Schumann said, his voice colored with a German accent.  He leaned forward to attempt an embrace, but Willard stepped back.

“I’d rather not.”

“Would you like some help with that suitcase?  It looks heavy.”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m sure you’d like to get out of this heat.  I know a quiet place not far from here.  Give us a chance to talk.”

“I’d rather just go to the hotel.”

“Like I said, it’s not far.  Come.”  They pushed through a cluster of returning GIs, their brown uniforms reminiscent of the wedding photo.  After making their way through the train station, Willard and his father emerged on the main thoroughfare, a white tent visible on the horizon.  Fliers on the door of the general store proclaimed that the Grand National Circus had come to Evanston for this week only.

“So when are you leaving?” Willard said.

“I can stay here for a few days and meet them in Chattanooga.”

“I have to be in Atlanta tomorrow night.”

They weaved through oncoming traffic across the cracked pavement and followed the road in the opposite direction from the circus tent.  At a bend in the road, the pavement gave way to dirt and slanted upwards, towards a forest of sun-baked trees.  Johan motioned to the suitcase as they started up the hill.  “Are you sure you don’t want any help?”

“I’m used to it.”

“What is it you do?”

“Have you ever heard of the GripMeister?”  When Johan shook his head, Willard explained, “It’s a special wrench to help housewives and the elderly open jars.  Why, with the GripMeister, it’s like having an extra hand.”  Willard waved his empty sleeve, the way he did for customers, prompting them to chuckle. 

“You sell these all over the country?”

“The south is my territory.  They have people for other regions.”

“We’re not so different, I think.”

“It’s not the same at all.  I sell people a useful product; people pay a quarter to laugh at you.  No wonder Mom left you.”

Johan spun around, his jowls sinking as he frowned.  “I am sorry for what happened.”

They retreated into the weeds at the side of the road as a rusty truck approached.  While the truck wheezed uphill, Johan unpinned his left sleeve and waved the misshapen arm at the half-dozen children in the back.  The kids gaped at the flipper and then giggled as Johan pursed his lips like a fish and pantomimed swimming through the weeds.  The truck reached the top of the hill and then disappeared, the sound of the children’s laughter fading while Willard stared at Johan’s arm.  “How could you do that?” Willard said.

“They seemed to enjoy it.”

“They were laughing at you.”

“Why shouldn’t they?”  Johan pulled down his sleeve and began walking up the hill in the tracks left by the truck.  After a moment’s hesitation to listen to a retreating train whistle, Willard followed his father.  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“It’s grotesque.”

“What would you have me do?  Chop it off like your mother suggested?”

“Yes!”

“Then why haven’t you?”  Willard’s face warmed, but he didn’t say anything.  “There is a man at the circus, Milosh, who swallows swords.  We could borrow one from him.  Is that what you want?”

“Are you crazy?  I’d die!”

“Wouldn’t you be better off then?”

They stood frozen in the center of the road as Willard pondered the question.  At last he shook his head.  “No.”

They continued in silence to the top of the hill and then Johan motioned for Willard to follow him along a narrow path through the trees.  Leaves killed prematurely by the heat crunched under Willard’s feet as he considered his father’s words.  He thought back to his first day of school, when his mother had knelt before the front door of the classroom to look him in the eye.  “If anyone asks, you say you had an accident,” she said.

“But Mama, that’s a lie.”

“I know honey, but sometimes we have to lie for our own good.  It won’t hurt anyone.”  As he toddled into the classroom to sit amongst the normal kids, he saw his mother still in the doorway, kneading the fabric of her skirt and biting down on her lip.  He had told the lie that day and repeated it every time a customer asked what happened to his arm.  He had turned his deformity into a joke to peddle GripMeisters.  We’re not so different, his father had said.

They emerged from the trees at the shore of a still pond surrounded by hills of withered green.  Johan sat upon a rotting log and motioned to a patch of moss next to him.  Willard sat on the opposite end of the log and stared at the dark surface of the water.  “Your mother never understood,” Johan said.  “Even when we married, she thought it could be fixed like a broken stove.  She thought I felt the same way she did about it, ashamed.”

“You didn’t?”

“Sometimes, but it is who I am.”  He pulled off his shirt and gestured with the flesh-colored flipper.  “During the war I interviewed prisoners in the hospitals, most of them burned or blinded or missing limbs.  They found it easy to talk to me, thinking I was one of them.  After seeing their pain and hearing their screams, I couldn’t pretend anymore.”

“So you left Mom and I?”

“I didn’t think I had a choice.  Now, seeing what she’s done to you, I would have stayed.”

“She didn’t do anything,” Willard said, his voice faltering.

“I know you love her and so do I.  I wish it could have been different.”  They sat in silence while the sky began to fade from blue to the amber shades of evening.  In the dwindling light, Johan’s deformed limb had the dark, glossy look of a seal’s flipper.  “Before we head back, let’s go for a swim.”

“I can’t.”

“You were born to swim.  Stop being afraid.  There’s no one else here.”

Johan waded into the pond until the water came up to his shoulders and then darted away with the agility of a fish.  Willard removed his suit jacket and unbuttoned his shirt to stare at the tapered lump of flesh he kept hidden.  After taking off his pants, he entered the pond, the water as welcoming as a warm bath.

When the water reached his stomach, he took a few practice swipes with his arms and marveled at the way his left arm sliced through the water.  Droplets rolled down the scaly flesh of the flipper, rippling the pond’s black surface.  Johan floated at the other end of the pond and called to him, “Come on.  You can do it.”

Willard pushed forward, his arms and legs responding to some primitive instinct.  He gained speed, the flipper pulling him ahead faster and faster.  As he neared his father, Willard began to laugh.  Still he kept swimming from one end of the pond to the other, faster and faster, laughing all the while.