Chapter 1 - Part 2

**
The first heavy drops of rain hit our windshield as we continued to speed away from the park where the reunion had been held, to speed away from the hurt and humiliation, to speed away from home. I had stopped looking out the window now and was facing forward staring at Dad.

“Turn around!” I pleaded with him mentally. “Can’t you see we are going nowhere? Turn around! We need to go home!”


**
Once, for Halloween, I wanted to be the Invisible Man.
“You mean a ghost?” my mom asked.
“NO! I mean the Invisible Man!” I insisted.
It may have been impossible, but my mom tried to think of ideas for my sake. Afterall, she attempts the impossible everyday for my sake.

We finally decided that since it would be night while I was trick or treating, that I could dress all in black. I would wear a black stocking cap and Mom would paint my face black including my eyelids, so if I stood very still and closed my eyes – it would seem like I disappeared!

That night I went out in my costume to show Dad as he got home from work. I stood by the car as he was getting out and I said, “Hey, Dad, we made it work! I really am the Invisible Man!”

Then I closed my eyes to make the effect complete. But I had to crack them open a second later as I heard Dad leaving his car and heading for the house, without even glancing toward me. I stood there in the darkness watching as he climbed the stairs to the house and shut the door.

I closed my eyes again. “I am the Invisible Man,” I said to myself. I didn’t have to worry about anything I said giving me away. I knew I couldn’t be heard either. My dad had just proven that to me.

**

The clouds suddenly opened up and let out a deluge of rain. Individual raindrops could not even be discerned on the windows. It seemed more like we had driven under a waterfall. It was really dark outside now and the windshield wipers beat furiously against the rain. I felt bad for them somehow. I knew that they could race and beat and do the very best for which they were made, but they still wouldn’t be able to help us. We still couldn’t see. The headlights weren’t any help either.

This kind of storm was never good news in Nebraska. When the clouds roll in across the plains and it turns dark in the middle of the day. Well, then you know, that’s tornado weather, that is. And if you’re out in the middle of nowhere, like we were, heading away from home, then there’s nothing to shelter you from all those angry blasts.

Mom had noticed, too. I saw her reach over to turn on the radio.
Dad immediately switched it off. “I don’t want that on!” he growled.
“Sam, there might be a storm warning . . .”
“Ya think?” he demanded. “We are obviously having a storm.”
“But . . . a tornado?” my Mom asked feebly.
“Enough! I don’t want the radio on right now. Is it too much to ask to have just a little bit of alone time just a little bit of the time?” he demanded.

After that, it was silent again. I changed my mental pleading, “Please find some shelter. There must be somewhere to keep us safe. There must be! Stop the car! Get us somewhere safe!”

“What’s that sound?” Brittney asked at my side. I didn’t know how she could hear anything with the rain pounding on the car and the wheels swashing through the water on the road. But I strained my ears to listen anyway. Dad and Mom hadn’t even heard her ask the question.

“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “Nobody can hear anything right now! The rain is too loud!”

She glared at me. “Don’t you think I know that? I think it’s weird, too.” She paused for a moment, “But I hear music.” She glanced up front at Mom and Dad. “It’s not the radio, either.”

“Nope. Not the radio,” I agreed.

Just then I heard it too. It was indistinct and sounded like it was still quite far off in the distance, but I could hear it too. I couldn’t hear an entire melody – only snatches that seemed to be carried to us on the wind that buffeted the car and threatened to blow us off the road. The simultaneous experience of being pushed by the wind and hearing a snatch of music made it feel as though the music very much wanted us off of that road. As did I.

Brittney was staring hard out her window again. “As if she’ll be able to see anything in all this rain,” I thought bitterly to myself. But then, she grabbed my sleeve. “Tommy! Can you see that?”

I leaned over so that I was looking out her window, too. At first, all I could see was rain and the deep gray/black of the storm obscuring the fields outside our windows. I strained my eyes ahead to the far horizon where Brittney had pointed and I thought I did see something. Lights maybe, clustered together in the distance. Not enough lights to be a town but too many to just be a house or a barn.

As we got closer, the lights seemed to form into shapes. One group of lights in particular, seemed to be higher than the rest and seemed to be . . . a circle.

“It’s a Ferris Wheel!” Brittney exclaimed as she turned her excited eyes up to mine. “It’s a Carnival!”

An awful screeching noise suddenly shuddered through the car. Dad swerved madly back and forth trying to stay on the road, as the engine made several more horrible noises and the car shuddered to a halt.
“What in the tarnation?” Dad hollered as he flung open the door and stomped out into the rain. He lifted the hood and we thought we could hear him tinkering around in there.

Several minutes passed. “When’s Dad coming back into the car, Mom?” Brittney asked.

“I don’t know, honey. Soon. I’m sure.”

It was then that I saw him. He wasn’t under the hood. He was striding through the corn field headed for the lights of the carnival. “Look!” I said, “There he goes!”

Mom craned her head around until she could see around the uplifted hood. She shook her head. “He must be going to get some help.”

We all stared as his figure retreated into the dark. I didn’t trust my dad. He was leaving us and he might not come back.

**
In ninth grade, my mom wanted me to play football. My dad loved football. He wore red. We had pictures of him in college with his face painted at football games. We did, after all, live in Nebraska. I think my mom thought that if I played football, I would cease being the Invisible Man.

“I want to take Karate!” I told my mom. “In Karate, you don’t have to be big, but you can still fight. That sounds like something useful to me – not running around on a field pushing people down and fighting over a leather ball.”

“Tommy,” she had said and my heart twisted inside me because I knew what she was going to do. “I don’t get a lot of happiness in this world.” Then she sat down and started to cry.

I signed up for the football team the next day.

On the first day of practice, my stomach was tied into knots. I felt like I was going to be physically ill. The thought of being run over by guys twice my size had kept me up all night. Mom asked Dad to drive me to practice, even though he had other things he had to do. As he stopped the car in front of the field, the panic almost overwhelmed me. In desperation, I turned to my dad and did something I never would have normally done. “You’ll pick me up, Dad, won’t you?” I asked him. “You’ll be here when I’m done?”

“Tom! I’ve got to meet with Harry and go over the programming he’s done for me. I have things to do to support this family and you can walk home. It is not that far.”

“Dad!” I said. “Please! Just today? Just on the first day of practice?”
He had looked at the desperation in my face and then turned away. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll come.”

I waited a full 30 minutes after practice until one of the coaches who had stayed behind to wait with me asked if he could give me a ride home since he wanted to get home himself.

“No thanks,” I said. “You go. He’ll come.”

I walked home that night at dark. He didn’t come.

**
I sat up. “I’m going with him!” I said -- my hand on the handle of the car.
“Tom!” my mom said, “We need you here with us.”
“Please, mom?” Brittney said at my side. “It’s a carnival. Let’s all go!”

Mom looked out into the rain. It had abated somewhat so that it was only tickling the top of the car, now. Rain in Nebraska did that. Pounded on you, then lightened up, then pounded on you again.

“If we hurry,” Brittney said again, “we won’t get too wet!”

Mom looked out toward the lights and at Dad steadily getting farther and farther away from us.
“Alright,” she finally said reluctantly. “Let’s go.”