My Life as a Rat. Joyce Carol Oates

enlisted. I was nineteen. I was stupid.”

      We knew from relatives that Daddy had been “cited for heroism” helping to evacuate wounded soldiers while wounded himself. He’d been awarded medals—kept in a box in the attic.

      My brothers tried to get him to talk about being a soldier in the U.S. military and in the war but he never would. In a good mood after a few ales he’d concede he’d been God-damned lucky the shrapnel that got him had been in his ass, not his groin, or none of “you kids” would’ve been born; in a not-good mood he’d say only that Vietnam had been a mistake but not just his mistake, the whole country had gone bat-shit crazy.

      He’d hated Nixon more than Johnson, even. That a president would lie to people who trusted him and not give a damn how many thousands of people died because of him, Daddy shook his head, speechless in indignation.

      Most politicians were those blood-sucking sons of bitches. Cocksuckers. Fuckers. Even Kerrigan relatives who were involved in local, western New York State politics were untrustworthy, opportunists and crooks.

      Daddy would only talk about Vietnam with other veterans. He had a scattering of friends who were veterans of Vietnam, Korea, and World War II he went out drinking with, but never invited to the house; our mother did not know their wives, and our father had no interest in introducing her. Taverns, saloons, pubs, roadhouses—these were the gathering places of men like Daddy, almost exclusively male, relaxed and companionable. In such places they watched championship boxing matches, baseball and football, on TV. They laughed uproariously. They smoked, they drank. No one chided them for drinking too much. No one waved away smoke with prissy expressions. Who’d want women in such places? Women complicated things, spoiled things, at least women who were wives.

      Returning home late from an evening with these men Daddy was likely to be heavy-footed on the stairs. Often he woke us, cursing when he missed a step, or collided in the dark with something.

      If one of us left something on the stairs, textbook, pair of shoes, Daddy might give it a good kick out of pure indignation.

      In our beds, we might hear them. Our mother’s murmurous voice that might be startled, pleading. Our father’s voice slurred, abrasive, loud.

      A sound of a door being slammed, hard. And though we listened with quick-beating hearts, often we heard nothing further.

      Katie had hoped to interview our father for a seventh-grade social studies project involving “military veterans” but this did not turn out well. Calm at first telling her no, not possible but when Katie naively persisted losing his temper, furious and profane, threatening to call the teacher, to tell that woman to go fuck herself until—at last—our mother was able to persuade him not to make such a call, not to jeopardize Katie’s standing with her teacher or at the school, please just forget it, try to forget, the teacher had only meant well, Katie was in no way to blame and should not be punished.

      Punished was something our father could understand. Punished unfairly, he particularly understood.

      Katie would remember that incident for the rest of her life. As I will, too.

      You didn’t push Daddy, and you didn’t take Daddy for granted. It was a mistake to assume anything about him. His generosity, his pride. Dignity, reputation. Not being disgraced or disrespected. Not allowing your name to be dragged through the dirt.

      There were many Kerrigans scattered through the counties of western New York State. Most of these had emigrated from the west of Ireland, in and near Galway, in the 1930s, or were their offspring. Some were closely related to our father, some were distant, strangers known only by name. Some were relatives whom we saw frequently and some were estranged whom we never saw.

      We would not know why, exactly. Why some Kerrigans were great guys, you’d trust with your life. Others were sons of bitches, not to be trusted.

      We did notice, my sisters and me, that girl-cousins with whom we’d been friendly, and liked, would sometimes become inaccessible to us—their parents were no longer on Daddy’s good side, they’d been banished from Daddy’s circle of friends.

      If we asked our mother what had happened she might say evasively, “Oh—ask your father.” She did not want to become involved in our father’s feuds because a remark of hers might get back to him and anger him. Personal questions annoyed our father and we did not want to annoy our father whom we adored and feared in about equal measure.

      For instance: What happened between our father and Tommy Kerrigan, an older relative who’d been a U.S. congressman and mayor of South Niagara for several terms? Tommy Kerrigan was the most prominent of all the Kerrigans and certainly the most well-to-do. He’d been a Democrat at one time, and he’d been a Republican. He’d had a brief career as an Independent—a “reform” candidate. He’d been a liberal in some issues, and a conservative in others. He’d supported local labor unions but he’d also supported South Niagara law enforcement, which was notorious for its racist bias against African Americans; as a mayor he’d defended police killings of unarmed persons and had blatantly campaigned as a “law and order” candidate. Tommy Kerrigan was a “decorated” World War II veteran who supported American wars and military interventions, unquestioningly. He supported the Vietnam War until the U.S. withdrew troops in 1973 and it was his belief that Richard Nixon had been “hounded” out of office by his enemies. Naturally Tommy Kerrigan was critical of rallies and demonstrations against the war which he considered “traitorous”—“treasonous.” He defended the actions of the police in dealing roughly with antiwar protesters as they’d dealt roughly with civil rights marchers in an earlier era. After a scandal in the early 1980s he’d had to abruptly retire from public life, narrowly escaping (it was said) indictment for bribe taking and extortion, but he continued to live in South Niagara, in a showy Victorian mansion in the city’s most prestigious residential neighborhood, and he was still exerting political influence in circuitous ways while I was growing up. It was speculated that there’d been bad blood between Tom Kerrigan and our father’s father and so out of loyalty our father was permanently estranged from Tom Kerrigan as well. When a softball field was built in South Niagara and given the name Kerrigan Field no one in our family was invited to the dedication and the opening game; if our brothers played baseball at Kerrigan Field, they knew better than to mention the fact to our father.

      Carefully Daddy would say of Tom Kerrigan that there was no love lost between our families though at other times he might shake his head and admire Tom Kerrigan as the most devious son of a bitch since Joe McCarthy.

      And if anyone asked us if we were related to Tom Kerrigan, Daddy laughed and said, tell them politely No. I am not.

      WE LIVED IN A TWO-STORY WOOD FRAME HOUSE AT 388 BLACK Rock Street, South Niagara, that Daddy kept in scrupulous repair: roof, gutters, windows (caulked), chimney, shingle board sides painted metallic-gray, shutters navy blue. When the front walk began to crack, Daddy poured his own cement, to replace it; when the asphalt driveway began to crack and shatter, Daddy hired a crew to replace it under his direction. He knew where to buy construction materials, how to buy at a discount, he scorned using middlemen. In the long harsh winters of heavy snowfall in South Niagara Daddy made sure our walk and driveway were shoveled properly, not carelessly as many of our neighbors’ walks and driveways were shoveled; in warmer months, Daddy made sure that our (small) front yard and our (quarter-acre) backyard were kept properly mowed. My brothers did much of this work, and sometimes my older sisters, and if Daddy wasn’t satisfied that the task had been done well, he might finish it himself, in a fury of disgust. By trade he was a plumber and a pipe fitter but he’d taught himself carpentry and he dared to undertake (minor) electrical work for he resented paying other men to do anything he might reasonably do himself. It wasn’t just saving money, though Daddy was notoriously frugal; it had to do with pride, integrity. If you were a (male) Kerrigan you were quick to take offense at the very possibility that someone might be taking advantage of you. Being made a fool of was the worst of humiliations.

      As long as I lived in the house on Black Rock Street, as far back as I could remember, a project