In the Tank
by Orman P. Day
From the laundry room, Ricky reached into the garage, turned on the dangling lightbulb and called, “Dad, you in there?” His dad grunted, so Ricky squeezed his gangly body through a narrow path between boxes, broken furniture and other junk stacked practically to the ceiling. Ricky gasped when he found his dad in a clearing, lying nearly naked inside the long aquarium the two of them had salvaged from the ruins of Yun Ching’s. No water, thank God for that. Just Dad with a rug of grass between his legs and some plant life and dirt scattered around. His hairy round belly and his scraggly beard and the grass reminded Ricky of the hillside park where they used to fly kites and eat homemade doughnuts.
Hovering above him, Ricky asked, “Another one of your wacky experiments?”
“Didn’t you read my note?” His dad’s voice sounded dry, like it did when he’d been chain smoking.
“Note? Got too impatient, so I jumped to the end, ‘You’ll find me in the garage.’ You’ve done some wacky things before…” Ricky shook his head.
“You’re home early. Didn’t expect you for hours.” Dad was staring at the ceiling. “Cut school again?”
“I was up in the hills, dirt surfing.”
Dad glanced sideways at Ricky’s dirty trousers and raw elbows. “Looks like you wiped out. The dirt was gnarly, was it?”
“Just because there aren’t sharks and rips…” Ricky frowned. “What’s with tearing up the lawn?”
“You wouldn’t want me to be X-rated, would you? Wouldn’t want me to shock your schoolmates, would you, with only a wilting fig leaf covering my crotch?”
“Schoolmates? Why would they see you?”
Dad took a deep breath that fogged the scratched glass. “Since you didn’t read my whole note…”
“I was going to. I just wanted to shower first and pluck out the nettles. The letter looks pretty complicated….and you know me and reading.”
“I know all about you and reading and writing. That’s why I tried not to use a word a sixth-grader wouldn’t understand. It’s not easy writing a letter using words with only one syllable.”
“Dad, don’t,” said Ricky. “Remember what the counselor said about building up pride in myself.”
“Speaking of the counselor, Mr. McGill called me in for a private talk this morning.”
“What’s on his mind?”
“Your senior class project.”
“Oh.” Ricky twisted his mouth to one side.
“You realize you can’t graduate without it?”
Ricky looked downward, shook his head and then nodded it.
“Not to be a bearer of bad news,” said Dad, “but it’s due tomorrow you know. You’re not doing it on dirt surfing, are you? Maybe what happens when you hit a stretch of mud, and the difference between sliding across gravel and sliding across sand.”
Ricky flopped his top lip over his bottom lip.
“Or did you have another topic in mind?” asked Dad. “Maybe you’re doing something on poultry to prepare yourself for a lifetime career frying tenders and fries at Chick-fil-A.”
“I’m still thinking about it.” Ricky popped the brittle cane on an old rocking chair that Dad had lifted out of someone’s dumpster. “I don’t want to rush into anything.”
“You’re gonna think yourself right out of graduation. Mr. McGill told me that some kids get senior-itis, but it’s a rarity to get sophomore-itis, junior-itis…actually junior-itis twice…and senior-itis. I tried to convince him of the benefits of social promotions…but he wasn’t buying it. No senior project…no diploma…no graduation checks from Uncle Jon and Aunt Jenny”
“What am I gonna do, Dad?”
“That’s why I’m lying in the fish tank on a bed of potter’s soil.”
“This has to do with my project?” asked Ricky. “I thought you were testing some kind of tanning booth without a light.”
“It’s all in my note. And your papers are all written.”
“Are you gonna clue me in?”
“It’s a stretch,” said Dad, “but I put that you’re interested in a career in landscaping…growing things…because your dirt surfing has given you an appreciation for nature.”
“Isn’t landscaping where you mow the lawn and yank weeds?” asked Ricky. “And edge…I hate edging. Can a white kid even get hired as a gardener around here? People think we’re too lazy.”
“Take my word for it,” said Dad. “You WANT to be a landscaper and your project supports your school-to-career transition.”
“So why are you bare-assed in the aquarium?”
“Because I’M your senior project.”
“What?” asked Ricky.
“I’m going to turn myself into a terrarium.”
“What’s that?”
“When we die,” said Dad, “we melt away and things start growing out of us…you’re fertilizer, see? Now if you planted seeds in yourself and on yourself…you could become a small garden…a terrarium. Or at least, that your project’s hypothesis.”
“A garden like with Adam and Eve?”
“Eden was pretty tidy,” said Dad. “There was a snake, but I don’t remember maggots.”
“So what things are gonna grow out of you?”
“That’s where the research part of your project enters in. You’re going to find out which seeds sprout and which vines wither.” Dad reached beneath his buttocks and grimaced.
“Hemorrhoids?”
“I’ve got an acorn in my anus,” said Dad.
“What?”
“An acorn up my wazoo. That’s one of the seeds you’re testing. I’ve already swallowed poppy seeds, radish seeds, sunflower seeds…all sorts of seeds. They’re all written down in your research paper, which—I should note—was nicely typed on the Selectric that your mother said was useless. You’ve got your hypothesis, your experimental design…everything you need is there. Wrote it in your limited vocabulary and tossed in some typos so no one’ll think you plagiarized.”
“Are petunias gonna pop out of your pores?” asked Ricky.
“Things aren’t going to grow until after I’ve been dead awhile.”
“That could be a long time from now,” said Ricky. “Decades.”
Dad held up a plastic bag and rattled it. “Barbiturates. Swallow the pills. Pull the bag over my head. Tighten it with a rubber band. Next thing: I’m a terrarium.”
“You’re nuts.” Ricky frowned. “Have you been taking your meds?”
“Don’t like the side effects. Missed the highs.”
“I’m gonna call the doctor.”
“By the time he gets paged on the golf course…”
Ricky sighed. “What would I do without you? Who’ll cut my hair? Who’ll drive me to the mall?”
“I’ve figured it all out. With your high school diploma, you can get a job….maybe one without a future…but a job anyway. You’ll get my car and you can drive it when you get your license back, although I wouldn’t drive it far, not with the cost of oil. If you can find your mother, maybe she’ll let you move in with her and Randy, although he thinks you’re a loser because you wouldn’t try out for football.”
“What am I gonna do for sodas and fish tacos?” asked Ricky. “Walking around money?”
“People made fun of me for collecting all of this stuff.” Dad wagged his finger back and forth overhead, so that Ricky could see an ivy cutting and a seedling taped to his armpit. “They called me a packrat. A compulsive obsessive. But these are your inheritance. All treasures to the right people. Hold garage sales, take things to the swap meet, go to eBay. Thousands of dollars here. I gave a month’s notice to the landlord, but my deposit will take care of July. After that…sink or swim…but I think you’ll find some water wings here.”
“How am I supposed to haul your carcass to school without shattering the glass?”
“And getting a pane in my ass?” Dad laughed at his own pun. “Uncle Grif’s got the pickup. I’ve already alerted him to be here early tomorrow morning. He brought the aquarium here and now he’s going to take it away, only with me inside. You’ll note the aquarium’s resting on plywood, right? And the tarp? Don’t let Uncle Grif look under it, for cripes sakes. Or anyone else until you unveil me at school during your oral presentation.”
“Got ya.”
“Here’s how you do it,” said Dad. “Open the garage. Pull down truck tailgate. Have Uncle Grif back up. Lift, push in the whole kit and caboodle.”
“What’s a caboodle?”
“Forget it.” Dad scratched at his backside. “Damn acorn.”
“You’d do all this so I can graduate?”
“Nothing much in life has worked out for me,” said Dad. “Patents didn’t make me rich. Schemes fell apart. Jobs failed to materialize. You’re a dim bulb, but you’re all I’ve got. And I want you to succeed, even if I haven’t.”
“You’ve been a good father.”
“A better father would’ve bought you a real surfboard and taken you to the beach for vacations, maybe even to Hawaii.”
“I like surfing on dirt.”
Dad sighed. “See the sheet of Plexiglas over there. That goes on top. Notice I drilled ventilation holes into it.”
“But you won’t need any air, will you?”
“Oxygen for the plant life. It’s all in your report. The holes are too small for the flies to get out. Wouldn’t want your classroom to become infested, would we?”
“What flies?” asked Ricky.
“As I ripen…now here’s a word you might want to remember…into compost, I’m going to host all sorts of things, including maggots, which’ll turn into flies.”
“Dad, this is too weird.”
“I could step in front of a train. Then what? An autopsy. Cremation. My ashes scattered to the wind. This way I can give my body to science and get you an ‘A’ in the process. Look, you need to prepare yourself for what’s going to happen to my corpse. The terrarium may fizzle. I may turn into more of a cesspool than a garden.”
“Why?” asked Ricky.
“The roots might die. Toxicity from some of the fatty acids in my body. This is my final experiment and I’m giving it my all. But I can already see some flaws. I wonder if I should’ve packed some manure in here so the bacteria would break down my tissue? But then you barely passed chemistry, didn’t you?”
“This is so creepy,” said Ricky. “No one’s gonna want to go dirt surfing with me anymore.”
“They’re a bunch of dumb shits anyway. Hey, one more thing, when I’m dead…open my mouth and pour in that jar of marsh water and polliwogs.”
“So you’re doing this just to help me graduate?”
“There’s something else,” said Dad. “Vengeance.”
“Who you pissed at?” asked Ricky.
“The whole damn educational establishment. The kids who bullied you and goosed you. The principals who wanted to turn you into a zombie.” Dad’s speech was gaining speed with each sentence. “The teachers who insulted you because you couldn’t understand their poems and theorems. The politicians who want to measure you with their dumb-fuck tests. I want to stuff their damn nostrils with my stench. Fill their brains with nightmares.”
“Calm down, Dad. You’re getting manicky.”
“I hate their guts so I’m going to show them mine. When they see you marching across their damn platform in your cap and gown, I want them to retch into their mortarboards. And then you take your diploma and get the hell out of town and make yourself a life somewhere else. Find yourself a girl who can see you’ve got something special inside.”
“I don’t know.” Ricky scraped at his buzz cut. “It’s just too strange. I don’t know if I can pull this off with a straight face.”
“Damn it, Ricky.” Dad rose naked out of the aquarium like Neptune, shaking his head, scattering seeds from his hair, beard and bushy eyebrows. “I got a better idea.” Firmly he set his hand on Ricky’s shoulder and said, “Why don’t you get inside.”
Orman Day, a resident of Durham, NC, has had short stories, non-fiction and poetry published in such journals as Zyzzyva, Creative Nonfiction, Third Coast, Oyez Review, Red Cedar Review, Ascent, and Portland Review. He is currently writing a book about his backpacking travels in 90 countries and the 50 states.
