The Cub

by Lois Dykeman Kleihauer

One of his first memories was of his father bending down from his great height to sweep him into the air. He could look down on his mother's upturned face as she watched, laughing with them, and at the thick shock of his father's brown hair and at his white teeth.   
     Then he would come down, shrieking happily, but he was never afraid, not with his father's hands holding him. No one in the world was as strong, or as wise, as his father.
     He remembered a time when his father moved the piano across the room for his mother. He watched while she guided it into its new position, and he saw the difference in their hands as they rested, side by side, upon the gleaming walnut. His mohter's hands were white and slim and delicate, his father's large and square and strong.
      As he grew, he learned to play bear. When it was time for his father to come home at night, he would hide behind the kitchen door. When he heard the closing of the garage doors, he would hold his breath and squeeze himself into the crack behind the door. Then he would be quiet.
      It was always the same. His father would open the door and stand there, the backs of his long legs close. "Where's the boy?"
      He would glance at the little smile on his mother's face, and then he would leap and grab his father about the knees, and his father would look down and shout, "Hey, what's this? A bear—a young cub!"
      Then, no matter how tightly he tried to cling, he was lifted up and perched upon his father's shoulder, and they would march past his mother, and together they would duck their heads beneath the doors.
      And then he went to school. And on the playground he learned how to wrestle and shout, how to hold back tears, how to get a half-nelson on the boy who tried to take his football away from him. He came home at night and practiced his new wisdom on his father. Straining and puffing, he tried to pull his father off the lounge chair while his father kept on reading the paper, only glancing up now and then to ask in mild wonderment, "What are you trying to do, boy?"
      He would stand and look at his father. "Gee whiz, Dad!" and then he would realize that his father was teasing him, and he would crawl up on his father's lap and punch him lovingly.
      And still he grew—taller, slimmer, stronger. He was like a young buck with tiny new horns. He wanted to lock them with any other young buck's to test them in combat. He measured his biceps with his mother's tape measure. He thrust his arm in front of his father. "Feel that! How's that for muscle?"
      His father put his great thumb into the flexed muscle and pressed, and the boy pulled back, protesting, laughing. "Ouch!"
      Sometimes they wrestled on the floor together, and his mother moved the chairs back. "Be careful, Charles—don't hurt him."
      After a while his father would push him aside and sit in his chair, his long legs thrust out before him, and the boy would scramble to his feet, half angry, half laughing over the ease with which his father mastered him.
      "Doggone it, Dad, someday—" he would say.
      He went out for football and track in high school. He surprised even himself now, there was so much more of him. And he could look down on his mother. "Little one," he called her, or "small fry."
      Sometimes he took her wrists and backed her into a chair, while he laughed and she scolded. "I'll—I'll take you across my knee."
      "Who will?" he demanded.
      "Well—your father still can," she said.
      His father—well, that was different.
      They still wrestled occasionally, but it distressed his mother. She hovered about them worrying, unable to comprehend the need for their struggling. It always ended the same way, with the boy upon his back and his fathergrinning down at him. "Give?"
      "Give."
      And he got up, shaking his head.
      "I wish you wouldn't," his mother would say, fretting. "There's no point in it.
      

       You'll hurt yourselves; don't do it any more."     
      So for nearly a year they had not wrestled, but he thought about it one night at dinner. He looked at his father closely. It was queer, but his father didn't look nearly as tall or broad-shouldered as he used to. He could even look his father straight in the eyes now.
      "How much do you weigh, Dad?" he asked.     
      His father threw him a mild glance. "About the same; about a hundred and ninety. Why?"     
      The boy grinned. "Just wondering."     
      But after a while he went over to his father where he sat reading the paper and took it out of his hands. His father glanced up, his eyes at first questioning and then narrowing to meet the challenge in his son's. "So," he said softly.     
      "Come on, Dad."     
      His father took off his coat and began to unbutton his shirt. "You asked for it," he said.     
      His mother came in from the kitchen, alarmed. "Oh, Charles! Bill! Don't—you'll hurt yourselves!" but they paid no attention to her. They were standing now, their shirts off. They watched each other, intent and purposeful. The boy's teeth gleamed again. They circled for a moment, and then their hands closed upon each other's arms.     
      They strained against each other, and then the boy went down, taking his father with him. They moved and writhed and turned in silence seeking an advantage, in silence pressing it to its end. There was the sound of the thumps of their bodies upon the rug and of the quick, hard intake of breath. The boy showed his teeth occasionally in a grimace of pain. His mother stood at one side, both hands pressed against her ears. Occasionally her lips moved, but she did not make a sound.    
      After a while the boy pinned his father on his back. "Give!" he demanded.     
      His father said, "Heck, no!" And with a great effort he pushed the boy off, and the struggle began again.     
      But at the end his father lay flat on his back, and a look of bewilderment came into his eyes. He struggled desperately against his son's merciless, restraining hands. Finally he lay quiet, only his chest heaving, his breath coming loudly.    
      The boy said, "Give!"     
      The man frowned, shaking his head.     
      Still they boy knelt on him, pinning him down.  
      "Give!" he said, and tightened his grip."Give!"    
      All at once his father began to laugh, silently, his shoulders shaking. The boy felt his mother's finger tugging fiercely at his shoulder. "Let him up," she said. "Let him up!"     
      The boy looked down at his father. "Give up?"     
      His father stopped laughing, but his eyes were still wet. "Okay," he said. "I give."     
      The boy stood up and reached a hand to his father to help him up, and his mother was before him putting an arm about his father's shoulders, helping him to rise. They stood together and looked at him, his father grinning gamely, his mother with baffled pain in her eyes.    
      The boy started to laugh. "I guess I—"He stopped. "Gosh, Dad, I didn't hurt you, did I?"     
      "Heck, no, I'm all right. Next time …"     
      "Yeah, maybe next time …"     
      And his mother did not contradict what they said, for she knew as well as they that there would never be a next time.    
      For a moment the three of them stood looking at one another, and then, suddenly, blindly, the boy turned. He ran through the door under which he had ducked so many times when he had ridden on his father's shoulders. He went out the kitchen door, behind which he had hidden, waiting to leap out and pounce upon his father's knees.     
      It was dark outside. He stood on the steps, feeling the air cool against his sweaty body. He stood with lifted head, looking at the stars, and then he could not see them because of the tears that burned his eyes and ran down his cheeks.