Free Burn Down the Ground by Kambri Crews

squealed a pitch so high Mom thought her hearing aids were malfunctioning.
    I counted down the days until the outing finally arrived. I spent the whole field trip interpreting questions for Dad from my classmates. Like paparazzi chasing a celebrity, they swarmed in a circle around us as he and I walked hand in hand. I beamed with pride.
    After the trip, Dad drove my two new friends, Shana and Stacey, home. Like most new people I meet, they quizzed me aboutlife with a deaf parent. “My brother and I can do anything we want and my daddy won’t hear a thing,” I bragged.
    Stacey seemed skeptical. “How do you know he’s really deaf? What if he’s pretending?”
    “Here, watch this.” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “SHIT!”
    Dad gave me an inquisitive glance. My shrieks inside the metal cab of the Chevy must have given his ears a piercing shock. Shana and Stacey froze and their eyes grew wide with fear. My father just grinned and looked back at the road ahead.
    The girls and I burst into heaving laughter. We caught our breath and they joined me in screaming, “BITCH! SHIT! ASSHOLE!” Dad grinned with eyebrows raised in suspicion. I could bet money that he knew exactly what we were up to, but still he just smiled and kept driving so as not to spoil our fun.
    “Your daddy is the best!”
    “Yeah, he’s so cool!”
    They didn’t have to tell me. I already knew.
    The pride I had for my father was reinforced every school day when Bus #9 rounded the corner to drop off the older kids at Montgomery Junior High. A row of shanty houses was directly across the street from the school. The dwellings were so tiny and dilapidated that I would have thought they were abandoned if not for the fresh laundry hanging from the clotheslines. Most of the shacks had broken windows, some haphazardly boarded up. Porches were collapsed, structures tilted, and roofs were patched like quilts.
    Often, I stared at them from the bus window, wondering who lived there and imagining how tough their lives must be. Seeing such extreme poverty, I thanked God I wasn’t so unfortunate.
    These tumbledown houses helped put everything my father had done on Boars Head into perspective. Dad was smart and skilled. He had managed to provide us with water, plumbing, and electricity and I was certain he’d never allow us to live like these poor folks.
    My father’s accomplishments on Boars Head over the past year and a half were extraordinary. And when a young man driving a large truck filled with sand caused the bridge on Boars Head to collapse, he became a superhero.
    The loss of the bridge stopped all traffic in and out of Boars Head. We were stranded. Dad immediately took charge. Unknown neighbors emerged from the hidden recesses of that forest. Most of them had never seen a deaf person, but they trusted my father as a leader capable of ensuring their survival.
    After clearing the wreckage and disassembling the remains of the bridge, Dad designed a new one and constructed it with more modern, solid materials. Members of the neighborhood pooled funds together to pay for the supplies and Mom photographed every step of the process so we’d have evidentiary proof of this catastrophic event and epic recovery. Once the framework and metal rods were in place, a ton of concrete was poured and evenly spread. When it was almost dry, Dad signed one corner with his name and the year, 1980. As long as we lived there, I proudly pointed out the signature to anyone who visited. If they were skeptical, I had the pictures to prove it.
    The Army Corps of Engineers inspected Dad’s handiwork and deemed it capable of holding up to a thirty-thousand-pound load. The new overpass changed our lives. It opened up the remote area to more comforts that other people took for granted. Dad’s bridge connected our private hideaway to the world. Years later, it allowed the passage of oil tankers and drilling equipment.
    But back in the spring of 1980, the new bridge meant that Bus