My father wore a brace on one leg.

The rubbed chrome peeked from under the cuff on both sides of one leg of his slacks. The metal sides ran along his shoe, and angled into his black leather sole. We looked down, afraid, ashamed, when we stood near him. We stared at it.

I saw that steel more than I saw his face, growing up.

The ratcheting knee had a catch; in order to stand or sit he had to press it, through his pants, and it made a distinctive sound, ck-chck. I learned to fear this sound. It meant he was getting up, and that meant coming for me, for one of us. Sometimes it meant he was releasing his knee to bend, so he could swing into a chair or onto the grass next to us, to grab our arm or smack us good.

At least once a week it was the sound of his walk -- step-draag, step-draag -- then the snik of his belt clearing the loops, then the ck-chck as he sat abruptly in the Good Chair, so he could Wail The Tar Out Of Us. Me.

The brace joined under his heel and embraced his whole leg, all the way up to his hip. He got polio a year before I was born. That metal was a part of him, as constant as his eyes, his muscled arm, his heavy hand. It defined him, to everyone: poor Al, in a brace, raising those four rowdy kids with that nutty wife of his.

In the morning he scooted, his word, into the bathroom, crossing the thin, dead leg over the other and crab-walking on his ass and hands and one good heel into the john. None of us liked to see this. He met our eyes with anger and contempt; "outta my way". His BVDs loose, showing too much, wrinkled things that seemed no relation to me, my tight boy's scrotum, or to any other human thing.

I see now how hard this was for him. He didn't do it right, his fathering, but his daily routine was what a man with polio had to do. He was brave and determined: he went from iron lung to wheelchair to brace to lighter brace in 18 months. He used the cane less and less as I grew up, swinging that stiff leg with artistry and grim athletic intent.

I want to love him for this. I want to admire him for his fearless work. I want to conjure his face: the thin profile, Cherokee nose, pale grey eyes, black widow's peak, and muster a grudging respect for the Old Man.

If not for those hands. If not for the words he used on us, like pliers, hacksaws, weedforks, mallets. "I said (slap) the Phillips head (smack). You little idiot (shove)." If not for the choices he made, still makes: you ran away from home, you disgraced me, you little shit, so I'll be damned if I ever call you or reach out. Even now.

If not for the lies he tells himself, the come-to-Jesus fog he hides in, still. Old, broken, his third wife an RN, coddling his papered bones.

If not for that goddamned belt.

What was I to do with my heartbreak for him? I saw, every day, how he soldiered on, went to work, trimmed the hedges, stayed useful. I saw every day, we all did, that he could not run, or bend, or dance.

We played hardball catch sometimes. It improved my aim, since he couldn't chase it down. I saw him perfect the trick of swooping the mere lip of the glove basket to grip a ball in the grass, as often as not teetering as he used angular momentum to recover.

I remember the fierce feeling I got when he fell -- rarely -- and got up without help. Even on ice. I remember changing shame -- everyone is looking at my Dad's leg, that metal on his shoe, the straight creases on the inner and outer pant leg; everyone sees how hard it is for him to do these stairs, this shallow hill; how he has to walk around while we go straight ahead -- changing that shame into surly contempt for everyone. What are you lookin' at?

And then minutes later, because I scuffed the toe of my shoe, or didn't hear him say "come on", or shoved my brother when he was looking my way: Slam! Smack! Punch!

Sometimes he stood and shaved, in t-shirt, boxers, black socks, brace and black shoes -- he never got to wear sneakers, or flip-flops, or slippers, they didn't make those for his brace -- and he looked alien. Sad. Crippled. I wanted to hug him, to hold him. He wouldn't let us; no lap time, because of the brace; no leg hug, because of the brace; no carry us, because it put him off balance.

I can see this now, and I want to love him for what he couldn't have, what I know he persevered, was stoic about. What wasn't his fault.

Except for all the cruelty. What do I do with this? I hate that goddamn metal brace, for what it did to him, what it kept from us, what it made us all into. My siblings and me, we are all fractured adults. Slapped and belted and punched and insulted, by a man whose daily existence moved us beyond expression.

I can do no other than forgive you, Al. Goddamn you. You don't deserve it, and then maybe you do, and I cannot tell which is true.

There were no such words in those days, in the 1950s and 1960s. We did not Feel Your Pain, or Validate Your feeling, or Share Your Grief, Dad. You would not have let us, and you thought it was the best way. Everyone said so. Matt Dillon and Ben Cartwright and Paladin and John Wayne said: buck up. Take it like a man. You said as much, as you lashed out at us.

It was not the best way. Growing up with you gave me the gift of compassion, but gnarled and twisted and knee-locked. And rage, too: impulsive, strictured, choked-off, self-serving rage.

You used it, your brace, for pity. We saw you do this. I forgive you for this, too. How can anyone so confined -- any grown boy who can no longer run, as every man must sometimes run, recklessly, scrambling, to chase and roll with his children -- be so saintly as to resist some occasional cheap nobility, well-earned, by his bear-it, endure-it determination?

Except you had two faces. The weak face, the making-do guy, the man's man with a bad limb. Poor fella. And the cruel face, just for us; the narrowed eyes, the fighter's stance framing that dead expression as you Let Us Have It.

My forgiveness is sour ash in my mouth: I know you were just human, you let people admire your Goodness because you got a bad break in life. But you were also a cruel son-of-a-bitch, and more agile, brace or not, than anyone knew. You worked out, on a bag in the basement. You used fists on your children.

You had one Big Rule: no crying. Even when you cut us, bare-assed, with that sharp leather belt. More tears? more swats. Even when your own father, that beautiful, generous giant of a man, died at 65, from a stroke, out of the blue? you did not let us see you cry.

So what were we to do with our tears? The cry in us for the life you suffered through, for the loss you felt keenly every day. The cry from the pain of you, for the way you left terror in your wake. For the pathetic metal around your pale, withered leg, the daily reminder of it, how you did everything with difficulty, differently. What did we do with those tears, for you? for us? What do we do with them now?

You kept us dry. The life you made for us in that small frame house, was unwatered, cracked, arid. Our hatred of you was an everlasting shimmer, as you step-draaged us along, through your parched and unforgiving desert.

We pitied you. How could we not? And you had steel. The good kind.

But you were not kind, you were not good, and the metal on your leg was a cage around our hearts.

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