Prize by Robert Stone

I heard about this magazine running a competition offering a substantial cash prize for a piece of writing simply on the subject of how you would spend the cash. Well, I have no cause for hesitation, I would buy a tank. Surely second-hand and probably vintage WWII, or a little more modern. I don’t see how an individual would be allowed to buy or could afford a new one, but I have seen older models in private collections.

I would most likely then drive the tank up to the north of Scotland and back south again. And so on. I would keep on the move. The tank would be my home. I intend to live in my tank forever.

Tanks are relatively slow-moving and it is not every road that can accommodate one. The negotiation of difficult terrain is one of their specialities but I would want to avoid the destruction of any fragile surface or deliberately making life difficult for the more conventional road-user. I might not be allowed on the motorway at the speeds at which I anticipate travelling. None of that matters. I would be in no hurry. Steady but inexorable progress is, I feel, a hallmark of the tank’s tortoise-like procedure.

I don’t think it’s possible to sleep comfortably in a tank, nor is it desirable to re-design the interior of one for sleeping purposes. If you are going to live in a tank, do just that, don’t transform it into an armoured bedroom. I would have a tent, or an awning, which I could attach to the tank at night and sleep on the ground under that. I would find somewhere to park near the shops and other conveniences and be fine in most weather. You could always get back in the tank and put the lid down for a bit if it got too cold or wet.

I don’t suppose I would need to ask permission to park my tank. After all, who is going to deny me? I am literally in a tank. If I saw an obstreperous landowner striding towards me with his shotgun cocked over his arm, I would just bring the barrel of my cannon leisurely to bear on him. I love that idea of the barrel swinging round like a massive animal turning its scaly head. An elephant, a brontosaurus, a leviathan. The slow speed of their actions is not a sign of weakness, but of their almost complete invulnerability. I imagine that even the feistiest of landowners are going to be pretty civil.

I won’t bother with actual live ammunition. It would undoubtedly be enjoyable to fire the gun, to hear the bang and feel the recoil and so on, and somehow to allow this machine to fulfil its purpose. But I’m not going to war and I don’t really want to hurt anyone. In all honesty, I can think of a number of people I’d like to fire at, but, not really, of course. My tank could inflict grotesque injuries. I’m not a monster. So, no ammunition. I’m sure my considerable bluff will not be called. Besides, I expect you need a licence for that kind of thing and there will be all manner of health and safety implications. The tank would not, in any case, be intended as an instrument of retribution.

The tank is paramountly a steel-plated house, a suit of armour on a grand scale, a moving, somewhat prison-like, wall built around oneself. Belligerence is not really required. Hostility against the tank can be shrugged off. Teenagers might hitch rides uninvited and naughty children throw stones just to hear the clang, but with what consequence? I am reminded of a great shark with its families of remora attached near its deadly jaws. Whales are hosts to multitudes of parasites. They pose no danger. The whale is safe. Not immortal, but safe.

I would pick up hitch-hikers. Many of these might eschew my hospitality as the tank would be too slow for them, but others would consider themselves very fortunate. Some of these might even be enlisted as crew. I very much like the idea of sitting up on top on a sunny day with head and shoulders above the turret, a soft-peaked cap on my head and goggles lodged above the peak, binoculars on my chest, while a recruit took a turn at the wheel. Needless to say, a bond of trust would have to be forged between me and these people before they could be allowed within my fortress. The whole idea of the tank is predicated on the most rigid distinction between the outside and the inside. I would relish the company, to some extent, I have never been known as a people person, but any sniff of treachery would have to be met with ruthlessness, extreme prejudice.

There is the question of the tank’s insignia. A second-hand tank is sure to bear the symptoms of its history and certain emblems would be considered in very poor taste by most people. The insignia of some armies are so sinister and intimidating as to be bound to cause alarm when the tank appeared at the end of the village high street. I don’t want to frighten anyone. I like the idea, however, of those trophy decals that tanks used to sport, cartoons of enemy tanks destroyed painted on a panel below the turret, each crossed out with a big black X. A tank should be allowed its memories.

I have thought about some kind of post-psychedelic whorls, unique and not easily copied, but these might attract people who are not my type. Camouflage of course. De rigueur.

It’s not a trouble-free matter, running a tank, I know that. I am not sure about the cost of petrol or oil but I am more concerned with basic maintenance, dealing with breakdowns, for example. I think I would simply have to learn how to cope. I would have to come to that old-fashioned way of thinking which sees people manage on their own. The tank need not have too many more years in it, after all. I would become a can-do man.

I can see that owning a tank, living in a tank, would have a deep-seated effect on anyone. You would be metamorphosed, become tank-obsessed. You would see the world through the lens of the tank, via its metaphorical possibilities. If all questions are nails to a man with a hammer, what are they to a man in a tank?

Psychologically, this could be destabilising. I might lose my head. I can imagine myself swinging off the road and heading my behemoth into the countryside, storming across fields, smashing through streams, crushing all kinds of barriers. The road is not the tank’s natural milieu, merely a convenience. I would emphatically be taking to the outside, charging unstoppably through the world while tucked up safely in my metal box.

I am already plagued by one significant anxiety and it is one prompted by success rather than any conceivable failure. What if this idea of living in a tank and driving it up and down the country were to become popular? The one thing I had not envisaged when I began all of this was meeting someone else who had a tank. He could be any kind of nutcase.

Further thought is required, but I am putting that off until I have won the competition, which probably won’t happen. I have never had a lot of luck with such things and I have been told that I’m not a very good writer. Moreover, I shall have to win first prize as the second prize is a year’s subscription to the magazine, or something like that, which no one could possibly want. I suppose I could sell my house and buy a tank with that money. If I owned a house.

In the meantime, being a life-long and confirmed pedestrian, I should invest some of my spare capital in a course of driving lessons. Even that might be premature. I don’t want to jinx anything.

Robert Stone

Image by Wolfgang Eckert from Pixabay A grey battle tank with the name Thor on the side.