The Empire of the Dead

by Tracy Daugherty

  Around 4 a.m., Mildred woke me, pounding my door. I unbolted it and slid back the chain. She staggered in with a bottle of Southern Comfort. Her clothes smelled as smoky as the town.

  “Well, did you meet her?” I asked. I slipped into a shirt and buttoned it halfway.

  “Damn straight.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Beautiful. Want some?” She held up the bottle.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Don’t be a goddamn prig, Frankie.”

  “Okay, just a little, in that glass over there—there, next to my sketchbook. What did she say?”

  “Said people here had laughed her out of class, out of town, and out of Texas.”

  “I believe it.”

  “Her classmates, Frankie—they’re fucking pigs. Still! Nothing ever changes. The world will always be high school. They gave her a tire because she had traveled the farthest to attend. ‘What am I going to do with a fucking tire?’ she said. And then. Oh, Frankie. Then some asshole said she was still the ugliest girl in class.”

  “No.”

  “Yeah. But she was cool. She said, ‘Everybody lay whoever you’re sitting next to.’ I wouldn’t have touched any of those suckers. But guess what? I got to hug her and get her a drink. And Frankie, you know what she told me?”

  It was the finest night of Mildred’s life. I raised my glass to her. “What?”

  “She told me stardom was nothing but riding a bus.”

  History records that, three months later, in Room 109 of the Landmark Motor Hotel in West Hollywood, California, Janis Joplin lay dead of “acute heroin-morphine intoxication.” Apparently, she had spent the evening in the Sunset Sound recording studios working on a track entitled “Buried Alive in the Blues.” At the end of the session, Janis and her band made a cassette recording of “Happy Birthday” to be sent to John Lennon for his thirtieth on October 9. Then she went to her room at the Landmark. Earlier, she had bought an unusually potent supply of smack; in the course of the weekend, it killed eight people. Janis shot up. Her eyes rolled backward in her head. She pitched forward onto the floor, busting her lip on a nightstand.

  In New York, the night before she had flown to Port Arthur for her high school reunion, her fellow Texas exile, Robert Rauschenberg, had split a bottle of tequila with her. “I knew the reunion was going to be a disaster,” he told a reporter after she died. “But I couldn’t convince her not to go.” He blamed her death on Thomas Fucking Jefferson. “She was devastated,” he said. “She needed confirmation from home and that’s what got her into trouble. She wanted to be loved.”

  Signs (1970), one of Rauschenberg’s finest collages, features Janis Joplin (“the voice of her generation,” he said) and an Apollo astronaut. Also in the picture: RFK and JFK, Martin Luther King Jr. in his casket, peace marchers, soldiers in the swamps of Vietnam. I’ve hung a copy of Signs in the art room of Ely High School, in my old hometown, where I teach now. The collage is meant to “remind us of love, terror, violence,” Rauschenberg wrote. “The danger lies in forgetting.”

  6.

  Appropriately, given my father’s obsessions in his final, mostly silent years, the last time I saw Dad was the day Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon. This is so neat, it sounds like a trick of memory, but I swear it’s true.

  That day, I’d left the house early. Bob Mitchell, out on Farm Road 60, had a problem with runaway waste in his yard. His tank lines were old, and the D box seemed to pump most of the effluent into only one line at a time. Tree roots and a jerry-rigged system made it hard to find the actual problem. The leach beds were poorly designed.

  I removed the D box lid to re-level the outlet pipe. I didn’t have the tools I needed or a cap with an offset hole in it, so I tried to align the holes by sight. I kept missing the mark. This went on for hours. Finally, frustrated and angry, I kicked the pipes and sliced my knuckles on a tree root. I climbed out of the hole and told Mitchell I’d come back tomorrow for another go.

  When I dragged into the house, my father met me at the door. He looked me over—spattered overalls, muddy boots in my hands, bloody knuckles. He placed his palm on my shoulder. “Frank,” he said. “You can’t open a flower with a hammer.” He patted my back and went to sit on the couch.

  Mother and Mildred sat raptly in front of the set: a blurry moon. “The Eagle has landed!” Mildred shouted.

  I stood behind them. Whatever I touched, I’d soil. Mildred held her nose and laughed. “Mr. Beaver says this is America’s finest hour,” she said. “Mr. Beaver” was her name for the heavily jowled Dick Nixon.

  I squinted at the screen. A shifting white mass. Piccarda, are you there, I thought. Has your eternal soul been saved?

  Armstrong bounced down the spacecraft’s ladder.

  Gingerly, my father stood, approached the set, and touched the screen’s curved glass. “The gate is closing,” he said. Then he walked to his study.

  Mildred rolled her eyes.

  I moved down the hall toward my father’s oak door. Lamp-glow spilled into the hallway. “Dad?” I said.

  “Frank. Come in.”

  He sat at his desk in a wedge of light. The rest of the room remained dark. I sat in a chair opposite him, careful not to dirty the cushion. “Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you happy?”

  He smiled at me. “Of course I am.”

  “What do you recall of the night we found you?” I asked. “Anything now?”

  He stared at the ceiling. “Moonlight. Rain,” he said. “You and Mildred.”

  I nodded. I didn’t know why I’d followed him in here. Perhaps I knew I wouldn’t see him anymore. I’d applied to college. In honor of my father, I’d been tempted to write in my application essays, “Martin Luther’s enlightenment came to him on the toilet. ‘It is God’s justice which justifies and saves us,’ he declared. ‘This knowledge the Holy Spirit gave me on the privy in the tower.’”

  Now Dad leaned toward me over his desk. “Frankie. Man is spreading contagion to the moon and beyond.”

  I stared at him.

  “Evil. You know what I think? I think it’s a fellow clutching something tightly in his fist,” Dad said. He paused for a minute as if searching the shadows for something. “Everyone around him wants to know what it is. They’re convinced, whatever he has, they can’t live without it. ‘Please!’ they call. He laughs and opens his hand. And do you know what he’s holding?”

  I shook my head. He must have read this somewhere and memorized it, I thought. I listened to the wind.

  “Nothing,” Dad said. He slumped, exhausted.

  I rose, came around the desk, and kissed the top of his head. “Okay. Okay, Dad. Good night.” I thought: I will not let you go until I have blessed you.

  7.

  “She was a goddamn saint. And they fucking crucified her,” Mildred said.

  We had rented a little blue canoe. A Friday afternoon. We were paddling down the Sabine River—in part because it was a crazy thing to do, and Mildred was always up for something like that, and in part because she wanted quiet time to grieve for Janis. She’d brought a bottle of bourbon and two paper cups.

  We drifted past Gulf Island and the Rainbow Bridge. Along the banks, sooty brick walls of World War II–era factories rose above knotted kudzu. The factories’ windows were smashed. Fire broke above the trees, from the smokestacks of nearby refineries. Ahead of us, a blue heron skimmed the surface of the water.

  “Who the hell invented high school?” Mildred moaned, filling our cups.

  “Some sadist.”

  “Dickie Nixon is king and Janis is toast. Tell me about a world like that, Frankie, ‘cause, I gotta say, I don’t think I can find my way around in it.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I took one of her hands.

  We didn’t see each other for nearly three years. I moved away from Port Arthur, returned to the university. My art professor was disappointed that I’d picked up few new skills, and I began to avoi
d his courses.

  One semester, I met a girl named Lori in a class on the American Puritans. After our first night making love, she asked about my family. I told her Mildred’s story.

  “She’s still in Port Arthur?” Lori asked. She propped herself on a pillow and rolled a joint.

  “Yeah. Washing dishes, waiting tables. Caring for Dad—it seemed to knock her off her rails and she’s never gotten back.” Mom blamed me for that, too. “She calls me for money now and then. Booze and cigarettes.”

  “Still, you’ll regret it if you cut her out of your life, Frank. You should go see her.”

  “Go see her,” Mother insisted on the phone.

  And so, over Spring Break, I arranged to visit Mildred.

  She didn’t show up at the Greyhound station. I shouldered my duffel, checked the address—Mildred had moved out of the Wayfarer, into an apartment—and walked along the canal. Her place was up the street from TJ High, in the shadow of the auditorium and the gym, ugly round buildings dubbed “Twin Titties” by the high school students. Her apartment, a one-bedroom on the second balcony of a crumbly complex, was dark. The door, painted red over a layer of blue over another layer of yellow, stood open. “Hello?” I called. I dropped my duffel and fanned the door to keep from gagging: a combination of rat poison and spoiled meat. I switched on the overhead. A poster of Big Brother and the Holding Company was taped crookedly over a hound’s-tooth couch, next to a poster of George Harrison with a long beard and flat felt hat. He looked like a monk. A portable TV sat, unplugged, on a green shag carpet in the center of the room. In a corner, by the kitchen, a purple beanbag chair bled Styrofoam pellets from a gash in its side. “Hello?” I called again.

  I stepped outside and leaned against the balcony’s iron railing, breathing deeply. The balcony overlooked a weedy courtyard. As I stood there, a sailor pulled a weary woman in high heels and a miniskirt toward a ground-floor apartment. He kicked open the door. I had no experience with such things, but it occurred to me: this was the kind of place that might be called a Shooting Gallery.

  For over an hour I waited for Mildred. Finally: “Oh shit.” Her voice at the bottom of the stairs. I heard her scrabble in her bag.

  “You don’t need your keys,” I called. “It’s open.”

  “Who’s there?” she shouted. “What the fuck do you want? I don’t have anything.”

  “Mil, it’s me.”

  She straggled up the stairs, an unlit cigarette locked between two fingers. She wore only one shoe. Her hair, dirty brown, branched in all directions like an unpruned ivy plant. “Frankie!”

  “The door was open.”

  “Come in, come in! Welcome to mi casa!”

  The apartment smelled a little better since I’d aired it out. In the light, I saw Mildred wore a rope for a belt over a tentlike dress. Bangles and beads. A rattan wrap with a pattern like rattlesnake skin. She smelled of garlic, sweat, incense. “What happened to your shoe?” I said.

  She glanced at her left foot. The nail of her big toe, but only the big toe, was painted black. “I don’t know,” she said. “I hope I donated it to a good cause!” She rushed me, affectionately, and shoved me into the beanbag. Styrofoam sprayed the room: confetti at a sad little party. “Frankie! It’s so good to see you!”

  “You, too.”

  She stood. “So here’s the thing. I didn’t meet you because … because …”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Well, anyway, before you judge me—”

  “I’m not judging you.”

  “All I’m doing?”

  Her breath was a blast of gin-soaked cherries. I’d count our meeting a success if I could get her to bed without any fuss.

  “All I’m doing—”

  “Let’s talk in the morning, okay?”

  “—is my Daddy-thing.”

  “Mil, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Frankie, did you ever see Dad in a suit and tie? I’ve been thinking about this. Listen. The proper, paunchy, hotshot bit? No! That wasn’t him. Dad went his own way! Frankie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Frankie, listen, listen to me.” She frowned, suddenly serious. “It’s about ignoring the so-called outer reality and seeking the inner light. Feeling it, man, as much as you can. The bullshit pain as well as the highs. I mean, Frankie, it’s all about opening yourself to the whole fucking range of being a human goddamn person. You know?”

  I struggled to rise from the beanbag. “Right,” I said.

  “You are judging me. You’re pissed that I didn’t come meet you. But that’s what I’m trying to say—”

  “Really, Mil. Let’s get to bed.”

  “You’re judging Dad, too, you know. Don’t deny it.” She swayed on the shag carpet. “You laughed at him just as much as I did.”

  “Dad? I never laughed at him. What’s this about Dad?”

  “And I am on—” She nearly fell into my arms. “—I am on a goddamn spiritual path, Frankie, okay? So don’t screw with me.”

  “This is pointless, Mil. In the morning. We’ll talk then, okay?”

  “You don’t know what it’s like, Frankie. Never even tried. Too goody-goody.”

  “Who’s judging who now?”

  “You’ll never know what it’s like to dig so deep into yourself, you’re like the wick inside the candle wax—the candle wax, man—knowing part of you’s burning somewhere, burning you up from the inside out, and one day all the wax will melt and you’ll be as free as the ash in the air!”

  I stepped away from her, tried to make a joke. “Well, Sister Mil, eh? Can we get some sleep now?”

  She picked up her bag. “I’m leaving,” she said.

  “Mil, how did we get into this? I didn’t mean—”

  “I’m going to sleep with a friend. This place is too small for both of us. I’ll see you in the morning. We’ll get some breakfast or something.”

  “Mildred—”

  “There’s food in the fridge.” She stumbled toward the door, stopped and turned. “It really is good to see you, Frankie.” And then she was gone.

  I couldn’t sleep. When I’d left her here and gone back to school, Mom scolded me. “You’re letting me down again, Frankie. You need to look after her.”

  “Mom, she’s a grown woman,” I’d said. “I’ve got myself to think about.”

  Now, I surveyed the room, the squalor to which I’d condemned my sister. No one was going to mistake me for a saint.

  I’d gotten used to the smell. I picked up the loose Styrofoam pellets, but the trash can in the kitchen was full so I left the pellets in a pile on the floor. I dragged my duffel into the bedroom. The sheets were stiff and yellow. On the red-striped pillow sat Mildred’s old teddy bear, the one she used to sleep with as a girl. He smelled of old milk. I clutched him to my chest and stretched out on the floor.

  Mil didn’t show for breakfast. Or lunch. I couldn’t find a key so I left the door unlocked and wandered into town. Students tossed Frisbees on the high school grounds. Downtown, I sat on the steps of a boarded-up Savings and Loan and watched men across the street, on the curb, share a flask. I had brought a drawing pad and a charcoal pencil but nothing inspired me. How had Rauschenberg made anything of himself, coming from here? He had once said, in an interview, “Painting relates both to art and life. Neither can be made. I try to act in that gap between the two.” I’d never understood what he meant.

  Late in the day, when I returned to Mildred’s apartment, I found the door wide open, the television gone. I rushed to the bedroom closet. My duffel was missing, too. A few pairs of pants, shirts, a transistor radio. “Son of a bitch!” I yelled. It occurred to me Mildred might have taken the things and pawned them. In any case, I had my wallet, and I’d kept my bus ticket in my pocket.

  The stuffed bear stared at me. George Harrison stared at God. “Hell,” I said to the room. “I guess that’s it.” I stuck two twenties on the freezer door with a fridge magnet. Maybe Mildred would get them,
or maybe I had just made some crackhead’s day. I picked up my drawing pad and walked to the bus station.

  Lori and I spent the next day in bed, getting high, making love. She was the perfect ministering angel, her blonde hair a festival of light.

  Six months later, Mil disappeared. Mom was frantic on the phone. I went back to Port Arthur. It seemed I could never escape it.

  The apartment manager told me Mildred owed him nothing. He thought she’d gone someplace with an out-of-work oil man. She didn’t want to stay in touch, fine, I thought. I was tired of the burden of her. Mom was furious at me, but it was a quiet fury. “Texans,” she said. “How is it I raised a couple of damn Texans?”

  Of all the ways I feared Mil would die, asthma was not a candidate. Cigarettes, I guessed. Alcohol. An overdose.

  When we finally got the autopsy report, we learned that just before her death Mildred’s lung capacity had dropped to nearly zero. For at least a week she had been a walking corpse.

  A jogger discovered her body in the south end-zone of the TJ High School football stadium. Apparently, she had scaled the fence around 2 a.m. For what purpose, no one knows. She had, on her person, a pack of Marlboros and an unopened bottle of Old Charter. She weighed ninety-seven pounds.

  It’s not clear where she’d been living. She had given her teddy bear and the George Harrison poster to a friend at work. None of her other things were found.

  Mom left me to make the funeral arrangements. She’d exhausted herself when Dad died just a few months earlier (she’d buried him quickly, giving me no time to make it back for the ceremony). “I asked you to do this one thing for me, to look after your sister,” Mom told me. Her voice was brittle, faint. “Just this one little thing.”

  I had Mil cremated and scattered her ashes on the Sabine River.

  8.

  The moon is shrinking. I read that yesterday in the paper. My father would have appreciated this. Scientists at the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum announced they have “deduced the moon’s dwindling size from cracks on the surface seen in images taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.” As the moon’s core has cooled and contracted, the outer crust has fragmented into faults, with one side of each fracture slipping over the other, reducing the moon’s size by about two hundred yards, or the length of two football fields.