Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails

by Anthony Swofford

  And my mother says, “Sometimes babies don’t sleep.”

  This is the wisdom from a mother of four children. It is basic and it is true tonight just as it was forty-one years ago: sometimes babies don’t sleep.

  You need not blame yourself or your mother’s canned enchilada sauce.

  Christa is tired and I have work to do, and I say to her, as though I am now an expert, “Sweetheart, sometimes babies don’t sleep. Go to bed; I’ll work with her on my chest.”

  A friend who had a baby a few weeks before we did sent me an e-mail one night that said only: “Skin-to-skin solves everything.”

  I took off my shirt and unclothed the baby and I slung her tight to my chest. I walked around the warm main room of our house and I sang her Van Morrison tunes, and I looked outside at the thick white blanket of snow on the ground and the tree branches weighted with snow.

  At first the weathermen said the storm might drop eighteen inches, and then they revised that down to twelve, but it looks to me as if so far we took on eight inches at the top end, if the snow on my picnic table is any fair measure. But eight inches is a good snow for late October, a real snow.

  It is only one in the morning, and we might still lose power. That is the measure of a proper storm. Some people must die: there must be danger. A storm also measures the man: will you protect your family when the storm shows? In the life of a family many storms threaten and some arrive full force. I’ll pass this first test. I will pass them all, I tell myself.

  Josephine sleeps against my chest. Some of her slobber has dripped down into my chest hair. I find this charming and beautiful. I find everything about my daughter charming and beautiful. Someday this will probably change. For instance, she will steal money from my wallet for beer and cigarettes. Hell, I will find this charming, too.

  I will make enchilada sauce from scratch but my baby will not care; all she will want and need from me is guidance. She will need my sure and steady voice. During storms and during calm, she will long for my sure and steady voice, she will say, “That is my father, that is his sure and steady voice.” And I will calm her.

  I walk the house and I think about Mr. Owens spending the night in the cave last night. I wonder how or if his parents slept knowing their son was lost in the wilderness with his friend’s dog. I can’t imagine sleeping in such a situation. Sometimes I can’t imagine sleeping ever if I do not know exactly where my baby daughter is sleeping.

  I think of my father out in California, in his house, his cave, the place where he rests each night, oxygen mask tied to his face, knowing that if somehow he loses that oxygen overnight his life will end. For my father a power outage really could be a matter of life and death. I think of my mother sleeping upstairs in my home. I haven’t slept under the same roof with my mother in at least twenty years. I like having her here. I wish my father were here, too. I know that he is alone in bed in Fairfield struggling to breathe. I hope that tonight he thinks of me, his son, holding his newest granddaughter to my chest.

  I join Christa in bed. The baby makes some of her snorting noises and then settles back to sleep. The spotlight in the back of the house is on and I can see snow falling and I can hear the calm nothingness of the night, the quiet eternity of an evening with my family.

  The baby warms my chest, and we sweat on each other. I feel JoJo’s life against my chest, an inferno. I hear next to me my wife snoring. I hear the snowfall. I hear the baby breathing and I feel the baby’s life burning against my chest and I am on fire and I am in love with my wife and my daughter. I am a husband and I am a father. This is my life now and this is how I live.

  Postscript

  My father’s death clock had been ticking for over a decade, but since Josephine’s birth the thrum and thunder of the clock had increased so much so that when my father and I spoke on the phone I could barely hear our conversation—I heard only one recurring thought: He is dying, he is dying; bring your daughter to meet him.

  It was warm in Fairfield when we arrived. It is a town where people wear the warmth with pride the same way old soldiers wear their worthless and tattered ribbons.

  My father greeted us standing in his driveway. Usually he wore a white T-shirt and briefs but now he sported a western suit and shirt with a bolo tie we had sent him for Christmas. He wore his black leather zip-up boots I had admired as a teenager because they looked like something Johnny Cash might wear.

  I carried Josephine toward him. He also wore his oxygen tube stuck into his nostrils. She wore a pretty pink dress I had picked out.

  He held her close to his chest and said, “Hello, Miss Josephine. I am your grandpa John.”

  She cooed when he kissed her cheek.

  He seemed to strain under the weight of my fifteen-pound daughter. He stared at her. She had his blue eyes and his forehead and his ears. He must have noticed the glimmers of Jeff. I watched my father staring at my daughter and I finally understood the life-shattering loss that he’d suffered when Jeff died. I would never again challenge him on his behavior surrounding Jeff’s death.

  He said, “Take her back, Tone. I don’t want to drop the beauty. I’m weak.”

  Christa greeted and kissed my father and we all entered his home.

  We sat in his living room and he presented to us some things of his mother’s that he wanted us to give to Josephine when she got older—her wedding and engagement rings, her watch still in the case, and her cedar keepsake chest.

  Christa fed Josephine.

  My father asked me to do him a favor by installing a motion-activated spotlight over his driveway.

  “Thieves,” he said. “They are everywhere. Gotta scare ’em off.”

  As his sickness worsened my father’s paranoia increased. It was as though he waited every evening for an ambush. I did not point out to him that not many thieves would want to make off with his 1970s-era reel-to-reel stereo system unless they were throwback hi-fi aficionados.

  It had been years since I had used my father’s tools but I knew where to find everything. I needed a ladder and a drill and bits and the fixture itself. The sun shined bright and hot on me while I worked, and sweat stung my eyes.

  I’d been at the work for a few minutes when my father appeared at the side of the house. He’d crept up silently enough that I hadn’t seen him until he was ten feet away. He was bent at the waist.

  “Hey, Dad, need a hand?” I said.

  He pointed an index finger skyward, the John Howard Swofford sign that he was catching his breath.

  I assumed that he’d appeared in order to micromanage my work on the spotlight. My father would never change. I readied myself for a tense scene like when I’d emptied the septic system on the RV. I thought, Jesus, Old Man, give it a break.

  He propped himself up against the ladder I was standing on and took a few deep breaths.

  He said, “You know, I’ve been talking about being buried in Opelika next to my mother for so long. I checked it all out, and it’s a done deal if that’s what I want.”

  I said, “I always liked the idea of you being buried next to her.”

  “The thing is, I ain’t Southern, Tone. I left the South when I was seventeen. Ain’t nothing but ghosts there. I’m a Californian. I love this state. I want to be buried over there at Dixon at the national cemetery next to all them other dead GIs.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “Will you visit me there?”

  “Of course.”

  He shuffled slowly back into the house and I returned to my work on the fixture.

  I thought about my father and Christa and Josephine inside and of the spotlight I was installing and how it might scare off a thief but I hoped that what it would do was help my father to see.

  I wanted him to see that whatever kind of father he had been to me I would become a very different father to Josephine. I knew that he must want that, too. For many years I had considered combat the only test of a man’s greatness, but I’d begun to understand that for m
e fatherhood would be the real measure.

  I wanted my father to look at his only surviving son and say to himself, That is a man I admire, that is a father I admire; I wish I had been more like him, everything in this life can be new.

  When we left, he kissed Josephine goodbye and she cooed some more. We made plans to see him the following day.

  As we pulled away from his home it was just becoming dusk. The spotlight shined upon my father and he waved.

  Acknowledgments

  I must first thank my agent Sloan Harris for his unyielding support and generous spirit, on the page and beyond the page. Sloan, thanks for kicking me in the teeth when I needed it and talking me back from a number of ledges.

  Thank you, Cary Goldstein, at Twelve. You wielded the book and deduced where I’d been hiding and the corridors I’d yet to search. Your comradeship proved invaluable throughout. Brian McLendon: thank you for your hard work. It is a treat to have one’s book in passionate hands. Libby Burton: thanks for your assistance in moving the manuscript along. Mari Okuda and S. B. Kleinman: thank you for tending to the copyediting and pointing out the corrections I’d missed. Catherine Casalino: you nailed the cover.

  Kristyn Keene at ICM is a rock star and I thank her for all she does. And my thanks to Shira Schindel at ICM.

  Thanks to C.H. for his friendship and discussing and dissecting my father over burgers and beers in dive bars throughout the city. To my numerous other male friends for the talks we had about those unyielding beasts, our fathers, thank you. You know who you are. I’ll never tell your fathers what you said about them.

  Dan Clare and Rob Lewis are true heroes for the work they do at Disabled American Veterans. I appreciate their bringing me into the fold and introducing me to dozens of remarkable young injured men and women, veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  The Movermans: you are my family. Father: thank you for all your flaws and your beauty and your tragedy.

  I should note that I borrow my book title from the first line of a James Tate poem called “The Private Intrigue of Melancholy.”

  My wife Christa is a brilliant writer and artist and a loving mother and the most amazing partner a lumpfish like me could possibly hope for. Every day with her is a splendid gift. She read this manuscript more times than is healthy for a spouse and she made me make it better when I was lazy or dumb or wanted only to walk in the woods with her and our beautiful daughter. Thank you, sweetheart, and our dear daughter, Josephine Clementine, joy of our lives.

  About the Author

  ANTHONY SWOFFORD is the author of the memoir Jarhead and the novel Exit A. He lives in the Hudson Valley in New York with his wife and daughter.

  ABOUT TWELVE

  TWELVE was established in August 2005 with the objective of publishing no more than twelve books each year. We strive to publish the singular book, by authors who have a unique perspective and compelling authority. Works that explain our culture; that illuminate, inspire, provoke, and entertain. We seek to establish communities of conversation surrounding our books. Talented authors deserve attention not only from publishers, but from readers as well. To sell the book is only the beginning of our mission. To build avid audiences of readers who are enriched by these works—that is our ultimate purpose.

  For more information about forthcoming TWELVE books, please go to www.twelvebooks.com.

  Contents

  Welcome

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Goodbye to All That

  Chapter 2: John Howard Swofford

  Chapter 3: Fairfield to Billings, the Joker Is Out of Breath, April 2009

  Chapter 4: Brother, to Thy Sad Graveside Am I Come

  Chapter 5: Letter from My Father

  Chapter 6: Bethesda

  Chapter 7: Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas

  Chapter 8: Freddy Business

  Chapter 9: Genesis: an Imagining

  Chapter 10: Atlanta to Austin, Dead Swoffords, August 2010

  Chapter 11: The Girl from Tarawa Terrace II

  Chapter 12: Fairfield to Aspen, Getting the Venom Out, March 2011

  Chapter 13: Oh Josephine

  Postscript

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About Twelve

  Copyright

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2012 by Anthony Swofford

  Jacket design by Catherine Casalino, Jacket image from Getty.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First e-book edition: June 2012

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  ISBN 978-1-4555-0672-9