by Jason Carney
I am no victim. I am not my father’s son.
CAUGHT IN THE ACT OF GOING NOWHERE
1992
“I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” I scream at my grandfather as I turn the stereo down.
My grandfather, J.W., stands in the doorway to his bedroom wearing a look of disgust. I did not expect him home this early. He did not expect me to be in his room, on his stereo, filling the neighborhood with John Coltrane. In fact, he probably did not expect his twenty-two-year-old grandson to be living in his house, hiding from the world, jobless, and stoned. The noonday sun sneaks through the cracks of the blinds, the horizontal beams fall across his reddening face. He looks like a pissed-off barbershop pole twirling in the August sun. We just stare at each other.
I wonder if he can smell the weed.
Even if he does, he will not say anything about it. We are a family adept at close-quarter avoidance. I live in his house, but we have not spoken in months. When I was little, he used to spend time with me. We went to Friday-night hockey games, and on Saturdays we got our “ears lowered”—as he put it—at the barbershop. I think the silence makes it easier for him. He never says the word “disappointed” to me.
“What are you doing?” he yells over the silence. “I can hear that noise down the street!”
“Poems,” I say. “Just reading what I wrote this morning.”
This is a typical day for me: I get up, I get high, and I write poems on the floor of my bedroom down the hall. In the afternoons, I get high again and read what I have written out loud over the flow of the jazz. Some days I scream out Paz, Baraka, or Ginsburg. Every day involves the reading of poems over the max-volume of his stereo.
In the evenings, right after J.W. gets home, my friend Cornbread picks me up and takes me to his parents’ house. We sit in his car five nights a week, smoking weed and bullshitting. Cornbread likes to listen to my poems. He also likes to show off his guns when the sun goes down. He has a TEC-9 and a .44 caliber revolver. Around midnight he takes me home. This is a great way to avoid my family; get up after they leave, leave when they get home, come home when they are asleep. I am going nowhere. My grandfather knows this. This is his first opportunity to tell me.
“Is this what you do all day?” he asks. “Waste your time?”
He also knows about artistic desire, more precisely the suppressing of his own passion, photography. When I was younger, he always had a camera around. He took photography courses at the community college. He created posterboard collages of his work. He showed them to no one. My favorite photo is a simple black-and-white image of his shadow stretching across the front lawn. The thick-shaded silence of his form, gigantic against the noisy brightness of the grass; the picture says everything there is to say about this quiet man. The photos gather dust in his closet under the darkroom equipment and a stack of Playboy magazines. I’ve looked at the magazines and the photographs often, over the years. Photography did not pay the bills or feed his children. A drawer of the refrigerator is still full of unused rolls of film.
“How is dreaming wasting my time?” I reply.
I have been dreaming of poetry in this house since I was seven. I wrote my first poem in this bedroom in second grade. In the summers, I stood in the dark stairwell listening for the muffled rhythms of the air conditioners, behind the closed doors of the upstairs bedrooms. Alone in the darkness, words flew off the top of my head out into the heat of the stairwell. My voice in harmony with the echoes that bounced back from the high ceiling; I kept time with the clatter of the air conditioners as I found the rhythm of my poems. I did not yet understand the power of the living poem and the way it connects with the muscles of my body. I just knew when I let the poem be spontaneous, I felt alive.
Poetry is my calling. No one seems interested.
“You’re not dreaming,” he adds. “You’re pretending.”
I just stare at him, embarrassed, not knowing what I should say.
How would you know?
I do not understand the sacrifices he made to raise my mom and her siblings. I have no responsibilities, no wife and kids counting on me. In the 1950s, marrying an older woman with a child born out of wedlock was neither common nor proper. My grandfather is both. J.W. was thirty-seven when I was born. I am my grandparents’ fifth child.
“You’re not a kid anymore, no matter how hard you try!” he says. “Or how often your mom and grandma try to baby you.”
“I know.” Truth is, I do not. I have no clue how to become a poet. More importantly, how I would make money if I did.
“Keep pretending and see how much time you have left for dreaming.”
“Huh?”
“What you’re doing here is pointless pretending!” he snaps. “Out there in the real world—that is where you dream! It’s the only place dreams happen. Ain’t nobody going to knock on our door and offer to make you a success.”
I am really listening to what he says. There is a conviction behind his voice I have never heard. He has spoken more words to me in the last few minutes than in the last year. I feel the urgency in his eyes.
“One day there will be other things to think about. Dream now, while they still belong to you,” he goes on. “If this is what you want to be, go do it. But do something! And leave my stereo alone!”
“Yes sir,” I say. “I’m sorry for . . .”
He is already going down the stairs, leaving me with the echoes of his rant.
“Stop letting those two women save you! Spinning wheels go nowhere.”
He is right.
The room seems vast and empty. I need to move out of here.
My life has been on hold long enough.
COWBOYS KILL INDIANS SO THAT G-D COULD SURVIVE
(after K. Coval)
White kid eats corn bread fried in a pan, greens stewed with oil and pork, black-eyed peas, tortillas, and grits—does not know that he is stealing—eats Swanson in tins, eats front-row prime-time, eats sausage in cans, eats helper, eats kraut,
eats poverty, eats love, eats stories—learns of harmonious hate.
White kid knows jokes that his elders have said, knows Bunker, knows Hee Haw, knows locked car doors / through welfare check liqueur / stores, government housing / and descendants of slaves,
knows Jefferson is trying to be like us. Good Times aint anywhere near.
White kid has white friends at white school, listens to white music, wears white clothes—
he is flat-world mentality,
speaks ___-wad ___-rod, this is the language of swings.
He is told anything different is always a sin—white teachers, white chalk on blackboards, white walls, white fears, white news, white books, white faces behind the badges—he is good at spotting what does not belong.
Has a black friend on the soccer team, comes to the white kid’s party once—
told black friend his white friend jokes.
Has afro-girl Penthouse spread under his mattress—has a Pam Greer breast fantasy on top of his mattress.
White kid uses racial slur when knocking on doors or fixing contraptions, watches Roots, finds it
terrific/horrific. Thinks that is some shit far off in the past.
Andy Griffith Show whistles through the correlations.
White kid don’t know, don’t care, it will all work out tomorrow. Thinks Christian, hates Jews—
They killed Jesus.
Don’t know how close it all is. White kid knows stones thrown from his tongue,
—how connected it all is— knows pellets, firecrackers, and crossbow a friend made in wood shop.
White kid knows arrows
are weighted for things
words cannot break.
White kid rehearses stance before launches the shaft, rehearses mockery consuming a straw
—he carves himself from this salt.
White kid feels alive, in the night, spun under highway halogens
(lucid and penetrating, he is the pulse of this nation).
&
nbsp; White kid remembers how long he can breathe without holding his breath,
how long he can breathe without holding his breath,
how long he can breathe without holding his breath,
how long he stands still without drowning.
WHY DID GRANDPA NEVER REALLY TALK TO ME
1993
“UNWED GIRLS DID NOT HAVE BABIES in 1952 Arkansas,” my grandmother says as she stirs her coffee. “He was a beautiful man . . . I have made mistakes, Jase, been a fool sometimes.”
I do not press her on what she means. I just smile as she watches my face, then turns to stare out the window into the balmy spark of the morning sun. I let the puzzle of family mythology piece together at her lips.
“Lindsey Porter Hall peddled his snake oil charms with a steel-blue eye.” She exudes a flirtatious giggle, a sound I have never heard my grandmother make. As if she were a schoolgirl, a single moment of happiness blossoms on her face, the only smile to crack her frown in the four months since my grandfather’s death. “We were going to be married the summer your mother was born . . . But my daddy did not want Lindsey to find us,” my grandma adds, as her facial expression loses life. “We moved to Dallas overnight—almost as if we were sneaking out of Arkansas.”
“Mom never told me about this,” I say. A few moments ago, I did not know his name. Only that my mom had a real dad and I look just like him.
“Deb and I never really spoke about it either, she was just a baby. As far as she was concerned, J.W. was her father.”
Her eyes fix on something in the backyard; beyond the wood deck surrounding the porch, beyond the suffocation of all the suppressed memories of the past forty-one years. The guilt releases from her bones in heavy sighs. She married a man she loved and was with for over twenty-nine years. She has been in love with another man for longer.
“Jase, your grandfather loved you very much. He just had trouble showing it.”
“I know he did.” I do not believe the words I am speaking.
“The older you got, the more you looked like Lindsey. It bothered him that everyone recognized it.” She paused. “Honey, you got the face of an Arkansas bigamist.”
The serious undertone of her joke strangles my heart. Moisture wells up at the soft pink edges of my eyes. The harder I try to stuff the feelings escaping as salty tears, the more the face opens. I imagine the ghost of my grandfather stirring across the walls as his name is spoken. When I was a boy, he always had me on his knee or at the barbershop on Saturdays. I now know that as my boyish frame grew to resemble Lindsey’s swagger, he became silent and withdrew himself from my life.
“Lindsey was a traveling salesman and had territory all over Arkansas,” Grandma continues as she refills her cup. “I was barely twenty, worked at the bank in town.” She livens her step as she crosses back to the table. “I had my own apartment,” she says, sitting with a dancer’s flare. “We were in love.”
“So what happened?” I ask.
“Turned out he already had a family,” she answers, as if it does not matter. Even though I can tell that it does.
“What did Papaw do?”
Her father, Ernest Morrison, held the family tight to his chest as if they were his connection to an eternal God.
“We moved. We lived happily ever after.”
9:03 P.M.—06:07
DESPITE THE UNEASY RESPONSE TO MY GENEROSITY, the couple smokes their pipe together like a pair of laughing hyenas feasting on a carcass. They load the bowl like there is no end in sight. I am amped by the situation. A captive audience makes me feel right at home. I decide to tell a story.
My story needs an introduction. I set the scene while loading a fresh bowl. I tell them about phone calls to my grandmother, fleeing across town to score dope, the lights of a cop car, and the Motel 6. They both look on in awe. I take a large hit, hold it, and begin the exhale. The smoke rises through my words.
“I check in to the Motel 6 at three this morning. Everything is chill for the first three hours. I go to my car to get a pack of smokes at six. A woman stands outside the side door as if she’s waiting for somebody. I know she’s a hooker, so I say, Too early to be going to work, as if she has not been working all night. I think nothing of it, head back upstairs. Now remember the sun isn’t up yet. There’s a knock at my door like five minutes later. I’m in my underwear lying on the bed. I ask who it is, a woman says, Patty. I open the door wearing only my underwear. Unfazed, she came right on in, decided I needed some company. Taken off guard, I look down both directions of the hallway, sure I’m about to be busted. Nothing. The audacity of this white woman, I think. I sit on the bed, she starts to undress, offers a trade for a hit. I am speechless. A hit of what? I ask. A hit of the crack you’ve been smoking, she says. I will blow smoke on your cock, she says. I try not to laugh. I’ve been up for a few days, and there was no sign of an erection on the horizon. She doesn’t take no for an answer. Before she could get her panties down there was another loud knock on the door across the hall. We can hear a large deep voice asking if Patty is in here or not. Then the door next to mine. The man is loud and demonstrative. I think this is par for the course tonight. The man bangs on my door. I know for sure I’m being busted. She freaks out, gathers her clothes, and heads into the bathroom. She doesn’t say a word. She knows something I don’t. I hide my supplies under the blanket and sheets. Go to the door, with my jeans unzipped. This time it was a big, older black man, bald and pockmarked. He is steaming. Asks if his wife Patty is in here. I assure him she is not, that he is being too damn loud and needs to go away. He tells me to fuck off and give him his wife. I again say she isn’t here. I’m nervous at this point; his loud behavior has lasted five minutes. Somebody’s going to call the police. I tell him this and again that she’s not here. He says he knows his wife was in here and she better not be smoking without him. He calmly turns and walks down the hallway back to their room. This was too much. I know a bust is going down today. Patty’s hiding in the bathroom shower. I wait three or four minutes to retrieve her. She’s still naked. The audacity of this bitch, I think. She puts on her clothes. I ask her to leave, she asks for twenty bucks for her time. I tell her she owes me forty for mine as I help her out the door. I know if I make a break for it, the cops will be waiting. I decide to be quiet, as if I am asleep . . . “Y’all want me to continue?” I ask, as I pause to light a cigarette.
“Hell yeah, this is a good story,” he says.
“So there I am in the dark trying to be as quiet as possible, when the phone rings. I was taking a hit and the damn thing scares me so badly that my whole body jolts and the hot end of the pipe is shoved awkwardly into the corner of my eye. Now I’m in pain and paranoid. I answer the phone; Patty is demanding her twenty bucks. She says she’s in the lobby and that I should bring it to her. I hang up, thinking this will go away. Wrong. She calls back three minutes later; I hang up. Then again. We do this dance for ten or twenty minutes. Every few times I tell her to leave me alone. The calls finally stop. Now I am hoping I do not go to jail. Ten minutes after the calls stop, the phone rings. The guy this time. Very angry, he demands that I pay her the twenty in either cash or dope. He says they know I have dope; they’ll call the cops if I don’t give them what they want. I hang up. These people are crazy. A couple minutes later I can hear him stomp up and down the hallway outside my room. He talks under his breath but I know he wants me to hear him. After a few moments, he returns to his room. The phone rings again. This time it’s Patty. You better pay me, she says. I decide that I have to get out of here. I should have stayed, waited for my grandmother.
“I hurl down the stairs three at a time, sprint out the door to my car. I get to my car, notice the black man hanging out of his second-floor window. He screams about kicking my ass. I flip him off. Then I shout, Fuck you! as I climb into my car. I catch a glimpse of his figure when he leaps out of the window. Lands ten feet from my car. Pounds on the hood of my car, each fist landing in the same spot, making larg
e dents. I tell him I have a gun; he says, Shoot me, motherfucker. I say, I will shoot you, motherfucker. We both hear a siren; an ambulance drives past the hotel. We look around. I am definitely going to jail. After three minutes of us screaming crackhead nonsense at each other, I suggest one of the onlookers is going to call the cops. He settles down, climbs in the car, and we talk. Long story short, he is mad his wife is smoking crack without him. Not that she sucks dick for the stuff.”
“Dude sounds crazy,” the panhandler guy says.
“Been a weird fucking day,” I respond.
We all agree on this fact. They load a bowl. I load a bowl. I offer them the shower if they want. They both decline. Somehow, I think they expect me to make a play for the girl. I just want company.
“My turn,” he says. “I got locked up a couple of weeks ago for about five days. She was alone.” This story begins in a wrong direction. Young girls with drug addictions do not last long on Buckner. “She had a bad experience with a dealer who tried to turn her out.”
“Oh shit, that’s horrible,” I say.
“Ain’t the half of it. She goes over to score, but she doesn’t have any money.” He looks at her, says, “What did you think was going to happen?”
