I don’t know how I got through the next few days. They are a blur. A blur of disbelief. Grief overlaid everything like volcanic ash. They said, Junior was dead but that didn’t necessarily make it so. It had to be some sort of mistake, a miscalculation, a misjudgment—one tiny heart beat skipped that they’d made a snap-judgment about. What would happen when his eyes fluttered open as it happens in films when the poison, the sleep potion or the wicked witch’s curse has worn off? I was driven wild by the horror of the idea of his eyes opening where they said he was now.
“What a place to be buried.” Junior had said that. The words echoed through me as I remembered exactly when I’d heard them. We had crossed the border over into Arizona for the first time and were driving along near a place called Tombstone. We’d stopped for gas and had seen some rattlesnakes and a Gila monster down in a viewing hole or pit. The poor beasts had looked more dead than alive and I remember he’d shuddered when he said, “What a place to be buried.” He couldn’t possibly have had an inkling, a premonition that he’d be buried in the Gila Desert.
I refused to accept the fact that he had been buried. Here or anywhere. I refused to accept anything that had happened since we’d left California. Junior couldn’t be dead any more than I could be alive without him. We’d always been together. It was inconceivable that I could go on breathing when he had stopped. I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror without knowing that I had no right to have sight, heartbeats, feelings. I didn’t deserve to be the one alive. I wasn’t worthy and I knew it. I also knew that I’d see my unworthiness reflected in Dad’s eyes as long as I lived. Mom’s too, perhaps if they were ever able to reflect anything at all again. I’d lost my second skin. Like a snake. I was that expression Dad saved for unspeakable people: Lower than a snake’s asshole. I felt like a snake, sliding silently around where I wasn’t wanted, where I had no right to be. I was a pretender. I wasn’t the one who should be here at all.
I didn’t want to believe that I had gone back to the Fiesta in the town square the very night they said Junior had died and had danced wildly with my Mexican street musicians. Had drunk Tequila. Had loved it, what’s more. Had even puffed on a Mexican cigarette Juan rolled by hand in his room that caused me not only to fly, to lose touch with the earth and defy gravity, but to also lose touch with all restraints and controls. I had openly defied God. I defied God’s existence and His Son’s teachings by willfully performing acts that I knew by any definition—not just Southern Baptist definition—were abominations. Acts that that same afternoon I’d been brutally forced to commit in the backseat of a car in broad daylight, I performed that night with abandon. Acts of humiliation and degradation in the afternoon became flights of ecstasy with a chosen partner that night.
I’d lost my mind. Did I think by denying God’s existence I’d cancel out Junior’s too? Just because he wasn’t beside me, was his watchful presence no longer to be considered? Were Junior’s standards no longer valid? Was I shaking off all traces of decency to prove to myself that Junior was truly dead? If he were no longer there, I didn’t have to seek his approval anymore? The magnitude of my loss was beginning to become apparent to me. Without seeking his approval, without having his restraining reasonableness at hand, I could go whole hog. Whole unmentionable hog. And had. Was this what my life was going to be without him? I couldn’t make myself believe that all that was left of him was his spirit.
Could I believe that puffed-up waxen doll in the coffin in the funeral parlor had anything to do with Junior? Those rouged cheeks and the funny smile on the too-full lips had nothing to do with anybody I’d ever known. I wanted to scream at them all when I saw it. I wanted to scream, “It’s not Junior! Can’t you see? Just look, for Lord’s sake. Look at the hair for one thing. That’s not Junior’s. It’s a wig. Don’t you know a wig when you see one? See, the color’s all wrong. It’s too light and it looks like straw. Dead like straw. And there, there, the parting! See? It’s on the wrong side. What more proof do you need? It’s on the right instead of the left.” I wanted to call out to Mom, “Mom, don’t you know your own son? Your first born?” And to Dad, “Dad! Listen, Dad. Can that be the greatest ball player of his generation? Look, for Christ’ sake. A trick is being played on all of us. Don’t you know it? That can’t be Junior. Junior’s off somewhere. Somewhere else—maybe he’s gone to that military academy he always longed to go to. Maybe he’s back in Clovis, marching in the high school band. But he’s not here. That pathetic facsimile is about as convincing as the little matador dolls on sale at the Fiesta. Look! Please, just look, for God’s sake. Don’t be taken in … It’s some sort of hideous joke … Can’t you see, for God’s sake? Are you all blind. All blind but me? Why do you accept this …”
Then, a funeral. Ostensibly for Junior. Thank God, it too was a blur with only certain moments clearly etched in my mind. Fleeting pictures of our little knot of people—swollen to about a dozen with the arrival of Mom’s sisters, Aunt Bill and Aunt Elsie—all crowded together in a stunned clump listening to a preacher straining to think of something to say about a dead boy he’d never even seen. Had never known his sparkling eyes or his sweetness. He was just standing up there sweating, that poor preacher man, making up words, words he thought we’d like to hear. Empty words. Nice words. Worthless words. Words meant to console. But what is consoling about “… it’s God’s will.” Or “God calls his children home …” What kind of a God is that? Certainly not the God that I’d felt on such comfortable and friendly terms with until I turned my back on Him the other night.
There was some organ music that was just loud enough to stir some dust motes around the organist who also sang a couple of hymns and ended up with “Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair.” That had been a request of Mom’s because she’d heard Junior whistling it with one of his last breaths. That was the clearest moment of all for me. That was the moment I thought my heart would break. I’ll never be able to listen to that song again as long as I live. Or bear to hear anybody whistling. Whistling any tune.
The pallbearers were volunteers from the local Boy Scout Troop. They sat off to one side of the church uncomfortably rigid in their stiff uniforms covered with badges. They were embarrassed by this unfortunate ritual for somebody unknown but tried valiantly not to show it. (I just looked up “pall” in Junior’s dictionary that I’ve been carrying around with me like he did. Only for me it’s a talisman, a connection with him as intimate as if I were holding his hand. Mom handed it to me without saying a word when his things were brought back from the hospital. I’d had difficulty figuring out the connection between “to pall—to lose interest” and “pallbearer—a coffin attendant.” I’m beginning to understand now.)
From one minute to the next, it was all over. Aunts boarded trains for Missouri. The Model-A was packed and we moved to it like robots, easing ourselves silently into our accustomed positions and drove off.
Drove off. We just drove off. Heading back the way we’d come four years ago. Along the same roads. We could, with some sort of time-warp and imagination, wave at ourselves passing in the other direction. We drove off. Headed east. Leaving behind the most important part of ourselves. Of each of us. Our lives. Behind in a grave. An unmarked grave. Just a typed-out name with dates in a metal frame that stuck into the sandy earth on a wire prong. We didn’t have the money or the time to have a tombstone cut here in a place not too far from Tombstone. When we first started west, we left Oak Grove, Arkansas, on the day after Grandma Idy had been assigned her hole in the ground. History was repeating itself. Would we go on forever, back and forth on these endless roads, never having a real home, just depositing members of the family in holes all over the fucking place until there was none of us left?
I felt considerable relief getting out of Ajo although it hadn’t been easy for me to make proper farewells to anybody except Aunt Dell. She was the only one in that Ajo house untouched by my sordid little story and I hoped she would remain untouched. As for Sister,
I could hardly look at her. I was sick enough with guilt without assuming any of hers. She’d stirred the sordid little story into a froth of fear that still stuck in my throat and made it difficult for me to embrace her with my usual warmth. It choked me to know that she was instrumental—however inadvertently— in having me fear for my life. It was as though gangsters had a contract out on me and the terror I was living with constantly kept my blood icy. So did the very sight of Roy. I shrank from him as from a coiled rattler. His winks and knowing smiles were meant to calm my fears but only fed them. I could do without him for the rest of my life. But that other one—that irreplaceable one that we were leaving—how could I possibly live without him? There was no way to say farewell to him. Ever. He’d be with me always.
We were a sorry lot bouncing along in the Ford. I was huddled in the back seat, way over on my side staring out my window trying to put the inconceivable happenings in Ajo out of my mind, terrified to turn my head from the window to face the awful emptiness next to me where Junior had always been.
Nobody would have guessed that Dad had been crumbling away inside ever since Junior’s illness’s first warnings months ago. Looking at the back of his head now, seeing his hands firmly on the wheel in their customary position, he seemed solid enough. Perhaps the steering wheel was his crutch, the thing that held him together. God knows at every possible opportunity he found reasons to seek its support.
As for Mom’s withdrawal, if it got any deeper, she’d turned inside out. We were all afflicted. Maimed and wounded in our various ways, left scarred as if by the removal of a vital organ. I felt particularly crippled. Crippled and crutchless. I tried to close my mind to the horrifying fears—wrapped in layers of shame—I had for myself. Fears about what I thought I might become. Or had I become it already? What was it? Was it my flaw? We all have at least one. Having embraced the forbidden was I doomed forever? If so, whose fault was it? Could Junior have saved me from performing loathesome acts? Could anybody be blamed? Maybe Dad? No, you can’t blame others for your own flaws. Or actions It’s something you have to live with by yourself. But Junior wouldn’t have let me face it alone. He’d have understood—he actually said as much in the car: “I couldn’t hate you, Tots. I couldn’t possibly hate you, no matter what you did. Or how you turn out.” How much had he known? Or guessed?
If for nothing else, I could still blame Dad for our present predicament. Looking at the back of his head now sent a searing flash of resentment down my spine that was almost thrilling. Being able to blame him for something was soothing. I could tell by the thickness of Dad’s head and neck, the stubborn set of the shoulders, and the arrogant command of the car and its occupants that he and I’d come to the parting of the ways. I knew he’d never help me realize my dreams or ambitions, let alone help me face or fight this curious demon I felt within me. I was on my own—a bit blemished, soiled and scarred, but not ruined. Just fifteen years old and I was confronted with the awesome task of single-handedly making something of myself. If I got into any trouble—particularly the sort I sensed I might be headed for—he’d turn his back and simply consider it another example of the inequities of life. Verifying conclusively that God had really got his wires crossed and whisked the wrong victim “home”. Dad could have borne— oh, so philosophically—my being whisked “home”. But not Junior. For Dad it was a soul-wrenching catastrophe. I could see him eventually wishing me dead, if he didn’t already. Captain J had said that it was normal to wish your father dead, but was it normal the other way around? I don’t think I wished him dead, but I let my new resentment of him take hold and root itself in the core of my being. With some nourishment, it could become hate.
Just how much over the years could I blame Dad for? All I know is that we’d been fine, just the three of us; Mom, Junior and I. Happy and getting along fine back at the beginning in Galena. Long before I even knew who Dad was. We’d managed perfectly well without him since right after I’d been born. If he’d just stayed away, we’d all have been better off. We might even all be alive. If he hadn’t come back and started us out on this tragic journey, Junior wouldn’t be dead. Yes, it looks like it’s going to be easy to work up a case against him. Even hating him. But when you know you are hating yourself too, it makes it easier to spread it around.
Chapter Two
DAD WAS JUST a dim occasional presence in the early days. Now with us. Now gone. Mostly gone. When gone, his absence wasn’t a cloud hanging over us. Our lives seemed to go on whether he was there or not. We went to school when we were old enough and Mom went on teaching at her country schools and finding whatever work she could during summer vacations. When Dad did appear, he provided vivid, lively moments but when away, I for one, didn’t grieve or pine.
We lived in several houses in Galena, Missouri—none our own— but the first one I remember was a two-story clapboard house two blocks from the Stone County Court House on the main square. It was down a hill from the square. Well, everything was down a hill from the square or up a hill from it. The town square was sort of a shelf, a semi-circular one, natural or hacked out by early settlers with the twisting James River flowing south down below the railroad tracks. Behind the shelf was a hill, steep but as the houses petered out into woods there were foot-paths worn through the trees by generations of children climbing up to the schoolhouse at the top of the hill. The criss-cross lines of paths was like an intricate carpet-design, each making no sense except to the family who used it. Everybody had their rocky route from house to school or house to town square which was the heart and core of the town.
Memories of that first house are without Dad. There was a long yellow stain under one of the upstairs windows, spreading down the weathered clapboards, as though some previous tenant had been too lazy to go outside to the toilet.
“Why didn’t they use a pot?” I asked Junior.
“Maybe they did use a pot,” he grinned. “And dumped it out the window.”
“That’d be easier than trying to pee out the window. You’d have to stretch way out or have a long toy like a hose and you’d have to be careful not to fall…”
“Hush, Totsy,” Junior was blushing. You couldn’t even say “pee” in front of him, let alone “toy.”
But you could sure say toy in front of Bonnie Lou who lived across the street. My thing was called a “toy” and we played with it. Bonnie Lou was fascinated by it and I was fascinated by her. She didn’t have a toy for some reason so I guess that’s why her interest in my not quite six-year-old one was so unflagging. She did have something that I wanted desperately. Her knowledge of dancing. She could play with my toy until the cows came home, watching it get hard and pointing straight up—we both regarded it as some sort of miracle—so long as she taught me all she knew about tap-dancing. And she knew a lot. She’d taken lessons somewhere before moving to Galena and even had black shiny shoes with ribbon ties and silver metal taps on the heels and toes. I was determined to learn everything she could teach me even if it meant letting her put my toy in her mouth which she did once and I knew we’d committed a sin. Anything that felt that good couldn’t be allowed. Junior would have had a fit if he knew.
I was an apt pupil—everybody had always said I had natural rhythm—and was soon embellishing the basic steps and developing my own routines to whatever music she’d put on the windup phonograph.
“That silly kid’s a dancer,” Bonnie Lou’s father said one day. He did nothing but sit all day making cigarettes in a funny little hand-operated machine—cigarette paper in one side, a sprinkling of tobacco from a Prince Albert tin, a handle turned, a roller moved across a flat surface and out dropped a perfect cigarette. He made them by the hundreds. Not to sell, he just stuffed them into empty packs of Wings or Spuds and put them away in cardboard boxes. I don’t think he even smoked.
They moved away—cigarettes and tap-shoes—leaving tingling memories in my loins and the ringing in my ears of “That silly kid’s a dancer.” I already knew I was going to be a
dancer, but Bonnie Lou’s father was the first to recognize it. I’m going to be one day. One way or another.
When school let out for the summer, Mom was faced with job hunting. She faced that problem every year. She was paid as much as fifty dollars a month for teaching but only during the school term. It was during the summer holidays that she really worked. She always said she loved teaching so much she’d even pay for the privilege. Obviously a fairly empty boast in the early ’30’s in the Ozarks.
That year, it must have been ’32, Mom found part-time work at the Galena Hotel as room-maid, receptionist, waitress, dishwasher and scrub-woman. She ran the place.
The hotel was only three blocks from our house so she felt she could keep an eye on us and nobody seemed to mind me and Junior running in and out of the hotel all the time. It was like having Mom home with us and we all three got our midday meal free. Mom said it was free, but Junior told me that our food was most of her wages. All her hard work was just to feed us.
“Don’t they give Mom any money at all?” I asked.
“Not much. They take our food from what she earns.” Junior was biting the inside of his lip and his eyes looked misty. “We’re eating Mom’s wages and it sticks in my throat.”
“That’s silly. We ought to eat as much as we can. The more we eat, the more wages Mom is making.”
“Oh, you…” Junior put his arm around my neck and pulled my head down near his chest and gave my scalp a brisk knuckle-rub, chuckling deep in his throat. I could tell that he was pleased and amused by me. I was an outrageous showoff at best, but he was the audience that I wanted to applaud me the loudest.
With nothing much else coming in, in came Dad. We three were a bit cautious as we welcomed him—rather like animals sniffing out a pack member who’d strayed away to make sure he still belonged. Of course he belonged. He was our father. He’d been away enough in my short life for me to feel that I didn’t know him very well. I couldn’t remember exactly the last time I’d seen him. It wasn’t that I didn’t recognize him when I saw him, that was easy and pleasurable. He was good to look at. People said I looked like him—which pleased me—and Junior looked like Mom. That wasn’t a bad thing either. Mom and Dad were a handsome couple, everybody said so. That is, when they were a couple.
In Tall Cotton Page 3
