“Dad, this next part is just going to upset you more. Are you sure you’re ready to hear it?”
Dad exhaled sharply. I suddenly realized he had been alternately holding his breath and releasing it throughout this entire conversation. “Richard, nothing could upset me more. Go ahead.”
“Michael’s first thought was to become a conscientious objector, so he said something to your dad, like ‘What would you do if I got drafted and became a conscientious objector?’ Your dad said, ‘I’d rather be the father of a dead soldier than a live coward.’”
Dad looked like he was going to spit on the floor as he said, “Sounds about right.”
“So then Willow tried to get Michael to run away with her to Canada, but he wouldn’t go because he was afraid of what your parents would do to you if he couldn’t come back and protect you. And that was when he came up with his plan. He said he was going to shoot up heroin several times in the weeks leading up to his final induction physical, and when the army saw the track marks in his arm and his general pathetic physical condition, they would reject him. Then he would kick the heroin habit, and get away free without anyone in the family knowing anything about anything.
“I tried to tell Michael and Willow how dangerous the plan was. They snorted heroin on Saturday night, and I could tell it scared Willow. Remember when Michael wouldn’t wake up on Sunday morning? But I guess Michael was just so desperate that nothing I said made any difference in the end.”
“You know,” my father said, “I’ve wondered every day for the past forty-five years—why that night? Why not sooner? Why not later? I’ve gone over every second I can remember of my time with my brother, trying to understand whether I did something wrong. Did I hurt his feelings? Should I have noticed some hint? Was he trying to tell me something? Were there clues? Was I a bad brother?”
“Dad, you didn’t do anything wrong. Your brother just couldn’t see a way out. No matter what he did, he was going to have to disappoint his father, or leave you alone with your parents, or desert Willow. I think he just ran out of options. And I know why he chose that night.”
Dad practically lunged at me, his eyes bulging. “Why?”
“I saw the draft letter. His physical was scheduled for Wednesday, October fifteenth, and if he passed, he was due to report for duty on Monday, October twentieth. He must have passed the physical. His time was up.”
My father put his head in his hands.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I know you didn’t want to talk about any of this, but I promised Uncle Mike I would tell you everything. I can’t imagine how much it must have hurt to hear it, but at least now you know the whole truth, right? So now, after all this time, you know your brother’s death had nothing to do with you. It wasn’t your fault, Dad.”
Dad looked up at me through his interlaced fingers. “Oh, but it was, Rich. Now I know the whole truth. But you don’t.”
SOUL SACRIFICE
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2014
It was past two in the morning, forty-five years and four days after his brother’s death, when my father finally told a family member the truth about what had happened that night.
“Your mother told you I was on a marching band trip, right?”
I nodded.
“Because that’s what I told her. That’s what I told my parents at the time, too. It’s what I always told them when I wanted to get away on a weekend. But really, I was out with the other guys in our rock band. I figured it all out afterward.… Michael sent me away. We used to rehearse in the rhythm guitarist’s basement. We always left my drums set up there and everything. On that night, the rhythm guitar player’s parents were out of town, so Mike told me we were all going to meet at his house and rehearse some new songs. Then we were supposed to party all night and sleep over.
“At the last minute, Michael backed out. He said he had a special date with Willow. He told me he would drive me over to rehearsal on the way to pick her up, but that I’d have to walk back home in the morning. He gave me ten bucks and told me to take the guys out to the diner for breakfast, relax, give my parents time to wake up before I came home. I didn’t even stop to think that was strange. I’ve wanted to punch myself over and over and over—why wouldn’t he have offered to pick me up in the morning? Why didn’t that strike me as odd? Why didn’t I make a big deal out of it? But truthfully, I was just a little bit excited to be hanging out with the rest of the band without the shadow of my older brother lurking over me.
“So when the time came, I grabbed my drumsticks and my overnight bag—the same mud-stained backpack I had at Woodstock—and jumped in the shotgun seat of Dad’s Caddy. Mom and Dad were glued to the television in the living room, beers in hand, so nobody even asked us where we were going.
“I don’t remember getting out of the car. It’s awful. I don’t remember the last time I saw my brother alive. I can recall snatches of the rehearsal, and then somebody brought out the marijuana. When I was really flying, Willow suddenly appeared. She was frantically looking for Michael. She had shown up at our house, and our parents had told her he wasn’t around. The bass player kept saying, ‘Calm down, baby, he’s with you,’ and she just kept saying, ‘No, his parents said he was with you!’ After the fact, I pieced it together that Michael had pulled a fast one on everybody. He’d left the house and told our parents and Willow he was going to be with the band, but he’d told us he was going on a date with Willow. Meanwhile, he had somehow managed to sneak back into his room, as alone as he would ever be.
“Anyway, Willow tried to get me to come looking for my brother, but I was too high. I thought the whole situation was hilarious.”
My father stopped talking, got up, paced around the room, got himself a drink of water, took a few sips, paced some more, and continued.
“I’m sorry, Richie. This is hard for me to tell anyone after so long. Willow begged me to come with her. She knew something was wrong. I’m pretty sure she was crying, and she might even have slapped me, but I had to look cool in front of the boys in the band, right? So I just laughed and laughed. Eventually, I blinked a few times, and she was just … gone. Then I laughed myself to sleep. In the morning, I woke up with a sick feeling in my stomach, so I forgot all about taking the guys out for breakfast. Instead, I hurried straight home, let myself in, and tripped over my dead brother. If I had listened to Willow, if I had gone along—who knows? Maybe our first stop would have been my house. Maybe Michael wasn’t dead yet at that point. Maybe—”
I felt every muscle in my body clench up. It hurt. I tried as hard as I could to sit up in bed, but all I managed to do was strain my neck forward a bit and make my voice sound more plaintive.
“Dad, you can’t do this to yourself! Uncle Mike must have wanted to die. He was just a few days away from getting shipped off to the army. He was probably addicted to heroin. His parents were raging alcoholics, and he had no choice but to leave you alone with them. His life was a mess, and he couldn’t find any other way out. He gave up.”
“But there was another thing, Richie. Something not even Michael knew. Willow had just told me that week, but she was waiting to surprise Michael. In fact, I had been thinking she might tell him that night. In light of what you’ve just told me, I wonder whether she was waiting until after the amy physical to tell him.”
“What was it?”
“She told me I was going to be an uncle. Willow was pregnant with my brother’s baby.”
My head slumped back into the pillow, and a chill ran through me. “Wait a minute. That means I have a forty-five-year-old cousin somewhere?”
“Actually, the child would be forty-four, but of course I have no idea as to what happened, because I didn’t track Willow down. That’s what haunts me the most.”
“You were fifteen. What were you supposed to do? Besides, you said you tried to find her.”
“I didn’t try very hard, and I didn’t stay fifteen. I’ve had all this time to reach out. What if she never met anothe
r man? What if she raised that kid all alone, without any help? What if—”
“Dad, do you remember what Willow looked like? It’s not like it would have been hard for her to meet another guy if she wanted to. Plus, you don’t know whether she had the baby. But, um, it’s never too late to find out, right? The kid would be a grown-up, but I bet Willow would still feel good to know that you turned out all okay, and everything.”
Dad looked away from me and mumbled, “Maybe. Maybe. I don’t know, though. If I were Willow, I think I would want to spit on anyone I met whose last name was Barber.”
I couldn’t stand the heaviness, so I made a pathetic attempt to lighten the mood. “So, are there any other horrible secrets you want to get off your chest while you’re on a roll? Are you really a top-secret government spy? Is mom not my real mom? Was I abducted by aliens as a baby?”
“There’s just one other thing: my Tuesday-night bowling league.”
“You really go to strip bars? I knew it! Nobody is that interested in bowling!”
“Ha-ha, Richard. Some respect, please. I’m not your fifteen-year-old pal in the mud at Woodstock anymore.”
Ouch. “Um…”
“But maybe I can work a little harder on remembering what it felt like to be your age, if you’ll agree to work a little harder on being open with me, too.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. But all in all, I was pretty sure my father had just offered me a fair deal.
“Think it over, all right? In the meantime, just listen, because this is important for you to know. A few weeks after your uncle’s death, several of our mutual friends took me out on a Saturday night. I know they were trying to do something kind for me, and I suppose in a way, they did. They gave me marijuana, and beer, and pills of some sort. I don’t remember many details of that evening, but I do know that I lost all control of myself. The next morning, I awoke in a cell—in the same jail you and I visited a few days ago—with cuts and bruises all over my body, vomit all over my clothes, and the worst headache it has ever been my displeasure to experience.
“The police called my father, who grumbled about having to wake up early to come and get me. The officer in charge knew my parents, and everybody in the precinct probably knew what had happened to my brother, so he let me off with a warning. But my true punishment came a few minutes later. When my father walked in to get me, one of the policemen pointed at me and said to another, ‘Chip off the old block, huh?’
“If there is one thing I knew I never, ever wanted to be, it was a chip off the old block. I decided right then and there that I was never going to use drugs or alcohol again.”
“What does that have to do with your bowling league?”
“Well, Richie, you’ve heard of Alcoholics Anonymous, right?”
“Sure. We learned about it in health class.”
“When my father and I got home from the police station, I asked him if I could speak with him and my mother. He muttered something sarcastic, lit a cigarette, got himself a cup of coffee, and shouted for her to get her ass down to the kitchen. When she got herself situated with coffee and a cigarette of her own, I asked my parents whether they would consider going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.”
“What happened?”
“Your grandfather snorted so hard he choked on his coffee, and then your grandmother said, ‘Is this about your brother? Because if it is, let me tell you, a few beers never kilt anybody. If Michael’d had the sense to stick with alcohol, he’d be alive. Hippie drugs might kill you, but a few beers after a day’s work ain’t no crime. Now you listen here, David: If you don’t like the way your parents live, you can just pack on up and get on out. Otherwise, shut your trap.’
“My parents never did get any help, and they both kept on drinking until they died. That’s why we never left you alone with them when you were a baby. Anyway … I wanted to tell you about my bowling league. There’s an offshoot of Alcoholics Anonymous called Al-Anon. It’s a support group for family members of alcoholics. A couple of years back, I started having trouble sleeping. Indirectly, it was because of you, I guess.”
“Me? What did I do?”
“You didn’t do anything. It’s just that, when you hit your big growth spurt and started getting serious about the guitar, you suddenly started reminding me so much of your uncle. I began having nightmares about you using drugs, or ending up drunk in a gutter somewhere. You didn’t have to do anything—all you had to do was be who you were. My worries did the rest.”
“And that was why you didn’t let me go out with my friends, or get an electric guitar for so long?”
“A lot of it, yes.”
My first impulse was to snap at him. Judging me because I looked like my dead uncle was so unfair. On the other hand, now that I had met Uncle Mike, I got it. My eyes blurred.
I half-whispered, “But Dad, you can’t protect me from everything.”
“Believe it or not, your mother kept telling me that. But it didn’t matter. My anxiety just kept growing and growing. When I couldn’t sleep at all anymore, and I thought I might go insane, I asked one of the counselors at work for help. He told me that maybe I should try going to an Al-Anon meeting. I’ve been going ever since.”
“Is it helping?”
“In a way, yes. I’ve been sleeping better. But there are twelve steps in the program, and I’ve failed miserably at some of the most important ones.”
“What do you mean?”
“As part of the healing process, I’m supposed to admit my wrongs, and make amends to anyone I’ve harmed. That’s been holding me up for a few years now, because I couldn’t get past what I did to your uncle. I couldn’t save him. Not only that, but when the time came to save him, I was so wasted myself, I didn’t even bother trying.”
My father got up and refilled his water cup.
“Dad, it wasn’t your job to save him. It wasn’t even your job to protect him. He spent his whole life trying to protect you.”
“And failed. Just like I spent my whole life trying to protect you, and failed.”
“I’m not going to lie, Dad. Until this weekend, I thought you were the most overprotective parent in the world, and you’re right—that was a pretty massive fail. I hated the way you and mom never let me do anything. But I just realized something else. You did save me, just not the way you think.
“It’s pretty amazing that you didn’t quit, like Uncle Mike did. So you saved me just by staying alive through all the stuff your parents did to you. Then you didn’t do the same stuff to me. So, um, thank you, Dad.”
We both got pretty flustered at the straightforward display of appreciation, and my father was so overcome, he needed to take a walk. He was gone for so long that I lost track of time, but the next thing I knew, he walked back into the room and said, “Son, are you awake?”
Truthfully, I wasn’t so sure I had been, but I croaked something that sounded like a yes.
“I just realized something. You warned Willow about that specific night, didn’t you? You told her the date. That’s why she was so frantic. I’ve always wondered, because it was so out of character for her. You warned her in advance, even though saving Michael would have meant you would never be born.
“Am I right, Richie?”
I couldn’t answer. My mind was racing, and I felt like something was crushing my chest.
“Am I right?”
“Dad, I … yes. I warned her. Jimi told me it wouldn’t make a difference. He told me I couldn’t change anything, because it was all already part of my past. But I had to try.”
“Why, Richard?”
I couldn’t look at my father as I answered. “I don’t know. Michael and Willow were amazing people. He was really, uh, noble. You know? And he was my uncle. Plus, you just seemed so happy back then, with your brother. You were just so … there. A hundred percent there, every moment. And all the time I’ve been alive, you haven’t been like that. I thought that maybe if I could save Unc
le Mike, you could spend your whole life being happy. And all there.”
I risked a glance at Dad. His hands were balled into fists and tears streaked his face. “Richard,” he said. “You’re such a brave boy. And good. Really, really … good. I knew it back at Woodstock, when you were Gabriel, but for fifteen years I haven’t seen it developing under my nose.
“And I’m sorry. So here is my promise to you. I’m here now.”
My father sat back down and put his hand on my shoulder. At some point, we must have both dozed off. When my mom and the first round of doctors came by at sunrise, Dad’s hand was still on me. It felt really nice.
YOU CAN MAKE IT IF YOU TRY
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2014
They kept me in the hospital for three days “for observation.” All of the little burns, scratches, and scrapes on my body healed so fast that one of the doctors told my parents on the third morning that it looked as though they had happened years ago. As for whatever injury had been done to my brain, every medical test had been completely normal ever since I had woken up. The neurologist wanted to keep a close watch on me for a while, and hook me up to some brain scan machines every couple of weeks, but I had a feeling there wasn’t going to be anything to see.
The only suspenseful part for me, physically, was what color my still-stubbly hair was going to be when it grew back.
As soon as I walked in the front door of my house, the smell of smoke assaulted my nose, and I bolted for the basement. My parents called after me to wait, but I needed to see how much damage I had done.
The house itself wasn’t messed up too badly at all, because the whole basement was mostly made of concrete, and concrete doesn’t burn. The burning smell seemed to be coming from my dad’s room, so I opened the door, flipped on the light—and gasped. Someone had cleared out all of my father’s piled-up mementoes from the floor, so the room itself was basically bare. The entire back wall, the one that adjoined the closet, was singed black, and the closet door was completely charred. I heard footsteps on the stairs behind me, and my dad reached me just as I started walking through the room to see how bad the inside of the closet looked.
Are You Experienced? Page 19
