by Mark Johnson
After the waiter took our orders (mine including a midday Budweiser, which induced a scolding frown from Dad), I whined about the injustice of my termination from the cookbook company, criticized its stupid and shortsighted management, and declared, “Truth be told, I pretty much hate sales anyway, whether it’s mustard or cookbooks.” I took a swig from my longneck Budweiser and noticed my father’s lips tighten.
“You could at least pour it into the glass,” he said. “We’re not in Boulder.” I snorted through my nose at his bourgeois pretension and took another swig from the bottle. That was Dad’s last straw.
“For goodness’ sake, Mark, when are you going to grow up and take responsibility? Get on an even keel? You’ve got to quit blaming other people for your problems. You’ve got to buckle down—you’re almost thirty, married now, about to be a father, and you can’t hold a job. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. You dropped out of architecture, would’ve quit college altogether if I hadn’t made you stay. You wanted to quit Country Day, would’ve even quit the Boy Scouts if I hadn’t intervened. After all we’ve given you, the education, the contacts, I don’t understand it. Most young men would be grateful for the advantages you’ve had, but you turn your nose up at it. I guess we spoiled you. By the time I was your age, I’d been in the navy, fought in a world war, worked my way into a good company, was building a career. Mom and I taught you better. I was never fired from a job and never quit a job unless I got offered something better. But that’s always been your problem. You’re a quitter.”
I was stunned. Stung. And seething. So much for solace, comfort, and encouragement. I took another defiant swig of beer and watched my father cut his steak. I felt the urge to upend the table, make a big loud scene, and stomp out of the place shouting profanities. Instead I lit a Camel, contemplated my counterassault, and exhaled a long blue stream of smoke across his plate. He put his silverware down and glared at me.
“I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment to you, Dad. I guess I can’t argue with most of what you said. But I will say one thing: I’m not a quitter. And I’ll prove it to you. Remember, about ten years ago, when I asked you and Mom for information about my adoption, about how I could find out about whom I came from, and you said it was stupid, hopeless, impossible? ‘No good would come from it anyway,’ you said. Remember that, Dad? I was eighteen. Well, I didn’t quit on that.
“It took me years, Dad, but I kept at it, and I found ’em. I found my real parents. And guess what? My mother’s richer than anybody at Country Day, or anybody in St. Louis, for that matter. Her father had a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, owned companies, was elected to Congress, built hospitals and libraries that they named after him. Her brother, my uncle, owns an oil company in Dallas. And my father was a damn war hero, a Marine sniper in Korea.”
Dad’s eyes bulged. For a long moment he just stared at me.
That got him, I thought. Especially the word choice: real parents. War hero. A stroke of genius. Of course Dad heard only my highly edited, selectively excerpted version of the real parents but to great effect: he’s got no comeback. I returned his gaze in stony silence, the subtlest evidence of a smirk at the corners of my mouth. I stubbed out my cigarette in my plate of untouched food.
“When did this happen?”
“Heck, over a year ago.”
Dad made no reply. After a moment, he calmly pulled out his wallet, laid a couple twenties on the table, looked at his watch, said, “I have to get back to the office,” and got up and left, leaving me and his full plate behind.
The ugly details and loose ends of the Tom and Judy story were best left unsaid. I hadn’t actually found my “real” father yet. I didn’t even know if he was dead or alive, for certain. Nor did I know if he was a “war hero” in Korea, just another grunt, or a deserter, for that matter. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out, since it had taken me a few sessions with a shrink just to deal with Judy.
When Dad got home from work, it was clear he’d been drinking. This was unusual and concerned Mom, but she held her tongue. Dad barely spoke to her, said nothing to me, and headed straight for the bar, where he mixed himself a pitcher of martinis and began knocking them back as he watched the six o’clock news.
I had said nothing to Mom of lunch at Busch’s Grove. Over supper, Dad alternated between distracted, silent gazes off in the middle distance and odd declarations apropos nothing Mom and I were chatting about:
“Margaret, I been thinking, we oughtta just sell this place and move to Hawaii. There’s nothing keeping us here anyway.”
“Stan! What has gotten into you? What are you talking about?”
“I mean it, Margaret! We got nothing here. If you don’t wanna go with me, maybe I’ll just go on by myself.”
“I think you need to slow down the martinis, dear, and focus on your supper. I don’t know what’s come over you!”
“Whaddaya mean, ‘come over me’? I’ve just come to my senses, is what it is. We’ve done our duty, worked our whole lives, put the kids through school. They’re grown and gone now, got families of their own. Nothin’ left for us here. We oughtta live for ourselves for a change. Just up and go.” He was making grand, sweeping gestures, his voice loud and gruff, like George C. Scott’s Patton, surveying the field of battle.
“Seriously! Where’d you rather go than Hawaii? California? ’Member how you thought San Luis Obispo was so pretty? We could take up golf, play at Pebble Beach. See movie stars. Or Europe! You always loved Paris, said you wanted to go back some day.”
Mom was totally befuddled and knew better than to argue with him. She looked at me, but I clearly had said too much already, at lunch. I just shrugged.
Dad kept pounding down the martinis.
“Or if you’d rather, we could just go home to Oklahoma. Our folks’re all buried out there, and we could be closer to your sister. Billye would like that I bet, and Bill and their kids, too. They’re all still there, together, not scattered like ours, one off in Cleveland, the other in Colorada.
“You know, Margaret, we mighta all been better off if we’d just stayed in Oklahoma. But I still think Hawaii’s best. We need to just get away. Or I do, anyway.” Turning to me, he snarled, “Maybe I’ll just do that, with or without you, Margaret. There’s nothing for me here.”
Mom got up and started clearing the table, muttering, “For goodness’ sake, Stan,” her eyes brimming, her mouth set. Dad pushed away his half-eaten supper, picked up his glass and the pitcher of martinis, and stalked off to his den. Moments later the smell of cigar smoke and the sound of Glenn Miller cranked up loud emanated throughout the house.
I went into the kitchen with a load of dinner plates and began helping Mom with the dishes. When I finished putting the leftovers in the fridge, I pulled out a cold can of beer.
“Now don’t you start, too” she scolded, fighting back tears. “Why can’t you two get along? What’s going on between you? This started at lunch, didn’t it? Why must you drink the way you do?”
I just shook my head and shrugged, popped the top on the beer, and lit a Camel. Mom left the room fighting back tears, and I could hear their raised voices from the den, but their words were drowned out by the band shouting “Pennsylvania six five oh oh oh.”
Hours passed. Mom had given up and gone to bed. Dad was still smoking and drinking and playing his old swing music from the forties, now at a more civilized volume. I had called Nancy and told her what a disaster this trip had been and that I’d probably head back to Colorado in the morning to resume my job hunt. She wasn’t particularly sympathetic or consoling. Maybe I should just light out for parts unknown, I thought, and popped another beer from the kitchen fridge.
Sometime after midnight I was sufficiently primed to confront the old man. I entered his den and sat in a leather wing-back chair opposite him. He wouldn’t look at me, and we just sat there for a long while, smoking, drinking, listening to the music. My mind wandered back to Luling, my earliest memories, when he u
sed to call me “Markie Doodle” and invite me to “wrassle” with him on the floor. And he’d take me to the plant to show me around; there were snapshots of him holding me, still in diapers, the plant in the background and a silver Lion Oil hard hat on my head. I remembered Boy Scouts, and Ernie’s dad, my scoutmaster, who had reacted with disbelief when Dad had volunteered to spend two entire weeks at summer camp with the troop. Even the scoutmaster only traded off a couple nights at a time with the other fathers, none of whom committed to a whole week, much less two. And I remembered how Dad had attended every one of my high school football games, even that first year when I hardly played. I had been so caught up in my own embarrassment and frustration at being a bench warmer I had wished he hadn’t come to the games. And there was that time he’d taken off work to drive across Missouri and halfway across Kansas to bail me out of jail in Junction City, where I’d been arrested for hitchhiking on Interstate 70. I’d been more embarrassed than relieved or grateful for Dad’s unexpected rescue; the sheriff had called him, not me. I hadn’t wanted the deputies or my cell mates to think less of me for whining to my daddy to come bail me out. “You’re a lucky boy to have this man for a dad, son,” the sheriff had said as he removed my shackles. They’re in cahoots to make me feel as bad as possible, I remember thinking. And of course there had been the time he had flown out to Boulder to convince me to stay in school rather than enlist in the Marines.
What a shitty son I am! A flood of shame, guilt, and self-loathing overtook me as I studied him in his silent reverie across the room, but I was too drunk or stubborn or wrapped up in my own self-pity to find the words that needed saying.
It was probably too late for words, from me anyway.
Then he began, still not looking at me. “I think where I went wrong, was in stepping in too much. I probably should have just let you take your lumps, learn things the hard way. That’s how my father raised me, and I didn’t make the same mistake twice. I listened to my father, took his advice, even asked him for his advice, to avoid mistakes. I respected him—never argued like a smart aleck with him. I sure miss my dad.” He took a sip from his martini and a puff from his Roi-Tan cheroot. I made no reply.
“Like when you wanted to quit school and join the Marines, it probably woulda been best. Apparently it was, for your ‘real’ father. A hero, you say, in Korea. This music reminds me of being in the navy: the danger, the pride, the camaraderie! We were at war! At sea! You just don’t have any idea, Mark. Out in the middle of the Pacific, for months at a time. You don’t know anything about sacrifice, or duty . . . or honor . . . courage. We saw ships wrecked, sunk! The whole fleet at Pearl Harbor . . . Jap subs stalking us for days. I was scared. We all were. But we pulled together and came through it stronger.”
I’m thinking, wait a minute, Dad, you told me yourself that your hitch in the navy was more like Mister Roberts and McHale’s Navy than The Battle of Midway or PT 109.
“I shoulda let you drop out and join the Marines, you mighta learned something about being a man—that is, if you survived. Afraid it’s too late now . . . and y’know, I’ve wondered since then if that wasn’t all just a bluff, anyway. If you’da really wanted to join, I doubt I coulda stopped you from it.”
All my gushing sentimental guilt of mere moments ago ebbed, then vanished, replaced by welling, drunken anger.
“But I wasn’t bluffing at dinner. What’s to stop me from leaving? You’re not the only one with options, you know. With alternatives. A man of my age and means has places he can go, interests, friends, companions. I’ve traveled all over the world and know places, people. I’ve got opportunities that none of you know about. You’ve obviously made your choices, for at least a year now. It’s my turn to exercise my options, cut my losses. I can just disappear. Retire, move away, disappear without a trace, and be much happier . . . maybe start a new family.”
I shouted, “What about Mom and Lynn!” and was on him, leaping across the room, raining blows, bloodying his nose. He joined the battle, rising through my flurry of fists with a punishing slam to my gut that knocked the wind out of me, doubling me over. I took him down with me as I fell forward sucking for air. Furniture crashed with us to the floor and by the time Mom came out to break us up it was already over and we both lay gasping and bleeding on the floor, wounded by shame and sorrow amid the broken glass and puddles of gin and beer.
18
The Chicken Comes Home
to Pensacola
Though this knave came something saucily into this world before he was sent for yet was his mother fair; there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged.
—Gloucester, King Lear
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
—Edmund, the bastard, ibid.
A year later, having scrambled to keep the bills paid doing cowboy stories for the Rodeo Sports News, I finally landed full-time steady work. Better yet, I found it to be meaningful, challenging, and satisfying, something I could see making a career of. I was public relations director for the Pikes Peak United Way. Things were coming together for Nancy and me: our first child was born and we named him Peter. With Nancy’s approval, I baptized him myself in Fountain Creek, the mountain stream that ran through our backyard.
At a weeklong management training program at United Way’s national headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, I skipped an afternoon session and took a cab to the Marine Corps archives in D.C. In just a few hours of poring over microfilmed lists of Korean Conflict KIAs, I was able to determine that no Tom Whitaker from Detroit had died in action in the summer or fall of 1951 or the winter of ’52.
But there was a record of a Tom Whitaker from Detroit, riflery coach at Parris Island Depot and later Camp Lejeune, sniper in Korea, there awarded a battlefield commission, who had spent twenty years in the corps, the latter part as an aviator. He had done a couple of tours in Viet Nam flying cargo planes before retiring as a major at NAS Pensacola.
I had written him a letter, included a photograph of myself, requested a meeting. He had called me immediately upon receipt. He was all spit and polish.
“Before I say anything further in response to your letter, I want to be very clear with you that I have consulted with my attorney regarding estate law and matters of inheritance, and you have no standing per stirpes for any claim as a descendent of mine, assuming you could prove that you are in fact such.”
I assured him I had absolutely no interest in anything of his. He didn’t pick up on the bristling sarcasm of my words.
“Good. I didn’t think you would. It’s not something you would do, if you’re a son o’ mine. And I will further stipulate that, judging from the photo you sent, there is a strong possibility we’re related.” His voice then softened, becoming wistful, nostalgic.
“And I do recall, with no small measure of fondness, the cherry blossoms in the Tidal Basin in the late spring of ’51 and a romantic picnic in Rock Spring Park with your lovely mother, Judith. If you’d like to come for a visit, son, you’re more than welcome.”
It wasn’t going to work on me. No sir. None of this tough-but-tender warrior crap impressed me. And this generous “welcome, son” bullshit didn’t fool me for one second, either. Not one second. And I didn’t give a rat’s ass if he had three sons and a daughter (more half-sibs) and a thirty-five-year marriage to a wonderful, understanding wife, and two decades of heroic, distinguished service to his country, or had given his goddamn left nut to save a fallen comrade, for Christ’s sake. I know his game. Hell, I’m the product of his game. I’m him, and he ain’t getting over on me.
It’s almost dawn, and I’m nearing the end of another epic cross-country odyssey. My destination this time is the home of the Blue Angels, sugar-white sandy beaches, and a naval air station. The home of Major Tom Whitaker, USMC aviator, retired.
Though I lack the element of surprise (and control) that I had with Judy Culkin, I fully expect to inflict shock and awe with devastating fury. This time I’m he
avily armored with advance intel, resolve, and purpose. There won’t be any of that sad, weepy, huggy mother-and-child-reunion stuff. Nor will there be any longneck Buds or quarts of Beam, which nearly proved disastrous last time. It’s been almost twenty months dry now, and I’ve even driven through the night with nary a hit of speed.
For this time, I’m no longer a bewildered boy seeking sweet comforts and excuses from a long-lost mother. I’m a man, and I’m on a mission: to avenge the honor of a woman betrayed, with all the righteousness of the denied, scorned, and abandoned bastard son.
I’m about three clicks out from his place on a bayou off Perdido Bay. When he opens the door, preferably in front of as many of his family as possible, I will
1.cold-cock the jarhead motherfucker, breaking teeth and nose,
2.knock his ass to the ground,
3.say, “This is from Judy” (and stomp a boot hard in his groin),
4.say, “And this is from me” (spit a cheekful of Red Man in his proud Marine face),
5.snap a smart middle-finger salute,
6.do a crisp about-face, and
7.never look back again.
Of course it only goes like that in the movies. Bad movies. Or in my twisted imagination.
Since Judy bore little physical similarity to me (a disappointing surprise), I hadn’t given any more thought to physical resemblance. This proved to be a major miscalculation of my Major encounter. Rather than the crisp, choreographed vengeance I planned to dispense, I discovered that a close encounter, for the first time in my life, with someone whose face is an older version of my own, has a staggering effect. Staring at him in the doorway was like looking into a mirror from the future. My future. I was completely disarmed. All the righteous fury I had intended to visit upon his visage instantly dissipated, replaced by a jolt of recognition for which I was utterly unprepared.
