The Great Cherry Blossom Incident

My bedroom was in the rear of the house. It would eventually become everyone’s bedroom, because we shuffled our accommodations several times to make room for  new additions to the family. There was a Japanese cherry blossom tree outside the window that was so close to the house that the branches scraped against the asbestos shingles on rainy days.

In the early spring I would watch closely for the first hard and tiny buds to appear. They had an outer shell the color of a Rome apple. Even before the first blooms appeared I would shimmy up the tree and sway  on the branches, climbing so high I could see the gutter, which was usually clogged. The trunk of the cherry blossom tree had the girth of  a beer keg. It was a shiny plum color, and  it’s leathery skin was nearly impossible to peel.

 Hitting a wiffle ball into the tree was also a home run.  My father threw a wicked knuckleball, but like my hero, Ted Williams, I could pull dad’s into the tree in right field. Knock a few twigs off now and then, too. 

*

Fall was a bittersweet time. It was my favorite season, with the World Series and my birthday falling in mid-October. But it also meant the falling of the cherry blossoms, which was a week-long festival. I would rake those soft pink petals into a pile two feet high, climb to highest limb I could reach, and belly-flop into the mound. 

When it came time to clean the gutter, my old man climbed the rickety ladder and turned blue in the face, cussing a blue streak as he dug out the soggy petals. My mother shouted out the window at him to watch his language around me. Of course there wasn’t a foul phrase or a dirty word I hadn’t heard before.

Hell, I was six years old, for chrissakes. I’d been there when we were cleaning  out the garage and a cinderblock fell on his foot. He poured a stream of obscenity the neighborhood will never forget. And I was at his side in Seaside Heights when a rusty nail punctured his foot. He set a new record that time, bitching not only about the foot, but the money he’d lost renting a bungalow for a $%^&***# week while all he could do was skip around on one foot. Set a record for vodka tonics as well.  

My mother wasn’t that happy with the bungalow, either. She had to cook,  vacuum, and scrub pots and pans, just like at home. Heard some new words between her and my father that time, and I ran to my room to jot them down.

 * 

I took the jitney to the boardwalk every afternoon, even though it was only three blocks. I lugged my inner tube along and floated in the waves. Camped in front of Kohrs and made myself sick on ice cream cones. 

* 

In the evenings my father taught me to play solitaire.  He got pissed off when I lost.  

Horseshoe Lake, Chap. 1-3

Chapter1.

Mute as a Stone

It was a humpback whale of a thing. At one time it might have been black or dark blue, but over the years it had acquired a purple patina and looked like an eggplant on wheels. Its radio picked up Chicago at night—if you smacked it just right—and a plastic St Christopher stood on the dash. A trailer hitch rose from its rear bumper like a rusted fist.           

Hank Stillwell loved the old car, and patted it kindly whenever Marge hinted that perhaps it had seen better days. “They don’t make them like this anymore,” he told her, and Marge would answer: “Thank God.”Hank braced the steering wheel with his knees and fired up a Lucky Strike. He tossed the spent match at the ashtray but missed, grazing the side of Marge’s bare foot. “Sorry,” he said.            
His wife flipped the sun visor down. She craned her neck toward the vanity mirror, applying more gloss to her wine-colored lips.           
“This car. I swear,” she said.    
 Roy paid no attention to them. He sat in the back seat, watching in awe as a red Chevy Impala flew by. Roy imagined that it was a rocket ship, leaving a fiery trail as it vanished around the next curve.He took his model airplane out of the tin lunch box he always carried it in. When he held the airplane out the window, the plastic propeller made a whirring sound,  and it felt like it was flying under its own power. He’d made the plane out of of balsa wood kit and Elmer’s glue. He’d made lots of other things too, such as houses for his Lionel set, and drawings that his mother hung all over the trailer. When Roy was only eight  years old, everyone said he was as smart as a whip. He had a bright future, people in the trailer camp said. He’d make a name for himself and get out of this lousy camp. But there was a hitch. Not one single word had passed through his lips since shortly after his father had joined the Navy and shipped out to war. Even after his father, Roy remained as mute as a stone.                       

“Keep that thing in the car, Roy, godammit,” Hank shouted over his shoulder.           
“Hank! He’s only playing with it.”           
Hank eyed her sideways.            
 Marge Stillwell wore red Capris, and a checked shirt open at the neck. The shirttails were tied just above her waist, leaving a narrow band of flesh. The white kerchief wrapped around her head kept her hair-do inplace.           
Hank tugged  at his white sailor’s cap, and then jerked a thumb toward his son. “Hell, Marge. He’s goin’ to lose his damn arm, holding that thing out the window that way. I’m just watching out for his safety, is all.”            
Marge pursed her lips.           
Hank fixed his sight the road.
Draping his hand over the steering wheel, he glanced down at the odometer, and did some quick math in. It was forty more miles to Horseshoe Lake, and his stomach was rumbling already.    

Chapter 2.

The Galaxy Diner Snail-shaped clouds hung low on the ridges that bordered the road. Hank scoured the landscape for someplace to eat. Marge hadn’t wanted to stop at the Perkins or Pancake House they’d passed—they were too dirty, she’d said. There were too many immigrants working at places like that. They had passed nothing since then but fallow pastures and sad-looking barns.           
Hank steered the car through a curve, flooring the pedal to urge the old Plymouth uphill. As he crested the top of the ridge, a trio of buildings emerged on the side of the road, like three frogs peering out of a swamp. He flipped the blinkers, and jerked the steering wheel into the lot. 
The Galaxy Diner was positioned between a Sinclair filling station, and a one-story shack called the House of Reptiles. It was once a railroad car, and now squatted on a foundation of loose concrete blocks. Hank thought it looked as it as if the builder had forgotten to cement them in place, or maybe the owners had stiffed him and  he’d walked off the job. The place seemed to sag in the middle bit, and the aluminum siding was dented in spots. But it gleamed like a new nickel in the harsh morning sun.           
Marge Stillwell squinted at it and made a pained face.           
“Really, Hank,” she said.           
Hank eyeballed the diner, and motioned toward a pair of semis parked near the edge of the lot. If truckers ate there, then the food would be fine, he told her.           
Marge frowned. She’d heard that kind of bullshit before, she told him, adding, “Maybe they’re not in the diner at all. Maybe they’re in the “House of Reptiles,” buying themselves a new snake.”           
“Cute, Marge. Real fucking cute.”           
“Watch your language around the child, okay?”            
“Why the hell should I? It ain’t like he’s goin’ to repeat it nowhere.”           
“Don’t start Hank, okay? It’s much too nice of a day.”           
“Yeah, well,” Hank, said, with a glance the mirror at Roy. “You know what I heard a smart guy say one time? He said that there ain’t nothing comes to the dog that don’t bark.’ That’s what he said.”           
“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard anyone say,” Marge said as she got out of the car.Hank killed the engine and swung out of the driver’s side door He leaned his arms on the hood, and adjusted his shades. “Oh Marge, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m so sorry I didn’t come ‘round  like a gentleman, and open up the door up for you.”           
“Knock it off,” Marge said.”              

*

The  young waitress waited for them at the end of the booth. Her cotton shorts and a white tee-shirt looked as if they were glued to her frame, and a name tag pinned above a full young breast read, ‘Hi! Call me Dawn.’           
“Good morning, Dawn.” Hank beamed at her, tipping his cap back.           
Marge rolled her eyes, and turned to examine the waitress. Her hair was long and blond and brushed back from her face, and held in place by a plastic barrette. Her nails were done-up the color of mother of pearl. The waitress pulled a pad and a pen out of a short stained apron she wore The plastic pen was chewed to a pulp on the end.           
Marge sat up, as cold and stiff as an icicle. Her shoulder blades nearly sliced leatherette booth.            
 “Good morning young lady,” She said stiffly.           
“You want something to drink?”             

Marge was nearly forty years-old, but admitted to just twenty nine. Hank didn’t give a jackrabbit’s balls how old his wife was, as long as she kept her figure, and still did those things to him with her hands. He didn’t care that she was so much older than him. She taught him things he’d never had on his own. She was more experienced, he thought, improving each year like fine wine.            
Marge watched  the girl closely as she returned with the menus. Goddamn flirt, she thought. Teenage tramp like in the movies these days. “I’ll have the Spanish omelet,” she said, and ordered the usual eggs-over easy for Hank. She slid the menu across the table to Roy, and leaned in to see where he’d point. “Is that what you want, honey?” she said quietly.           
Most folks thought they had to shout at someone who did not speak, but his mother knew better. She had the patience of a saint, that’s what folks had always said about her.           
 “And the blueberry pancakes,” Marge said.           
Dawn scribbled the order into her pad and returned Marge’s glare, pirouetting toward the kitchen door. Hank craned his neck, watching Dawn sashay.
“You’re going to throw your neck out,” Marge snapped.           
Hank grinned as he slid from the booth. His wife had some nerve passing judgment  on the waitress, considering the way she herself was decked out today.  “I think I’ll go get me a paper,” he said.            

Marge dipped a hand into her bag and drew out the folding fan that Hank had sent on ‘shore leave’ once. Now It was spotted with pocketbook lint. She tapped it on the edge of the windowsill a couple of times to knock off the dust. By the time her husband returned she was fanning her face           
“It’s awful stuffy in here,” she complained. “In fact, it’s hotter than hell. You at least could have found us a place with air condition,” she said.           
 “It’s not that hot, Marge,” he replied, thumbing through the paper until he reached the sports. His face felt cool, splashed with the Old Spice that Marge had bought for his twenty-fourth birthday.            
“Well, it feels awful stuffy to me,” she replied. “I can’t hardly breathe in this place. You can take it, you’re used to that jungle weather.”           
Hank rolled his eyes. “How many times I got to remind you, Marge? I was on a ship. A ship, Marge. They float on the water, you know? ” Hank pointed to his canvas cap. I was in the Navy, remember?           
“I’m sorry,” she answered. I must’ve forgot.”           
Hank reached under the table and slapped her leg.           
“You always forget,” he said.               
Roy leaned on the glass and looked out at the gravel parking lot. He inspected his father’s old car. He compared the Stillwell’s car to the other cars in the parking lot and figured that their car looked like some old dinosaur. Marge never used the car when Hank was away.  It sat next to the trailer collecting dust. Kids in the trailer camp laughed at it and pelted it with eggs. They draped it with tissue paper, and wrote ‘wash me’ on the windshield. It was always Roy who had to clean the mess.             
Roy ached to get out of the diner, and back on the road to Horseshoe Lake. Ever since his parents had told him about their trip to Horseshoe Lake, a vision of the place had been growing in him like a seed. It would be a magical land, where promises always came true. He was certain that Horseshoe Lake would be a land of beauty and peace. 

Chapter 3. The Cadillac            

Precious minutes were ticking away while his mother and father sipped coffee and talked. They were always talking, it seemed. They talked sometimes about things that Roy did not understand, and sometimes they said hurtful things to each other. But most of the time they just talked.           
Roy Stillwell studied his father as Hank raised his coffee to his lips. A package of Lucky Strikes was rolled in the sleeve of his tee-shirt. A crimson heart was tattooed on his biceps, crossed by a ribbon upon which the word “Marge” was inscribed. Hank had gotten the tattoo on shore leave, and just seeing it there on his arm made Roy feel safe. When his father arrived at his bedside each night, Roy wrapped his small hands around it, as if he could measure Hank’s love for his mother that way. Marge had no such mark etched onto her flesh, at least not that Roy ever saw. He wondered if this meant his father’s love was greater than his mother’s. He figured that the crimson heart bearing his mother’s name would be there forever, too, since everyone knew that you could never erase a tattoo. It was permanent proof that Hank’s love would never die, which was something Roy needed to know if he ever dared to speak again.            

He pressed his cheek on the plate glass window in the Galaxy Diner, feeling the warmth of the sun on the side of his face. He held a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice in one hand. He watched a long white convertible ease into the lot. It looked like a starship, with its fancy chrome grille throwing sparks in the sun.            
 Roy took a sip of the orange juice, gazing in awe at the flashy white car it looked familiar.The driver stepped out, then made his way across the gravel lot. The way he moved looked familiar too. Maybe Roy had seen him somewhere.“You posin’ for animal crackers?” Hank said.            
Roy caught sight of the man’s face as he entered, and the orange juice fell from his hand.           
 Marge jolted forward and grabbed the glass.
 “My goodness,” she said as she reached for a napkin. She saw fear in Roy’s face. “What is it, honey? You look like you just seen a ghost!” Marge followed his gaze. She noticed the man striding to the counter. “Oh, my god,” she muttered aloud..           
Hank looked up from the paper, a puzzled expression on his brow. He glanced across the table at his wife. “What is it?” he said.           
“Roy’s dropped his juice,”           
 “I can see that, Marge. I ain’t friggin’ blind.”           
 “Oh, what a mess,” Marge said.           
 “You’re getting it on my newspaper, Marge,” Hank complained. “Now, what the hell’s happening here?”           
“I told you what’s happened. Roy’s dropped his juice. It must have been stress. Remember honey? The doctor said that Roy had stress.” 
“Stress,” Hank said, and lit a Lucky Strike. 

The Cherry Blossom Saga of 1956

My bedroom was in the rear of the house. It would eventually become everyone’s bedroom, because we shuffled our accommodations several times to make room for  new additions to the family. There was a Japanese cherry blossom tree outside the window that was so close to the house that the branches scraped against the asbestos shingles on rainy days.

In the early spring I would watch closely for the first hard and tiny buds to appear. They had an outer shell the color of a Rome apple. Even before the first blooms appeared I would shimmy up the tree and sway  on the branches, climbing so high I could see the gutter, which was usually clogged. The trunk of the cherry blossom tree had the girth of  a beer keg. It was a shiny plum color, and  it’s leathery skin was nearly impossible to peel.

 Hitting a wiffle ball into the tree was also a home run.  My father threw a wicked knuckleball, but like my hero, Ted Williams, I could pull dad’s into the tree in right field. Knock a few twigs off now and then, too. 

*

Fall was a bittersweet time. It was my favorite season, with the World Series and my birthday falling in mid-October. But it also meant the falling of the cherry blossoms, which was a week-long festival. I would rake those soft pink petals into a pile two feet high, climb to highest limb I could reach, and belly-flop into the mound. 

When it came time to clean the gutter, my old man climbed the rickety ladder and turned blue in the face, cussing a blue streak as he dug out the soggy petals. My mother shouted out the window at him to watch his language around me. Of course there wasn’t a foul phrase or a dirty word I hadn’t heard before.

Hell, I was six years old, for chrissakes. I’d been there when we were cleaning  out the garage and a cinderblock fell on his foot. He poured a stream of obscenity the neighborhood will never forget. And I was at his side in Seaside Heights when a rusty nail punctured his foot. He set a new record that time, bitching not only about the foot, but the money he’d lost renting a bungalow for a $%^&***# week while all he could do was skip around on one foot. Set a record for vodka tonics as well.  

My mother wasn’t that happy with the bungalow, either. She had to cook,  vacuum, and scrub pots and pans, just like at home. Heard some new words between her and my father that time, and I ran to my room to jot them down.

 * 

I took the jitney to the boardwalk every afternoon, even though it was only three blocks. I lugged my inner tube along and floated in the waves. Camped in front of Kohrs and made myself sick on ice cream cones. 

* 

In the evenings my father taught me to play solitaire.  He got pissed off when I lost.  

 *     *     *   

The Duchess of Rue Bourbon, Part One (Memoir)

November, 1967

I was hitching from Alabama to New Orleans with Jimmy MacElroy. We were on a dark stretch of road between Slidell and Lake Pontchartrain when a car pulled to the side of road. The driver nodded to us as he opened the front door. I got in front while MacElroy opened the rear door and climbed into the back seat. The driver took us several miles, then began mumbling about salvation for half an hour, and suddenly tossed us out of his car.  
“You boys can git out out right here,” he announced.

He put us on the tarmac miles from the nearest exit. We walked a mile or two before the first car passed, and I stuck my thumb out hopefully. The driver passed without a glance at us. We dropped our packs between a stand of saw grass and the shoulder of the road, then fired up a joint. It shone like a beacon in the night. We rested a while, then walked another mile or so. A billboard on the other side of the highway appeared, advertising Dixie beer, a local diner and a snake farm. Half the florescent  bulbs were burned out, and mosquitoes and other winged creatures of the night obscured what little light was left.
MacElroy pulled a deck of Bicycle playing cards out of his pack and we dealt them out in the middle of the highway, right on the double yellow stripes. We dealt several hands of blackjack and five-card stud beneath the light of the billboard, until we saw the tiny beams of headlights appear in the distance. We knew thaat we had time to finish the hand before they arrived.  

 *

For all its frustration, hitch-hiking is a the best way to see the land up close. You meet all kinds of people, but it can get real boring at times, answering questions about where you were going, what kind of work you did, and what religion you were. That last question was the difficult one. You give the wrong answer and you might get left in a pile of dust.

We played games, and told unsuspecting drivers that we were professional surfers from California, or minor league ball players who had missed the team bus. It was just like playing charades.

 * 

“My fucking thumb is killing me,” MacElroy complained after a while. He only spoke when he had  something to say, which made him an ideal companion for the road. Sitting in weeds alongside highways for ten or fifteen hours a day with some blathering fool was my idea of hell.

Mac was always prepared as well. He pulled a pint of rotgut Scotch out of his sack and we it passed back and forth, then he screwed the bottle closed and lit up a joint.  We saw lights in the distance, and began to step out on the road, but these lights were closing in on us quickly. They  were gaining on us at too rapid a pace. We escaped to the side of the road. We watched as the car approached and sped by in a blur.  We heard a sudden screech of tires, and smelled burnt rubber as the car skidded to a stop. It sat still for a moment, idling about a hundred yards away,
We stood in disbelief for a moment as an empty beer can flew out of the window of the passenger side, and broke the eerie silence as it crashed against the road. Without warning the gears gnashed and the car fishtailed back toward us, stopping a few yards short of our knees. The door on the passenger side opened.
“Y’all comin’ or not?”         
I began toward the car, but Mac pulled me back. “What the fuck, man? We’ve got a ride!” I said.
"They might be more trouble than it's worth,” MacElroy replied. I walked toward the car.
"Don't worry," I said. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life staring at that fucking billboard." I hurried toward the car, and Jimmy MacElroy followed reluctantly.
"Okay, he said. "But no games this time."

Chapter Two coming soon...

Somewhere on The Falls Road

Conor is lonely and confused, and he’s forgotten his hat. His hair is wet, and the water coursing on his cheek reassures him that Belfast is the most miserable place in all of the world, and now with the rain makes it worse. Ten Major cigarettes and a box of matches are growing damp in the pocket of his oilskin. Plodding uphill now his heart aches with things he cannot name. Such things as fear and excitation.

They say it is a circle and the excitation comes first.

Conor fears that his mates will catch sight of him on the Falls Road. “Conor, where are ye off to? Going to see Madame George?”

 His fear is that someday they will tell, and everyone will know.

At the crest of  the Falls Road he reaches for the fags, then he taps one out and it takes several tries before he can fire it up. Leaves a bad taste in the mouth in the rain like this. Gummy-like. Smoldering ash stinking just under the nose, and the smoky nimbus of it sticking to his damp hair.

*

Tires hiss on the roadway, splash the foot path. The RUC patrol the Falls Road, weapons at the ready, turning circles, eyes alert. Conor slowing his pace, staring ahead. They’ll pass the flat before he gets there if he walks a slow pace. Excitation as he reaches Madame George's brightly painted red door

God forgive us. Why are we here?

He cannot find the will to look at the door, the glossy old door, but stands before it wrapping his arms around himself to fight the damp and chill. The door opens and suddenly and Madame George is standing in  the threshold.

Well isn’t it Conor himself. Come here to me now, I saw ye  escaping the guards like a hero,” she teases.

Madame George. Queenly George. Resplendent in her violet dress and lacey purple scarves, wearing her embroidered red hat with the spangles that shimmer when she turns her head, and the blue powder and paint surrounding  her eyes. Madame George leads Conor upstairs, a quiet ascent of Persian carpeted treads, lit by sconces and a grand overhead lamp.

Madame George invites him onto the sofa, and he tries to remember the second part, the part that comes after the excitation. George comes to him, tall and mountainous George, leans over him and pats his head in her motherly way.

“Good evening love.”

“You look grand, Madame George.”

She sits at his side. Her fingers are callused but made soft with a lotion. Conor breathes the scent of cologne on her fingers, and on her wrist, and George says, “You look lovely as well,.”.

*

Her hand on his lap, light as a feather it feels; and she leans closer to put a soft peck on his cheek. The yearning in him drives the shame away; first theexcitation, then this. It will chase the shame. He finds his warm soft hand on her thigh.

“Madame George likes that,” she says; and her voice grows huskier now.  “Love me, Conor,” she pleads.

Conor leans into the arms of Madame George.

“Now there’s a good lad.”

*

She leads him to the door and sees him away.

The rain  is colder now and she is wearing boots, unlaced, like something a tradesman would wear. The rain is washing the paint off of her face as she peers around the neighborhood, and she touches him on the shoulder one last time. Her made-up blue and violet eyes running like the Prod in the rain. She quickly scans the Falls road, and furtively closes the door behind

“Safe home now, love. Slan go foill”

“Slan’,” he replies   

Conor waits until George is settled, until she is safe from the Peelers or the gooks. He hears the brogues drop, the signal; and the window is lit.

He scurries away gripping himself, shaking from the cold and the shame. When the shame is gone, the excitation arrives again. Then the time in-between. He knows this now. Conor hunches, hides his face within his Mac, then moves quickly along the Falls Road. It is dark now. If anyone speaks to him now, or catches his eyes, Conor will crumble and die.

6/31/03

The Cherry Blossom Incident.... 1954

My bedroom was in the rear of the house. It would eventually become everyone’s bedroom, because we shuffled our accommodations several times to make room for  new additions to the family. There was a Japanese cherry blossom tree outside the window that was so close to the house that the branches scraped against the asbestos shingles on rainy days. In the early spring I would watch closely for the first hard and tiny buds to appear. They had an outer shell the color of a Rome apple. Even before the first blooms appeared I would shimmy up the tree and sway  on the branches, climbing so high I could see the gutter, which was usually clogged. The trunk of the cherry blossom tree had the girth of  a beer keg. It was a shiny plum color, and  it’s leathery skin was nearly impossible to peel.

 It was also a home run.  My father threw a wicked whiffle ball, but like my hero, Ted Williams, I could pull dad’s knuckleball into the short porch in right field. Knock a few twigs off now and then., too. 

*

Fall was a bittersweet time. It was my favorite season, with the World Series and my birthday falling in mid-October. But it also meant the falling of the cherry blossoms, which was a week-long festival. I would rake those soft pink petals into a pile two feet high, climb to highest limb I could reach, and belly-flop into the mound. 

When it came time to clean the gutter, my old man cussed and turned blue in the face, while my mother shouted out the window to watch his language around me. Of course there wasn’t a foul phrase or a dirty word I hadn’t heard before.

Hell, I was six years old, for chrissakes. I’d been there when we were cleaning  out the garage and a cinderblock fell on his foot. He poured a stream of obscenity the neighborhood will never forget. And I was at his side in Seaside Heights when a rusty nail punctured his foot. He set a new record that time, bitching not only about the foot, but the money he’d lost renting a bungalow for a $%^&***# week while all he could do was skip around on one foot. Set a record for vodka tonics as well.  

My mother wasn’t that happy with the bungalow, either. She had to cook,  vacuum, and scrub pots and pans, just like at home. Heard some new words between her and my father that time, and I ran to my room to jot them down.

 * 

I took the jitney to the boardwalk every afternoon, even though it was only three blocks. I lugged my inner tube along and floated in the waves. Camped in front of Kohrs and made myself sick on ice cream cones. 

* 

In the evenings my father taught me to play solitaire.  He got pissed off when I lost.  

 *     *     *   

Alabama Burning, 1966

When we landed at the Birmingham airport, the wreckage of a small private plane sat in a heap at the end of the runway. Rust and weeds poked through the fuselage. It must be an omen, I laughed. I snubbed my cigarette and closed the ashtray until the smoke stopped, and then I inched into the aisle, and pulled my ratty backpack out of the overhead bin.

 The terminal was no larger than a hockey rink. I quickly found the van that had been sent to meet the students arriving on the Delta flight from Newark. It was parked alone alongside the curb, with the words Saint Bernard College lettered in blue on the side.

We had barely left the airport grounds before I spotted some wooden shacks on the side of a muddy hill. Water trickling down the hill had etched tiny veins in the mud. A group of skinny boys sat on a flattened cardboard crate and slid downhill. At the top, girls skipped rope and women in sundresses hung clothes to dry on a line that sagged between two straining poles. The sun gleamed off their dark shoulders as they worked.

In the van, the radio was playing Buffalo Springfield’s new hit; “…It’s time we stop children, what’s that sound, everyone look what’s goin’ down.” Alabama, just like I thought it would be.

* 

It was 1966, and parts of downtown Cullman, Alabama still had the raised sidewalks you’d see in old westerns. The Dollar General Store sat at the eastern end, and sold everything from Dickies coveralls to posthole diggers. Grizzled old men sat on benches outside, rolling Bugler cigarettes, and spitting pecan juice on the sidewalk. I was barely seventeen, and had found myself on the set of friggin' Gunsmoke. 

 * 

The Saint Bernard College faculty was mostly a handful of Benedictine monks, a few locals fresh out of junior college, and a pair of English teachers from Philadelphia, one of whom bore a resemblance to TV host Dick Cavett.

The campus encircled a shallow bowl of well-trimmed grass, crossed by gravel paths. I was assigned to a room in Maurus Hall, which sat at the edge of the campus, tilting into a swamp of weeds and cypress trees.
The asphalt shingles were stained a coppery green at the high water line.

I tossed my back pack onto the empty bed. My new roommate, known only as ‘Snyder,’ was busy lying on the other cot ignoring me. He rolled himself on one elbow, examined me from head to toe, and mutteres something under his breath as he turned away faced the wall again. He was a moody megalomaniac, but I was badly in need of a friend, so I watched him closely and soon developed an adequate sneer of my own.

*

In my sophomore year I became the features editor of the Saint Bernard College Guardian. It certainly wasn’t the big time, but I liked the way my name looked in print. I wrote book and film reviews, and an occasional editorial, usually some radical, leftist rant that had the dean’s office on my ass full time.

I received word one afternoon that somehow we’d managed to book Julian Bond to speak at our yearly address.  Julian Bond was the first black man to win a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives. He had come to Alabama to address colleges across the state. When I first heard the news, a shudder rose up my spine. The Civil Rights Act had been law for less than two years, and in a few hours I would meet one of the men who had fought so hard to turn the bill into law. 

 I nervously intercepted Bond at the foot of the stage after his address. He was thin and patrician, with a pair of narrow eyes that seemed to bore into mine. He was a man on a quest. I felt intimidated, and my interview was shorter than I had hoped for.

Nancy Parsons, the reporter from our ‘sister school,’ Sacred Heart Academy, seemed more at ease with Bond. She was a tall, intelligent young woman, feisty in a southern belle way. Her mother, Alma Parsons, was a professor at St. Bernard, and as frail as a butterfly wing. She smiled widely as she watched her daughter Nancy interview Bond, whose eyes were smiling even before the interview was over. The two of them joined hands, and posed for a group of local photographers.  

* 

Hours later I was at my desk with a tee-shirt draped over the lampshade, afraid to awaken the beast--my snarling roommate, Snyder. It was very late, and the dorm was quiet. I was doing my best to describe Bond’s stirring address earlier in the night, when I was suddenly jarred by the loud ring of the telephone in the hallway. It was obvious that no one was going to get it, so I went out in the hall. I lifted the receiver and heard a woman’s panicky voice. I asked what was wrong.

She he said to come to her house as quickly as possible, and to bring help. Suddenly, I recognized her voice. It was Alma Parsons. I got my notebook and she gave me directions to her house. She was sobbing hysterically, imploring me to hurry. I assured her that I would, and I was about to hang up the phone, when she said “Bring a camera. Please.” 

*

 

There were nothing but scrub pines and palmettos along the unpaved road. There was no moon. The sky behind us was as black as coal, but above the palmettos and scrub pines, the glow of flames licked at the sky.

 

*

  

Burning flakes of newsprint peeled free from the charred coals of a burning wooden cross. Two more crosses were staked into the front yard, which was littered with newspaper photos of Julian Bond and Nancy Parsons hand in hand. Some of the photos that had been nailed to the crosses were still aflame as they peeled away.

 I could not make sense of what was happening. There was no compartment in my mind for this kind of thing. I’d seen such stories on the small black-and-white TV we watched at dinner time. But my friends and I could only stare at the scene. 

*

It was raining fire as we held bed sheets behind the smoldering crosses while we took photographs. One by one we smashed the burning stumps with a shovel and rake. As we pushed the dying embers into small piles on the lawn, the silhouette of a pickup truck crept past the house with its headlights turned off. Shadowy profiles stood on the bed with their rifles pointed at the sky. They made two more passes, but no shots were fired.

As dawn peeked over the palmettos, I turned to survey the carnage again. The charred newspapers still smoldered in piles, and an occasional ember flared free and burned out.  Alma Parsons was shaking in her doorway, a pistol still in her hand. She thanked us profusely, and promised she would be all right.

“You boys can go now,” she said.  

Malachy and I sat on a bench outside of the Grotto gift shop. I swore to Father Malachy that I would write an article about the account, complete with photos of the carnage. He was a large, rotund man in his Benedictine robe. He was my mentor, and I told him I would spread the news of what had happened across Cullman County with my own hands if I had to.

Father Malachy said, “No.”

I stared at him, dazed. "What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“I mean just that. No.” He turned away from me with a distant, mournful look.“Do you think that nothing like this has ever happened before last night?” he asked in a sad Irish brogue.

I waited before answering. Something was happening here that I did not grasp yet. I chose my words carefully. “I suppose it’s been happening for decades.”

“No, I mean here.” He waved his huge hands in an arc, from the Grotto to the campus and back.

I wondered what was happening here, and I looked in the large man’s eyes. He was quiet.

“Tell me. What are you trying to say?”

“All right, so,” he said and drew a deep breath. “It’s been ten years. Mind you it was a terrible sin. Someone much like yourself saw a... thing happen, and just like you, he wanted justice done.  He wanted to spread the news. And he did.” Malachy shut his eyes.

I spoke quietly, “What did he see?” I asked.

“Can’t say, son. It isn’t spoken of anymore. Lips are sealed.”

One student stood up and exposed the story, he told me.

“He wrote about it in your paper, so.”

“And?”

“The locals did not take to that, especially the youth. In their thirst for retribution they entered the campus one night while the campus police were away. They burned every automobile on campus.”

“Was anyone…hurt?”

“As I said, it isn’t spoken of anymore.”

“So what are you saying?” I said angrily. ”That I give up on the story? That we'll be attacked or something? That was ten years ago. This is 1966.”

He rose from the bench and stood before me, his hands hidden in his long black robes.

“I’m saying nothing.”

*

 I stormed to my room and threw myself face down on the bed. I saw crosses burning on a woman’s front lawn, and the shadows of men with weapons pointing at the sky. I pictured dozens of cars in a holocaust of of gasoline and burning tires. I could only imagine what horrible “sin” they had committed.  If I had the facts, maybe I could write the whole damned thing… 

* 

I did not write that story, or any others. I had to live with that in 1966, and I live with it now. Whenever I repeat it a different emotion arises.

At times I think I was a coward, but usually I am only confused. Maybe on that particular day I did the right thing, maybe not. But I was young, and the stories were so much older than I.  

*          *          *        

Reclamation

Long after my parents were gone, my sister and I were sitting at her kitchen table poring through a shoe box of old family photographs. Most were faded four-by-fives, some with scalloped edges and creased corners, and others were faded beyond recognition. I brushed some aside, removed two photos and placed them on the table. They were ancient photos of my mother and father taken from the distant past. A date hastily scribbled on the back of one photo was unreadable. But the writing on the other photo was clear: Union Beach, 1946.

They are sitting in the sand. My father is bare-chested and lean, and his face deeply tanned. My mother is in a risqué two-piece bathing suit that’s a bit scandalous for it’s time. She is gazing at him adoringly, a rich smile on her lips. Beyond them a pier juts into the water, the waves splitting against the long thin stilts. I can almost taste the crisp Atlantic salt in the air, and hear the raucous laugh of the gulls.

In the second photograph, they sit on a bench on the boardwalk. A simple woolen coat is drawn over her shoulders, the sleeves of it knotted loosely around her neck. My father wears a loose-fitting, waist-length jacket reminiscent of James Dean. Its lapels as wide as the wings of a gull. His other arm is hung jauntily upon his left knee. The camera caught him tossing his head in the middle of a smile.

*

While those smiling pictures faded in a shoebox somewhere, my father took to alcohol. His rage and anger were too often aimed at me. He was taken by cancer at the age of forty-eight, a hollow man, a dead drunk in a hospital bed that I’d never seen. He had never allowed me into the room.

*

My own path along the alcoholic trail was worse  than his. My track had been peppered with drugs and other addictions, a few bouts of homelessness, and cold nights living in the back seat of my car. I became a blackout drinker, and never knew where I’d wake up, nor with home.

One morning I felt myself dying inside, and knew I would not last another day. I made a phone call, hoping it would not be my last. The call was answered, and I stopped. I was one of the lucky ones.

*

In the therapist’s office, and in workshops and retreats, I looked deeply into the bottomless pit that we call the past. I found his face down there. I howled at him, pounded at him with rubber bats and shouted at the ways I’d been scarred. When I knew it was safe, when I knew I had survived, I crawled out of the box I’d been in forty-five years. It should never have happened to us. Neither of us. It took years to put the pieces together, and sometimes I found that there were good times as well as the bad.

*

I forgave, and a great weight was lifted. Tears were shed, but they were no longer tears of pain. It took a few more years before I was well enough to forgive.

And longer still before I asked forgiveness.

*

I’ve never hung a family picture on a wall. When I found the two small photos  in the shoebox in my sister’s kitchen years ago, I tucked them into an envelope, and put them into a drawer somewhere. Years later I came across them, and scanned them into my new computer for the hell of it. I stared at them on the screen. I took out a dust mark here and there. Erased a scratch. I spent hours retouching them.

They are in frames now on a shelf. For days I was drawn to them. Each night before I turned out the light, I took the photos down and studied them. Even after a year or two I still pick them up. I guess that’s what pictures are for.

As I stare at their images, I feel them smiling at me—no, not at me, but at the idea of  me. When I see them on my shelf now I know that they never left. It was I who’d returned.

*