Other People's Dreams

(previously published in CRATE, the University of California at Riverside)

“What about the light coming from her mouth?”

“I don’t really remember it any more…”

************

And how did you cope with this when you were younger?

I think it all started with a dream Mamma told my brother and me when I was five and he was seven.  I’m not sure why she told us, but knowing her, I suspect it was to somehow purge it from the surface of her own consciousness, regardless of the burden she unloaded on someone else.

It must have been a Saturday morning because Bubba and I were at home stretched out on our bellies in front of the T.V. watching reruns of Roadrunner.  Still in her gown, Mamma padded almost silently through the den on her way to the kitchen for a much-needed cup of coffee.  Then she came back into the room and stood looming over us with both hands curled around her mug.

Attempting to garner our attention, she said in her husky morning voice, “Do you guys want to hear something creepy?”

Like magnets that suddenly realized they were too close together, my brother and I simultaneously flipped in opposite directions until we were facing her, obviously intrigued.  Mamma must have been encouraged by our instant response because she continued.

“You know that ravine you always go to, the one over by Dr. Thompson’s house?”

Without moving our heads, my brother and I cut our eyes sharply toward each other--we weren’t supposed to be in the woods without permission--and then because we wanted the story to continue, we nodded in unison, a diminutive admission of guilt.

With a slight tightening of her lips and one raised brow, Mamma let us know we hadn’t gotten away with anything.  But she was more eager to tell us her dream than she was to punish us.

“I dreamed last night that we all went there together to catch tadpoles.” 

As she spoke, she pulled over a vinyl ottoman the color of vanilla ice cream to sit right beside us with her cup on her knees.  The toes of her high-arched feet peeked from beneath the edge of her voluminous pink robe.  As usual, her toenails were painted scarlet, perhaps to distract from the fact that her toes were somewhat crooked.  (This was an area of great sensitivity about which we were not supposed to tease her.)

“Well…” she went on, “in my dream, we slid down the bank…”

(No surprise so far, since sliding down was really the only way to approach the muddy creek.)

“…and I saw a pair of boots near the edge of the stream.”

She said they looked worn out like army boots… “neatly placed, side-by-side, heel to heel and toe to toe, with a dull green sock tucked inside each one.  And…” she paused then, looking first at my brother and then at me.  “There was a knife on the ground beside them,” she said.  “A big one,” she added for emphasis.

We looked at her expectantly, imagining the horror that was about to follow.  But Mamma was looking past us as though gathering elusive details from the dream scene.  With a familiar off-center pucker, she chewed on the inside of her jaw for a moment and tensed her forehead in concentration.  Then her lips relaxed and she released her breath in a sigh, and though she seemed to be shaken out of her trance, no dream details were forthcoming.  It was as if she had forgotten we were even there, when, without uttering another word, she stood slowly, and with one foot, somewhat distractedly maneuvered the ottoman back into place.  Then, without looking in our direction, she detoured around it and left the room.

I was still watching the door waiting for her to come back and finish her story when my brother elbowed me in the ribs and said, “I don’t get it.” 

Flopping over onto his stomach, he grabbed his ankles and pulled his feet toward his head.  “I bet you can’t do this,” he challenged as he forced the soles of his sock covered feet to meet the cow-licked crown of his stretched back head.

I elbowed him in retaliation, made a comment about him rubbing his smelly feet on his head, and we both returned to the misadventures of Wile E. Coyote.

But Mamma’s dream fragment stuck with me.  That night as I lay in bed, I couldn’t uproot the feeling of dysphoria that her story had planted.  It wasn’t so much the idea of the boots that disturbed me.  It was the thought that somewhere near the creek a grown man was roaming about without his shoes.  I was sure he was desperate or maybe deranged.  And I was sure he would eventually come back.  I think Mamma was afraid of the same thing because she made us promise, “and I mean really promise…” to stay away from the woods until she gave us permission to return.

I didn’t go back to the woods for weeks afterward.  I just couldn’t.  I know for a fact that Bubba and his friends went there the next day.  But I was afraid.  I was afraid I would see the boots myself.  And I was afraid I wouldn’t.  I was afraid I would see a war-weary soldier wandering in the cool shadows.  And I was afraid I wouldn’t see him before he saw me.  Eventually, yes, I did go back to the creek.  But I never felt the same way about the place again.

Sometimes, it isn’t so much the dreams themselves that scare me.  It is more the way they affect the people who tell them.  For example, the first time I went to visit my oldest daughter, Crystal, who had moved out of state and lived in an apartment by herself for the first time, she told me this dream.  

“Here's what I remember,” she took a deep breath and began somewhat reluctantly.  “In my dream, I open the door of my apartment, which looks just like my real door, and I can see that the bathroom door is closed.  And since I never close that door when I leave, I know something is wrong.  So, I walk over to it all in a daze, push open the door, and your sister Kay (here her voice rises in surprise) is standing in the toilet up to her thighs.  And your mother, who is standing there looking at her, turns toward me, sort of wild-eyed and angry at being interrupted.  That's pretty much it.  All in slow motion.  That one really freaked me out for some reason,” she added.

And it freaked me out, too.  Perhaps it was because she dreamed about my mother and my sister, not her aunt and her grandmother.  It was as though she was having the dream for me.  Like a surrogate, she gave birth to it and then handed the responsibility for it to me…

People are always telling me their dreams.  It’s as though they sense I don’t have an active dream life myself, probably because I don’t sleep long enough to dream.  It’s like my brain can’t slow down enough to let my body rest.

And you’ve had this problem since childhood?

Yes.  Since I can remember.

And how did you cope with it when you were younger?

When I would wake up, I couldn't make myself stay in bed.  So, when I was very small, I'd go get in bed with my parents.  But they expected me to be still and go back to sleep.  They thought I was scared.

Were you scared?

Not really.  Not most of the time.  I was just awake.  And my brain was so busy, it just zoomed around hoping to land on something to think about.

What kinds of things did you think about?

I don't remember exactly.  Usually I would go to the den and sit on the floor with my back to the sofa facing the TV.  It was like I was barricading myself against the house behind me.

Or maybe shutting out the past…?  (Momentary silence.)  What did you watch on TV?

Oh, those were the days long before infomercials.  Back then there was nothing on TV that late at night except a test pattern.  But I remember sitting there and looking at my reflection in the dead screen.  I remember the sound of the mantle clock ticking as time edged toward morning.  Sometimes my dog would wake up and come lie beside me for me to pet her.

What was her name?

I know it sounds crazy… but I don't remember her name.  She was really my brother's dog.  And she was really a boy dog, I think.  But I wanted her to be a girl, so I always thought of her that way.  I remember my brother crying when she got run over.  She was black and tan and didn't have a tail.  Stub.  Her name was Stub.  My mother named her that.

What do you do now when you can't sleep?

Sometimes I watch TV.  Sometimes it occupies my mind until I’m able to go back to sleep.  I drag my pillows and my blanket to the couch, and propped up on the sofa, I watch TV in the dark.  I've become pretty good at hypnotizing myself in front of the flickering screen.  I keep the sound turned almost all the way down so I don’t bother anyone.  And that way if I slip off to sleep, sudden noises won’t wake me.  Usually that works and I’m able to lull my mind into relaxing a little.  I especially like old movies.  If I can manage to wedge myself between Rock Hudson and Doris Day, it’s a pretty sure bet I can get some sleep.  Of course, nothing works every time.  Sometimes I just lie there and worry…

About what?

About everything I can think of to worry about.  It’s like my brain can’t accept the fact that I’m simply awake and it starts looking for an explanation.  But I have gotten better at not doing that.  It’s really not a good habit.  I can get myself pretty worked up if I’m not careful and things always look better in the morning.

So, you try not to worry?

Yeah, I try to just turn it off, to take my mind in a different direction.

When you get up at night do you ever go back to bed?

Sometimes.  If I get lonely.  I drag my pillows and blanket back to my room and try to get in bed without disturbing David.  He’s so used to my coming and going by now, he usually doesn’t wake up completely.  And he tries to help me sleep.  I can usually count on him to rub my head automatically in his sleep because he knows it calms me down.  And, if it is almost time to wake up, he’ll turn over and talk to me when I go back to bed.  If he remembers his dreams, he tells me what they were about.

What kinds of things does he dream about?

A lot of his dreams are about protecting the kids and me.  And he still has a lot of dreams about West Point.  I guess because it was such a frustrating time for him.  They really try to tear boys down and build them back the way they want them to be--into soldiers.  They try to make them over into machines so they will act predictably… effectively.  But in a way, I think they failed with David.  He’s such a kind and sensitive person.  I guess that’s what makes a man a hero though, when someone is willing to put aside his personal dreams and takes on the dreams of his country.

Do you see that as being a conflict?

I think it would have to be an irreconcilable conflict.   I know he has a lot of war dreams.  But that may just be his nature.  He told me that from the time he was six or seven, he has been mentally fighting Germans alongside Audie Murphy.  When we were first married, we lived in the house he grew up in.  I was planting some mums around our front sidewalk one day and found a cache of little green plastic soldiers buried in the flowerbed.  It was eerie to see them frozen in their combat positions, ready to take on the enemy, while all around them the world kept going on.  That must be how he feels.  But I think part of him is disappointed that he was never called on to be a hero. 

There are times when I’m lying beside him at night, that I can tell by the way he is breathing that he is dreaming and I try to make up stories that go along with his breathing patterns… He’s a lot better dreamer than I am.

What do you mean?

I’m such a light sleeper, I usually wake myself up when I start to dream.  Sometimes though, when I realize I’m asleep, I am able to stay in there and learn something.  I have gotten pretty good at lucid dreaming.  It’s all about being able to know when you’re asleep without becoming fully awake.

How do you do that?

How do I do it?  Well, I start out by looking at my hands before I go to sleep.  Supposedly our hands are the most recognizable things we see in real life.  They’re always in front of us doing things.  So, anyway, you memorize the way your hands look and you tell yourself that when you see them in your dreams, you will instantly know you are asleep and dreaming.  At that point you’ll be able to take charge of your dream. 

For example?

You know, if I’m having a dream about a snake or something that scares me, I can take control of the situation and deal with it.  Or if I have problems, I can summon experts to help me solve them.  Once I talked to Coleman Barks in my dream because I was writing a poem and couldn’t quite get it to work out the way I wanted it to.  He was very helpful.  But I’m not good at just letting go and letting the dream have full sway.  I wish I could release myself from my body like David does.

For example, once when I went back to bed, I could tell he was still asleep.  Really out of it.  I tried to be still so I wouldn’t bother him, and I could hear him making this weird noise.  It was almost like he was singing, but it was a tuneless song without words.  More like a keening noise.  But not loud.  Very quiet.  And then he started breathing faster and sort of irregularly as though he was struggling.

I didn’t want him to be upset, so I shook him by the shoulder until he was awake.  He immediately started telling me about the dream he had been having.  His speech was slurry… and slow… and his voice seemed to come from him in an almost formless, involuntary way.

“In my dream I’m floating,” he said.  “And you know that fluttery feeling you get in your stomach when you float?  It’s like that… and I’m over a valley, floating about as high as the surrounding mountains.  There is a house in the valley with a porch all around it, and Crystal, B.J. and Pappy are on the porch… (He was talking about our daughter, David’s father, and his recently deceased grandfather) and they’re all smiling and motioning for me to come toward them.  I want to go to them, but I feel myself struggling, as though I’m being pulled backward by a powerful force.  And I know… somehow I know that Death is coming for me.  And it’s not that I’m afraid, I just can’t let go…  But then I finally do.  I stop struggling… and they smile at me from the porch… then I’m free.  I realize I have to let go in order to be free…  I have to leave behind the things I love to be free.”

And did hearing his dream upset you?

Yes.  Yes it did.

Why?  Because it was about death?

No.  I don’t think so.  It was more that I thought he was confused.  I don’t think Death was pulling him from behind.  I think it was luring him toward the house.  I think he barely escaped.  But I don’t know.  He said, while he had been floating, he drifted closer to Crystal, was drawn to her, and that at first he thought she was wearing braces on her teeth, which she never had.  Then as he got closer, he saw a brilliant gold light emanating from her mouth.  He said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.  Maybe that’s why he struggled to stay.  I asked him about it years later, and he looked at me very intently, a little confused, and he said, “I don’t really remember it any more…” 

But it stuck with me.  And it haunts me.  That’s the trouble with other people’s dreams.

 

No such thing...

Lately, I am all about the serendipitous.  David and I were talking yesterday about how we really shouldn’t expect to be contented or happy all of the time.  We talked about how even the negative things that happen to us can provide us with learning experiences.  He was down and I tried to give him some specific examples of things that had happened that turned out to be beneficial in the long run.  For example, if he had stayed at West Point until graduation, he would probably have never met me!  We also talked about how learning to be accepting is so much more important than learning to be happy.  Anyway, later that afternoon he was reading on the hammock, enjoying the beautiful spring day in mid November, when he came upon the following passage.  “Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive, inner peace does not.”  This really made an impact on me.  What is life but our momentary perceptions of it anyway?

I started then wondering about the origin of the word serendipity.  That’s just what writers do, you know, wonder about words and things and write about their wonderings…  and I was delighted to discover that the word originates from a fairy tale, “The Three Princes of Serendip,” in which the royals are always making discoveries by accident of things they were not in quest of to begin with.  As the story goes, “You don’t reach Serendip (this is a former name for Sri Lanka) by plotting a course for it.  You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings serendipitously.”

Perhaps that is why I am so enamored of the this whole idea—because I don’t really know what I am in quest of.  But I do somehow have faith that I will discover something, such as a poem, a painting, penicillin, dynamite, post-it notes, corduroy, America, something, along the way.  

 My idea of the perfect day is one in which I don’t really know what is going to happen.  That is why I love the days on my calendar that are empty.  It is even better when the weather is slightly cooler than my body temperature, overcast, maybe even slightly rainy.  I envision myself getting up early, dawdling over breakfast and coffee just because I can, and then heading out for a walk to my studio.  I’m not much for walking for exercise (unless I am on my treadmill—more about that later), but I can really get into walking to a destination.  There is just something that appeals to me about the adventure that accompanies a heel-toe rhythm, along a path you may or may not have traveled before, something about just progressing forward without knowing what is around the bend or over the hill.  I always seem to stumble across (no pun intended, but I am a klutz…) something unexpected.  It is as though the discovery is my gift for that day and even though I realize it is merely a matter of perception, those small moments, objects and accompanying realizations often lead to deeper discoveries.  I have come to think of each as a lens through which I focus on my life.  I used to assign my creative writing classes to go out and record everything they saw that was red and write a poem about it.  I am posting below one of my poems that resulted from this:

SUNDAY MORNING SEEING RED 

Unfurled umbrella

in the field beside the church.

 

Full blown, due east.

No Entrance.  Full metal tunnel

on the playground.

Metal inside.  Metal out.  Blue. 

No Parking. 

Do Not

Enter.

 

Green acorns underfoot.

Yellow plywood.  Golden ripe wood.

Blue graffiti on brown brick.

 

Buried Cable:  Before Digging

                        Call This Number.

Number the cars.  Number the

Taillights.  taillight.  taillight.

Diesel odor, taillight, taillight.  Trailing

one vibrant oblong leaf in the puddle near the

school.  One car going too fast,

one             “STOP”      showering splash.

 

One spinning

umbrella

in the field beside the church.

Full open.  Facing south.

No Entrance.

No Parking.

No end.

People often ask me what my poems mean.  And though I think this one is relatively accessible, here are just a few thoughts.  I think most readers would agree that the poem moves from mere observation into the realm of social and spiritual implication.  Not to be heavy handed in my explication, but “unfurled umbrella in the field beside the church” calls to mind and juxtaposes the ideas of naturalism and organized religion.  “Full metal tunnel” then brings in touches of industrialization ironically overshadowing the childlike qualities implied by the playground equipment, which is immediately followed by a set of rules, “No parking.  Do not enter.” 

Back to nature with the acorns, but not for long as wood becomes lumber, and not only lumber but plywood enhanced, or, depending on the reader’s  ideological slant, defaced, with graffiti.  Then there is digging, perhaps psychological analysis, interrupted, of course, then with the rational attempt to control the observation by counting the cars… which is then sidetracked by the multisensory assault which ends up causing me to focus on a single red leaf in a puddle.  Not long before the world imposes almost violently with a splash, which takes us back to the umbrella.  Notice that it really wants to be open.  It is after all so close to the church, but then the rules return to inhibit any spiritual progression.

Oh well, Napoleon Bonaparte said, "There is no such thing as an accident; it is fate misnamed."  But I prefer to live my life on the verge of not needing to know, and it doesn't really matter what I call that particular sensation.  

Oh yeah, and the part about the treadmill.  I simply like the sound, the little whump, whump, whump, and the way it pulls me gently into the future while I contemplate the present.  I like the way I can move without moving, think without thinking, and go nowhere while I safely leave my body.

 

 

 

 

Repeatedly, and with great enthusiasm...

The image above is a close-up of the background of a painting I am currently working on.  It is about 3' wide and 4' tall and is entirely composed of 1/8" wide strips of magazine clippings.  No dots!  It has been a strange experience cutting out all of these words, handling them, gluing them to the panel.  I end up reading each phrase about three or four times.  It seems I am not able to treat the paper strips as merely paper strips.  And I have found myself impacted by these words.  Each string of syllables leads me on a new train of thought.  And sometimes they combine beautifully.  Several times I have been tempted to monitor my progress and jot down some of the serendipitous language.  But I was afraid I would ruin both the experience and the painting if I tried to juggle another element.  

One day as I was working, a woman was watching me and asked me somewhat incredulously, "So, are you really just making a picture out of all those words?"  Without ever taking my eyes from my work, I answered her, "Yes."  And then I noticed that the strip of paper I was gluing down said, "Yeah, it's really that simple."  Coincidence?  I don't know about that.

I started looking at each strip even more intently and playing a little game with myself as I glued.  At one point I was thinking about the stories I had been writing about my mother, thinking about how my mind had turned down that path after having shunned it for so many years, and noticed that the strip in my fingers said, "It just began to unravel one day."

Another time I was thinking about a story I had read about a young man who drowned and remained in a vegetative state for several weeks.  The phrase I glued down next read, "Still clinging on desperately."  As usual, once I get into a piece of art, I am often overcome with self doubt.  And not surprisingly, the words that appeared in my fingers at that moment were, "How did you decide to take on this project?"

So this canvas has been and continues to be an adventure.  Sometimes it is truly more provocative than recursive.  For example, yesterday I walked to my studio to work for a few hours.  Along the way I thought of many things.  Personal things.  Things personal to me and some personal to others.  I enjoyed the beautiful weather and the invigorating walk, but I was a little down by the time I arrived at the warehouse.  I just had a lot on my mind and couldn't seem to make satisfactory decisions about things.  As I sat down and rifled through my word strips, I prepared myself to find clarity in the text.  The first strip I picked up said, "And of course the worst thing..."  

At first I was disappointed.  This wasn't an answer.  But then I started to think about it all.  What is the worst thing that could happen?  Death?  No.  My mind immediately rejected that.  I have no special fear of death.  I fear much more my ability to deal with the deaths of those I love.  So what is the worst thing?  I don't know.  And I don't think it is even valid to ask such a question, to ponder such possibilities.  I was reminded of the birth of my children.  And I can tell you that anyone who has opted for a natural delivery has learned what it means to live in the present moment!  I mean, you can stand any amount of pain for a second at a time.  And life is made very simply of one second stacked on top of the next and the next and the next.

I shared this revelation, my startling discovery of each moment, with one of my students several years ago.  We discussed how this idea could impact the writing process.  A few days later, I saw her sitting in our creative writing classroom, smiling quite peacefully and I asked her what she was thinking about.  She said, "Just thinking about this moment, and this one, and this one..." 

So, remembering this allowed me to let go of the tension that had been weighing me down.  I thought about walking to the studio, one foot in front of the other.  The beauty of each step.  The ability to pull one leg forward and then the next, almost without conscious thought.  The rhythm of life surrounding me along the way.  The incredible array of choices I made along that short journey to connect to or remain separate from the world around me.

It is so easy to get bogged down in the self-important seconds of our lives.  And it is just as easy to lay it aside for one second at a time.  As easy as taking off my backpack when I arrived back home.  As easy as gluing tiny strips of paper onto a canvas to create an image that will make people wonder why I did it for years to come.  As easy as becoming momentarily weightless with joy one second at a time.  Repeatedly and with great enthusiasm...

Who's Your Daddy?!?

I have not been in the mood to blog for a couple of weeks.  Just too tied up in my own thoughts to make myself accessible to the world.  Today I have been thinking about my parents, about all of the things for which I blame them.  Everyone has problems, large or small, with the way they were raised.  Perhaps they were neglected.  Perhaps they were controlled too much.  Perhaps their stories are too sad to even contemplate.  When I look back at my childhood, I realize that my parents were seriously messed up.  They made a lot of parenting mistakes.  And I realize, too, that I was an especially sensitive child.  At some point, however, every adult must deal with the history he or she was given.  It is important not to turn your back on your past, but to acknowledge it, examine it, understand it--and to make some conscious decisions about how to formulate a future filled with beauty and peace, as well as a healthy dose of compassion for those around us who are surely struggling, too.

A couple of weeks ago, my stepfather sent word to me that the man I have always thought was my real father was in fact not my father.  I was shocked by my reaction to this news.  I despised my stepfather and never knew my real father, but I have always carried with me a dim sense of reassurance that somewhere in my past there must have been someone my mother loved who was worth loving.  I now find out that while this may be true, I will never know if she loved my father, if he had a chance to love me, if he even knew of my existence.

Evidently my mother had a real knack for picking losers.  Maybe my father was the one decent man who got away.  Maybe it doesn't matter.  I have come to think that each person must be his or her own parent.  We must nurture ourselves, guide ourselves, and always be there for ourselves.  Only then can we be mentally and emotionally healthy enough to offer anything to anyone else.

I am writing about my parentage today, not merely to analyze my still emerging feelings about it, but to preface the story I am posting below.  I wrote it a couple of years ago.  It is based partly on my own childhood and partly on a story that my husband told me.  I have never felt like the story was finished.  I just didn't know where it needed to be changed.  Today when I look back at it, I realize that one of the problems with the story is the distance I maintain from the reader throughout the story.  It is as though I am protecting myself so carefully that the story can't connect with the audience.  So I am going to post it and work on revision.  I am going to hold myself accountable for fixing the story... and simultaneously, I will work on fixing those aspects of myself that I have conveniently blamed on my parents in the past.

TOUCH AND GO

I had the dream gun in my dream hand last night, but the scene didn’t lend itself effectively to death.  The sensation was like falling off a building and waking before making the ground my final home, and I sat up, wondering how I could have botched the landing again.

**********

            “Charlie-Lima-Bravo, this is Juliet-Alpha-Bravo...”

“Charlie-Lima-Bravo here,” I answered matter-of-factly into my walkie-talkie. 

Even though he hated being called "Juliet," Bubba was a stickler for authenticity and insisted that we use our real initials as our call signs.  And since I didn't really mind being called "Charlie," I didn’t argue with him about it.

“Request flight level three five zero.”

            “What?!?!”

            “All you have to say is ‘Roger Wilco.  Level three five zero approved. Over.’” 

“Okay.”

“Then say it!” As his exasperation reached new levels, Bubba forgot to mimic the droning tones of a seasoned pilot.

“Roger.  Wilco,” I repeated tonelessly.  “Level three five zero approved.  Whatever…”

**********

I was never very good at flying.  Not even when my brother and I played airplane in the narrow utility room (a.k.a. the fuselage) attached to our garage.  But that’s understandable because I didn’t get a lot of experience at the pretend controls since he always tried to make me be the air traffic controller or the stewardess.  Years later when I took flying lessons, I was so short I had to sit on a Houston phone directory (including the yellow pages) and no matter how hard I tried to pay attention to all of the instruments and controls, I always became distracted by things like wing-level clouds, rivet patterns, and the delicious, light-stomached sensation of dropping a few feet without warning only to be caught by an invisible cushion of air below.  As a result I usually ended up crabbing through the sky, able to guide my plane to the desired destination, but arriving there slightly skewed.

            My real father was a real pilot.  But I don’t remember him.  I’ve only heard other people’s accounts of him.  Most of the stories indicate that he too was not a very good pilot.  Like the tale I heard about the time he was flying drunk and clipped his wing on the towering, burnt-orange runway lights at the Pounds Field airport, right where the planes come in from the north over the old Dallas Highway.  It’s been 20 years since he died, but every time I pass that way, I can’t help but scan the metal structure, looking for some sign of his previous existence.

            My parents were divorced before I was old enough to form memories.  And since my family devotedly maintained a façade of perfection, I never asked my mother about the mysterious holes that dotted the surface of my history.   Of course, I was curious about my father. And though I’ve never seen a photo of Billy Jack, I’ve always had a vision, if somewhat blurry, of what he looked like.  In my mind he was a big man, not overly muscular and not too tall.  He had straight dark hair, and I imagine his eyes were hazel.  My mind usually dresses him in khakis and a white t-shirt, and I’m always trying to freshen him up a bit, you know, to sort of shake out the wrinkles and make him a little snappier, maybe give him a more stylish hair-cut.

            But this all sounds perhaps a bit too romantic.  In reality I had no more desire to see Billy Jack than Mamma did to let the Fuller Brush Man in our front door.  I had grown up terrified of the notorious door-to-door salesman because every time he rang the bell, Mamma refused to answer the door, and kept us quiet so he would think no one was home.  And I was even more afraid of Billy Jack. You see, I had heard stories that I was not supposed to hear, but that my grandmother couldn’t keep herself from sharing with me. 

I spent a lot of time with Nanny when I was young, and while I can’t say we were close, we understood each other.  I understood that she liked having me to keep her company, but also that she resented the fact that Mamma spent a lot of time traveling with my stepfather instead of taking care of her children.  Her understanding of me must have included some recognition of my curiosity about my real father because she would occasionally offer me an unsolicited installment about him. This was usually something almost unbearably frightening and told in a huskier than normal voice that seemed ever on the verge of slipping slightly out of control.

            “Your mother came in one day carrying you on one hip and James Allen on the other.”  (She always called Bubba and me by our full Christian names.)  “It was in the middle of August but she was wearing a turtleneck sweater.  And not one of those lightweight ones either.  A thick, black turtleneck sweater.”

            After a pause, which could have been for the sake of effect or an indicator that she was truly overcome, (I tend to believe it was mostly for emotional manipulation since this was not the first time she had told me this story) she continued.  “I could tell Glenda had been crying.  And she wanted me to keep you kids for the weekend.”  

Nanny was scraping potatoes in a bowl of water, and at this point in her story, the rhythm of the blade against the wet brown skins grew silent as she shook her thin-from-too-many-sharpenings paring knife in the air between us for emphasis. 

“I didn’t come right out and ask, (her jabbing knife marked the meter) but I knew what that shirt was attempting to hide.”

She looked at me as though there was no need to finish the story, and she was right.  I already knew the ending, but she couldn’t help herself, so she continued.

“I’d seen the bruises before.  Finger-shaped bruises… wrapped clean ‘round her throat…”

Then, as though she hadn’t given me enough to chew on, Nanny cut a coin-sized sliver of raw potato and thrust the pale, transparent offering in my direction.

**********

Every Saturday morning Bubba and I parked ourselves parallel to each other in front of the TV and waited for Sky King’s twin engine Cessna, “The Songbird,” to blaze across the screen “from out of the clear blue of the Western sky,” bank sharply away from the camera, and climb toward the heavens.  We were drawn to the heroic main character as predictably as dust particles were attracted to the surface of the TV screen.  The magnetism was understandable.  Sky was one of the good guys.  With the help of his niece, Penny, and his nephew, Clipper, he used his skills as a clear thinking pilot to assist local law enforcement agencies each week as they tracked down a variety of smugglers, bandits and spies around the fictitious town of Grover City, Arizona.  Though my brother and I never came right out and admitted it, we longed to have a real-life hero of this same caliber in our own lives.  

But things are not always the way we imagine them to be.  A few years later my grandfather heard that Sky King was making a guest appearance with the circus at the fair grounds outside our town.  I was ten and Bubba was twelve, and though we hadn’t watched the show in a several years, we still had lots of adventure-filled memories and were eager to see this larger-than-life figure in person.

I had been to the circus once before.  It had been in Dallas and it was an elaborate three-ring show that we viewed from up high in the padded seats of a comfortable stadium.  But the Carson and Barnes circus was a completely different experience.  The make-shift arena offered only one ring formed of gray boards placed loosely end to end, and the seats that surrounded it were splintery wooden bleachers jammed so close together that no one could walk between them once they were filled with curious spectators.  When one of the plodding elephants circling the perimeter broke free of its trainer and wandered into the stands, I was ready to leave.  But we had come to see Sky King, so we waited. 

I think I had imagined that Sky would zoom out of the skies, make a dramatic landing, and shake hands with each of his adoring fans.  It never occurred to me that he was really a middle-aged actor named Kirby Grant who was rapidly nearing the end of his career.  The others in the audience must have also been unaware, because when Sky King entered the ring on a wave of anticipation, dressed in a dapper white cowboy suit, the crowd went wild.  As he began to entertain them with his sharpshooting skills,  they were satisfied that he was still a star and that his smile was almost as bright as they had remembered.  But during the finale things fell apart.

I have to admit I was watching the audience as much as I was paying attention to the show, so I didn’t realize at first what was happening.  Sky had been shooting balloons out of a clown’s hand when the atmosphere became suddenly and uncomfortably quiet.  In their excitement, the circus-goers hadn’t been willing to acknowledge that their hero wasn’t using real bullets.  The clown had been doing a pretty good job of pinching the balloons in synch with the gunshots.  But then one of the balloons failed to explode.  At first the crowd thought Sky had missed.  Then they saw the clown frantically trying to pop the balloon.  Within a matter of seconds cheers turned to restlessness, then  restlessness turned to booing.  I will never forget the look on Kirby Grant’s face.  He retired from the circus later that year.

In the following years, Grant spent much of his time raising money for a variety of charities.  His health declined, but even after suffering a massive heart attack in 1978 which resulted in the suspension of his pilot’s license, he continued serving the public and making appearances. 

Grant was killed in a car accident on October 30, 1985.  He was on his way to watch a launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger at Cape Canaveral where he was to be honored by the shuttle astronauts for his achievements in encouraging aviation and space flight.

Earlier that same year the other pilot from my childhood died.  I hadn’t actually seen my real father since I was three, but he had been in touch with Bubba, and I had heard stories from my brother about how Billy Jack had stopped drinking and was trying to turn his life around.  Then one day he was at the lake with some friends; he was playing catch in the water with the kids when he had a heart attack and sank under the surface.

Over the years I have learned that imaginary figures and fictional situations can’t ever really fill an empty heart, and the plot lines of our lives are seldom as simplistic as we imagine them to be.  Sometimes I feel guilty that I had more compassion for Sky King than I did for my own father.  But I have also learned to be gentle with myself.  Perhaps life really is no more than a series of touch and go landings, and no matter how much we practice, we just keep getting bounced back into the sky to try again and again.