“This is Peter. He’s got some cash of
his own so he’s coming with us.”
We stopped at a service station in
Ranch de Taos and had the oil changed along with air/oil filters. I bought a
tire because the Hillman had one bald tire and no spare. Peter left to use the
can while I paid the bill.
I was pissed but had held my peace
until then, “Why are all of us left out of the decisions here Dennis. I mean,
I’m paying for everything.”
“Don’t get uptight, Max, he has his
own money and it is my car.”
Peter didn’t come out of the can
until after the bill was paid. I decided to see if he had cash and asked,
“Peter, your share comes to…” adding it up… “$14.32… gas, tire, oil, and
filters.”
“What, that’s half the bill?”
“You and I are the only ones with
cash until Florida.”
“I don’t have it on me now. My
money’s in Miami too. I told Dennis. Ain’t that right, Dennis?”
Dennis stepped between us, “to have
one more body to help with expenses is a good idea, Max.
“He might be cool and all, but I’m
paying plane fare for Stan and Jamie and it doesn’t seem right that you left me
out of the decision.”
Dennis asserted, “That’s capitalist
thinking, Max. You believe your investment bought you privileges? I have the
car and that gives me rights too.”
I dropped the subject. I was
beginning to not like Dennis all that much.
Stan had been up at the cabin with
the sisters, and Dad for about a week. It was a beautiful drive through the
forest and into the mountains to the place. Dennis had hooked up with Wanda, a
Comanche woman, so his little Hillman was loaded with five guys and one woman.
We stopped on the way at a service station in Ranch de Taos and had the oil
changed along with air/oil filters. We bought a tire because the Hillman had
one bald tire and no spare.
We filled the tank and headed into
the mountains to the small colony of Government Lease cabins. When the Hillman
pulled up in front of the cabin, the party was already underway. The cabin was
on two levels built into the hillside, with the living room below and bedrooms
and hallway on the second floor that opened onto a deck. A pathway led up the
hill from the deck to an opening among the pine trees and a fire-pit with logs
hewn into seats around it.
The women were in their Georgia Peach
Southern Belle dresses and Dad was in slacks with shirt and tie looking
gentile. Debby and Leah had spent the day making goodies like roast lamb, pies
and cookies. There was plenty to eat and drink… a full bar and stereo system
with speakers in all the rooms.
Dad just wandered around the place
aimlessly… not talking with anyone beyond a muttered “Hello.”
I pulled Debby off to the side and
asked, “What’s the deal was with Pops.”
Debby explained, “Dad’s heavily
medicated. He’s only been out since last November.”
“Out of where?” I feigned not knowing
anything about Dad.
“Midgeville… a mental hospital
southeast of Atlanta. You don’t know about mom?” Debby was smart enough to know
that I had heard something of what had happened.
“Yeh, Stan told me a little but I’m
curious as to how it all worked out with you and your dad. I mean, how did it
happen and all that?”
“About ten years ago, Mom was having
an affair and Dad was a pastor, an Episcopalian Priest, of one of the bigger
Episcopalian churches in Atlanta. He came home in the middle of the day and Mom
was fucking with a guy in the master bedroom. She’d been seeing this guy for
some time. Dad suspected it and that accounts for the surprise visit. Dad had a
pistol. He shot the guy once but emptied the chamber on Mom. He then went down
to the library, loaded another bullet in the gun, put it to his forehead, and
pulled the trigger.”
“Shit… he lived through that?”
“Yes, it took out a chunk of his
skull, the bullet deflected. Leah found the whole mess when she got home from
school. What damage that did wasn’t near as bad as the electro-shock therapy in
the mental hospital.”
“How about Romeo, did he live?”
“He was lucky… almost bled-out.
Wounded in the upper back. Unconscious when she got there. Dad probably didn’t
care whether he’d killed the dude or not. He wanted Mom dead though. So, Dad
was put under psychiatric care and treatment… sort of turned him into a
zombie.”
The party went on into the night. I
started drinking Southern Comfort with Wanda and Leah. Big Brother and the
Holding Company, Bob Dylan, and The Grateful Dead, was the background music so
loud that no one talked. The sisters were out of their Southern Belle dresses
and into jeans, making out with the guys, and swapping partners every now and
then. It was a surreal scene to walk into a room and find Stan and Debby going
at it, and Dennis with Leah and Wanda, while Steve and Jamie alternatively
switching off with one of the women. But mostly it was me drinking. That is
what I was doing.
I was wandering around the rooms like
dad when I heard a sweet female voice through the speakers… poetry, jazz,
fuckin’ amazing. It was the first time I’d heard Joni Mitchell. I planted
myself in front of the turnstile with my bottle of Southern Comfort and
replayed the Song to a Seagull album several times. No one seemed to care. They
were busy bouncing around like bunnies in heat. I didn’t have time for sex with
all that good booze in the house. Since I’d had little other than Red Mountain
for all the time I was at Risingstar and abstinence did little more than to
develop a thirst for the real thing even though it was as sickening sweet as
any wine. And then there was Dad… he was wandering around the property. It
mildly freaked me out knowing that the good Reverend might be a walking
time-bomb with his own daughters slutting-it-up with all these guys.
Wanda was the wildest. Everyone had
been taking a break from the sexual escapades and were sitting outside at the
fire-pit under the crystal-clear stars and the sky. Wanda challenged, “You
fuckin’ men. You think you got it on us because you can hang out your limp
dicks and piss and we pee sittin’ down. I can piss higher and further than any
man.”
It became a contest to see who could
piss higher up on a tree next to the fire pit.
Leah demanded, “Make things fair. You
guys lay on your backs just like us.”
Dennis argued, “Hey now, a man stands
when he pisses. No man can piss from flat on his back!”
That debate went on for a while until
Debbie declared, “It doesn’t matter… The men don’t stand a chance.” She
stripped off her jeans and laid down in the pine-needles.
Even standing, no one came near the
lowest mark the women had made.
Sometime during the contest all that
Southern Comfort sank into my consciousness and I blacked-out. I came-to on the
front porch of a cabin I thought was the cabin where party was happening. There
were no lights… no party… but I wanted to get inside to go to sleep. I didn’t
see any sign of the Hillman either. Figuring everyone was asleep I pounded on
the door hoping to wake someone up. I called out, “Stan!” No answer, “Dennis!”
No answer again, “Debby!!” Pounding on the door louder… “Leah!” Pounding and
pounding louder, “Jamie!” I was getting desperate. “Peter!” What if they all
took off for Jamaica without me! “Hey, it’s me, Max damn it!” I had my boot off
and readied myself to break a window.
“Max?” It was a female voice… “What
are you doing?
“Debby?” I saw her coming up the
steps to the porch wearing a nightshirt.
“We were wondering where you went…”
she looked gorgeous in the moonlight with her reddish hair catching a ray from
between the shadows.
“God, Debby, where is everybody?” I
was still confused. I wasn’t so confused that I didn’t appreciate the fact that
I was alone with her. She put an arm around me for support and led me off the
porch.
“This isn’t our place.”
“Wha…?” I didn’t understand it yet…
the words coming from her were words of concern… of caring for me the way a
mother talks to her kid.
“This isn’t our place?”
“Good thing nobody’s home. You might
have your head blown off.” She explained further, “You woke me up. I was in my
bedroom when I heard you yelling and pounding on that door.”
“Shit no… where am I?” I leaned on
her and let my hand hit her breast as she Florence Nightingaled me up the hill
to the cabin. I felt assured as we passed the Hillman parked in front.
Dad was sitting in the kitchen and
stared at us with glazed eyes like he didn’t recognize Debby… a, “Who are you?”
expression masked his face. I noticed for the first time the scar where the
bullet had grazed Dad’s head. Using the same tone that she’d used on me back at
the porch, she said, “It’s Okay, Dad, it’s me, Debby and Max, here.”
She gave Dad a hug when he rose
mechanically from the table, “Dad, you ought to get some sleep.”
He shrugged, “You think so?”
“Yes, I think so,” and she gave him
another more affectionate hug that seemed to assure him everything was going to
be alright. He shuffled off into his bedroom and the light went off behind the
crack in the door.
Dennis was snoring on the floor of
the living room in front of the fireplace with Wanda naked and her arm draped
across his throat. Steve and Leah were in one of the beds in the girl’s
bedroom. They were passed out and not doing much. Jamie was curled up on the floor and Debby
went straight to bed. I was still very drunk but I still wanted to get laid
before we departed in the morning and sat on her single bed as she lay there.
She opened her eyes and asked, “Where
did the light go, Max, from your lazy blue eyes?”
“What?”
“Joni Mitchell, right? You must have
played it a billion times. Did you try to drown 'em out with Southern Comfort?”
“Drown what out. I don’t know what
you mean.” I didn’t want to know what she meant… a bunch of hippy dippy gobble-dee-goop
but I saw sadness in her face, and realized that she might have been the
soberest one at the party that night. I didn’t want to talk about my lazy blue
eyes and tried to switch her focus without derailing my chances of squeezing some of
her sumptuous flesh, “I couldn’t help but notice the affection you have for
your Dad.”
Indignant, she sulked, “He is my Dad,
you know.”
There, that was better…. get her
talking about herself, her dad, Leah, anybody but me, “It must have been hard
for you and Leah the way that deal went down.”
“You know how kids are… they aren’t
as innocent and tender as you’d think. Besides, Mom hurt him… she wasn’t a bad
woman but she fucked around and it tore him up.”
“So, you lost them both that day.”
“Yeah, Dad’s been a dead man since.
He flinched when he pulled the trigger. The gunshot wound was more like a
concussion because the bullet, though it took a good piece out, never
penetrated his skull. It just knocked him out a few days.”
I was feeling brain injured at this
point myself but she tweaked my interest in her and her dad enough that I
almost sobered up talking with her. Debby was just another good-looking
red-head before that night. I still liked the idea of screwing her but
something deeper than that was happening inside as she explained what had gone
on. Before we talked, it was just another wildly weird story… one I could tell
others… the orgy the drunkenness… the going away party… the grand send-off.
“Debby, you and Leah aren’t done with
this yet, are you?”
“Dad could have recovered okay if he
hadn’t had the electro-shock therapy. Of course, he’d probably still be in
prison. Instead he was committed by the courts to Midgeville. I don’t know what
would have been worse.”
This was so much to absorb. I felt
the urge to confess, “I’m not proud of blacking-out like this tonight. Or, to
tell the truth, having this fuck-fest with your dad wandering around like a
zombie. But damn… is he aware of any of this going on around him?”
“You know, Max, none of us are really
aware of what is going on in his head.”
I had to squash the feelings I was
having with some good old-fashioned Yaba Yum. “God, Debby, can we get it on,
you know, make love, before I go?”
Youth and avoidance had something to
do with the libido that helped spark an intimacy with Debby through the fog of
Southern Comfort. The same feelings I had for Sunflower… the unattainable
feelings denied. A combination of contempt and desire…
“Oh, Buddha, you are so full of
shit,” she laughed, “You mean, fuck, don’t you? Making love isn’t exactly what
you want, huh?”
She reached up and put her hands
around the nape of my neck and pulled my face down to hers. Her passion was
fire and I needed no coaxing but, even though all the lights were off in the
room, I was distracted by a shadow… motion at the door. I looked over to see
dad’s silhouette standing there like maybe he was watching an exhibit at the
zoo. This caused me to stop and Debby looked to the door too. However, when she
did, no one was there.
“He was there,” she said… her face
flushed with either orgasmic blush or embarrassment… or both. We passed out
afterwards.
At dawn, as the morning light
filtered in through the sheer curtains over the windows of the cabin, I awoke
in a sub-cranial fog and my stomach churned with booze and bile. Dennis was
already down at the Hillman making preparations. Debby and Leah were in the
kitchen making sandwiches and packing lunch bags. Dad was sitting on the porch,
rocking in his chair, and staring blankly out over the scene as the little car
was filled with the stuff of travel.
Dennis took the wheel, Wanda sat in
the middle, straddling the gear shift, and Stan rode shot-gun. Even though the
’65 Hillman Husky was a wagon, it was a two door and could only squeeze four or
five. Five would be possible for a short ride but near impossible for anything
over fifteen minutes. I needed to sit by a window so I took the back seat
behind Dennis. Jamie had the drive-shaft hump and Steve took the other side. We
were packed into that little Hillman like a circus clown car as we pulled away
from the cabin. Debby and Leah waved us off and Dad still stared blankly out
beyond at the car as it left.
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