Blood Read online

  “Where were you when you heard the shots?”

  “What were you doing when you heard the shots?”

  “Who else was in the house?”

  “What did you see?”

  “What happened last night?”

  I answered as best I could. I did my best to remember everything and conjure some words to describe it all somehow while I focused on the frilly white curtains Mama and I had hung over the windows in my room and how the light blue walls made them look like cumulus clouds.

  Phone Calls

  Carolyn called Vance McVay, who’d known Mama and Daddy for years and lived in West Bend, Alabama, about twenty-five miles from Frankville, to ask him to go tell Dandy what had happened to his son and daughter-in-law. I can’t imagine it was easy to deliver that news to someone’s daddy.

  Nanny and PawPaw, Mama’s parents, were told through a phone call from their niece Gayle. Nanny’s sister Gaynor worked at the highway patrol office and somehow heard the news on the scanner. She called Gayle and asked her to tell Nanny.

  Nanny told me that when she got the news she screamed for her firstborn child and fell to her knees. She then called PawPaw, who was at his job at the paper mill just like any other Tuesday morning, and told him to get home, that their baby was dead.

  Mama’s brother, Larry, called the house on Barden Avenue. We’d just seen him in Houston. He and Mama were always close. Sissy talked to him and when he asked, “What hospital is your mama in?” Sissy replied, “She’s dead, Larry” in a flat and perturbed tone. I was sitting beside her. She told me later that Larry had screamed and cried and cursed Daddy for killing his sister.

  “I WISH HE WAS ALIVE SO I COULD KILL HIM.”

  I had arrived in Jackson at Nanny and PawPaw’s house from the house on Barden Avenue after the eighty-mile drive with Bobo and Don. I think it was around noon, but I’m not sure. I had somehow slept for part of the drive and the world already felt different from how it had when we’d pulled out of the Providence Hospital parking lot. Mama and Daddy slipped farther away as my brain adjusted to a whole new life with every passing minute.

  Jane, Mama’s sister, was distraught. I understood, but I still winced when I heard her say it. I thought to myself that he was already dead, and no one needed to worry about that anymore. I remembered all of the times I had imagined how life might be easier if he just disappeared and left us alone. I wasn’t quite sure yet that I had been wrong to think such a thing, but I wasn’t glad that he’d done what he’d done, and not just because Mama was gone.

  I started to think about what must have been going on across the river in Frankville, where Daddy’s family was surely gathering just the same as Mama’s was at her parents’ house. I wasn’t sure where I belonged or even where I wanted to be, but no one had asked me. I would get used to that feeling.

  I sat down in PawPaw’s chair. My cousin Joey, who is just a year older than I am, sat on the couch next to it.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  His voice broke and he cried. He has always been tender and I have always loved him for that reason first. I didn’t know what to say either, or what to do but try to absorb it all somehow without it breaking me into a million pieces. I can’t say I’m exactly sure that it didn’t do some version of that, just as I don’t know exactly what happened to my parents that morning other than that they ended up dead. How would I have not immediately changed?

  People kept arriving at Nanny and PawPaw’s with bowls of potato salad, pots of green beans, buckets of fried chicken, cakes, pies, paper plates, and jugs of iced tea. By early afternoon—why did I keep track of the time?—there was a houseful of family and friends. Everyone asked if they could do something, and if they could, to just let them know. People just hung around, just to be there. Some of them came over to speak to me. Some took my hand and squeezed it or hugged me and patted me. Some talked about how much they loved and thought of my mama. I caught this or that one glancing in my direction, but some couldn’t even look at me. No one except Jane had mentioned Daddy at all, at least not that I could hear.

  I got up from PawPaw’s chair and tried to find a quiet, secluded corner to slink into. Some of my friends started to arrive—Delicia Harvey was first, then Angie Savage and Lance Cole from Chatom came in—we’d only lived down in Irvington for a few years and I’d tried to keep in touch with everyone. I was thankful for the diversion. I waited to not have an adult hovering for even a few minutes, then I snuck into the yard and around the back of the house with another cousin—Amanda, who lived up the hill—to smoke a cigarette I’d extracted from someone’s handbag. When Sissy finally arrived sometime that afternoon she had her own stash, which she begrudgingly shared with me because she knew I was too young to smoke. She also knew she’d given me my first cigarette when I was nine so it was hard to tell me no. She had begun puffing away on Winston Lights like there was no tomorrow. And maybe there wouldn’t be a tomorrow for all we knew, but everyone got on with things.

  The phone rang incessantly. Arrangements were beginning to be made for wakes and funerals, for the details that have to be attended to when people die. Arrangements were being made for what would be done with Sissy and me.

  Dying isn’t cheap. Nanny and PawPaw had to cover the cost of Mama’s casket and services, the same as Dandy had to cover Daddy’s. It was decided that Mama would be buried in one of the plots that Nanny and PawPaw had bought for themselves at the cemetery out on Walker Springs Road. I would find out two days later that Daddy would be buried at Frankville Baptist Church. The two holes lay twenty-five miles apart.

  Holes

  There’s a hole in the world. I don’t know if that line started out as a song idea or what, because it sounds like a title, but I suspect it ended up in this pile of cards and notes on my desk because it’s how I’ve felt about living without her for so long. Eleven thousand days or so. Randy Newman’s “Living Without You” floats through my head. Losing her was hard.

  The living was hard too.

  I don’t know if she had any idea what it would mean to us later. I think she was always just trying to get through the day. We never spoke about what it would mean. If there was some awareness of future fallout, no one ever nodded toward it.

  CLICK, CLACK, CLICK, CLACK.

  Mama’s high heels struck the hardwood floor, keeping that almost rushed but sexy tempo that must have always been running through her head like a Chuck Berry song, all backbeat. Her feet announced that she was on her way toward the classroom where her sister Jane sat. Jane was a senior at Jackson High School that year, and one of Daddy’s study hall students.

  Jane said that Daddy was so handsome and mercurial that she and her friends wouldn’t study at all during the hour they were in his room, but would just sit there staring at him, watching him grade papers or, more than likely, read a book. She recalled him once bursting into laughter and almost falling out of his chair one afternoon while reading Mark Twain, then going totally silent again just as quickly. Jane had a feeling that he and her sister needed to meet. She devised a scheme.

  Mama was twenty-two years old and divorced. She’d gotten married right out of high school to a man who ended up being less than kind to her. They’d lived in Tuscaloosa but she went back home to Jackson after she finally got away from him. Nanny said that when Mama left her first husband, she’d left everything but her cedar chest, clothes, and the iron she and PawPaw had given her for a wedding present. Mama moved back in with them and got a secretarial job at Allied Paper, where PawPaw worked. Jane told me that Mama would take a bath and wash her hair every afternoon when she got home because she couldn’t stand the smell the paper mill left on her. Paper mills smell like rotten eggs. PawPaw cosigned a note on a yellow Ford Mustang with a black top. Mama would drop Jane off at school in the mornings on her way to work, and when she did, all the high school boys would fawn over her, their jaws reportedly dropping.

  Mama was gorgeous, blonde and blue-eyed, with a car
toon-character figure and a spirited attitude to match. Jane said that Mama never knew she was so pretty, but she had to have known there was something special about her. I don’t think it was that she didn’t know she was attractive, rather more that she lacked any confidence past the kind that makes you just a little bit mad when someone tries to control you but not mad enough to do much about it but fuss and be mad.

  The scheme that Jane devised involved leaving some papers in Mama’s car one morning and then calling her at work to tell her she needed them at the exact time she was in Daddy’s study hall. She told Mama she had to bring the papers in to her, that she couldn’t leave them in the school office, and that she wouldn’t be able to come out and get them. She told her what room she’d be in.

  Click, clack, click, clack.

  Mama opened the door to the classroom, prissed straight over to Daddy’s desk like only she could, angrily slammed the papers down on it, and said, “These are for Jane.” She then turned on her heel and sassily clicked and clacked her way out of the room. Daddy’s eyes followed her. Jane said he immediately questioned her about who that beautiful creature had been. Shortly after that they became a beautiful pair.

  I don’t know much about their courtship. I study the photographs that I have from that time and they look happy together mostly, especially in the ones that have a lot of paper cups and guitars in them. Daddy loved to take Mama’s picture. He loved her, full stop, as much as he knew how.

  I heard Daddy say once that the first time he walked into Nanny and PawPaw’s house to see her, he wanted to stay. He was struck by how welcoming and warm it felt. It was different, I suppose, than the house he’d grown up in. Why else would he say that? There was no lack of love in his family, but there was also no ease or much tenderness. He had to learn his brusque manner and all of that stomping and snatching he did somewhere.

  Mama’s family was large and boisterous, always quick to laugh and joke and love. They played music together, having what Nanny called “fiddlings” at her house on the regular, or even just gathering around the piano impromptu on any given afternoon as one or the other of them was always dropping by Nanny’s house for a cup of coffee or slice of pie, arms draped around each other as someone would pick out the chords to a song and everybody else would find a singing part. Daddy was taken by their ability to lean in on three-or-more-part harmonies just as naturally as they breathed, play instruments, and how music was woven into their daily lives. He hadn’t grown up that way.

  Some of Mama’s made-up words

  Smellance—perfume.

  Epizootie—a sickness.

  Goolygangoolie—an unknown substance that’s gotten on something.

  Boogershit—goolygangoolie that won’t come off with spit.

  Muckleturd—a word used to enhance the definition of a color such as yellow or green when it is particularly putrid. Muckleturd yellow would be akin to mustard, as that is a generally awful color and no one looks good in it. Muckleturd green would be the color of a baby bird’s shit.

  Throughother—not a Mama original but a sort of catchall word, unique to the Dolbear family, used for many things. It really means, more than anything, not quite right. To use it in a sentence, one would say, “Hand me that other ratchet. This one is throughother.” Or, when discovering someone had displayed less than savory or some sort of strange behavior, one might utter, “Well, we always knew he was kind of throughother.”

  Hockey—not a made-up word, but it was in that she used it as a stand-in for bullshit. Also used as bullhockey.

  MAMA AND DADDY MARRIED ON MARCH 23, 1968. MAMA was pregnant with Sissy so they had a quick service in Quantico, Virginia, where Daddy was stationed in the marines. He had volunteered for service. Supposedly, if you were a college graduate and enlisted on your own accord, you could prevent being sent to Vietnam. He was honorably discharged in November of the same year. That makes no sense.

  I sent away for his DD Form 214, the standard military discharge form, years ago. I’d never been able to get what I felt was a straight answer out of anyone about how a commissioned officer was able to achieve such a discharge after serving only seven months in the Marine Corps at the height of the Vietnam War. I’ve asked all of the relatives that I thought might know something. The closest I ever got to any sort of explanation was from Dandy.

  Supposedly, Daddy intentionally, and with encouragement to do so from his parents, did badly on a marksmanship test, missing too many targets.

  From a letter Mammy wrote to him and Mama while he was at Quantico:

  September 11 isn’t long off. I hope to hear a report of failing out of the Marines by then. I don’t at all feel bad to say so, either. Reggie Tolbert being shipped home dead has no glory in it to me. He was killed the 22nd, his family have no details, and will never really know, except that he was plain murdered over there along with old Lyndon’s other 35,000 plus, that he admits. Besides the uncounted thousands that are ruined for life.

  I saw Daddy shoot two deer from the kitchen stoop right before Christmas 1983. They were at least a hundred yards away and probably farther than that. I don’t trust my memory of distance this many years down the line, but they were at the fence on the far end of the pasture by the barn. He killed them both. He never had much trouble hitting any target he set his sights on, from deer to squirrels to turkeys in flight.

  He took pride in his shooting ability, so intentionally failing a marksmanship test doesn’t sound like something he’d do, but I guess he did.

  Was Daddy unable to adjust to military life? Maybe he already had a recognizable drinking problem. Maybe he acted crazy to escape and they let him. Maybe they saw something in him that was indeed off and they didn’t want to take responsibility for it. Maybe he just didn’t want to go to Vietnam and he took what he thought was the easiest way out. I don’t believe in war. I just didn’t know that Daddy didn’t believe in it.

  Katharine told me that when she was talking with one of Daddy’s coworkers at his funeral, they mentioned a luncheon they’d gone to with Daddy. When they walked in, they all noticed a man sitting alone, talking to himself and making gestures. One of the group commented on it, and Daddy immediately came to the man’s defense, explaining that he could tell by what the man was saying that he had served in the marines, and not to judge or think badly of him because that was something from which no one could recover.

  The B-25

  I call the B-25 Daddy’s guitar because that’s what it is and always will be. It’s a 1964 Gibson. I’ve played it on every record I’ve ever made. It just has something special. It’s all dried out, not very well kept. There’s a hairline crack just below the headstock that reveals a break that has been repaired. I asked Nanny if she knew how it got there and she said she thought she recalled Daddy throwing it across some stage one night, but who knows if that’s true. It may be, but it could’ve easily fallen and gotten broken as well. It sounds old, like it should and like it is. I keep it out where I, or anyone who comes into my house, can pick it up and play a tune. Daddy would like that, I think. I don’t treat it like a precious thing, but it is even though it’s so scarred. Maybe it’s precious because it’s so scarred and holds so many stories and songs.

  Guitars are mysterious. A person can practice playing one for a lifetime and never really figure out how they work.

  MUSIC WAS SECOND NATURE TO MAMA, WHILE DADDY had to work hard just to be an average songwriter, singer, and player. He probably had more talent for other things—but the desire to make music was deeply in him, even more than it seemed to be in her. He always looked to her for the right chord when he couldn’t find it and for the harmony parts he couldn’t hear. She was just plainly better and more naturally talented than he was. It made him deeply frustrated because she had something he didn’t but wanted badly. He despised the part of her that didn’t treat her talent for music as the most important thing in life besides, of course, him.

  Daddy was unsatisfied with not being able
to make a living independent of anyone else and he saw music as a way of doing that. He hated having to answer to anyone. At the end of the day, I’m not sure if he cared how he did it—whether through playing music, raising cows (“fooling with a cow here and there” was how Mammy described his attempts at raising livestock), or some other way—he just didn’t want to punch a clock. He thought he was special. “I tried it straight and went half mad,” said the song he wrote. And maybe Daddy was special; maybe he could’ve done something out of the ordinary with his life if he hadn’t had the extraordinary drinking habit and violent temper that he did.

  When Sissy and I were young, he brought home every Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson record he could find. He loved anything that even hinted at the outlaw or outsider spirit, and hated everything that didn’t. He even went so far as to have Mama make a red leather cover with white whipstitching for his Fender Telecaster so that it would be similar to Waylon’s brown leather tooled one. He learned all of those songs and sang them at every seedy bar he could get on the stage of within one hundred and fifty miles of our house, every kind of gathering he was invited to or even sometimes hosted at home, and all of the events at the VFW club or at Nanny and PawPaw’s house over in Jackson.

  He kept his amp and electric guitar set up in the front room, which we called our music room. It held not only his rig, but the baby grand piano that his aunt Lucille had sent UPS from California, the console stereo (with coins taped to the top of the stylus to keep it from skipping), and the records that he and Mama had collected. He also had a reel-to-reel tape recorder that he loved to use to record himself and sometimes the rest of us.