Chinaberry Sidewalks (17 page)

Settling for the comfort of the ongoing jam sessions gave my father three things: one, a small but adoring audience, as grateful for his treasure trove of old songs as they might have been for Christ dying on the cross had they not been heathens to a man; two, the illusion of control over everyone and everything involved, his own family included; and three, the attention paid to the perpetual guest of honor. These jam sessions even provided his troubled marriage with a social context. Since he’d have sooner slit his throat than attend a tent revival, they gave my parents some place to go as a couple.

Of the twelve or so people in their circle, only Willie Hardin found a reason to enter our house on Norvic Street. It was early one weekday afternoon when Willie, part-time welder and full-time alcoholic, slagged off work to make a play for my mother. The near rape—he’d grabbed her hair and tried to stick his tongue down her throat—was for her more puzzling than troubling.

“Willie Hardin’s the last man on earth I’d ever go with,” she told me. “That man’s a sot drunk. I can’t believe he’d risk tanglin’ with your daddy just to get me to go with him. It don’t make one bit of sense. If I can push him off me that easy, there’s no telling what your daddy woulda done to him.”

My father denied it ever happened, and his refusal to admit that he might have been betrayed by one of his admirers was unwavering. It was easier for him to accuse my mother of lying or exaggerating than to accept that his omnipotence was an illusion. Nevertheless, from then on he rarely accepted invitations to lead the jam sessions.

The passing of his musical dream was sad to watch. For all his narcissism, there was a sweet innocence in the pleasure he drew from playing songs. And as his need for an adoring audience faded, I came to appreciate more fully his need for adoration plain and simple.

Inexplicable Behavior

A
couple of years after the Buck family moved into the house across the street, my parents found themselves in a quandary over what to do about my obsession with Election Day yard signs springing up around town like so many proselytizing toadstools. This glut of placards—promoting the likes of A. J. “Burt” Holder, Mayor; W. M. “Pappy” Beck, Alderman; L. L. “Sleepy” Barge, Councilman at Large; and J. R. “Booger” Attenberry, Director of Parks and Recreation—had rekindled a criminal spark missing since I opened fire on their New Year’s Eve party more than five years earlier. By late one afternoon, I’d swiped three dozen signs and planted them in our front yard.

An irate neighbor pounding on the door and demanding the return of his stolen property is how my father got wind of the political rally amassed on his lawn. Caught off guard and affecting indifference, he drawled, “You’re welcome to it, if you can figure out which ones is yours.”

No one hated situations beyond his control more than my father, and he’d sooner have his teeth pulled than admit he had no idea how thirty-six Election Day placards came to be standing in his front yard. The implications that placed his son in the criminal hot seat were even less bothersome to him than being seen as a man out of touch with what went on around his own home.

Volunteering guilt was pointless; before the door banged shut behind the first vigilante, he was on me like a bad paint job. “What in the name of Woodrow Wilson made you steal all them signs out yonder in the yard?”

“I didn’t steal all of them.”

“What’d you do?”

“I went up and asked.”

“Aw, hell, son, don’t lie to me. You already got both our asses in a crack. I want to know why you stuck all of them signs up in the yard.”

Knowing that sniveling assessments of his inability to provide for his family was a surefire means of getting him off my back, I aimed low. “Because our house is ugly.”

To explain my fascination with the subliminal use of down-home charm and good-ole-boy familiarity as tools of political seduction called for powers of articulation far beyond me. And since I possessed neither the skill nor the will to put in plain words my theory that the candidates were simply addressing the notion held dear by most residents of Jacinto City, that to be taken for a sucker was their God-given right, I let my gutless answer stand. Besides, why throw long-winded clarification at my father when half-truths worked just as well? He fired up a Pall Mall and lit into his wife for not keeping better tabs on my after-school activities.

Two sips into a half cup of my mother’s instant coffee, Police Chief James L. “Jimmy” Daniels concluded his investigation. Seeing as how the old lawman had just spent a wad of taxpayers’ money returning stolen placards to six persnickety citizens, I could’ve told my father that a rambling summation was the wrong way to go, but I doubt he would’ve listened.

“I don’t think he meant nothing by it, Jimmy,” he said, pleading my case in the same sucking-up style as the placards. “From now on, I’m gonna be on him like a duck on a June bug. You can bank on that.”

Pushing the coffee cup aside as if this were his assessment of their parenting skills, the old officer summoned up all the gravity of thirty-plus years in law enforcement. “I expect I’ll be leavin’ this a family matter. I got no doubt y’all are gonna straighten all this out. J.W., me and you and the boy need to take us a ride in the squad car and see about stickin’ a sign or two back up where they belong. Any left over, I’ll take on back to the station.”

Afterward, I took my mother’s switch-whipping stoically.

Stealing yard signs was only the half of it. I’d also fallen into an involuntary habit of singing aloud in my fifth-grade classroom. The urge fed almost exclusively on the inopportune moment, written assignments being the worst. Something about the entire class engrossed in silent concentration brought out the oddball in me. If for no other reason than the consequent fall from social grace, you’d think my being shaken from a trance in the middle of a math test only to find that I’d been warbling some hackneyed anthem inspired by Election Day yard signs would’ve curbed the compulsion once and for all. Well, think again. Two days later, I’m crooning, “W. M. Pappy Beck, now there’s a man you can’t neglect / and for your councilman at large, don’t forget ole Sleepy Barge,” to the hybrid tune of “Davy Crockett” and “The Ballad of Jed Clampett.”

The first time it happened, Mrs. Cain cited the rules of conduct in her classroom as including neither impromptu serenades nor “the egging on of fools with laughter.” I went immediately to work on a disclaimer meant to separate me from the intentional rendering of such drivel, but Mrs. Cain’s ill temper put me on notice that my audience allotment had been used up for the day. If there was a reason why I’d sung such a song, it was lost the moment I realized that the laughter of which the teacher spoke was at my expense. From then on I was as much a stranger to myself as I was to my teacher and peers. The second and third times I sang aloud in class, Mrs. Smith shoved my desk into the hallway and had me write “I will not sing in class” 250 and then 500 times. The fourth landed me in the vice principal’s office.

Mr. Holcombe was as old as he was foreboding. On the wall behind his desk was a handmade illustration of his disciplinary credo: “If they can’t sit down, they’ll stand up straight.” I, like every other student between the fourth and sixth grades, was well aware of the vice principal’s legendary “Board of Education.” Tales of its size, shape, and color flew like paper airplanes whenever one of our own fell prey to the wooden lash. There was also the unconfirmed rumor that—for the purpose of raising welts on deadbeat backsides—he’d drilled fifteen holes in the thing. It was my first time to brave the wrath of the paddle.

Mrs. Cain and I were ushered into his office by the school’s inscrutable secretary, Miss Lyle. Tardy slips, unexcused absences, and disciplinary traffic were her domain. The first time I heard the word “spinster” used in conversation, it was in disparaging reference to her. When I asked my mother what Mr. Vick meant when he called Miss Lyle a “cold-hearted old spinster,” I was told: “Some women like to work around children ’cause they don’t like to go with men and can’t have babies.” I pressed for clarification on this bit of nebula but had to make do with her generic “You’ll understand when you get a little older.” Vis-à-vis her ongoing prediction that in the not too distant future I’d pluck out of thin air the meaning of no less than a hundred salacious words, well, there I was, a year older, the cold-hearted old spinster making a minor event out of announcing my case to the vice principal—“the fifth-grade singing problem” is, I believe, how she framed my transgression—and I’m no less confused as to why she liked to work around children.

Judging by Mrs. Cain’s nervous fidgeting you’d have thought she’d been called on the carpet instead of me. No doubt she had it in her head that guilt by association was as good a reason as any for Mr. Holcombe to take a dim view of her future prospects. And if frosty receptions were an indication of things to come, her instincts were spot-on, for it looked as if teacher and student would face the music as a duo. For the time it would take two people of average intelligence to decipher the meaning behind the sign above his desk, Mrs. Cain and I were ignored by Mr. Holcombe. Not until he was satisfied we had a grasp on the gravity of our situation did he bother acknowledging our presence.

The script called for him to deliver a prepared statement of some kind, I was sure of it. But he couldn’t find the handle to haul it up. The teacher and I were soon to learn that clearing his throat was no easy task for the old disciplinarian. Several stabs into the ordeal, when it looked as if lodged debris would be the cause of his overdue retirement, we were obliged to read the shifting tides as a good omen—she more astutely than I. Where I saw a possible stay of execution, she saw a whopping career move. Aiding her faltering superior was her ticket out. Spouting a bunch of brown-nose crap about his disciplinary track record and my soon-to-be exemplary behavior, she bought the wobbly geezer a little time to regain his composure. Fresh off the hook, she made short work of disclosing the charges against me and fled the room.

A full six feet and four inches of antediluvian autocracy rose from its leather chair like the gray dawn of the Apocalypse, pulling from a hidden sheath the exact crimson Excalibur I’d foresworn never to lay eyes on. The courtly manner with which he cradled the artifact in the crook of his arm declared that he alone possessed the power to extract such magnificence from its magic stone. Honoring his wordless call to admire its candy-apple finish, custom-wrapped handle, and the gleaming white “Board of Education” stenciled across the paddle’s sweet spot (no holes in this baby), I acknowledged, with a trembling, jujitsu bow, that indeed I’d never seen a more dazzling instrument of torture.

Recovered from his bout with laryngitis, Mr. Holcombe delivered the particulars of my sentencing with practiced formality. “You have left this office no other choice than to use the Board of Education. We have found it an effective tool in the stifling of disruptive behavior. You’ll be back on an even keel in no time.”

Three hard licks across my scrawny rear netted zilch. Two days later, I was back on the carpet—this time alone.

Dealing with me as a repeat offender confounded the vice principal. Involuntary disorders such as the one landing me back in his office didn’t square with his concept of cause and effect. Had his faith in the paddle allowed the occasional need for a plan B, perhaps the once proud monocrat might have cracked my case. I felt kind of sorry for the guy. Gone was the sword-wielding Arthur of days past, and in his place was this watery-eyed old man with a catch in his throat. He hocked and hacked but couldn’t clear a space in his vocal apparatus from which to address my inability to stop singing.

The summons to Mr. Holcombe’s office rattled around our house for a couple of days before my father finally gathered the nerve to face the music. “Aw, hell, Cauzette,” he grumbled, scowling, “I guess we’re gonna have to go down to that schoolhouse tomorrow and see what he done.” Being called in to discuss a disciplinary matter agitated him to no end. Believing that his method of discipline—that is, no method at all—was bound to come under scrutiny, he was close to eating his cigarettes when he trudged into Mr. Holcombe’s office. Likewise, the thought of losing her job had my mother gnawing on the remains of her blood-tinged fingernails.

The principal, Mr. Wallace, who’d been ushered into the meeting by Miss Lyle, seated himself casually in the chair next to my father and started the ball rolling. “Your son has always been a model student here at Jacinto City Elementary.” Mr. Holcombe nodded his head in oversized agreement. My father’s eyes were the size of half dollars and he, too, nodded his head, though not in agreement. Okay, Mr. Big-Shot Principal, I’ve seen your jab, is the silent rejoinder I read behind his disconcerted expression. “Now come on and show me the sucker punch.”

My mother voiced her solidarity with the inquisition. “Yes, he’s always been a good boy. The Lord has his hand on—”

Switching his tone to worried concern, Mr. Wallace interrupted her and continued presenting the facts. “We’ve reached an impasse in our ability to persuade your son to refrain from singing in class.”

As if invoking the name of her savior might disperse the approaching storm and play well with the judges, she muttered, “Jesus, sweet Jesus, thank you, Jesus.”

My father’s eyes narrowed to rattlesnake slits, and I readied myself for “What in the hell is a damn im-pass?” to come rolling off his tongue, but he held it in check.

Knowing he had my parents reeling, Mr. Wallace served up the gist of his agenda. “We think it would be in the boy’s best interest if you were to seek professional help for his inability to control the urge to, uh, sing in class.”

This was the low blow my father had been waiting for.

“You mean like a sy-ky-a-trist?” he asked tentatively. Then, ratcheting up a more challenging tone, he rephrased the question, “You want me to take him to a si-ky-a-trist just for singin’ out loud? I never heard of such a thing.”

“Traditional disciplinary methods have been of no consequence,” Mr. Holcombe volunteered. “And with your son we have been un—”

This time it was my father who did the interrupting. “Now, y’all are educated men and I ain’t. So y’all are gonna need to explain what the hell a traditional disciplinary method is.”

“I gave the boy a pretty stiff licking with the Board of Education only to have him turn up in my office for the same infraction the very next day.” Mr. Holcombe croaked, an obvious exaggeration during which I counted four more attempts to clear the debris from his throat. “Before that, on four different occasions, he’d been removed from class and made to write ‘I will not sing in class’ hundreds of times. I’m sure you can understand that I can’t just paddle the boy every day. Unless you have a better idea, we can think of no other alternative than professional help.”

“Y’all’s traditional disciplinary methods, hmm?”

My mother and I exchanged knowing glances. The J. W. Crowell we knew and loved was about to play his cards.

“I can think of an alternative that ain’t gonna cost me a nickel.” In an instant, he had hold of my right ear and was marching me out of the office. Passing the old spinster’s desk, he called over his shoulder, “Y’all ain’t gonna have no more trouble with him singin’ in class.”

If ever I was in for a public beating, I figured it was then. But never one for predictability, my father cranked up the Studebaker and drove away in silence.

“What you fixin’ to do, J.W.?” my mother asked.

Silence.

“You think he needs a psychiatrist?”

More silence.

Booger Attenberry, a friend of my father’s since the two of them were second-string defensive backs for the Jacinto City Bears semipro football team, lived a block and a half from my school. Mr. Attenberry—only adults called him Booger—was running his campaign out of a spare bedroom to get elected Director of Parks and Recreation. Rumbling to a stop in front of his house, my mother and I were told to just wait in the car.