Barefoot to Avalon

by David Payne

  We stayed in Iowa with an old farmer and his wife, who made us sleep in separate bedrooms and cooked us breakfast and drove us to the border of Nebraska, and sometime later a crew of bikers stopped, and we rode behind them in a van driven by a gray-haired woman with eyes like the day after the apocalypse. At a truck stop near Cheyenne, she gave us a plastic baggie with a pound or two of change in it and said we might be better off not going any farther in their company. In Wyoming, we got picked up by a car full of hippie types and drove all night, till somewhere west of Laramie, out in the Red Desert, up there in the dunes and sagebrush, the driver had to stop and catch a nap. There were so many in the car that Im and I slept outside in the desert, near the car and under it, cozying to the muffler for its heat until it faded, and then out under a van Gogh sky full of van Gogh stars, without a blanket. I held Im in my arms for warmth and our teeth chattered and coyotes howled, and we could see them circling, their eyes in the moonlight in a stand of limber pines not sixty yards away from us. On through Utah and Nevada and finally into California, where Im called one of her girlfriends from the cheerleader squad at her old high school in Vallejo, who took us in for a few nights the way Eric and so many others had along the route, wanting to do something for us. We ended up at Im’s mother Molly’s place, and she and her new husband were decent to us and passed along a message from Jack and Margaret to say Uncle, they relented. Sick with worry, they asked us to come home and sent us a plane ticket without conditions. So we won, youth and freedom prevailed over elders and tradition, and we, as Robin Hood and Marian and Clyde and Bonnie, stuck it to the man, and if the man was our own family, where else does the notion come from. We were pretty pleased about it at the time, or I know I was, but it strikes me now that our victory, though we won it, was a bad one. Though I told Imogen I loved her and believed it, now it seems I barely knew her and she barely knew me and so it wasn’t about love, love was just the sunlight on the surface, underneath we bonded in our anger at our parents and our decision to be outlaws. The truth is I don’t know what Imogen was feeling but to Jack I think I was saying, For my mom, your daughter, and to Margaret, Here’s what I think of our new family, here’s what I think of rebuilding the Titanic according to the original blueprints, and whatever Pa and I had in that boat, the contract we agreed to, was gone now, and I decided maybe that, too, was bullshit, fucking bullshit, just a child’s wishful thinking seen through rose-colored glasses, and like Bill, whom I took a blood oath never to be like, I sinned while feeling like a victim.

  And the summer Im and I took our road trip I was seventeen, the same age Margaret was when she snuck through the back fence at St. Mary’s and met Bill Payne in his dad’s jalopy and got pregnant, and offered the chance to have it fixed in Philadelphia, declined it. Margaret didn’t want it fixed, like Im and me she didn’t want to come home either, didn’t want to be forgiven and for things to return to normal. Instead, she took from Bill Payne what he didn’t wish to give her, and Bill was wroth and repaid her and the Roses pari passu, flunking out of med school and extracting from them a job, a house, a maid, a car, a membership at the CC, a pew at Holy Innocents, and when that wasn’t enough to assuage his fury, he gambled away our house and stole Mary Rose’s timber, and when that wasn’t enough he stole the shotgun from me, his first son, and gave it to George A., his second, who got sick and was thereby promoted into my position. And I wanted to take George A. with me out of bondage, but offered the scepter, George A. took it and he fucked me. And though he’s young and sick and scared and shaky after his ordeal, I’m never going to quite forgive him and it’s never going to be the same between us.

  And now, on the cold back porch, Imogen delivers us the message.

  –Your mama says it’s time to eat.

  And I say, Yo mama.

  And George A. says, Yo mama.

  –Did she tell you there’d be days like this?

  –She mentioned it, he answers, but I guess I wasn’t listening.

  –Apparently the fuck not!

  We’re laughing, God, we’re laughing.

  –Heh heh heh, says George A. with his sly, sweet grin, and there he is, all there behind the eyes, that’s him. We slap five, grateful to our sister not-so-sister Imogen and the Shirelles for the comic relief, grateful to flee the scene with things left unresolved, which is to say, to be resolved by time, neglect, avoidance, accident, and other half-assed methods.

  George A. passes the weed to Imogen, who tokes and passes it to me.

  –Merry Christmas. Don’t say I never gave you anything.

  I’d never say that, Imogen. Showing some discretion for a change, I merely think this and don’t say it.

  Im gets it anyway, at least I think so, because her eyes soften and she pats my head—with more condescension than affection, but affection’s in there also—and then turns her back again and puts me in the rearview mirror.

  –I’ll tell Margaret—yo mama—you’re coming in.

  As she makes her exit, George A. mugs at me. I punch him in the arm, not hard, not all that easy.

  –What? he protests, rubbing it. I didn’t say a thing! Did I say anything?

  And the shotgun? As far as I recall, we never speak of it again. It’s too hot to handle, so we drop it and it clatters on the iceberg and starts melting its way in and downward, away from the sunlit surface, ever deeper toward the underwater portion, where it remains suspended, gone but not forgotten till years later, long after George A. is dead, when in that Hampton Inn at Pawleys I pour a drink and something in me whispers, It’s time to write about George A., and I go back and find it where I left it.

  Margaret’s Christmas Eve spread centers on a tenderloin of beef, a six- or eight-pound slab, served still twitching with horseradish sauce and twice-baked potatoes. We heap our plates with tennis-ball-sized mounds of thin-sliced, still-bleeding meat and gorge like happy wolves. Which is to say, the others do, and I did once upon a time, who have become the family vegetarian and sister-screwing holy man, if self-anointed. With the appearance of Margaret’s bowl of special Christmas beets, however, I throw off my priestly collar and decorum. When George A. and I see it in the distance, we shudder with mock horror, hold our noses and wave it on dramatically, diva-ing it up, a pair of ungrateful shit-asses playing for the biggest rise that we can get from Margaret.

  –What? You don’t like my beets? I think my beets are wonderful! she says, looking for all the world as though we didn’t do the same last Christmas and the one before that.

  With wine and weed, the evening’s speeding up and getting blurry at the edges. We head downstairs now, the boys, to the rumpus room for pool, as Margaret and Imogen—wanting nothing to do with the trash talk, the extravagant and pitiless revenges we wreak on one another—grab the Kleenex box and retire to the den, where It’s a Wonderful Life is airing after a brief word from our sponsor.

  Pool is what the Payne and Furst boys do in lieu of duels with pistols, in lieu of piking one another’s heads on London Bridge, since we can’t murder them and drink their blood—though we like them, you have to understand, George A. and I really, really like the Jacks, as I believe the Jacks like George A. and David.

  –So how do we team up? Jack, père, asks, as he chalks his cue tip. George A. and me against the two of you?

  –Hell, no, I say. The Paynes against the Fursts. If we’re going to piss away another evening inching toward death, let’s at least make it interesting.

  I glance at George A., who signals his willingness to charge the ridge beside me.

  –You sure? Big Jack asks happily.

  –What’s the matter, Jack-o? We’ll go easy on you, won’t we, George A.?

  –Speak for yourself, my brother says.

  Jack continues smiling, but a blue gas flame roars up behind his eyes.

  –The last shall be first, and the Fursts shall be last, I say, crowing unwisely, as I’m pro
ne to.

  George A. extends a hand behind his back. I see his five and raise him, returning one up high, and on his way to the cue rack, George A. chicken-jerks his chin and walks like an Egyptian.

  –So what’s the bet?

  Little Jack is ready with the gambit.

  –If you and George A. lose, what say you eat that bowl of beets upstairs?

  –Not the whole bowl? George A. says.

  Jack Jr. merely grins.

  –Cruel, I say. Cruel, but brilliant. And if you lose?

  –I’ve got one, George A. says. You ride bikes, naked, to the Jewish Home and back.

  –Excellent!

  –Hey, there’s ice on the road, Little Jack protests. It’s twenty-five degrees out there.

  –So, what, you worried your package is going to shrivel?

  –How much smaller can it get?

  I douse the perimeter with gas; George A. strikes the match and tosses it, setting off a mini-riot. We’re howling now, he and I, doubled over, gasping and wiping tears of joy at our own jokes the way we’re prone to. The SOBs—Sons of Bill—are on a tear, one against all comers, who were so lately one against the other. You’d almost think the shotgun never happened.

  –Not naked. Jack Sr., the biggest Peter Pan among us, dons the black robes now, putting on the gravitas and playing pater.

  –Meow, says George A.

  –Here, kitty, kitty. Here, puss, puss, puss. In your undies then.

  –Underwear, socks and shoes.

  –Done!

  Having made our bed, here we are not thirty minutes later, the SOBs, lying in it—sitting, rather, on the kitchen counter under close observation from our grinning colonial oppressors. Passing back and forth the bowl of beets, we’re no longer cracking wise now as we eat in common from the serving spoon dripping vinegary blood or bloodied vinegar, a pair of red-toothed ghouls glumly feasting on moldering remains served à la carte out of the cemetery.

  Next slide in the projector, please! This one, which I like better, features us outside in the frosty drive after a rematch and a victory, me toasty in my Air Force parka, George A. in his Michelin Man down jacket. We’re climbing into Margaret’s Toronado, a ’71, electric blue with a white roof of pebbled vinyl, as the Jacks, both famously chicken-legged and heavy-chested—Senior in boxers, black calf-length socks and tasseled alligator loafers, Junior in tighty whities, tube socks and Adidas—set off past the lions at the entry. These, normally so stoic, have broken discipline and, unless memory deceives me, are now distinctly roaring, roaring laughter and pissing squid ink down the brick piers that they sit on. The Jacks wobble off on Bennett’s and Dickie’s banana-seated bikes, punching their shoulders with their knees with every revolution of the pedals and leaving black tracks in the new-fallen snow behind them. Blowing the horn and flashing the brights, George A. and I follow, making catcalls out the window as Billy Preston blares “Nothing From Nothing” on Margaret’s smoking 8-track.

  Home again, George A. and I form a gauntlet, jeering and applauding as the Jacks sprint, houseward, through it.

  –Nice gams, lady!

  –Assholes! Little Jack, karate guy, double-pumps the finger from fists of cold steel as he passes.

  George A. and I are wiping tears, panting, huffing, doubled over the way we were last summer in the wash the day he beat me to the pier and I snapped him in the photo.

  –Did I tell you Dad bought a bike? he says when he’s recovered.

  –No shit. What kind, a Western Flyer?

  –A motorcycle.

  –Bullshit! He didn’t finally get the Harley?

  Bill’s been threatening intermittently for years.

  –A Kawasaki 150.

  This puts me into spasms.

  –Did he join an MC? I ask. I can see it—six guys with ZZ Top beards and Bill bringing up the rear, riding sweep on his Vespa, shouting, Prego! Mi scusi, signore e signori!

  George A. goes down on his knees and pounds the earth with flat hands.

  –Remember the time he called to tell us he was going to Mexico?

  –You mean South of the Border, don’t you? I say.

  –No, he was going to buy a hog, he said, and head down to this little town on the Pacific Coast where he could drink Bohemias and eat ceviche and live like a king on a buck or two a day.

  –San Blas, wasn’t it? I seem to recall the travel brochure said the bulldogs there have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft-boiled eggs.

  George A.’s smile is happy now. He’s on the up seat of the seesaw.

  –You remember?

  –I remember, I say.

  –That was pretty funny.

  –You were crying like a baby.

  –No, I wasn’t. Was I?

  –Yeah, you were, buddy.

  George A.’s expression is incredulous, unresentful, eleven years old.

  –Well, it seems funny now.

  –If you say so.

  –I’ve got to take a leak. You coming in?

  –Right behind you.

  Through the kitchen and once more down the hallway, I can hear the Dimitri Tiomkin sound track swelling in the den, and the memory—the way George A.’s transformed it—is curious and troubling. Or is it me who misremembers?

  I will kill you, motherfucker!

  Not if I kill you first!

  Me screaming. Bill screaming back from Underground Atlanta. Fetal on the floor, George A., who, six years later, laughs and shakes his head, remembering it fondly.

  And is this how the hostages at the Kreditbanken in Norrmalmstorg in Stockholm ended up in court testifying on behalf of their oppressors? If you consent to your own violation and are of one heart and mind with your oppressors, you cast a magic spell that turns them into Friends, Protectors, Parents even as they press the muzzle to your temple or threaten to abandon you forever.

  And is what George A. did with Bill what I’m doing here tonight, consenting to my dispossession by my family—to Bill’s theft of the shotgun, and Margaret’s complicity, and George A.’s acquisition of my dearest childhood treasure—in order to preserve the hologram of Family?

  The night is speeding up and blurring. In the den, Margaret and Imogen are deep into the movie.

  –Watch with us, says Margaret, patting the sofa cushion and lifting the throw to share it with me.

  –Here, you’ll need these . . .

  Imogen offers me the Kleenex.

  –Good one, I say.

  Continuing to stand, I eye the screen reluctantly, having never really liked the movie.

  It’s the moment on the bridge when Uncle Billy’s lost the money and George has wrecked the car and could be facing prison, he who once upon a time planned to build things and explore—to see Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Coliseum. Only, his father dies, his family needs him, so George takes the shabby little office job he never really wanted, and when Harry’s turn comes George takes Harry’s turn as well so Harry can fulfill his dream and do research—he’s such a genius at it—and become a hero pilot and save those soldiers on the transports. And George, see, George can’t say It’s my turn, Harry, can’t say, It’s my turn and I want it, his candle flame is snuffed so Harry’s can burn brighter. George gives up every dream he’s ever had for others—for his family, for his dad and Harry and Mary and the children, for the townsfolk and the nation—and now at the end of that long train of unselfishness and self-betrayal he’s arrived on the snowy bridge at midnight, he’s staring down at the black water and he jumps and what happens? Presto chango, God sends an angel down to pull him from the water, the sound track swells, the movie turns to magic, the spell is cast and everybody’s reaching for the Kleenex, and there I am, tearing up like Imogen and Margaret—Goddamn it, Im, pass the fucking Kleenex—because I want to believe it, too, that George, in the hour of his lonely d
eath, ends up surrounded by his loving family and neighbors, all those he put before him, to whom he gave away the shotgun of his power, whose idiocracies he made more precious than his own, and they sing him “Auld Lang Syne” and shower him with gratitude and love and money.

  And there’s the spell, right there on screen, Capra’s captured it forever, only Capra’s in the spell he’s showing. The last real action in the movie is George in despair and going in the water and the rest is magic, the hologram that’s playing in George Bailey’s mind as he’s under the black water being swept downriver, dying.

  –Where you going? Margaret asks me.

  –Sorry, you guys watch. I can’t really stand this movie.

  –How can you not like it?

  –Because the whole thing strikes me as a crock, Im, a giant glowing ad for self-betrayal. Doesn’t George jump and drown and end up at the coroner’s with a toe tag? Doesn’t Potter keep the money? Don’t Mary and the children lose the house and have to soldier on without him? Don’t they blame George for being such a selfish coward? George sells himself out over and over, giving up his dreams for others, and he ends up in despair and jumps and dies. The End. The rest is just an Owl Creek occurrence.

  I’m overheated here, I admit it, but it’s been a long night, I’ve had a lot to drink, I’m feeling pretty disinhibited to tell the truth, like Fuck it.

  Margaret and Imogen look at me in the same way, startled by my vehemence, my perverse misconstruction, as if to say, Who can see It’s A Wonderful Life that way? Why turn good things into bad ones? George Bailey is a good man. Who are you? Why are you so angry?

  And the worst part is, I’m not sure they aren’t right. I’m not sure I don’t agree with them. Maybe that’s why the voice inside my head says I’m a Bad! Mean! Selfish! person. The voice is going strong now. And the night is speeding up and blurring and I’ve been here before, and I’m heading down the hallway, I don’t know where I’m going. Somewhere else though, not here, I can’t stay here, I need to leave, it’s over. What is? This whole thing. What whole thing? Our family. Fuck me. Is that what this is? It is. It’s midnight. We’ve struck the iceberg; I have. I’m heading for the lifeboat and no one else is coming.