After morning Mass, a long day at All Souls School began. The Sisters of Notre Dame, in starched bibs and wimples, shepherded the girls through their lessons in mathematics, history, and religion. The nuns’ bodies were hidden under layers of black wool, and long rosary beads swayed from their belts as they walked between rows of desks.
After school, Donna retreated to the bedroom she shared with her little sister Joanie. She played her parents’ copy of the Warsaw Concerto on her child’s record player and choreographed elaborate dances to the swelling, serious music. Time fell away; she was so engrossed in her body’s ecstatic movements. Her room became a castle in the air. Her body was a ship adrift on the wind, her hair a spinning halo of light. She could stretch out, guided by the music, finally released from the confines of the day.
One afternoon, Donna sat at her dressing table and wrote a story describing what it might feel like to kiss a boy. She dipped her fountain pen in peacock-blue ink and imagined her lips touching the mouth of a boy she knew. Warmth spread through her like she was stepping into a bath. She pictured the boy’s pale cheeks and dark eyelashes and her heart began to pound. She realized that what she was doing was wrong; she was having impure thoughts. So she tipped her bottle of ink over the whole page until a deep wet stain eclipsed her words, and put the ink bottle away. The lid on the bottle was loose and ink soaked the bottom of the drawer, the blot a reminder of her sin.
Her daddy was a calm and quiet man, tall and handsome with bright blue eyes. He was raised on a farm but held his body with the upright posture of a gentleman. He wanted nothing more after a long day at work than to read the newspaper undisturbed, reclining in his chair. But before he settled in for the evening, he had to address his wife’s long list of daily grievances. She described the girls’ noisy fights, the disrespectful, mouthy answers they gave her, and the messes left behind by their hands. He would walk heavily upstairs, unhooking his belt, and call out his daughters’ names. Discipline was his duty as a father. Donna would hide in her closet and watch him spank Joanie through the slats of the door. Watching her little sister’s red crying face was worse than knowing her own spanking was coming next.
Other times, a spanking would come from nowhere, a terrible reminder of the price of breaking a rule. One night, behind the closed door of her room, Donna taught herself to braid her doll’s hair. After struggling for what seemed like hours, she had a breakthrough and her hands just seemed to know the right rhythm. After dozens of feeble tries, the code was cracked. She held the slippery golden ends of three twists and tried to keep them from unraveling. She distantly heard her mother calling her down to dinner, but she ignored her. She knew that if she stopped now, she would forget how to braid. She had to keep going so she would always remember. Her father came stomping upstairs and threw her door open. Before she knew what was happening, he was jerking her up by her arm and striking her. He bent her over his lap and spanked her until she couldn’t breathe.
At the dinner table, she gasped and shook while her brother and sisters stared at their plates in silence. Her mother told her she didn’t need to help with the dishes, which was as close to a comforting word as she was going to get. Once safely back in her room with her blanket over her face, Donna cried in rage. She tried to think of Mother Mary laying a comforting hand on her head, but she couldn’t help it: She hated her father, and her mother, and everyone. Then her daddy came to her and put his big hand on her head. She couldn’t help but love him, a wide warm feeling of forgiveness and repair spreading through her.
The taxi ride from the airport in Jacksonville to the Mayo Clinic should have been familiar. We were nearly retracing the route my school bus took thirty years ago, but freeways and strip malls had taken root where trees and swampland had once thrived. The curve of the waterway under the concrete bridge and the smell of pine and saltwater were the only hints of the seaside hippie town of my childhood.
I arrived at the massive medical complex during the hottest part of a June afternoon, after flying all night from California. The land around the hospital was as painfully landscaped as the neighboring golf courses, and the grand foyer, visible through enormous windows, was very like the fancy hotels where I usually visited my uncle.
Gregg and I had rarely spent time alone and never under such difficult circumstances. I was slow to learn that waiting for an invitation to visit him didn’t work, and if he didn’t call, it didn’t mean he didn’t want to see me. I was in my thirties before I started reaching out to him, and I was surprised by how he welcomed me. Soon we were closer than we had ever been. Still, when I offered to help him after his liver transplant, it was his turn to be surprised. I told him I was grateful for the chance to show him my love. Being near Gregg made me feel closer to my father, and I hoped it did the same for him. He had waited for a liver for six months, and when it finally came, I got on a plane.
I found him asleep in a dark room, surrounded by blinking machines. He looked impossibly healthy and handsome given all he had just gone through. I settled on a stiff couch under the shaded window. A fishing show was playing mutely on TV, glowing with gloomy underwater light. I was half watching a group of men grappling with a small shark when Gregg suddenly spoke.
“My brother and I used to watch them catch sharks from the pier at night. They used a chain and a big hook.”
I felt the zinging thrill of hearing his low, familiar voice.
“Hi!” I said, but he kept looking at the screen. I watched his face and waited for him to say more. After a while, I asked, “How old were you?”
He turned his dreamy eyes to me and said, “I don’t know. Nine or ten.”
“You must have just moved to Daytona, if you were nine,” I said, but he closed his eyes. I watched the TV with new interest. A large pink-skinned man in a green vest leaned over the edge of his boat, searching the water for another flash of silver skin.
As Gregg floated away on a cloud of morphine, I could see him as a child walking with his big brother across Atlantic Avenue, both in rolled-up jeans, hands in their pockets, their white T-shirts glowing in the darkness.
The dim moonlight rode the endless ocean and lit the beach with an eerie gleam that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Duane and Gregg climbed the steps to the wooden pier that stretched out into slowly churning water. They walked until they were near the dock’s end, and saw two men heave a baited hook at the end of a chain into the water. Another man scooped chum from a bucket and tossed it over the edge of the dock.
A cooler sat behind the fishermen, and Duane called to them once they were close enough to be heard. “Hey, sir! Can we have a beer?” Gregg watched, amazed, as the man with the bucket glanced up, smiled, and tossed Duane a can without a word. Duane pulled a church key out of his pocket and pushed two small triangular holes into the lid with a quick turn of his wrist and handed Gregg the open can like a dare. “Drink up, Baybro.” They passed the can between them, sipping the cold and sour brew until their bodies felt heavy and odd. Suddenly three men jerked forward, clutching the chain that thumped against the dock’s edge. They tugged hand over hand, pulling up a writhing shadow until it slapped heavily against the boards. The boys leaned in and watched the little sand shark twist desperately, skin luminous and jaw bleeding. Duane smiled and stepped a little closer.
As Jerry drove down A1A beyond St. Augustine, the oaks that shaded the road thinned then disappeared completely as the terrain became low-rolling and sandy. Little dunes and curtains of saw grass parted for quick glimpses of blue water. At Flagler Beach, rough wooden steps bleached gray in the salt air led down from the road to the sand, and the sun drifted higher in the sky with every mile. Duane shoved Gregg away from his window, laughing, trying to block him from their first view of the Atlantic. The interminable drive from Nashville was almost over.
Daytona Beach shimmered ahead of them like a mirage. Shingled houses and cinder-block bungalows gave way to a steady stream of motels with names from lazy daydreams: the Ka
sbah, the Sahara, the Tangier, and the Miramar Motel. The Sandpiper, the Sea Horse, the Thunderbird, Blue Heaven. The Nomad, the Castaway, and Memory Lane Motel. Motor inns wrapped their futuristic curves around asphalt parking lots, and stucco cabanas with red tiled roofs nested in the dunes. Thousands of little bedrooms faced the sea, waiting to be filled.
Daytona was one of the few places in the world where driving on a beach was legal, and cars cruised slowly ocean-side, night and day. The hard-packed sand was ideal for the speed trials and stock car races held there since the turn of the century, long before the sprawling speedway was built. The boys whooped when Jerry pointed their car down a concrete ramp and drove onto the sand. Motorcycles and curvy Chevrolets rolled by them and fishermen stood hip-deep, casting out their lines. Surfers paddled out to the break. It was February when the Allmans arrived, and the Ferris wheel stood still above a silent, shuttered arcade. Bumper cars sat parked in a clump beneath a painted canopy. The Sky Lift’s bright gondolas hung empty on cables a hundred feet above the Main Street Pier. The boys begged to stop, but Jerry told them to sit still and calm down. There would be plenty of time to explore. Just you wait, she said. When summer came, their new home would be a holiday paradise: the Land of 2,000 Cottages on the World’s Most Famous Beach.
They lived for a while in a first-floor rental on the beach in the center of the tourist district. It was furnished and shabby, but the view of the water made up for everything. Jerry watched the sun rise from a screened porch and dipped in the ocean every morning before the boys woke up. She swam until the icy water felt hot against her skin. It was almost enough to shock the sad right out of her body.
Within a few short weeks of their arrival, she was as busy as she had ever been, keeping books for Mr. Hicks’s Amoco station and for a real estate agent in a nearby storefront. She started to plan her future. She figured she would be able to buy a house of her own in a year or less, if she planned well. Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man. She had always loved the line of that poem, and if she needed a motto, that would be it. She wanted a place no one could take from her, a place to raise her boys without interference. Her traveling days were done.
In the summertime, they moved to another rented house, a few miles south in a sparsely developed neighborhood called the Shores. Dense patches of primordial woods surrounded their little concrete bungalow on Cardinal Boulevard, but rows of identical homes were being raised fast in spaces cleared by a local developer. Still, it had a wild feeling, and her boss asked her why she was moving “way out there.”
The boys were old enough to mind themselves as far as Jerry was concerned, and after Castle Heights, their sudden freedom shocked them. It wasn’t as much fun as they thought it would be. They missed their friends in Nashville, their cousins and uncles, and there wasn’t a lot to keep them busy. Their house was across Atlantic Avenue from the beach, but you could only spend so long staring at the sea. It was lonely. At night the buzzing cicadas and the thrum of waves lulled them to sleep in blackness so thick Duane could close his eyes, then open them and see no difference in the dark. They woke up alone, left to dress and pour cereal for themselves, and the days were long and hard to fill. They walked the beach and dug deep holes in the sand. They listened to the radio and waited for Mama to come home at lunch and again at dinner.
It was a great relief when cousin Jo Jane came to visit for the summer, in her dual role of playmate and babysitter. She was fifteen years old now. Duane and Gregg were eleven and ten. Jerry had empowered her to rule the roost, but she also told her firmly never to challenge Duane. If he got mad or refused to do something, Jo Jane should just leave him be. There was no sense fighting with him—she would never win, and his temper was explosive. Jo Jane understood. She had terrible fights with her mom herself, which she always regretted and apologized for. It was one of the reasons she loved escaping to her aunt’s home. Aunt Jerry was more relaxed and open than her sister Janie, not to say Jerry couldn’t flare up. She was so tired most of the time, her fuse could be pretty short, but she treated Jo Jane like a friend and it made her feel very grown-up.
Jo Jane made tuna salad sandwiches for their lunch. She ironed the long-sleeved cotton shirts Duane wore every day, buttoned at his wrists and tucked into belted jeans. He was fussy about wrinkles. Gregg was usually stripped to the waist in cutoff shorts and ready for the beach, but Duane had to be careful of his fair skin. Gregg had to carry him home swept up in his arms like Scarlett O’Hara once, after the bottoms of Duane’s feet scalded while he napped on the sand.
The three cousins rode bikes up and down the beach, speeding past old ladies in cat-eye glasses sunning themselves on lawn chairs. Gregg bodysurfed while Jo Jane and Duane sat and talked, their backs resting against the little dunes that blocked the wind. Teenage girls with bouffant hairdos covered by gauzy scarves wandered slowly past the lifeguards. Jo Jane had her own, mostly make-believe romance with a lifeguard farther down the beach, but Duane and Gregg would frown fiercely at her if she stopped to talk to him while they were around. They’d start shoving each other to create a distraction, which would often turn into a real fight. She’d have to drag Duane off Gregg’s curled-up body and separate them until Jerry came home. They didn’t like sharing Jo Jane with anybody.
They took a city bus to the boardwalk, where the beach was crowded with bright towels and striped umbrellas stuck in the sand, teenagers thick on the ground. It was heaven. Jo Jane found “Yakety Yak” on the jukebox at the arcade and they played Skee-Ball. Duane hustled the boy who worked the concessions to help Jo Jane win a stuffed lion. She never figured out what he said to the kid, but Duane came sauntering back to her with a wink and a long ribbon of extra cardboard tickets.
In the hottest part of the afternoon, they’d stop in Metz’s Drugstore and pick through racks of comics and MAD magazines, sitting cross-legged on the cold floor and basking in the air-conditioning. Finally home, they listened to Top 40 radio and sang, miming “Twilight Time” by the Platters and “Little Star” by the Elegants. Duane always got to be Elvis Presley and Gregg was Ricky Nelson. Jo Jane was every girl singer, but she loved being Patti Page best.
When Jerry came home, she’d change into her swimsuit and short shorts right away. The kids would beg for burgers, and she’d drive them back to the strip in her yellow convertible with the top down. “Come with me to the Kasbah and we’ll make beautiful music together!” the kids shouted in goofy accents just like the radio announcer did each time they cruised by the Kasbah Hotel on their way to Steak ’n Shake or Krystal for hamburgers.
One evening on their way home from dinner, Jerry told them she needed to stop by Amoco. While they sat out by the pumps in the backseat, Mr. Hicks strolled over. He leaned in and said, “You boys better mind your mama. She can send you right back to military school just as easy as she pulled you out, and don’t you forget it.” It took everything Duane had not to push his face in. He balled his hands into fists in the pockets of his windbreaker and mumbled, “Yes sir,” along with Gregg. Jo Jane scowled after Mr. Hicks and stretched her arms around the boys, pulling them toward her in a protective clutch. The threat of being sent back never completely went away.
On one of the last mornings of Jo Jane’s Daytona visit, Jerry woke them before dawn for a sunrise breakfast on the beach. She said summer would be over soon and they had to seize the day. They loaded the car with a charcoal grill and grocery bag and drove across the road to the sand. Jerry scrambled eggs over dim coals while the darkness slowly lightened, but the sky stayed an ominous shade of gray and it started to drizzle. Jerry laughed at the sky with her wet palms raised and told the three shivering kids to hang in there. They sat wrapped in damp beach towels with their teeth chattering, mostly miserable, while she made milky coffee for them, but then the rain came down hard and the wind started gusting. Jerry laughed about rain getting in the scrambled eggs.
The boys began the school year at R. J. Longstreet Elementary Sc
hool, a few miles down Peninsula Avenue. They needed new clothes before classes started. Nice clothes were a real point of pride for them. Jerry didn’t have time to take the boys shopping for school clothes, so she called their neighbor Mr. Torme. He worked in the boys’ department at Doby’s Clothing Store on Beach Street. Jerry gave Torme her shopping list over the phone and told him when to expect Duane and Gregg. She said, “Call me if they don’t make it,” and gave the boys cab fare and instructions. She told them they had damn well better mind Mr. Torme. Once Duane and Gregg had all the socks and underwear on their mama’s list, they took their time, slowly sifting through piles of folded slacks and racks of dress shirts. In dressing rooms behind swinging saloon doors, they tried on stiff blue jeans and plaid shirts, T-shirts with stripes, and windbreakers. Back home, Duane came out of their bedroom wearing a new burgundy smoking jacket made out of satin with a shawl collar and deep pockets, belted around his waist. He sauntered into the living room pretending to smoke an invisible pipe. His mama sure yelled her head off, but he got to keep it anyway.
By their second year in Daytona Beach Shores, a house was being built for them in a grid of modern ranch-style homes. Their plot was on a dirt road spanning three blocks from the ocean to the river. Jerry modified the builders’ plans. She liked the slanted roof and walls of windows, but she asked for the main living space to be left open. The builder had planned walls where windows should be, never considering the morning light. She wanted her kitchen rearranged so her sink and counter would face the backyard and imagined watching her boys play outside the window while she cooked. Their backyard was deep and shaded by a big tree and she wanted to see it.
Please Be with Me: A Song for My Father, Duane Allman Page 6