Halfway Down the Stairs

by Gary A Braunbeck

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  —Snoozeville, right? Yet somehow those 5 basic, dreary, mind-numbing chords—chords you could teach a genetically-retarded monkey to play—mange to give body, soul, shame, and voice to the pain of the saddest songs ever … and wouldn’t you know, it was Dad’s favorite?

  Of course you know that, you know damn near everything about good old Dad, you know too goddamned much about good old Dad—Christ knows he talked enough during those last few days, lying there in his bed with a bedpan under his ass and a catheter running up into his urethra, trickling bloody urine into a plastic bag. Sometimes he’d give you a half-hearted smile, but he wasn’t the same man, the one who used to berate, humiliate, and mock you, the man who could always find fault in everything you did, who knew just the right thing to say to make your accomplishments seem inconsequential in everyone’s eyes including your own, who could diminish you with less effort than it took to pick his nose; no, this wasn’t the same man at all. This was just a sick old bastard making a last-ditch effort to get his bad-tempered ass into heaven.

  “Have you heard this song before?” asks Unspoiled, staring at you with a curious intensity that goddammit reminds you of good old Dad toward the end.

  You’d take him to the county cemetery where his parents and sister were buried, and as he sat there in his wheelchair staring at their headstones, you’d study his face and see him wondering if there was something that he’d missed, something that he could have done to spend a little more time with them, to save them from feeling alone and frightened during their last few days of life, maybe even wishing that one or all of them could still be here to comfort him and for a little while get his mind off the disease that was now counting the clock that told of the time he had left—you don’t know, maybe he came here to study their graves the same way he’d study his own face in a mirror, naked and defenseless. Why won’t you look at me and Mom that way? you’d wonder. We have some time left—not much, but some—and maybe we could repair some things—okay, okay, okay, be realistic—if not repair, then at least spackle over some of the cracks so that when we drop the bag of meat that used to be you into the dirt we might feel some kind of loss instead of relief. Is that too much to ask at this point?

  “Did you know,” says Unspoiled, “that this song has actually been around for centuries, in dozens—maybe even hundreds—of variations?”

  You nod your head. “Actually, yeah … I did know that.” Because good old Dad, he’d told you about that dozens—maybe even hundreds—of times … when he wasn’t a zombie.

  He’d sit for long hours in front of his bedroom window, staring out at the same neighborhood he’d known for most of his life, searching for something hidden, something unnoticed until now, something that would reveal whatever secrets there were to be revealed. Close by, Mom and you waited for him to complete this final voyage into himself, hoping the old emotional wounds might at last heal so that he would maybe maybe maybe pleaseGod just once turn and smile over his shoulder, telling the two of without the burden of words that he’d returned from this last nightmare, this final batch of self-recriminations that had made him a sadistic stranger to you for too long; and now, now that he was returned to you for however brief a time, you would go outside into the warm spring light, your mother and you each holding one of his hands, and you would thank the day for its blessings as it fell into twilight, and you would remain there, in shadows, as before, hands joined. I don’t even feel sick, were among some of the last things he said, along with, What I wouldn’t give for a hamburger and cold beer right about now. And of all Final Requests, he asked you to get out your old guitar and play that fucking song for him because, he said, it helped him to relax, to breathe easier, to fall asleep the way a man ought to fall asleep—no drugs, nosiree; just a good, hard-working man falling asleep because the good, hard work took it out of him today. He would say that the Duke, the Duke never took to pills or liquor to fall asleep in his movies. The Duke was a Man, a Man’s Man, and boy wouldn’t it be nice to just once have the kind of dream that the Duke must’ve had when his head hit the pillow at night, the kind of dream only a strong, solid, all-American Man’s Man dreamed? Maybe I’ll have it tonight, he said to you that last night as you strummed those 5 horrible chords on that shabby guitar you’d bought second-hand from a pawn shop when you were twelve; maybe tonight I’ll dream John Wayne’s dream.

  Part of you wanted to smash that guitar to pieces right there and then, go all Pete Townshend on the thing and scream Don’t you remember his last movie, Dad? The Duke, your Man’s Man, was a goddamn walking corpse, being eaten away bit by bit from the bottom of his bowels by the same thing that’s gobbling up your guts—fuck! He spent most of that movie fractured on Laudanum, that’s how he went to sleep, but you don’t remember that, do you? No—all you remember is that Jimmy Stewart told the Duke it was not the way he’d choose to go out, and that the Duke, your Man’s Man, the great All-American Cowboy, he took Stewart’s advice and went out in a blaze of glory, guns blasting away and bad guys dropping all around, blood and bodies littering the saloon floor, and you sure as hell aren’t going out that way, are you, Dad?

  No, he sure as hell didn’t. But that doesn’t have to mean you’ll go out the same way, his son who was such a private embarrassment to him; his son who never walked into the sunset with his best girl at his side; his son who never counted off twenty paces with a cheating gambler in the street and before whirling around and putting the scoundrel down with a quick, single, justified shot; his son who never rode high in the saddle or talked real slow and deliberate or strolled with the swagger of a Real Man who made decisions and stuck with them out there where the tumbleweeds blew across silent, dusty streets where the womenfolk and children could walk in safety once again, knowing it was Real Man who’d done what needed doing.

  Hey, Dad, look at those bad guys fall. Look what I decided to do. Am I a Man in your eyes now? Am I worthy to sleep the sleep of the Just, of the Heroic? Am I worthy to dream John Wayne’s dream?

  Unspoiled leans her head to the side a little and says your name again. “Are you all right?”

  “I was hoping for, you know, the other meeting that was supposed to—”

  She grabs your hand as she pushes the door open. “Oh, this will be much better than one of those dreary meetings. Those meetings are for everyone.” She pulls you into the room. “This, tonight, is just for unfortunate rakes—just one, actually. This is just for you.”

  You stare at her, hoping her crazy won’t explode and get all over you. “Imagine what that means to me.” What the hell is that supposed to mean? You have no idea, but it’s too late to take it back.

  She laughs and pulls you into the room. It’s mostly dark except for one bright circle of light shining down onto the middle of the floor; in the center of the circle is a folding chair. She leads you there, pushes you down, and kisses the top of your head.

  “Now don’t you move. We went through an awful lot of trouble to put this show together.”

  Before you say anything, she’s gone—snap!—into the shadows. You stand up and walk back to the door, but it isn’t there any longer. Okay, okay, okay—maybe you just lost your bearings, that has to be it, you’re just a little confused because of Things in your trunk and the unbroken seal on the bottle and the thoughts and pictures in your head, that has to be it, you’re just … shit—you’re probably just losing it, finally, just like everyone said you would someday. You stick out your arms and start feeling around the walls, doing your best Helen Keller to find the door because it has to be here someplace but after a minute or two you find nothing and you’re even more confused than you were before you stood up, so you go back to the chair and you just sit because you don’t know what else to do.

  The sound of an old-fashioned projec
tor clatters to life somewhere behind you, and your gaze follows the beam of light to the far wall where someone—Unspoiled, maybe?—has pulled down a screen, and you watch as a grainy black-and-white home movie comes into focus and shows you a scene that you damn well took place dozens of times in your youth but could not possibly have been filmed because your family never had the money to afford a home-movie camera.

  You see a variation of yourself—so much younger but only a little stronger than the man he eventually became; he’s standing in the corner of a room, head down, studying his feet as if expecting some great revelation to come thundering up from the earth’s core and show him a Great Truth that will set his spirit free.

  Sitting a few feet away in his favorite chair, good old Dad is pointing at the young man who would have to settle for becoming you; he’s got a beer in his hand and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

  A conversation repeated so many times and with so few variations it has surpassed the realm of mantra and become the refrain of the inharmonious tune that has been and is your life.

  “A man makes a decision and he sticks with it, boy.”

  “Yessir.”

  “A man does what he says he’ll do. No more, no less.”

  “Yessir.”

  “How old are you now?”

  Christ, you really didn’t remember, did you? you think now. “Twenty-three, sir.”

  “Twenty-three, and what have you got to show for it?”

  A decent-enough music career—playing clubs, upscale restaurants, sometime getting enough put aside for some studio time, a couple of self-produced albums selling okay for digital download on some minor music sites. Friends. A place of my own. “I think I’ve got a lot to show for it.”

  “You ain’t famous, now, are you? I mean, what’s the point of doing what you do if all you’re gonna settle for is being small-time? A big fish in a little pond?”

  “I like my life.”

  “You’re weak, boy. A real man, when he makes a decision to do something, he does it. Your problem is you never decided to be anything more than second-rate because you ain’t got the guts to be a real man and decide to be something more.”

  Why didn’t you just say you were ashamed of me? I could’ve worked with that. “I thought you’d be pleased that I make a decent living at something I love to do.”

  “Don’t talk to me about doing something you love. Doing something you love don’t get you shit in the long run. It just makes you weak, makes you a fellah who’s happy to settle for something. Hell, the Duke never settled in any of his movies. I thought you’d learn something from you and me watching all his movies when you was a kid. The Duke’s movies, they taught good lessons. Taught you how to be a man.”

  Still looking down at the floor, waiting for revelations to thunder. “Because when he made a decision he always stuck with it.”

  “Goddamn right he stuck with it. Duke always went out a winner, a hero, a man you could respect. Because he knew, the Duke did. A real man, he makes a decision and sticks with it.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Does what he says he’ll do, no more, no less.”

  “Yessir.”

  The film finishes, the light goes out, and the projector shuts off. Deep down in your bowels, you feel the need churning. Leave. Open the bottle. Do it. Take the Things and just do it. Don’t go out like good old dad. Don’t go out like the Duke. Christ, it hurts! If someone had jammed a knife-blade entwined with barbed-wire into your stomach and twisted it, it wouldn’t hurt as much as this need.

  “Goddammit,” you whisper to yourself. “I want a drink. I want a drink. Just one. One drink. That’s all.”

  The unseen guitar begins playing again, the same 5 chords, and each chord snarls into your head and your balls like a diamond-tipped drill. You want to get up and get the hell out of the room—and if you can’t find the door, you’ll beat a goddamn hole into the wall with your bare fists (just like the Duke would do, comes the echo of a voice that sounds like your own), you’ll kick and claw and chew your way out if you have to, you’ll—

  —Unspoiled appears as the screen is raised up. She’s sitting on a stage several feet off the floor. Her body is all wrapped up in a white sheet of some kind, its material thicker than something made from cotton; it looks almost like a tarp. Only her face and one hand are visible.

  The music from the guitar fills the room, a sentient force, and as you look into Unspoiled’s eyes you can feel her grief, even from this distance. She smiles at you, a smile that bespeaks an errant wish—that a young woman might never grow old, never lose the radiance that kissed her face when a suitor came to call, never see her beauty dissolve little by little in the unflattering sunlight of each morning, and never know a day when the scent of fresh roses from an admirer did not fill her rooms; as she begins to sing, you stare into her eyes, eyes with sad dark places around them that tell you she has often hid behind a scrim of gaiety to conceal a lonely heart, and both she and her song become every night you’ve sat isolated and alone, wishing for the warm hand of a lover to hold in your own as autumn dimmed into winter and youth turned to look at you over its shoulder and smile farewell.

  “When I was a young girl, I used to seek pleasure

  When I was a young girl, I used to drink ale.

  Right out of an alehouse down into the jailhouse,

  Right out of the barroom down to my grave.”

  As she sings other forms move forward from the shadows; a knight in the remains of ruined armor, his sword in one hand, his bent and twisted visor in the other; behind him comes a cowboy, classic and tall, spurs jangling with each step, holding his stained and tattered hat in wind-burnt hands; an older woman dressed in mourning black; a group of soldiers in uniforms crisp and funereal, carrying the shroud-covered form of a fallen comrade; the words each of them sing are different but the melody—the morbid, heartsick, soul-beaten melody—remains the same; it doesn’t matter if Unspoiled is singing of one morning in May or the soldiers are singing of Saint James’ Hospital or if the knight sings of the maiden fair who passed on her physical ruin to him under the guise of love; it doesn’t matter a damn if it’s a cowboy dying in the street or a young woman perishing alone in the countryside; it doesn’t matter if it’s a soldier who got a dose from a passing lady of the night or a mother discovering her prodigal daughter by the side of the road; it doesn’t matter how the words are changed or the rhythm is ever-so-slightly altered or even if the words are in English, it doesn’t matter if it’s a bad girl’s lament or a sorrowful young girl cut down in her prime or if she’s riding on horseback or the man is a soldier loyal and true or the cowboy knows that he’s done wrong and so must pay penance; it doesn’t matter if the pipes and fifes play or if anyone bangs the drum slowly; all of them eventually arrive at the same place: Send for the preacher to come and pray for me/Send for the doctor to heal up my wounds/For my poor head is achin'/my sad heart is breakin/My body's salivated and I know I must die/Hell is my fate/I’m a-feared I must die/There goes an unfortunate lad to his home/I’m shot in the breast and I’m dyin’ today/All gone to the round-up/The Cowboy was dead/For I know I must die/die/die/die/die ….

  The lights snap to black and the figures on the stage are gone, as is the music. The ghosts have sang their ballad, they have revealed the truth that a young man once, while staring at the floor, wished would thunder up from the core of the world and set his spirit free.

  You feel a hand on your shoulder, and look up into Unspoiled’s dimming eyes.

  “Do you understand now?” she asks.

  “It doesn’t matter,” you say. “It doesn’t matter if your intentions were good. It doesn’t matter if your heart was true. It doesn’t matter if you understood right from wrong.”

  “Yes …” Her voice is filled with bliss.

  “It doesn’t matter if you loved well or not, if you kept that love or lost it, it doesn’t matter. You—all of you—all of us—the whole goddamned br
oken world—it doesn’t matter, because we can’t help but be what we are, and what we are, in one way or another, will end us before we’re ready, before we can be forgiven, before we can feel worthy of the life that is inside and around us.”

  “Yes …” Her voice is now Bliss itself.

  “None of us will ever measure up,” you say, rising to your feet, feeling tall and proud and strong. You smile at her, running your rough hands through the curls of her hair.

  “Am I your best gal?” she asks.

  “Always by my side.”

  “It’s hard, to be a man.”

  “To be a man means you make a decision and stick with it.” When had you left the building and gotten back into your car? When had you driven here, to this restaurant/bar full of people who have no idea that it all means nothing?

  You raise the bottle to your lips and drink deeply of the whiskey, just the Duke would, whether or not the streets of Laredo waited outside the saloon doors or not. The bad guys were everywhere and always would be.

  Hey, Mom, Hey, Dad, look at me standing proud.

  You climb down off your horse and pull the Things from the saddlebag. You rack a round into the shotgun, and chamber rounds into the four pistols. No hesitation, no doubts.

  For I am a lonely cowboy, and I know I’ve done wrong …

  Jimmy Stewart told the Duke he wouldn’t want to go out that way, and the Duke didn’t, but good old Dad couldn’t lay claim to a blaze of glory at the end, could he? No, he couldn’t.

  But you can.

  You can be a Man; a Man’s Man who doesn’t make his mark with guitar strings and meaningless words in best-forgotten songs.

  Time to be a Man.

  You push open the doors to the saloon.

  Hey, Dad—look at the bad guys fall!