Well, here we are again. Time for another chapter of my memoir
Making Sh*t Up: An Improvised Life. This is most definitely not the feel-good, holiday chapter. (I'm actually pretty sure there is no holiday chapter in my book. There
is a chapter about the time I accidentally creeped out an elderly movie star; you'll just have to wait for it.) Anyway, I have placed it here for your entertainment and/or edification. If you'd like to make a contribution to the continued existence of this space, and this book (and it's author), you can do that
right here. And away we go...
Chapter Nine
Dad Before The End
One of the last surviving photographs of John Larry Brantley. Or, Dad.
Earlier in this book, I made a
rather harsh statement. I said that my dad was an asshole. (Note: if you think I’m about to retract that statement and get all
redeemy and forgivey, you might want to skip this next bit. Later on I’m going
to talk about how I was once convinced that a rabid beast was loose in my house.
Skip to that, it’s funny.) (Additional note: I am well aware that “redeemy” and
‘forgivey” are not actual words. Except they are now, because I just wrote
them. If you Spelling Nazis don’t like it, suck it.) Here’s the thing: I’d
like to be able to trot out some platitudes and shit like, He did the best he could, or He
loved us in his own way. But judged against the other dads I knew from
childhood, even the bad ones, it was as though my father’s sole objective in
being a father was to aggressively put forth as little effort as possible into
raising his kids.
If some dads did things to “toughen
their kids up,” my dad translated
that into “crush your children’s
spirits.” I remember once when I was
nine or ten, I’d gone to the little store in our neighborhood and bought
something, and as part of my change I was given a crisp, brand new dollar bill.
I’d handled plenty of money, but this was the first pristine dollar I’d ever
seen. It had been printed that year, and looked as if nobody had ever touched
it. For whatever reason, I was fascinated with it.
I brought it home and showed
it to my dad. I wanted him to see how clean and new it was. He snatched it out
of my hand, wadded it up, and handed it back to me in a ball. Swear to God. I
was so stunned by this that I just stood there, hand outstretched, looking at
what used to be an unmarred dollar bill, that my dad had just fucked up in
front of me on purpose. And then I started
to cry. I remember asking, through racking sobs, “Why did you do that?” And his response was, “What’s the problem? It’s still a DOLLAR.” I never showed him
anything after that.
Still think I’m being too
harsh? Okay, let’s take a quick, unscientific poll: how many of you ever had
your dad abandon your family by trying to
fake his own death? Anyone? Anyone at all? I’m totally not making this shit
up. This happened when I was around six or seven, and we were out at Aunt
Lillian’s ranch for the weekend. My dad decided to go fishing all by his
lonesome, so he took the ranch truck and the little aluminum boat, and off he
went. When he didn’t come back by dinner, nobody thought much of it. When he
didn’t come back by morning, we all decided to go look for him.
I remember this episode less
for the drama surrounding my dad’s disappearance, and more for the fact that
this was the time I had a close encounter with a cactus. By the time somebody
in my family had figured out my dad was missing and had raised the alarm, I was
driven out to the scene by the river where cop cars and an ambulance and a
freaking dive team were all in the process of trying to locate my dad’s corpse.
I was more fascinated than scared and, as everybody kept assuring me that everything
was going to be alright, I decided to poke around the countryside. Remember
when I mentioned earlier that I wasn’t the most physically coordinated child
that ever shot out of the chute? I was up on a rise overlooking the river where
all the activity was taking place. I took a step, and a root from a mesquite
tree snagged my toe, causing me, in the words of my Mee Maw, to go “ass over tea kettle” down the hill,
picking up a goodly amount of speed along the way. Fortunately (sarcasm alert),
my fall was broken by a beautiful and bountiful patch of prickly pear cactus at
the bottom of the hill. I mean I landed right smack dab in the middle of that
shit. When I started screaming, it took the adults more than a few minutes to
figure out how to even get to me without getting their own selves fucked up.
I think I made the ambulance
guys happy, because they finally had something to do. And what they had to do
was spend the next hour or so removing cactus needles from every single part of
my body. A lot of the little bastards had snapped off underneath my clothing
and were embedded in my skin, so the heroic men of the Marble Falls Volunteer
Fire Station stripped me down to my tightie-whities, got out the tweezers and
the iodine, and went to work. It was as humiliating as it sounds. I have no
memory of my cute girl cousins being on the scene, but I may simply have
blocked that out. And at the end of it, I was told that my father was missing,
and presumed dead. (Note: much later in
life I was reunited with the prickly pear cactus, after I discovered that it
goes really great in a margarita. But that’s the only time we ever hang out.)
A few days later I went with
my Paw Paw to the sheriff’s office to collect my father’s belongings that had
been removed at the scene. The only things I remember collecting were my
father’s boots and a couple of fishing poles. There may have been some other
items, but that’s what sticks out for me. I also remember that my Paw Paw (this
is my mother’s father) seemed really pissed off, which I thought was strange,
because I was really sad, and I thought that’s what you’re supposed to be when
you lose a loved one, especially your dad. Had it somehow inconvenienced my Paw
Paw that Dad had drowned? Was it cutting into his TV time? Did my dad die owing
Paw Paw money?
I should have suspected that
something was hinky when we didn’t have a funeral. At least, I don’t remember
having a funeral. Or even a memorial service. What I do remember is that me and
my mom and baby sister moved into a trailer home on my grandparent’s farm, and
this was just fine with me. I loved the idea of living in a house with wheels.
Not to mention living near a giant garden, where I would shortly learn how to
use a machete. I was completely and utterly distracted by the endless
possibilities of life on the farm. I also learned never to mention my dad in
the company of my grandparents, as this was a recipe for stern looks and
brooding, uncomfortable silence. I played, I imagined, and I got on with my
life.
Six weeks to the day that my
father died, I was sitting in the toy box with my sister, watching television,
when the phone rang. Mom answered it and immediately went pale and shaky. When
she hung up the phone, she turned off the television and told us to come sit by
her. “Kids… um, your father is coming
home.”
My sister, who was maybe three at the time, didn’t register this as
an unusual thing at all to say about a dead man. I was a little quicker on the
draw. “I thought you said Daddy was
dead.”
“Well, honey… not exactly.”
“What’s ‘not exactly’ dead?”
“Well…, he, um…, he’s just been gone for a while. And now he’s back.”
That was terribly anti-climactic for my imagination, as for a brief
second I had seriously entertained the thought that my family had super powers.
Like coming back from the dead.
Then my sister and I were told
that Daddy was coming home real soon, and that we should be really happy about that, and not to ask
him any pesky questions like, Where the
fuck have you been for the last month and a half? Or anything like that.
Ever. And two nights later my dad pulled into the driveway of the farm - on a brand
new, black-as-night motorcycle. Any thoughts I had about asking him where he’d
been flew right out of my head. He had a motorcycle! Plus the fact that I had a
dad again! I remember being really happy, and my mom being really tense. And
later, when we walked over to my grandparent’s house as a complete family
again, it being really, really weird.
To say my grandfather disliked
my dad would be understatement bordering on criminality. It would be decades
after both my dad and grandfather were dead before I uncovered the truth about
this animosity, but we’re not there yet. We’re at the part where my dad comes
riding back into our lives on a motorcycle, and my Paw Paw decided that he
wanted to ride it. Paw Paw was one of those old-school cases who believed in
the sanctity of never seeking advice, counsel, or education about anything
before jumping right into it. Like how to ride a motorcycle. I’m not sure
exactly how he talked my dad into the idea. Maybe Dad was just willing to do
anything to get back in his father-in-law’s good graces (which even I could have told him was an exercise in
futility if he’d ever asked me, which he didn’t), and thought letting Paw Paw
take a brief joyride on the bike might smooth some of the edges.
Dad tried in vain to give Paw
Paw a brief tutorial on the physics of two-wheeled travel versus four, but my
grandfather waved him off. When he very shakily took off down the driveway,
motorcycle wobbling to and fro like a drunken sailor on shore leave, I had a
thought that amounted to, This isn’t
going to end well. Paw Paw was supposed to turn right on the farm-to-market
road where his property began, drive the two miles down to the state highway,
turn around, and come back. The whole trip should have taken less than ten
minutes. After twenty minutes, my dad and I jumped in the Impala and went
looking for him.
We found him in the gravel
driveway of the local Baptist church less than half a mile down the road. The
bike was lying on its side, and my Paw Paw looked like he had been dragged behind the bike for that half a mile.
His whole left side was bloody, and it was obvious from the condition of the
white gravel in the church parking lot (crimson streaks) that he’d spilled the
bike there. My dad was pissed about the bike (which really only had some
cosmetic damage), and my Paw Paw was embarrassed, and he dealt with his
embarrassment by getting pissed. Plus, he was pissed about my dad being pissed,
and my dad could see this, which pissed him
off even more. So, you know. It was a real bonding moment for the men of the
family.
Paw Paw was in no condition to
drive, and I was seven, so Dad hopped on the bike to go back to the farm and
get my mom and bring her back so she could drive the Impala with me and Paw Paw
back home. We were sitting in the Impala with the doors open. Actually, I was
standing up on the front bench seat next to Paw Paw, who was half in and half
out of the passenger seat, and probably in a mild state of shock, now that I
think about it. And then he said it was too hot and he reached over to the
ignition column of the car and turned the key in order to start the engine and
get the A/C going. Except the car was in gear and he was on the passenger side
and couldn’t depress the clutch, so when he turned the key the entire car
lurched forward, and I went ass-over-tea kettle (are we beginning to see a pattern
here?) into the backseat, where my forehead connected with one of the solid
steel and very sharp seatbelt buckles sticking straight up out of the bench. It
wasn’t serious, but I am a dedicated bleeder, and so less than five minutes
after my dad left and returned with my mom, he rolled up to discover both his
father-in-law and his son bleeding
all over the interior of the Impala. This naturally pissed him off, which Paw
Paw could see, and that pissed him
off, which caused Dad to…
You get the point.
Here, then, is the sordid and
somewhat ridiculous story of what really went down when my dad “drowned.” It’s
also a reminder that, if there is a planet in the universe where common sense
grows on trees, my people live farthest from that planet.
The cops knew right away that my dad had not drowned. In fact he left so many
obvious clues that he had simply abandoned the family, he might just as well
have hung a banner that said Fuck Off,
Y’all. I’m Out! In the first place,
the spot in the river where he’d deliberately capsized the boat was so shallow
that he would have had to stand on his head – for a long time – in order to
drown. Clue #2: everything that should have been in a boat loaded for fishing
(rods and reels, tackle box, bait, nets, etc.) was all still neatly arranged in
the back of the truck. Evidently he was in such a hurry to get away from us, he
couldn’t be bothered to correctly stage the scene. Or he was just lazy.
Probably both. But the loudest clue was
the boots. Remember, the boots my Paw Paw and I collected from the sheriff’s
office? Why in the hell would a man pull off his footwear to go fishing in a boat? Answer: he didn’t want to
leave footprints after he capsized the boat and waded across the river to the
other side, where he walked up the bank to a trail that led to a dirt road,
that eventually led to a county road, where he hitchhiked his way out of the
state, and out of our lives. Except that my father was a big man, well over
6’6” and pushing 280 pounds, so even barefoot he left a trail that a
near-sighted drunk with no sense of direction could follow. Apparently the
blood hounds that the search team used had no problem picking up his scent, and
following it all the way to the point where he got in a car.
Based on the obvious and
embarrassing evidence that my father was a) probably still alive, and b) a
terrible death-faker, the county would not issue a death certificate, which
meant my mom could not cash in my father’s life insurance policy. So in
addition to remaining poor, she was now completely humiliated. As it happened,
Dad walked and hitchhiked his way to Dallas, where he met up with a very shady
friend in the private investigations business, who knew a guy who made
counterfeit documents, and got himself a phony Social Security card. He used
this to pinball between Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas, taking odd jobs that
included valet parking attendant, and bouncer. Eventually he got tired of
trying to hide the fact that he had abandoned his family from everyone he met, and
so decided to come back to us – on the condition that we never ask him about
where he’d been, or what he’d been up to. Which, to a seven year-old boy,
seemed fair, I guess.
Now I could stop right there,
and you could understand why my grandfather hated my dad as much as he did.
(Actually, this was the second time
my dad had walked away from his family, but that first time was only for a
week. But that’s another story.) You could totally look at that and understand
why Paw Paw absolutely detested my dad. But my grandfather’s hatred stemmed
less from what Dad did to his family (and especially to Paw Paw’s daughter, my
mom), and more for what he did to my grandfather’s pride.
See, when the cops came back
to the family and basically told them that my dad had split the scene, my
grandfather adamantly refused to believe them. Because my father had pulled
that shit once before, and had gotten himself a world-class ass chewing from my
grandfather, after he lit out for Mardi Gras with a waitress for a week. (Oh,
and did I mention that this was right after my mother had gotten home from back
surgery, which was way more dangerous and painful then than it is today? Swear
to God. He brought Mom home from the hospital on a Friday afternoon, then he
and the waitress took off for New Orleans. For a week.)
So Paw Paw and his Irish pride
were certain – dead certain – that my dad would never ever pull that shit again. He was so certain, that after the dive
team and the searchers left the riverbank, Paw Paw went back up to the ranch,
got a cot, a lantern, some food and water, and went back down to the site of
the “drowning,” and stayed there. For
three days. He would walk up and down the riverbank, looking for my dad’s
body, looking for clues he was sure the sheriffs had missed. He was so certain
he’d put the fear of God into my dad and that he would never leave the family
again, that the old man kept a three-day vigil during a hot and sticky Texas
summer, on a river bank teeming with mosquitoes and scorpions and snakes. At
the end of the third day, dehydrated, exhausted, and covered in bug bites, he
packed it in - only to have his wayward son-in-law coming rolling back into
town six weeks later, on a shiny new motorcycle.
Oh Yeah. There was hatred there.
Next Week, Chapter Ten: Smelling Angela Lansbury
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