My beautiful blonde baby boy. He has his father's hair, and smile. They tell me he is slow, and he teaches me to slow down, tie bandanas around our heads. We play pirates safe in the courtyard I have built.
We get a dog with one blue eye, the other brown. My son laughs, and dances and presses his tiny fingers together, signing for more. Speech is slow to come. But it does. It is slurred. I understand most of his words. He is safe.
On the street his hand never leaves mine. SAFE. We walk through heartache and high school. Summer camp and dances. And. And schizophrenia.
At twenty-five my darling son rages and trashes his room. He tears at the stone wall. With bloody fingers he claws at the crumbling mortar.
The police place handcuffs on my baby boy. They take him to a place with no forks or belts or laces.
Schizophrenia.
Genetic.
It lay dormant in his DNA. Waiting like Iago, to take our castle down from within.
Genetic.
A danger passed from father to son.
Genetic.
A danger not outside.
Genetic.
A danger, a spy, a mental assassin in the blood.
Schizophrenia.
So now I hold his hand. We watch the world spinning mad. I wonder what he sees.
I am sorry my son, I was never able or meant to keep you safe. All I can do is bear witness to all of you. Great and small. And I hold your hand. That I can do.
GREEN FREEDOM
I’m walking in the field, wee sheepies gambol about. I am standing on the blood soaked battlefield where my wife’s clansmen fought and fell to keep their windswept rock hard corner of the world free. Here is where the MacLeans and MacKenzies massed, held their ground and died. Over there, Jacobites fell.
Scotland the brave, you bet your ass.
Culloden is as somber as the sheep are silly as they play among the grave markers. They have no idea they are playing on death’s field in the gray mid-morning. No, they only know some inner voice called them out to play.
I feel the tug of a desire to fall heroically in battle. To have my life mean more than knocking out the bills. Silly. I have more in common with the wee sheep than the fallen warriors.
I stand in the battlefield, watching Erika as she honors the place of her clans and I wonder if my boys will bless me with grandchildren. I doubt it.
When I go to that green freedom will it have meant more than this? Will it end a line that led back to that Viking battlement?
Will my boys end that conversation?
And if so, so what?
Will my ashes give a rat's fart whether or not I leave a marker on a rock in a battlefield in Scotland, or if I leave heirs to carry my name?
I bet not.
Erika and I have soup and sammies in the museum's café. We walk Inverness, mouth of Loch Ness. She holds my two middle fingers in her hand. This moment is as important as any other. The memorial stone for this moment would read...
HE LOVED HER FIERCE, THEY LOVED EACH OTHER, BECAUSE OF AND IN-SPITE OF, ALL LIFE HAS TOSSED AT THEM.
The sea stretches out, gray and calm at our feet. I hold Erika’s small hand. We dance across the round smooth stones. We are free in our ignorant bliss. Let the monument read, if you must place one...
HE LIVED AS FREE AS HE COULD GIVEN THE CIRCUMSTANCES - no - HE LIVED HIS LIFE - no -WE LIVE BEST WE KNOW HOW, AND ALL TOO SOON IT ENDS AND HEROES AND FOOLS ARE BOTH JUST AS DEAD WHEN IT IS DONE.
LOVE IS GREEN, it’s an open field in the hills above Palo Alto. It’s a long walk with Torso the wonder dog. Green is the color of Erika’s eyes. Green is miner’s lettuce, water rich, plump and ready to chew. Green is the dew on the hills of Skye. Green is the sea that crashes against the jagged granite of Skye.
We walk, Erika, me, no one else.
She weeps for the sheer beauty of Skye. She feels a tug, deeper than heart, from her clanswomen.
Now it is gray. We are standing in the center of a ritual stone circle on the Isle of Lewis. It took a plane, a bus, a train, a rental car and two ferries for us to reach this moment. Throughout our travels Erika carries ashes of her mother, Dee. We say two silent blessings for a woman we both loved. The grey ash is taken by the wind and flutters twisting into the grey air and it is gone.
Two years later things seemed relatively stable at home so we take a second trip to Scotland, this time taking Erika’s father Jim with us. We stay on the Island of Mull, the Scottish side of his family’s ancestral home. It is wonderful. And while we walk the bays and lochs and moors, while we stomp about in the heather, my baby boy Jared throws a brick into a hundred year old plate glass window. His rage is brought on because we had the audacity to ask him to stay away from our home while he is drinking. He too has put his hand into the mental health genetic grab bag and come up with manic depression. In his manic phase he is the smartest person in any room. He also rages when fueled by booze.
We return from Scotland to discover the mass destruction Jared has caused. I will find the blood splatters from the hand he cut on the broken window. Ironically, I will find the apartment totally trashed, just as his brother had done before him.
“We couldn’t find you, you left no numbers.” - My sister Lilly says, pissed and indignant. Twelve days out of communication in twenty-seven years. We earned it. But then again it is easy to judge when you have no skin in the game.
“It ain’t like it used to be, but it’ll do.” - The Wildbunch
I am 50 and I have again watched the police take Dylan to a mental hospital. Now I sit in the visiting room. He is doped to the gills, trying to get him to sleep and break the mania’s back. I am grieving the loss of all that I thought my life with these boys would be. There is a day coming where I will have adjusted to this new normal. Beyond that is a day where I will feel the pure uncomplicated joy of life. It ain’t perfect, wasn’t ever going to be. But some days when the wind is just right I hear the leaves rustle and remember how my retarded son taught me to slow down and see, really see, the magic of leaf covered branches in the wind.
ROLL CALL
Tomas - MIA
Tanner - MIA - Last seen working in Holland and Cambodia, center of the heroin golden triangle. Word is he’s clean. I pray that’s true.
Michael Kowalski - DOA
Tad Williams - Father of two. Husband. Best selling author. Still the best friend a man could ask for.
Jochum Therkleson - Father of three. Sculptor. Living in Copenhagen.
Dean Smith - DOA
Arthur Tittel - DOA
The women I loved - I ended the relationships badly. They are all MIA, but not forgotten.
Jared Stallings - On the road with a good woman and dog named Blue. He’s drifting around the south, his Great Grandpa Harold’s ancestral hunting grounds. He may settle down in Austin or keep drifting. He is a good brave man, still searching for his one thing.
Dylan Stallings - lives in a bright orange house in Highland Park. It has been years since his last psychotic breakdown. He told me he is the luckiest man in the world. He may be right.
Erika Stallings - Most days she seems happy. Others I can see a deep wistfulness for the life we thought we would have. She doesn’t speak of it. She carries her own water. She works at the Unitarian Church. Her story is still unwritten.
Josh Stallings - Edits trailers, writes crime fiction, most days the voices are quiet in his head.
Lark - Lives in Texas and summers on Martha’s Vineyard. He has traveled far from where we started. At twenty-two he married his first wife, they fought and loved and fought some more. They made two amazing daughters. I was there when his first daughter was born. I have never seen a man more happy. Whatever pain he and Ana dragged each other through was well worth my nieces coming into being. I’m sure they carry the scars of divorce and chaos. I know they both wish it had been a bit more Norman Rockwell, but they play the cards they are dealt with as much grace as they can muster. Lark moved from their home to a smal
l apartment. He missed his daughters. He drank way too much. He lived in Houston, owned bars, felt no joy. At thirty, he lay in my boy’s bunk bed and cried. “Do you think it is possible for someone to completely ruin their life, wreck it beyond repair?”
“Is that what you did?”
“I think so. Yes.” He didn’t get out of bed for a week. He healed slowly. He dated again. Casual. Surface. He drank. He drinks some more.
Then he met Jackie. Nothing will ever be the same for my windmill tilting brother. Jack is beautiful inside and out. She calls forth all that is noble and fine in Lark. They have two kids. Lark is long time sober now. Every Wednesday night he brings the program to Harris County jail. He hopes one day he may help a young blood on the same path we were. He does it because it keeps him sober.
Larkin and his partner Mario now own six nightclubs.
Larkin is far from poor.
Larkin is far from where we started.
Shaun - The lines that track her are not so simple to see. From what I can tell she went in search of an ordered world, something that looks a bit more Brady Bunch. She went to Davis and got a degree in Agronomics, she always was a smarty pants. Shaunton marries a man who looks on the surface like a solid citizen. I guess he is. He is also a dick. Shaun divorces him. Shaun moves to Texas. Shaun falls in love with Mario, the DJ at Lark’s club, and a budding club owner himself. They have three kids. They have a messy chaotic family. Mental illness stalks her home. She fights a fierce battle everyday for her children and herself. Sometimes I think she is the bravest of all. Sometimes I think she doesn’t know that. Shaun never gets her Brady Bunch life. Shaun is too good for that.
Lilly, lives in the hood. She lives in the heart of Oakland. She lives with an Airedale and a German Shepherd. For many years she lived with Mom on an almond ranch. From my distant view it looked like she was trying to rebuild the childhood house on the hill, get back a bit of what we lost in the divorce. She has lived a life with one eye on the present and the other firmly gazing into the past. She has stopped looking back. “I am not the sum of my history. I’m not my diagnosis. When I feel crazy I look at my life, look for what is crazy and try and fix that.” She lives in the past. She lives in the present. Both are true and untrue in equal parts.
My mother will never read this chapter. I know this to be fact. After she read the first hundred and thirty-seven pages she called, “I don’t need to read anymore of this shit. I’m sure it makes a good story this way. But if you want the truth ask me and I’ll tell you… I may have put pot in the brownies at your birthday party, but I didn’t do it to get laid, I didn’t need it to get laid… I’m sorry you feel you had such a terrible mother, but I’m the one you got.”
This conversation was followed by two weeks of crying, berating and finally dull silence. By week three denial washed over the entire event and our relationship slipped back into its own version of normal.
I am sad my mother will never read this book. But my mother is 84and need not deal with the mistakes of her, or my youth. I do wish she could see through to how proud I am of what she did with what she had.
I read All The Wild Children to my Pops over a long weekend in the San Juan Islands. He listened intently. “I’m glad you showed me how it feels to be you.” He could see the art in the book, we could talk artist to artist about form and pace and content choices. He was a bit distracted by the parts that he wasn’t in.
I was raised by two abused and broken narcissists.
I was mostly raised by my siblings.
I am a lucky man.
Acknowledgement
This book started when Cheri Gaulke, Jennifer L. Eich, Christine Papalexis and I got together to write. We shared coffee, water, words and truth. It would have remained a messy stack of essays without my friends and fellow writers Charlie Huston and Tad Williams, they took the time and care to read and then tear apart the early drafts. Eloquently brutal both of them. Thomas Pluck, Holly West, Aldo Calcagno and Fingers Murphy gave a healthy combination of notes and encouragement. Thanks and admiration go to Keith Rawson, Eric Beetner for his creative take on the cover art, and to my esteemed editor Brian Lindenmuth, I am forever grateful to him and the Snubnose crew for embracing this odd and painfully honest book. And then there is Erika C. Stallings, my first, last and most lovingly harsh reader. I wouldn’t be the man or writer I am without her.
Appendix
For legal reasons I had to take out song lyrics from the book. I get it. Those are their words. I’d be pissed if someone jacked my words. So here is a play list. These songs blasted through my headphones whilst I typed. I have listed them in the order they informed the writing of this book.
String It Out - Gina Villalobos
In My Life - The Beatles
For What It’s Worth - Buffalo Springfield
Piece Of My Heart - Janis Joplin
Little Child Runnin' Wild - Curtis Mayfield
Thankful for What You Got – William DeVaughn
Pusher Man - Curtis Mayfield
Father To Son - Queen
Cracked Actor - David Bowie
Walk On The Wild Side - Lou Reed
Search And Destroy - Iggy Pop
Heat Wave - Martha and the Vandellas
Zip a Dee Doo Dah - James Basket
Oh What a Beautiful Morning - Rodgers and Hammerstein
All The Young Dudes - David Bowie / Mott The Hoople
Flashlight - Parliament
Play That Funky Music - Wild Cherry
White Punks On Dope - The Tubes
Eighteen With A Bullet - Pete Wingfield
What Do You Want From Life - The Tubes
Crazy - Gina Villalobos
Jolene - Dolly Parton
Straight To Hell - The Clash
Feed The Birds - Julie Andrews
I’m On Fire - Bruce Springsteen
Kooks - David Bowie
Party In The Woods Tonight - Jonathan Richman
Summertime - George & Era Gershwin, lyrics by DuBose Heyward
Doll Parts - Hole
Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
Stay Free - The Clash
Hooligans - Rancid
Polly Wanna Cracker - Public Enemy
Jammin - Bob Marley
About Snubnose Press
Snubnose Press is the ebook imprint of Spinetingler Magazine.
The snubnose revolver dominated visual crime stories in the 20th century. Every cop, every detective, every criminal in every TV show and movie seemed to carry a snubnose. The snubnose is a classic still used today.
The snubnose is easy to conceal and carry.
The snubnose is powerful.
The snubnose is compact.
That’s how we like our fiction.
Snubnose Press Titles:
Speedloader
Harvest of Ruins by Sandra Ruttan
The Chaos We Know by Keith Rawson
Monkey Justice by Patti Abbott
Dig Two Graves by Eric Beetner
Old Ghosts by Nik Korpon
Gumbo Ya-Ya by Les Edgerton
Hill Country by R Thomas Brown
Old School by Daniel B. O’Shea
Laughing at Dead Men by Keith Rawson
Nothing Matters by Steve Finbow
The Duplicate by Helen Fitzgerald
Cold Rifts by Sandra Seamans
Pulp Ink 2
The First Cut by John Kenyon
A Bouquet of Bullets by Eric Beetner
A F*ckload of Shorts by Jedidiah Ayres
Blood on Blood by Frank Zafiro & Jim Wilsky
Choice Cuts by Joe Clifford
Ghost Money by Andrew Nette
City of Heretics by Heath Lowrance
Bar Scars by Nik Korpon
Herniated Roots by Richard Thomas
A Healthy Fear of Man by Aaron Philip Clark
Karma Backlash by Chad Rohrbacher
To Die Upon a Kiss by Craig Wallwork
The Jones Men by Verne Smith
All the Wild Children by Josh Stallings
Moondog Over the Mekong by Court Merrigan
The Subtle Arts of Brutality by Ryan Sayles
Dope Sick: A Love Story by JA Kazimer
Broken Glass Waltz by Warren Moore
Wake the Undertaker by Joe Clifford
Piggyback by Tom Pitts
Captain Cooker by Todd Morr
Pale Horses by Nate Southard
A Wind of Knives by Ed Kurtz
Home Invasion by Patti Abbott
Stiffed by Rob Kitchin
Table of Contents
Copyright
Epigraph
Dedication
INTRODUCTION
FROM THE DAY ROOM OF A MENTAL HOSPITAL
RAIN TIME
THE DUMMY
BEST FRIENDS
DRIVING NOWHERE FAST
PEOPLE GO AWAY
SUMMER OF LOVE
LIVE WITH IT
MY FATHER
IF YOU CAN’T BE SAFE, BE FIERCE - PART ONE
IF YOU CAN’T BE SAFE, BE FIERCE - PART TWO
IF YOU CAN’T BE SAFE, BE FIERCE - PART THREE
DRUGS
SEX
GUNS
VIOLENCE
G-STRINGS AND ORGANIC GARDENING
MOTHER'S DAY
YOUNG DUDES, ONE AND ALL
MY - O - MY
BOOK 2
Dedication
DRIFT SOUTH
LOS ANGELES DRY SPELL
PRAYERS ANSWERED
SHUT UP AND SAY SOMETHING
SO FREAKY, SO FREE
GOLDEN DAYS
MY NECK, MY RAZOR
COWBOYS AND BALLERINAS
BROTHERS
MIND BOMB
DOS VADANYA MOMMA
LIVE NUDE GIRLS
MY SON SOLD YOUR HONOR STUDENT HERION