“My older brothers, they both boxed.”
“Any good?”
“Naw. But they were too big and dumb to fall down, so they usually won their fights.”
Harry laughed. “I could use men like that on the House floor.”
“So you’ll see Chewie through?”
Harry promised, “I’ll do what I can.”
Years, it’s taken me years to see how a good sketch leads a viewer’s eye from one figure to the next so the picture appears seamless. I mean, I’ve always understood this, but occasionally I’ve failed to see it. Some lessons, I guess, we need to keep learning. Sometimes we lose what we know.
In 1921, on the eve of the Carpentier-Dempsey fight, Harry, just a kid then, clipped a cartoon from the Daily Oklahoman by an artist named Winsor McCay (I found it in Harry’s papers after he died). This was long before the great Herblock. Its caption read, “The Kind of Fighting That Pays,” and it featured three First World War vets, one missing a leg, another blind, and a third without his arms.
The hobbled fellow spreads a paper on his lap. He says, “Listen to this! The fight is limited to twelve rounds. It may last only one minute or less. Carpentier is to get $200,000 and Dempsey $300,000. No matter who wins, or how long the fight lasts, they get theirs!”
The blind man responds, “WOW! What do we get for our fighting? Ha-ha-ha! Ho-ho-ho! And a couple of he-he-hes!”
The third adds, “We got ours! Yes, we did! We got ours, ha-ha! Thanks to an appreciative public!”
A pair of crutches guides the viewer’s eye down the first man’s body to his stump. The head of the blind vet’s cane points to the third friend’s empty sleeves. Simple, smart. A perfectly orchestrated drawing.
I often think that a man who tells stories and makes sketches for a living must still be a kid at heart, an idealist insisting on symmetry and balance, even when they’re hard to find.
That is to say, I wanted Harry’s life to be one straight line.
So did John Tasuda, that day in Jay.
So did Harry, maybe, as he tried to negotiate the complexities of our culture.
“I could use a soda,” he told me when we’d returned to the Olds. “How ‘bout you? Back to Dairy Queen?”
“Sure.”
“Got your breath again?”
“I think so.” For good measure, I took a couple hits off my inhaler.
Harry had exchanged a few words with the governor’s aide, who still looked confused. John Tasuda was addressing his people. They didn’t seem happy. They stayed in the street with their guns, but didn’t try to stop us when we pulled away.
We were alone now on Route 66. The road, lined with pumpjacks, had long been bypassed by the interstate.
“That was good,” I said after a while, pinching off a bite of Zorah’s cookie.
“Proud of the old man now? One last time?”
“That was good,” I said again. A hawk-shadow blackened the fields.
Harry reached for the radio. “—bless America, and our fine new president,” someone said. “And a very Merry Christmas to you all.”
Oh boy.
“We’ll grab some dinner at Adair’s?”
“Yeah.”
“Then let’s go home.”
“Yeah, let’s go home.”
Out the window, I waved at the ghosts of the Joads.
Cotton Flat Road
Bren and I were last-minute shopping at the Westgate Mall, looking for bath towels to give to our mother for Christmas, when a slender, professional-looking woman in a light blue pantsuit approached Bren, tugged her sleeve, and declared, “Land’s sakes, sugar! How long has it been? You’re looking good!”
Bren and I are white, middle class, in our early forties now, children of a petroleum geologist and a stay-at-home mom. This woman was black and, beyond first appearances, not so professional-looking, after all. Three missing teeth, a drooping right eye, a touch of red dye in her hair.
Bren blushed, a dappled rust color. “Hi,” she said.
“What is it — four, five years? What you hear from Bobby?”
“Nothing,” Bren said, backing away a little beneath a sequined BATH NEEDS sign.
I hovered near a shower curtain display, ready to slip away or step up to meet the lady, however Bren wanted to play it.
“He never was one to stay put. I tried to warn you, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Well, happy holidays, sugar. Good to see you.”
“You, too.”
The woman sway-hipped down the aisle.
“An old acquaintance,” Bren told me. “I couldn’t remember her name, or I would have introduced you.” Her fingers shook.
“Feeling a dip?” I asked. About five years ago she’d been diagnosed with diabetes and wasn’t, as far as I could tell, taking care of herself.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s grab these towels and get out of here, okay?”
“Sure. You’ll find me some armor back home?” Her three-year-old, Tommy, liked to wrestle. “He inherited your competitive streak,” Bren had warned me, last week, on the phone. Since I’d arrived he had already given me two shin bruises. My mother was always black and blue. She babysat Tommy every day while Bren’s husband, Chip, a financial adviser, called on his clients and Bren did — what? I gathered she stayed in bed much of the time, curtains drawn, suffering back pains, migraines, fatigue. Our trip to the mall — and meeting the woman — had done her in.
The towels’ peach color summoned the red in my sister’s hair, which was mostly brown now. As a cashier rang up the sale, I was struck by Bren’s beauty. Until this minute, I’d only seen her exhaustion. With our shopping done, she looked relaxed — carefree, even, the way she had as a teenager.
I drifted across the aisle into Home Entertainment — EVERYTHING 25 % OFF! From beside a pre-viewed video rack — Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Empire Strikes Back, The Rocky Horror Picture Show — I watched Bren. Twenty-five years ago she had been a rabid Rocky Horror fan. She was one of those kids who frequented midnight screenings each week, who mouthed the actors’ lines in the theater. One Christmas I came home from college (she was a high school junior then), and she dragged me to a twelve o’clock show. In the projector’s dazzling blue strobe she sang and danced in the aisle. She wore fishnet stockings and platform shoes.
After the movie she offered me a joint and hinted that she could scare me up me some acid if I wanted it. I understood she was trying to impress me. I knew, too, that she wanted my approval, but I was the mature college boy, newly steeped in foreign films, and I dismissed the dope, the drag scene, the horror show. Bren’s antics plagued my parents — they disagreed on whether to ground her or wait until she outgrew what Dad called “her crazy hippie phase,” and they bickered all the time. I was pissed at her for making my homecomings tense. I told her Rocky Horror was the stupidest thing I’d ever seen. She cried, her mascara as runny as cheap green salsa.
Many times over the years I’d wished I could take back my words, had told her how much it pleased me to watch her dancing with her friends. I’d wished I’d seen how much trouble she was in.
Now, I thought of buying the video for her but she’d probably think I was mocking her. At Christmas I was always dropping back into town, judging her. I know that’s how she felt, and Mom didn’t help.
Bren turned, clutching the sack with the towels. I’d replaced the video on the rack. She didn’t see it. Her skin was no longer flushed. She was as snowy as our mother’s bathroom carpet: a faintly faltering, well-to-do woman who knew her way around the mall. Did any touches remain of the lively, rebellious teenager? She had fought Mom all her life, but now she lived down the block from my folks, ate with them every evening while her husband worked late, counted on Mom for babysitting. Was that the rebellion now — staying in bed all day, leaving her kid with Grandma? Or had she given up the fight?