Read Online All Over but the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Rick Bragg
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time my momma had to flee my father, my grandfather told her, matter-of-factly, that she could go back to her sorry husband if she felt she had to, but she could not take the boy, Sam.
When my daddy came to get her my granddaddy met him at the door, and ordered him away like a beggar. My daddy slid his hand in his pocket for his knife but he never pulled it. It probably saved his life, because that tough old man would have come down on him like the strong right hand of God.
Charlie Bundrum died later that year, in April of 1958. He was fifty-one. “He still had his hair, he still had all his teeth, he didn’t have a gray hair in his head,” said my momma, of when they laid him out. “He was purty.”
After the funeral, my daddy came for her.
Her life might have been much different if she had refused to go. She might have found a new man, a decent man, while she still had her youth and her looks. But she had a baby, and the man she loved so much, for a lifetime, was dead and in the ground. There was hope, not much hope, but some, that her husband would change. She dreamed he would stop drinking up his paycheck, stop disappearing for days, for weeks, for months. She dreamed he would stop running around and shaming her, dreamed she would not have to beg him for money for milk for the baby, Sam. She dreamed that this time it might be bearable, it might last.
She didn’t want much, really, just something decent.
All she got was me.
4
Dreaming that a crooked man will straighten up and fly right
I t was there, sitting in the glow of that gigantic screen, that I saw Alan Ladd call Jack Palance a no-good Yankee liar, send him to his Maker in a haze of gunsmoke and then ride off into the sunset, bleeding, with a little boy frantically chasing him, crying, “Shane! Shane! Come back, Shane!”
There, I saw Robert Duvall call John Wayne a one-eyed fat man, saw Big John yell out, “Fill yer hand, you sonofabitch!” and charge down across a wide, beautiful valley, reins in his teeth, shooting a Winchester from one hand and a Peacemaker from the other.
There, I lusted after the unattainable Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra, and, years later, lusted after others, oh so attainable. There, I tasted my first orange slush, my first beer, my first kiss, whispered “I will love you forever” to people whose faces and names I can hardly recall. I am sure they cannot remember mine.
The Midway Drive-In Theater is long gone now, as if, by providence, someone saw fit to remove the scene of so many lovely lies. The Midway, so named because it stood like a beacon midway between Jacksonville and Anniston, is now a lot where they sell mobile homes and prefabricated buildings. The screen is blank, the romance is dead. Sometimes on Friday and Saturday nights I drive past and I forget, and I glance over at the marquee to see what’s playing or glance up into the night sky to catch a fleeting glimpse of some B-movie heroine’s eight-feet-tall lips, and all there is, is dark. It is a shame, really. I have a kinship with the place that goes far beyond simple nostalgia.
I was almost born there, during the stirring closing moments of The Ten Commandments.
I am told it was a hot, damp night in late July 1959, one of those nights when the setting of the sun brings no relief. It might have been the heat, or something she ate—an orange slush and a Giant Dill Pickle—but about the time Charlton Heston laid eyes on that golden calf and disowned the Children of Israel as idol worshippers and heathen sons of lewd women, I elected to emerge.
Some births are marked by a notation in the family Bible, others are acknowledged with the hoisting of glasses. For me, it all began with wandering Hebrews, flying gravel and a dangling speaker.
The front seat of a 1951 Chevrolet, roomy as it is, is a damned inconvenient place for the miracle of birth, and as the car sped north on Highway 21, my momma gritted her teeth and prayed. It would have been closer to
When my daddy came to get her my granddaddy met him at the door, and ordered him away like a beggar. My daddy slid his hand in his pocket for his knife but he never pulled it. It probably saved his life, because that tough old man would have come down on him like the strong right hand of God.
Charlie Bundrum died later that year, in April of 1958. He was fifty-one. “He still had his hair, he still had all his teeth, he didn’t have a gray hair in his head,” said my momma, of when they laid him out. “He was purty.”
After the funeral, my daddy came for her.
Her life might have been much different if she had refused to go. She might have found a new man, a decent man, while she still had her youth and her looks. But she had a baby, and the man she loved so much, for a lifetime, was dead and in the ground. There was hope, not much hope, but some, that her husband would change. She dreamed he would stop drinking up his paycheck, stop disappearing for days, for weeks, for months. She dreamed he would stop running around and shaming her, dreamed she would not have to beg him for money for milk for the baby, Sam. She dreamed that this time it might be bearable, it might last.
She didn’t want much, really, just something decent.
All she got was me.
4
Dreaming that a crooked man will straighten up and fly right
I t was there, sitting in the glow of that gigantic screen, that I saw Alan Ladd call Jack Palance a no-good Yankee liar, send him to his Maker in a haze of gunsmoke and then ride off into the sunset, bleeding, with a little boy frantically chasing him, crying, “Shane! Shane! Come back, Shane!”
There, I saw Robert Duvall call John Wayne a one-eyed fat man, saw Big John yell out, “Fill yer hand, you sonofabitch!” and charge down across a wide, beautiful valley, reins in his teeth, shooting a Winchester from one hand and a Peacemaker from the other.
There, I lusted after the unattainable Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra, and, years later, lusted after others, oh so attainable. There, I tasted my first orange slush, my first beer, my first kiss, whispered “I will love you forever” to people whose faces and names I can hardly recall. I am sure they cannot remember mine.
The Midway Drive-In Theater is long gone now, as if, by providence, someone saw fit to remove the scene of so many lovely lies. The Midway, so named because it stood like a beacon midway between Jacksonville and Anniston, is now a lot where they sell mobile homes and prefabricated buildings. The screen is blank, the romance is dead. Sometimes on Friday and Saturday nights I drive past and I forget, and I glance over at the marquee to see what’s playing or glance up into the night sky to catch a fleeting glimpse of some B-movie heroine’s eight-feet-tall lips, and all there is, is dark. It is a shame, really. I have a kinship with the place that goes far beyond simple nostalgia.
I was almost born there, during the stirring closing moments of The Ten Commandments.
I am told it was a hot, damp night in late July 1959, one of those nights when the setting of the sun brings no relief. It might have been the heat, or something she ate—an orange slush and a Giant Dill Pickle—but about the time Charlton Heston laid eyes on that golden calf and disowned the Children of Israel as idol worshippers and heathen sons of lewd women, I elected to emerge.
Some births are marked by a notation in the family Bible, others are acknowledged with the hoisting of glasses. For me, it all began with wandering Hebrews, flying gravel and a dangling speaker.
The front seat of a 1951 Chevrolet, roomy as it is, is a damned inconvenient place for the miracle of birth, and as the car sped north on Highway 21, my momma gritted her teeth and prayed. It would have been closer to
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