Tietam Brown (7 page)

I opened up the cover, my pulse racing as I did. The first page fell out from its binding and fluttered to the floor. A black-and-white photo of a soldier. World War II I guessed. A soldier who now lay amid feces and mildew, underneath a canopy of panties. The soldier deserved better. I picked up the photo and placed it back inside the album. The photo had been torn in half and yellowed tape in thin neat strips served to reconcile the soldier's image. My grandfather? I looked for some family resemblance, but I couldn't really tell.

I turned the page. My father. No guessing here, although he was obviously a good deal younger. Maybe eighteen, nineteen, twenty at most, and in a fighting stance. Maybe he was a boxer, it would explain the scars and broken nose. But in this photo, Father Time and human hands hadn't yet left their mark on Tietam Brown. His smile was sly, and full of hope, as if there was no goal he couldn't reach. I think I could have stared for hours if not for the fear that I'd be caught. He could come home at any second. I had to proceed with rapid diligence.

A simple headline filled one page, reading RIOT IN MONTGOMERY. No story, no date, just three words.

A page from
Ebony
magazine came next, a strange choice for a white guy like my father. A guy who listened to Barry Manilow. Although I think there was a black guy in the Village People. I wasn't really looking when the eight-track went whistling out the window.

The picture was unsettling. The beaten face of a teenage boy who'd been killed in Mississippi. Why would my father have this photo in his scrapbook. Did he know the boy? Did he know the killer?

Another strange photograph, this one from an Augusta, Georgia, newspaper. A woman wrapped in a bloody sheet, talking to police. A headline reading PECAN HEIRESS FENDS OFF ATTACK, and a story I was in too big a rush to read. My heart was pounding beneath my flannel. Butterflies flapped inside my stomach. I couldn't let my father catch me here. What did all this mean? Was my father some kind of lunatic who kept photos of his victims, or just a practitioner of naked exercise who kept the panties of his conquests?

There were other articles, all from southern newspapers. Birmingham, Nashville, Greensboro, detailing the fight for civil rights. Sit-ins, marches, and a troubling one of a fireman with a fire hose blasting a black child off his feet.

Then the
New York Daily News,
the only entry from the North. A two-page story of a man who had moved up from Atlanta and was trying to feed the poor. A black man with quite a biceps on him, holding a small child. The man's name was Eddie Edwards. Maybe Tietam knew him. Maybe they had boxed together, even if the guy looked much bigger than my father.

Finally a story about the first landing on the moon. All in all quite interesting, although it wasn't quite what I had hoped. Not a single thing about my mother, or what my father did for work. Unless he'd been a boxer.

I put the book away exactly where I'd found it. I wouldn't mention coming down, but if he asked me, I'd admit it.

My heartbeat had just regained its rhythm when the Fairmont came roaring back, a sleek, black Trans-Am close behind.

My father, who was now walking toward the door with his arm around a blonde, his free hand pointing to the “Boo” sign in our yard, had been gone for thirty minutes, give or take a few, and had come back with a female companion. Where had he gone, Sluts “R” Us? Except the woman was not your standard off-the-rack white-trash specimen, the type I imagined my dad did his best with. No way. She was beautiful, in a shimmering red dress that hugged her hips tight. Classy, too. Or at least as classy as you can be while still getting picked up in record time by a middle-aged bald guy who has fuzzy dice hanging from his piece-of-crap car.

Then Tietam and his new friend were in the door, at which point my dad ran into the kitchen and brought forth a glass, which he told me to “hold up against the wall, with your ear to the bottom.” Then said, “Listen real close, kid, your dad's gonna put on a show.”

“The hell he is,” said the blonde, who turned to my dad with fire in her eyes. “You promised me a good time, not a circus sideshow, Tikki.”

“Tietam,” my dad corrected her, then turned on a charm that I can only describe as eerie, and said, “Hey, we will have a good time, baby, I promise, but look at the kid, he's lonesome and it's his birthday. He just wants to listen. He won't even be in our room. He'll be next door, just innocently . . . listening.”

“Promise?” the blonde said.

“Promise.”

The blonde grew defensive and said, “I wasn't talking to you, Tatum.”

“Tietam,” my dad said, correcting her again.

“Whatever,” the blonde said with a shrug. “I'm talking about him. No surprises, kid, right?” I nodded. “You're not going to do anything stupid like try to join in, are you?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Oh southern boy, huh?” she said, sounding a whole lot less repulsed than she had just eleven seconds earlier. I never have considered my accent to be all that strong, but apparently she disagreed. She sashayed over to me and put her thumb on my lip, rubbed it gently, and said, “Southern boy, you go ahead and listen all you want, and I'll try to put on a little show for you, okay?”

I nodded, and I'll admit right now that the thought of Terri Johnson was a long, long way away from me at that particular point.

“Happy birthday, southern boy.”

“Thank you, maaoohh.”

The word “ma'am” is a simple one to say, and a short one as well, but somehow right in the middle of spitting out that short, simple word, the blonde caught me in midsyllable with her lips, and she momentarily explored the inside of my mouth with her tongue.

“You go upstairs now and listen real close now . . . ya heah?” she said with those last two words done in a pretty convincing southern belle drawl.

I did as I was told, and went upstairs to my little room and put my glass against the wall so that Tietam Brown could explain the art of the deal.

“Speak into the tape recorder now,” I heard my dad say. Wait just a second, ‘Speak into the tape recorder'? Was this guy for real? How could you possibly get any lower than tape-recording women licking your ass? Unless of course you are standing next to a wall with your ear on a glass, listening to your father tape-recording women licking his ass. Which is, indeed, a little lower.

“What the hell was I thinking?” I said out loud to no one in particular except maybe my conscience, and put the glass on my desk and laid down on my bed, a pillow on each side of my head to drown out the weirdness. I lay in that position for a good five minutes, hoping that the night's session would be a brief one, and that I could get some rest after what can only be described as the strangest day in the history of my life.

I put down the pillows and sat up in bed, and thought for a moment that my house was the epicenter of a midsize earthquake, as the room was literally shaking. I rushed for my turntable, thinking that maybe Nat could drown out the show that was being put on for my benefit, but my hormones betrayed me and I turned from the turntable, and in a moment found myself up against the wall, my ear cupped to the glass.

“Tell me,” Tietam said, “tell me what I'm doing to you.” I'd returned just in time.

The blonde in the red dress, who I guessed was now simply “the Blonde,” picked up on her cue and told my dad exactly what he wanted to hear. My goodness, that woman could swear. A group of drunken sailors would have covered their ears in the face of her verbal barrage. Just for a moment I turned from the wall to catch my breath, then went back to my observation post, where, to my amazement, the tide had turned. The blonde was no longer talking, being momentarily unable to for a reason I was about to discover.

“Worm that tongue, baby, yeah worm it real good,” my dad commanded.

I had turned from that wall for at most fifteen seconds, and the deal had transpired in my absence. I had missed out on the art of the deal!

I wish I could say that the whole thing repulsed me, but I can't. I thought of the blonde in the red dress, a woman of money, a woman of beauty, but a woman so utterly lacking in that special something in life that she had to find solace in my dad's hairy ass.

When the show was over, I waited for the sounds of Tietam Brown's special ritual, signaling intermission. The cracking of the Genny, the whoosh of his breathing, even the steady commentary he delivered as he defeated the decks. But the sounds of this night were new, and a little bit sad, and I found myself missing the stability of my father's strange ways. In a way, it was the only constant in my life, a constant that was now replaced by the sound of high heels clumsily navigating the stairs and the spray of the shower in the bathroom down the hall.

Perhaps my father was right. Maybe he'd just been helping the blonde in the red dress play out a role, and she'd return with new vigor to her husband and kids, or her job, or her mom, or whatever she did. I knew nothing about her, except I'd heard her bad words, and I'd tasted her tongue, and it smelled like strong whiskey and a life unfulfilled. Maybe my father wasn't doing any favors. Maybe, in fact, the favors were for him, filling a void in his own sorry life. I pictured my father in his room with his tapes, and the art of the deal. And then I thought of Hanrahan, and his put-downs and jokes. Maybe, I thought, they are almost like twins. Predators both.

I lay in the darkness thinking of Terri, how I would take my dad's great advice and throw it all out, like the Village People eight-track I'd sent hurtling to its wooded grave. I needed some guidance, but not from my dad, so I closed my eyes and asked for help from above, asked to be just slightly better than I currently was.

Then I turned to my pillow, closed my eyes, and saw Terri kissing my mouth with the gentlest of lips. But try as I might, her image started to wane, and the mouth of that pillow became the drunk blonde, and the gentlest of kisses became a probing wet tongue. The same probing tongue that had forced upon me my first kiss. Then Terri was gone and I was alone with the blonde, thrashing and plunging, my pity replaced by the most primal of urges. For once those old nuns were right, for the touching that night underneath my white sheets was impure to the core. The kettle was ready to boil, but turned quickly to ice with the knock at my door.

A moment later, my dad entered the room wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, and a look on his face that was a stranger to me. In his hand was an envelope.

“Can I sit down?” he said as he flipped on the light switch.

“Sure, Dad, can I get you a chair?”

“Actually, son, if it's all right with you, I'd like to sit here with you.”

I gestured him to the bed, and he looked at me for a long time without speaking. The light by my bed created soft shadows on his face, enhancing the scars that creased both eyebrows, and for the first time, I thought, my father looked vulnerable. The corner of his mouth drew up into just the slightest of smiles, and in a voice that was new, he said, “I wasn't always like this. I want you to know that what you see here, you know, in me, is not how I was when I was . . .” and then his voice trailed off, and he held his envelope with both hands.

“When you were what, Dad?” I said. “When you were what?”

“When I was, um, with your mother, Andy. I wasn't like this. I fell in love from the moment I met her. She was a singer. In a club . . . In Japan. God, she made me feel . . . like I was . . . the only man in the world.” He swallowed hard, then went on, his voice starting to shake, both of his eyes starting to well. “I thought you should know that.” Then, extending his hand to offer the envelope, he said, “This is for you, I'll let you open it in peace,” and as he got up to leave, I saw that his cheeks were bathed in fresh tears. “Good night, son,” he said.

I opened the envelope and took out a faded black-and-white photograph. A beautiful woman, her hair long and blond, looking down at her hands, which were placed on a huge belly. Those hands cradling her belly as if it were the most precious gift in the world. And I instantly knew, my mother . . . and me, in a time when the future seemed like a friend to us both.

I've thought about that time, Tietam and me, alone on my bed, a great deal over the years, and I always come to those tears on his face. I was his son, and his tears were all real. After all of this time, those tears are still real.

The Rage / 1977

I still remember those fireworks. Man, they were impressive. Sure, it was only on television, but as I sat in the Delanors' cozy living room, I could almost feel the heat as blast after blast illuminated the July sky in honor of our country's independence. And when Mr. Delanor put his arm around me and patted me on the back, I felt for the first time in a long time that I really belonged.

The Delanors weren't my first foster parents since the death of the DelGrattos, but they were the first to act as if they actually liked having me around—indeed, during the spring and early summer of 1977, I will dare say that they seemed to love it.

Little Rachel had been adopted almost immediately following her parents' death. She was kind of like a blue-chip prospect. I, on the other hand, was like the last kid picked in gym class when it came to choosing up sides. It could have been the useless hand. It could have been the missing ear. Or maybe, just maybe, it could have been that nagging stigma of having single-handedly wiped out my last family.

So when the Delanors pointed to me on their visit to the Petersburg Home for Boys, I pretty much felt like I'd hit the lottery.

Mrs. Delanor wasn't home on the night of our country's two hundred and first birthday. She was at grief counseling. Her counseling generally took place on a weekly basis, but at certain times, like this night in question, when her sadness overwhelmed her, emergency counseling was made available to her.

Just a little over a year earlier, there was no sadness in Sandra Delanor's life. She had what seemed to be an ideal existence. Victorian house, picket fence, a golden retriever named Shakes, a husband who was a pillar of the community, and a ten-year-old son whom she adored. A ten-year-old son who had accidentally stumbled upon his father's pistol . . . and fired it.

Little Wilson Delanor's pictures were everywhere. Eight-by-tens documenting his elementary school years smiled down on me from every conceivable angle, and snapshots of family vacations seemed to occupy every spare nook and cranny in their spotless home.

With his dark curls and impish grin, Wilson Delanor looked a lot like me, even if I didn't let my impish grin out in the open very often. Enough like me so that passersby in their small town just north of Petersburg did double takes. Enough like me so that as time went by, I realized what my role was. I was the substitute kid. Which might have hurt my feelings if it hadn't been for the fact that Doug and Sandra Delanor were just so . . . damn . . . nice. Damn, they were nice. I know that sounds repetitive, but I really don't know how else to put it.

I can still picture Mrs. Delanor with her happy smile saying, “Andrew, would you like a piece of pie? I just baked it.” Or “Andrew, would you like some help with your homework?” Always Andrew, and always with that happy smile. A smile that was betrayed only by the sadness in her eyes.

In many ways, she was Auntie M's exact opposite. She was slim, maybe even skinny, a problem which I guess was compounded by her seeming refusal to eat just about anything. With the exception of an occasional cigarette or drink that she held with shaking hands, I really can't remember anything that she put into her mouth.

Auntie M loved to hug. Maybe even lived to hug. Mrs. Delanor, on the other hand, made contact only with the slightest touch of a fingertip, and even then it seemed like she was forcing herself. Like she was trying to relearn a gesture that had once been so natural.

On one evening in late June of 1977, about four months after my arrival in their home, I had watched as she poured herself two or three glasses of sherry over her normal limit. Had watched as her hands shook less with each passing swig.

She sat down on the couch, and while Mr. Delanor looked intently at his paper, she looked intently at me as I played intently with Shakes the dog. The dog had originally been named Jebby when given to little Wilson on his seventh birthday, but the boy had done a switch in honor of the way the puppy emphatically shook his head anytime an object of any type found its way into his mouth.

On that June night, Shakes was having his way with one of Mr. Delanor's old slippers, and was really growling up a storm as I rubbed the dog's belly and tried to pull the slipper from the clenches of his stubborn jaw. I looked at Mrs. Delanor and saw her smile, which was not unusual. But something about her didn't seem quite right. And then I got it—realized what was different. Her eyes. For the first time, for the only time, her eyes were smiling too.

She tucked me in that night as she usually did, with a story—this one was about a little pony who joined the circus. But on this night, she touched my cheek with the faintest of fingertips and said three words that I thought were long extinct . . . “I love you.”

She was already sobbing quietly when she closed my door, and she didn't leave her bed for the next three days, but I will never forget those fingertips or those words. Words that hurt her so much, but made me so happy.

Mr. Delanor was a fifth-grade teacher and coached cross-country, winter track, and track at the middle school. The man liked his running. At one point he'd been a hell of a runner himself, having held a Virginia high school record in the fifteen hundred meters that stood for nearly a decade.

Sometimes he'd take me running with him. I hated it but never had the nerve to tell him. I was afraid it might hurt his feelings, so I played the role of the happy runner, talking with great excitement about that happy day when I would run for his team. That sentiment always brought a smile to his face—a face that seemed to walk a very fine line between all-American good looks and outright nerdism. The strong chin and classic nose said “all-American.” The oversized ears that supported thick black-framed glasses said “nerd” in a way that Potsie Weber or Ralph Malph couldn't even begin to approach.

Mr. Delanor didn't attend grief counseling with his wife. He said that he'd “come to terms with it” and that “someone had to be strong” in the family.

Mr. Delanor talked a lot about family. And never more so than on July 4, 1977, while we watched the red glare and bombs bursting in air.

“Hey sport,” he said to me, utilizing one of the three nicknames he threw my way regularly in random order, the other two being “pal” and “chief.” But at this particular moment, I was “sport.”

“Hey sport?”

“Yes, Mr. Delanor?”

“Hey come on now, chief, you know you can call me Doug.”

“Okay, Doug . . . sorry.”

“Hey pal, nothing to be sorry about. Listen, chief, how do you like being part of this family?”

“Oh I like it a lot, Mr. Delanor.”

“Doug . . . sport.”

“Yes sir, I like it a lot . . . Doug.”

“Well then, sport, what would you think about us making it official?”

“You mean . . .?”

“That's exactly what I mean, pal. I mean you being our son, me being your dad.”

I didn't know what to say, so I just nodded my head. Nodded my head while I watched Shakes shake his own head back and forth, a rubber chew toy paying the consequences.

Mr. Delanor said, “Think about it sport-o, think about how happy Mrs. Delanor will be.”

I nodded again, thinking about her fingertips and her gentle voice . . . saying those magic words.

“But chief . . . Andrew, there's one thing I need to know before we can make this happen for real. One thing that's real important.”

“Yes sir?”

“What I need to know, chief, is . . . can you . . . keep secrets?”

“Secrets?” I said.

“That's right, sport, secrets. Can you keep them?”

“You mean, keep them from . . . Mrs. Delanor?”

“Well yes, Andrew, sometimes we might need to keep a secret from your . . . mom . . . for her own good.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Sure, sport. Look, I love my wife. And I think you love her too, don't you?”

I nodded my head.

“And chief?”

“Yes sir?”

“She loves you too. You know that, don't you?”

“Yes sir.” My voice was but a mouse's squeak.

“But it hurt her to tell you. Do you know why?”

I shook my head slowly. “No sir.”

“Because she's afraid she might lose you. She's afraid that you're going to leave her. Leave her like . . . our son did.”

I felt tears welling up, but I fought them back. I fought hard. Then I yelled, “No I won't, Mr. Delanor. I won't leave her. I promise. I promise.”

Mr. Delanor took it all in, then smiled and said, “Do you keep your promises, sport?”

“Yes, Mr. Delanor, I do, I swear I do.”

“Well chief, if you're able to keep promises, then you won't ever have to call me Mr. Delanor again . . . or Doug for that matter. Do you know what you'll call me, pal?”

“Dad?”

“That's right, sport, you will call me Dad, and do you know what you'll call Mrs. Delanor?”

I took a second to fight back tears again, and then managed to squeak out, “Mom?”

“Yes, pal, you'll call her Mom . . . if you can keep a secret.”

“But . . . um, Mr. Delanor—”

“Dad, call me Dad.”

“Dad?”

“Yes, chief?”

“We don't have any secrets.”

“No, not yet, but we will.”

“When?”

“As soon as you promise . . . are you ready?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“Guessing isn't good enough, pal, I need you to promise. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Okay then, chief, here is the promise. Promise me that for the sake of your mother's health, you won't tell her about any of the things that you and I do together. Promise me.”

“I promise.”

Mr. Delanor smiled and nodded his head. He put his hand on my shoulder and kept smiling. Then he asked me to put out my hand, and when I did, he dropped a shiny new quarter into it. Then he stood up.

“Chief, put that quarter in your pocket. It's for being a good boy. Now you watch that television, and I'll be right back.”

With that he turned and walked to his bedroom, leaving me to look at my shiny new quarter. A quarter that I slipped into my pocket just as Mr. Delanor was reemerging from his bedroom, looking to my naïve eight-year-old eyes like a ghost with a pointy white hat.

Mr. Delanor looked at me for a long time. A little too long, it seemed.

“Why are you dressed so funny?” I asked.

“Well, sport, it might look funny to you, but there's really nothing funny about this. No, sport, to the contrary this garment means that I belong to a very important club . . . a club that I want you . . . my son to join someday. Would you like to join the club?”

I thought he looked ridiculous, but again, I didn't want to hurt his feelings, so I nodded my head slowly. As I did, a car's headlights flooded our living room with light. Mrs. Delanor had returned. Mr. Delanor seemed to panic.

“Remember, pal,” he said as he ran for the bedroom, “this is our secret.”

In his haste he neglected to close his door completely, and from my spot on the couch I could see him slide his bed to the side, pull up a rug, uncover a small opening in the floorboards, and throw his wadded-up ghost outfit into it. He was just skidding the bed back into place when Mrs. Delanor, my soon-to-be mother, walked into the room with her warm smile and her sad eyes.

I woke up that next morning with the realization that I was going to have a mother, a real mother. And a father, a real father. A mother who had said she loved me, and a father who wanted me to join his special club when I got to be old enough. I looked on my nightstand in the room that still housed all of little Wilson's things, and tried to find my quarter. It was gone.

That afternoon, while Mrs. Delanor took her daily nap, Mr. Delanor asked to see my shiny new quarter. Sadly, I told him it was gone.

“Sport,” he said, “if you want to join our club, you can't be losing things. That's irresponsible, understand?”

“Yes sir,” I said.

“Now chief, if you can't be responsible, we can't have you in the club.”

“But I can be responsible, Mr. Delanor. I swear I put it on my nightstand last night, but when I woke—”

“All right, chief,” Mr. Delanor interjected, “I'm sure it was an honest mistake. So I'll tell you what . . . I'll give you another one, and to make sure you don't lose it, I'll put it in your pocket myself . . . okay?”

“Okay.”

“And remember, don't tell your mother about this, all right?”

“All right.”

“About any of it.” And then he took the quarter and put it in my pocket. But before he let go of that quarter, I was pretty sure I felt his finger rubbing my testicle. He looked at me and smiled.

“How was that . . . son?”

“Um good,” I said, happy to have the quarter, but not sure of what had just gone on inside my trousers.

“Call me Dad,” Mr. Delanor said, still smiling.

“Okay . . . Dad.”

Within a week I had fourteen shiny new quarters to my collection, and an accumulated total of two and a half minutes of Mr. Delanor's clandestine pocket pool. The contact was no longer incidental, it was pretty obvious, and the duration was longer with each passing episode. It no longer consisted just of testicular tickling either. No, now my penis itself was part of the act as well. An act that always ended with Mr. Delanor and his goofy smile saying, “Remember, this is our secret.”

I weighed the positives and the negatives of the situation. On the positive side, I now had a family. Mrs. Delanor had taken to calling me son, and had even echoed her three magic words after a bedtime story about a girl who had a hundred dresses. As she walked away, I had said, “I love you too, Mom,” and she had raced back into my room and for the first time wrapped me in a tight hug, so that the mangled cartilage of my missing ear was crushed against her bony chest. Even so, for that brief moment, her breast seemed like the safest place in the world.