The Escape of Bobby Ray Hammer, A Novel of a '50s Family

  "You mean Papa threatened Dr. Wade?"

  "He was desperate. Loretta was the only family he had left. So Dr. Wade didn't like it but they went to work on her anyway. After a while, Dr. Wade came to Hershel and asked if they could stop. Hershel said, 'No.' He'd given up both his parents to a twister in Norman, Oklahoma two years before, just given up baby Joseph, and he wasn't about to give up his sister too. So they went to work again. Dr. Wade asked him three more times. Finally, he said, 'She's dead, Hershel. She's dead. Give her up.' They didn't want to waste any more blood on her. And Dr. Wade was mad too, so I thought they were going to fist city. Hershel didn't like it but he said, 'Okay,' and then he just walked out. Didn't thank anybody for their effort. They prepared Loretta for the undertaker, but when Mr. Hickman got there to pick her up, he saw that she was still alive. Three weeks later, they finally said she'd live. For three weeks she hovered between life and death. Dr. Wade said he'd never seen anything like it. I tell you, there was a tug of war for that girl's soul going on between God and the devil, a war the likes of which we've never seen on this earth. Looks like neither side could get the upper hand so they sent her back to us. Why they both wanted her so much is hard to say. Why she's still here even against her own will is even tougher. But don't you ever again say that she didn't want you. You do, I'll slap your mouth shut."

  "So who is my father? If Aunt Loretta is my mother, who is my papa?"

  "You'll have to talk to Loretta about that. She should answer it."

  "But why is my name Hammer. Or is it Hammer? Why isn't it something else?"

  "Because Loretta wasn't married, Bobby Ray. She never has been. So her name, and yours, is Hammer."

  *

  I'm in what was my bedroom clearing out my stuff. I have the sniffles. I'm worrying about who the sorry sonofabitch is that is my father. Curt comes in. He flips on the light. I didn't realize it was so dark.

  "What you crying about, Bobby Ray?"

  "The bedroom is all yours, Curt. You're old enough, you shouldn't be sleeping with your brother anyway."

  "You mean Papa really meant that you have to leave?"

  "That's the look of it."

  "Guess you should've let him whip me."

  "No. That's not the answer. Not anymore."

  Trish is standing in the doorway. "What you up to, Bobby Ray? What's that box for?" She looks really huffy. "Papa wasn't serious. You're not leaving."

  "I crossed him one too many times."

  "No. You've got it wrong," she says. And she takes my red corduroy coat off the bed and hangs it back in the closet. "He'll get over being mad, he always does."

  "I've already talked to Mama about me leaving." I take my coat back out of the closet, take it off the hanger, put it on this time.

  "Damn, you. You're going to let him kick you out, just like that?"

  "I can't see that I have a choice."

  "No choice! This house is as much yours as it is his. He's not God."

  "There's more to it than that."

  "You just did the first thing in your life, in any of our lives, to make things better. For the first time you showed some real courage and now you just turn your back, show your yellow streak and slink off."

  "Come on, Trish," I can't stand to cry in front of a girl, "leaving isn't as easy as you think."

  "I can't wait to hear where you're going."

  "Aunt Loretta is the only other family we have. Guess I don't have much of a choice."

  "That's really a match. The two of you together should be against the law."

  So here I go. I'm not telling them the truth. Trish and Curt seem strange though. I feel different toward them. They're not my sister and brother anymore. They are my cousins. I don't know what to do. It's obvious that Mama hasn't told them the whole story yet, and she probably won't. So I feel like this time, right here, with me putting my clothes in an old cardboard box and Trish standing there looking like she might want to hit me and Curt feeling like he owes me something for standing up to Papa but still wanting to cuss me, this is a crossroads for me. I can play it the way Mama and Papa have all these years, or I can start spreading the truth. Can the truth do anymore damage than the silence that I've heard so loud all these years?

  "Curt, come over here and sit down. Trish, I'm not going to tell you what to do because you wouldn't do it anyway. But I'm going to tell you something because I like both of you. I know we don't do a lot of talking about how we feel about each other, but you've been my sister and brother all these years and now things have changed. I need to tell you about it. I don't believe Mama and Papa will ever tell you. I don't want you to wonder for the next hundred years what this is all about."

  I think Curt just about wet his pants because he didn't have anything to say back. He just finds a place to sit in the center of our bed, his bed now.

  "You're not my brother, and Trish, this is true, you are not my sister, not by blood."

  "Ah, what kind of shit is this?" Curt's found himself again. "You may not want to be, but you're my brother, that's for sure."

  "I'm going to call Mama in here. She can straighten this out," is what Trish says.

  "Sit down and shutup," I tell Trish, then I go over to Curt, shake him by the shoulders. "I want to be. You'll never know how bad I wish I was." Then I turn back to Trish. "Listen to me. Cause I'm telling the truth. I just had a long talk with Mama. I'm not who you think I am. I'm not even who I thought I was. You're my cousins, not my sister and bother." Then I close the door so Mama won't hear me. My voice is getting a little loud. "I don't have much time, so I'd better make this fast. I've got to get out before Papa gets home. You had a baby brother named Joseph that was born a couple of weeks after me. He died. Aunt Loretta is really my mother. Papa and Mama raised me because Aunt Loretta couldn't. Quit looking at me like that, Curt. This is the truth, I tell you."

  "You've gone crazy," says Curt, but I can tell he believes me now.

  Trish just shakes her head no over and over.

  "Listen to me. It's the truth, I tell you. I just keep finding out more and more about our family all the time. The reason I'm going to Aunt Loretta's place to stay is because she's the one that gave birth to me. I could lie and say that I'm going to her place because I have no place else to go. But that's not true. I'm going over there because she's my mother. This world's a strange place. I feel like I live on Mars."

  I have both of them stumped this time.

  "I hate to tell you all this and just leave, but I have to. I know you'll worry about it, but try not to worry anymore than you have to. And for christsake, don't tell Mama and Papa I told you. Not yet anyway. He'd probably come looking for me with a gun. Give me a little time. I still have more to tell you, but not right now. It's not about the two of you. You really belong to Mama and Papa, both of you. I've seen your birth certificates, so don't worry about that. The rest of it, I think, is about Lenny. But I don't know the full story yet myself, and there'll be some things that I can't tell you until you get older. But I will tell you. I promise you that. Eventually, I'll tell you everything."

  CHAPTER 37: Bobby Ray's New Mama

  I'm afraid. Two weeks ago, I moved in with my new mother, Aunt Loretta. To go along with my new mother, I have a new perspective. I've been thinking about how we're always blaming everything on Papa. Maybe Delbert is a little simpleminded. Maybe Papa feels the pressure of taking care of so many people. I wish I could've found a better way to stop him whipping Curt. Maybe I should've just talked to him after he did it the time before. And now I find out that Lenny's problems were worse than I ever imagined. Helen says she thinks she can't go on. Life just seems like it's not workable. I don't know anybody that's making it too good, now that I think about it. Curt told me Trish woke up screaming the other night. Took Mama a half hour to calm her.

  I can't stay away from Papa's farm. Keep dreaming about it. Right now, I'm out on this piece of ground on the home place that we were planting when Delbert got fired, scratching
at the old crusted earth to see if the cotton's going to come up. In places the ground's cracked and lifted a little. I take a broken twig from one of last years cotton stalks and lift the earth, and it's like finding a little green surprise underneath. Seems almost impossible that that's what's happening all over this sixty acre field, just beneath the surface.

  I used to feel like this place was mine. I knew it belonged to Mama and Papa but still, it seemed like it was also mine. Now this place just belongs to Papa. I don't know why, but Mama doesn't even seem like part of the family. Life's so strange and I'm the strangest part of it. I don't belong to anybody. I don't belong anywhere. I feel like I'm living in a stranger's body. And I'm afraid to be by myself. When I walk into Aunt Loretta's kitchen, I'm afraid of the knives in the silverware drawer. I don't carry my pocketknife anymore. Put it in my dresser drawer. I don't know what I might do.

  Now I'm a part of everything I've ever been ashamed of. Aunt Loretta's spare bedroom has always been locked. When she unlocked it for me, it was like someone had been living there all these years. The cleanest room I've ever seen. My things have always had a way of disappearing. Sometimes it was old worn out toys, other times old clothes. I always thought Mama threw them away. When I questioned her about things of mine that were missing, like maybe an old shirt I really liked, she'd say she probably threw it away, or when one of my favorite toys turned up missing, she'd say Papa took it off to the junkyard. Now they show up in Aunt Loretta's spare bedroom. When she opened the door, there was my little rocking chair I had when I was three sitting in a corner. My first tricycle, with a back wheel missing, was out in the middle of the floor. I've been thinking about fixing it. Papa never would. All my old shirts that got too small for me were on hangers in the closet, and on the shelf above them were all my old coloring books. I never knew I was so bad about not staying in the lines. My old B-B gun with the stock loose, the one I killed birds with, was standing in a corner. Before I could put my clothes in the chest of drawers, I had to take out all my old holey underwear and stacks of socks that weren't fit for a foot. Everything washed clean and smelling a little like lye soap. A cardboard box was in the floor of the closet filled with old baby diapers. I feel more at home here than I ever did at Mama's and Papa's. And that's the big problem. I feel comfortable in her house, more than I do with my life, if you catch my meaning, and I'm ashamed of her. She's crazy. Not only do I have my own bed, I have my own room. Aunt Loretta even bought a little radio for me with her own money because she knows how I like to listen to Stan's Private Line out of Fresno before I go to sleep. That first night I listened to "Butterfly" by Andy Williams, "Round and Round," by Perry Como, and "All Shook Up," by Elvis. But I like Fats Domino best, and I was just about to turn off the radio and go to sleep when Fats started singing, "I'm walkin', yes indeed, and I'm talkin', 'bout you and me..." The last song I heard was Gogi Grant's "The Wayward Wind." It's been around a few months, getting kind of old, but I don't know if I'll ever get tired of it.

  I step from furrow to furrow scratching in the ground, then walk along a row into the middle of the field, stop, scratch some more, think about how close to it I was last night. Standing there in the kitchen by myself after Aunt Loretta had gone to bed, or at least after I thought she'd gone to bed, I felt like something had taken over control of me from the inside. I've never been so afraid. I opened the refrigerator door and there on the bottom shelf was a piece of red meat sitting in a puddle of blood, a roast Aunt Loretta's cooking right now for lunch. I got out the butcher knife that she'll use when she cuts up the fresh cooked roast after she's pulls it out of the oven, and I ran the blade along my arm, just to see how it felt, ran it along my neck. Cut my finger a little on the sharp edge. Sucked the blood.

  Later that night, I woke to what I thought was music, sounded way off in the distance. I peeked out my door and saw a thin column of light coming from a crack in Aunt Loretta's door, tiptoed down the hall and took a peek. I don't want to say anything bad about my new mother, but what I saw I wouldn't want to be known around town either. This is something I won't tell Curt. She was also dressed like a high school kid and dancing with a broom like it was a man. Every time I woke during the night, I heard the music. It's been that way night after night. I don't think the woman ever sleeps. Sometimes when I look in on her, she's coloring in a coloring book.

  One morning, we were out in her turkey shed, where she keeps the little turkeys before they get big enough for her to put outside. Now I know why she's so strange. All the peeps out of those thousands of beaks is enough to put your mind away. I couldn't find the courage to ask her who my father is. She doesn't seem to be in a big hurry to tell me either. She put on her gloves, and I don't know why because there wasn't anything else that could stick to a human being's hands. We'd just finished painting her house red. She told me why Mama and Papa left Oklahoma and came to California. How Papa couldn't take going broke during the dust bowl. There was four of them then, Papa, Mama, baby Lenny and Aunt Loretta. She stayed with them after a twister killed their papa and mama. Now I understand Papa and don't feel too good about myself.

  Only Papa's not my papa. He's my uncle. And Mama's my aunt, not even blood kin. So now when I look at my life, everything is turned around. The things I used to think they did to me now seem like things they did for me. Like Papa trying to get me to stay and farm with him. Even talked about buying me a little piece of ground. I'm not even his own kid and he put clothes on my back and fed me all those years. And when he told me he'd like for me to farm with him, I didn't even think that maybe it was because he cared for me. I was just thinking about myself, thinking about getting out of here. Now since he's calmed down a little over me standing up to him, he says that he still wants me to work for him. Says he can pay me a decent wage. "I can always use good help," is what Papa said. God knows, Aunt Loretta doesn't have the money to give me all the stuff I need. And Papa let me keep my car. "It's yours," he said. "I gave it to you." Now who could be fairer than that?

  And this thing about Papa's pistol. Aunt Loretta said that he bought it when they were still in Oklahoma, brought it home the day after they told him to get off his own land. Loretta caught him in the bedroom loading it and ran to tell Mama. Mama asked him what was he doing with a pistol? You should be ashamed of yourself buying a weapon of the devil like that, she told him. He didn't even own a rifle then, but Mama didn't mind rifles because you need them for hunting. The only thing a pistol is good for is killing people, is the way Mama looks at pistols. Papa was a member of the church then. Even used to do a little preaching himself. But losing his land broke his faith. Lost faith in himself. Aunt Loretta said he'd loaded the pistol with three bullets.

  Papa was right about the way we planted this field. I can tell just where Delbert helped us plant and where he didn't. I can tell where me and Papa and Curt did it alone. Where Papa didn't help, the rows are not quite as straight and in places it's planted a little deep. I find a spot where the ground's not lifted and scrape aside some loose clods dried hard from the wind we had a few days ago, dig down in the moist earth. I find a few of the little black seeds with a small tuft of white cotton still attached, buried probably two inches. That's too deep. They haven't swelled any. The sun's warmth can't reach them. They may never make it, just stay buried and rot. Only once in a while, one of them has this pale green spike sticking out the end of the seed. Then I know that sprout'll turn downward and put out white roots and the little black husk will turn up, sprout two little green leaves that'll bend over like an umbrella and start pushing up the ground. They'll make it, but the rest won't.

  I asked my new mother who it was Lenny wanted to kill just before he died. I asked her if it was Charles.

  "Don't think so, Ray," she said. "Think it was a girl. He was talking some nonsense about people hurting so bad and killing things that hurt. Kept saying over and over again that he couldn't stand to see people suffer."

  I had it all wrong about Lenny wanting to kill
Charles. Not that he didn't want to kill Charles, he just wasn't the one Lenny talked to Loretta about. It was a girl. Lenny was a really confusing person. From what she and Charles both told me, it could only be Helen.

  I didn't know that I was thinking about hurting myself. But after last night, I remember that the idea of not living sort of sits off on the side of my mind worrying me. I have this fear of tight places. I worry about getting buried and then waking up inside the casket. It's hot and stuffy in there, either that or cold and damp. I know that the undertaker is supposed to embalm all dead people, but let's just say that Wayne's father was real cramped for time or maybe that he was cutting a few corners to save a little money and that maybe I'm not completely dead yet. Aunt Loretta wasn't dead and they almost buried her. So I wake up under there, six feet down.

  I think it might be better to have them burn me like they do some people. But then I'm thinking about what the Bible say about those that go to hell and how they burn for all eternity. And I know that I haven't been doing so good the way I've been living.

  Who knows what happens after death? Fact is, I don't. So, what it comes down to is if I want to take the situation here and now or trade it for another situation that I don't know anything about. Except that Mama says there's some really bad shit coming down for people that commit suicide. Besides, someday I'm going to die anyway. I can put it off, do it later. I'll always have that way to go. Can't come back, but I guess my mother, Aunt Loretta, did come back. Maybe if I tough it out now, things won't be so bad later. But some times my arms do things on their own.