Okay, so … this is the story. I mean THE STORY that I used to tell at parties. It was the story that got the whole ball rolling. It was the one episode that used to provoke people to tell me, “You should write these down, you really should.” It was also one of the main pain points between my sister and I back in 2012. She remembers this whole event quite differently. And frankly, so do I. This is the point, right? Creative Non-fiction. This really happened, but not really this way. So, after my sister and I talked things over, she came around to the idea that I was taking a bit of creative license, especially when it came to the way she was portrayed in this particular piece. But neither of us will deny these events actually happened. So, if you want her version of this story, you’ll have to ask her. This is mine. All mine. And it’s the strong first chapter of the book, one I’ve been wanting to post for quite a while, but the timing just hasn’t been right. Today seems like the day. So … here it is.
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Independence Day
July, 1965
I hated shoes. I hid them under my bed in the summer. They made my feet feel stupid. Huge, hard, stupid shoes.
“Stand still! This cowlick just won’t stay down,” Mom said. “There … no … there … no! Goddammit!” My mother was determined to make my hair stand still.
“Shoes too tight,” I whined. (Only it came out Whose poo bite!) Born tongue-tied, my cleft tongue was a problem for everyone in my family except my older sister.
“What’d he say?” Mom asked her.
“His shoes are too tight.” A year older, B.J. (short for Bobbi Jean) was my interpreter, mentor and partner in crime.
“Stand still, honey. Goddammit!” Mom spit on her hand and started rubbing the back of my head. “Good. Good? OK, stand there for a sec,” she said. I stood stalk-still next to B.J. “Well, don’t you two just look like Caroline and John-John!”
“When can we take these clothes off?” B.J. asked.
“After the picnic, honey. Later on, after the picnic,” Mom said. Every Fourth of July there was a big parade downtown and a picnic in Washoe Park. “Now go play, but don’t get dirty. And for the love of God, Grantsy, don’t touch your hair!” She lit a cigarette, pulled the smoke into her nose and blew it out her mouth.
B.J. was dressed in a frilly party dress and a pair of very shiny Mary Janes. She looked great.
I looked stupid. My pants weren’t shorts, my mother told me, but short pants. I had to wear a blazer and a clean white shirt. Like B.J., I wore my Sunday shoes.
I was clean. I was a clean little boy. I never did anything my parents told me not to do. Mom insisted on dressing us like the Kennedys. According to her, we were fancy people, and it was important that we dress fancy. Only nobody did. Well, nobody except us.
Every afternoon, between Dark Shadows and General Hospital, Mom took a nap. She would close the heavy curtains over the big picture window, wrap a special pillow around her neck (to preserve her hairdo), and snooze on the couch in the front room. Before she went down this Fourth of July afternoon, she reminded B.J. and me to play quietly indoors and not mess up our nice clothes. She wouldn’t stand for us showing up to the picnic in play clothes like the neighbors.
We weren’t allowed to light fireworks until we were eight years old. It was a rule. But B.J. and I had swiped some snakes from my brother, Donnie. Snakes were little black pellets you put on the ground, lit on fire and watched from a safe distance. The ash of the firework made a snake—a long connected ash that grew from a tiny, smelly pellet. The fun was to see how long a snake you could get.
Snakes are harmless fireworks. No bang. No sparkle. No lighting it and throwing it like other, more grown-up fireworks. Although the smoke and fumes from the pellet made an icky smell, this was the only firework my parents told us was safe enough for B.J. and me. But we still needed a grown-up to light them.
That afternoon, B.J.’s plan was to take a pack of matches from the ashtray on the coffee table, go outside (away from my dozing mother) and light a couple of snakes. We counted on the good time doing something you aren’t supposed to do. What we didn’t count on was the wind.
“Sometimes, there’s nothing to stop the wind from coming all the way down from the North Pole. Over the mountain, across the street and into our yard,” my dad told us. Although we couldn’t see over the mountain across the street, I just knew he was right. He was smart about the weather.
Try as she might, B.J. could not get a match to stay lit long enough to ignite a snake. She went through an entire book of matches. She sent me back into the house for a second book, and she tried lighting the entire book of matches on fire and then igniting the snake. The wind blew out every try.
“Skylark!” I said. (Only it came out Pie rock!) I had gotten the idea to get out of the wind by lighting the snakes in my dad’s brand-new, sky-blue Buick Skylark.
I loved the sound of the word Skylark. It meant so many things, like the smell of the plastic seat covers that had little stars in them, or the big shiny dashboard with Climate Control. The car had a radio with stereophonic sound and a metal frame to hold a box of Kleenex that rotated out from under the dashboard.
My mother adored the rotating Kleenex box. She had Kleenex everywhere. It would appear from a sleeve, a brassiere, a purse, a pocket, even a shoe if it had to. She was never without one. She’d spit on the tip of it and wipe the grime from B.J.’s cheeks. She would use it as a compress on open wounds. She would roll it up and stuff it in our nose to stop the bleeding.
Our Skylark had a big bench front seat and a huge ashtray. In that ashtray was a lighter. At the end of the lighter was fire. Sit-in-the-back-seat-and-watch-your-parents-smoke-at-the-drive-in-movie fire. The plastic seat covers, the Kleenex box, the electric windows, the big shiny dashboard … oh, the glamour of the 1967 Buick Skylark. This was my mother’s car. But my father owned it. My father never drove the Skylark, but I could tell he liked owning it. He drove a Ford Falcon.
B.J. thought if we got the keys to the car and turned the key enough to hear the radio, we could use the cigarette lighter to ignite the snake.
“Go get the keys!” she said.
I did what I was told.
We tried using the lighter with little success. The snake pellets were small, after all, and B.J. simply couldn’t hold the lighter and the snake without her fingers getting burnt. In a moment of brilliance, B.J. thought to twist a piece of Kleenex into a punk, light the Kleenex with the lighter, light the snake with the Kleenex, then carry the snake outside to the curb. Easy peasey lemon squeezey.
When B.J. slid the Kleenex box out from under the dashboard, my heart began to pound. After several failed attempts, we had collected a half-box of twisted, torn Kleenex at our feet. B.J. twisted the Kleenex and held it in her right hand, the snake in her left. My job was to light the twisted Kleenex with the lighter and move away. But my hand started shaking every time the lighter popped out of the ashtray. Finally, my heart in my throat, I eased the lighter from the ashtray and moved it toward the Kleenex, which ignited with a small spit flame.
B.J. moved the burning Kleenex to the snake pellet resting in the open, outstretched palm of her left hand. For a few seconds, nothing happened. The moment hung suspended on a small, twisted bit of tissue.
Then the pellet burst into flame.
I shrieked and slapped her hand up from below, causing her to pop the burning pellet into the air, and we both watched it land in the Kleenex box below. After a second of hesitation, B.J. dropped the burning, twisted Kleenex onto the pile of scattered tissue.
We now had two fires—one in the Kleenex box, and one at our feet. Bits of ash floated up in our faces. B.J. stamped on the pile of burning Kleenex with her Sunday shoes. Before long, the seat covers began to heat up, and the smell of smoldering plastic filled the car. In a panic, B.J. shoved the burning Kleenex box back under the dashboard, opened the passenger door, and dashed off into the wind.
There I sat, dressed like a Kennedy, in the burning cockpit of my father’s Skylark.
Both fires leapt and danced around me. I knew I had to get out of the car. Being a clean little boy, I left the burning Buick by the driver’s side door. I ran up the front walk into the front room, trying to stay quiet, so as not to disturb my napping mother, but at the same time searching for B.J..
Not in the front room. Not in the kitchen. Not locked in the bathroom. I found her in her room, playing with Barbies. This was bad. She played with Barbies only when she had something to hide. It was one of her biggest fakes. After all, what could a little girl playing with dolls possibly have to do with the flaming car parked in front of the house? I didn’t dare cross the threshold.
“What are we going to do?!” (Putt doughing goo?!) I panicked.
“Nothing,” she replied.
“But … ” (Tut … )
“If you tell Mom, I’ll kill you!” she said, and slammed the door in my face.
I ran to my room. B.J. had told me she would kill me through clenched teeth. She did that only when she was serious. She was capable of killing me. I knew this. I had seen the tantrums when she didn’t get her way. I had watched my entire family—both parents, older brother; and eldest sister (who didn’t even live with us anymore)—crumble at her whim. I had seen her tear dolls limb from limb. I had even stood by, aghast, as she pulled clumps of hair from our Siamese tomcat. She meant business. If I woke my mother and told her the car was on fire, B.J. would kill me. It would hurt.
From my window, I could see the front seat of the Skylark filling with smoke. I stood silent as the flames licked the passenger-side window. I had to do something.
I made my way to the darkened front room. I wanted the phone to ring. I wanted the mailman to come and the dog to go berserk. I wished for a visit from the neighbor, from the insurance man, even the milkman—anything to wake my mother without getting blamed. Moments passed. Nothing happened. The front room was silent as a church. I could even hear the electric clock humming on the kitchen wall.
It finally dawned on me. There was only one wordless way to wake my mother. Only a sunbeam could scream into a room and send my mother running to close the drapes.
The drapes! Of course!
Before I knew it, I was standing at the side of the huge picture window, watching my own two hands reach for the cord stretched from floor to ceiling. With a quick tug the sun splashed into the room and fell across my mother’s face. She rolled out of the sun. I tugged. She rolled again. I tugged again. Finally she woke up, blinded by the sunny Montana day filling the front room.
She sat up on the couch and gazed beyond me to the smoking, seething, brand-new car parked directly in front our house.
“Good God!” she cried. She was up and out in a flash. Rushing down the walk, she paused to take in the sight of her blazing automobile.
I ran to B.J.’s room, flung open the door and shouted, “She’s up!” (Pea soup!)
B.J. was busy twirling Grow-up Skipper’s arms around and around in their sockets, making Skipper’s boobies move quickly in and out of her chest.
“Did you wake her up?” she snarled.
“Nope!” (Dope!) I said. A naked Skipper was thrown into the upstairs bedroom of the Dream House.
“You better hope not!” she rasped through clenched teeth.
Both of us raced down the hallway and out the front door. My mother was pacing around the front lawn, a lock of hair falling down from her bouffant across her dazed face. The hairdo pillow still encircled her neck. She was muttering something—parts of words, grunts, incomplete questions.
By now the neighbors were stalking the burning car. Our little neighborhood had become half war zone, half Night of the Living Dead.
My mother picked up the hose. Moaning and grunting, she followed the length of the hose to the nozzle, and made her way to the spigot. She cranked the spigot like Fireman Frank.
“Get on the porch! Stay on the porch! Don’t touch anything!” she shouted. We did what we were told. The hose tensed on the front lawn. My mother pulled herself and the hose as close to the car as she could and opened the nozzle. The neighbors advanced.
B.J. and I stood side by side on the front step. Neither of us could take our eyes off the flaming car.
While my mom doused the roof of the car, angry flames blew out the electric windows, one by one. The fire shot from the windows into the windy day like orange ribbons tied to the front of a fan. The gray-black smoke sailed up higher than any kite I had ever flown. The roar of the fire sounded just like the smelter train when you stood too close to the tracks.
Within a few seconds, the car began to hiss like wet wood on a campfire. Then it hunkered down … and … BLAM! The passenger-side front tire blew out. BLAM! The driver-side front tire followed seconds later.
My mother was well past 40. She had been a serious young woman during World War II. I don’t know if it was her civil-service training, or pure instinct that had placed my mother so firmly in command that afternoon. After she had witnessed the tires explode off the front of her husband’s pride and joy, she abandoned the idea that she could ever tame this flaming beast and dropped the gushing garden hose. She shot B.J. and me a terrified glance and then turned her attention to the zombie-like neighbors.
The car started to rock forward on its broken wheels, then back, then side to side. Fluid started oozing out from under its front. It looked like it was drooling. Then it sounded like soup boiling over on the stove.
My mother’s feet were planted in the ground as she Watusied on our front walk, dropping the garden hose and twisting from the waist, first to the car, and back to us. Her face was starting to get smudged and sooty.
She threw out her hands like a base coach calling a runner safe, squatted slightly and shouted with all her ever-loving might “SHE-E-L-L-L-L-TER!!!”
B.J. and I retreated behind our screen door, the neighbors turned tail and started toward the safety of their own homes, and my poor, dear, fresh-from-a-nap mother chugged toward our front porch.
The explosion sprung the hood of the Skylark open to expel a huge orange mushroom cloud of flame. The front passenger-side door blew clear off its hinges, cartwheeled across the front walk and flopped smoldering on the front lawn. Little bits of glass hailed against the picture window, which now stood between us and the burning car, each of us peeking around the edges of the open curtains.
The frame of the Kleenex box stuck, shrapnel-like, into the bed of honeysuckle lining the front of our house.
Fire trucks rounded the corner three doors down the street. The Buick inferno was watered out within the hour.
My father showed up a short time later and helped us simmer Mom down.
“What happened?” she asked, a dazed look crossing her eyes.
“Bake! Pee bit da bake! Burned da bee’s necks! Dook!” I cried, pointing from the car to B.J..
“What’s he saying?” my mom asked B.J.
“Beats me,” B.J. said.