The Complete Collection. William Wharton

she’s married a nigger.

      Mother’s always nourished the idea she’s married a man with a genetic deficiency. And now, finally, it’s beginning to show.

      I don’t want to get angry. I know Mother is only trying to protect herself. She has such a terrible insecurity about her own value, about her own continuity, about everything she is, she strikes out in every direction; and the more frightened she is, the worse she gets.

      I wish I’d understood this better when I was a child. So long as everything goes well, Mother is generous and kind. But if she feels threatened, she turns into a holy terror. If she feels jealous, or unloved, or ignored, it’s impossible.

      I sit for an hour and listen. I hold back; this is something Mom needs to do. She’s preparing to have Dad die. If she can make him seem unimportant, she’ll be able to bear it. At least that’s my rationale as to what her rationale is. Who knows what’s really going on?

      Joan comes back from the hospital. Mom’s finally asleep and I go out to the living room. Joan’s crying.

      ‘It’s awful, Jack. What can be the matter with him?’

      I tell her what the doctor told me.

      ‘No, Johnny, it’s more than that. There’s something seriously wrong. He’s scared to death; I’ve never seen anybody so scared.’

      Joan calls me Johnny on stress occasions; the last time was when she miscarried at five months visiting us in France. I was Johnny when we were kids.

      Joan gradually calms down. I go over everything I can think of to reassure her. She needs comforting so badly, she’s willing to believe almost anything.

      Finally, we decide it’s best if she go home. I’ll take care of Mom. In the morning I’ll visit Dad and let her know right away how he is.

      Later, I call Marty and give her some idea of what’s happening to Dad. She starts crying, so Gary comes to the phone. I tell them to stay out of all this. Their job is having the baby. This is my job now.

      ‘Mom and I aren’t going to be having any more babies and the best favor you two can do us is having yours.’

      They try to argue but I insist. I tell them I’ll yell for help if I need it. I promise on a stack of Bibles. This whole business is between Joan and me.

       9

      In the morning, we have ham and eggs at the Pizza Hut. While Dad’s paying, I roll the car down to a gas station. They have eight-tracks for sale on a revolving rack. I make the big move and buy a Dylan tape.

      I check the water, oil and battery. There’s enough motor to power a locomotive there. The battery’s big as a box of apples; the dipstick’s so long I could break my neck holding one end looking for oil on the other. Then, the damned machine drinks twenty-two gallons of gas.

      We’ve beaten most of the trucks out and start winding through beautiful country. I pull my tape out, fool with the dials and slip it in. I balance the speakers and we’re wrapped in sound. I look over to see how Dad’s taking it, but he’s hunched hard-eyed over the wheel, as usual.

      I lower the reclining seat, and watch the scenery float past. The sky gets bluer as we get higher and the air is sharp clear. The trees are more pine, less deciduous. The sound system is so great it’s almost like earphones. I’m drifting along.

      We go through the tape a couple times. The breaks aren’t bad. Trouble with eight-track is each part’s exactly twenty minutes; breaks can come anywhere.

      We’re into the second song again when Dad asks if we could turn it off for a while. OK. I don’t want to make a scene, but I can’t keep my mouth shut.

      ‘What’s wrong with Bob Dylan, Dad?’

      He looks up quickly and smiles, one of his yoga-meditation guru smiles.

      ‘Nothing much, Bill; only two hours solid is pushing it.’

      ‘Gee, Dad, these songs are important. He’s singing about things we should all put our minds to.’

      ‘Please, just for a while, Bill. We can listen some more later.’

      We cruise along quietly; packed silence.

      ‘He’s better than those Mafia-type moaners, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, those guys you and Mom like so much.’

      He doesn’t say anything.

      ‘Christ, all they do is take some dumb simple idea like “I love you” or “kiss me” and grind away at it.’

      I’m not sure he’s heard me. He can block off completely when he wants to.

      ‘Well, Bill; let’s see if I can explain my feelings.

      ‘First, it’s been so easy for so damned long. My generation started marrying, settling down at the beginning of a thirty-year boom. Most of our friends are semiretired, with a house on a hill, a pool and a Cadillac.

      ‘Hell, anybody white and half bright who even tried could make it. And you kids grew up in the middle of this. Nobody can get excited struggling for something they’ve always had. We’re accustomed to twenty-minute showers, thick, six-foot-long towels, clean underwear every morning, wheels, freezers full of food, stereos, the whole thing. And, on top, there’s the business of “having” to go to school.’

      Boy, he’s getting close. Billy boy, you’ll never learn!

      ‘Now, today’s kids want to hear about hard times, hard people. Guys like Bob Dylan tell them. You know, Dylan’s name is Zimmerman, comes from Hibbing, a town outside Duluth, Minnesota. He’s singing Tennessee because Tennessee is supposed to be manly, poverty, earthy talk. Actually, he’s imitating Woody Guthrie imitating an Appalachian dirt farmer. And he’s not out in a corn patch singing those songs, either. He’s in a recording studio, surrounded by technicians. There are different specialists with blenders, dampers, amplifiers; mixing, putting together all the honky sound. It’s totally computerized; not even Dylan ever hears himself sing the way it sounds.’

      Now he’s the technical genius. Hell, he can’t play ‘Jingle Bells’ on a harmonica without making mistakes. I dread Christmas. Every year he whips out his harmonica and massacres all the Christmas carols. How far is it to Philadelphia?

      ‘But that’s OK, Bill. It’s just I don’t want to hear about hard times; it doesn’t interest me. Dylan’s only another entertainer like Crosby, Sinatra or Como. It’s what he’s paid for; singing things people want to hear. Dylan’s worked up a voice that’s just right, black enough but not too black, red-neck but not hick, an acceptable squeak of poverty. Here’s a nice bourgeois Jewish boy who’s been turned into an event.’

      He’s quiet. I’m praying he’s finished. I’ll hide the tape in my knapsack, forget about it.

      ‘One more thing, Bill. There’s the voice. I’m not talking about the Tennessee accent but the voice itself. It violates me. There’s something tight-jawed. I don’t feel this is a rational person with whom I can talk, work it out. There’s hate in that voice, just generalized hate.’

      Oh, boy! I can see there isn’t going to be much Dylan played on this trip. I only wish I could get my eight dollars back.

      We’re behind a whole line of trucks on the way up Loveland. The old man isn’t about to pass, either, so we lug along at thirty, thirty-five. The car’s heating up. At this altitude, in midsummer, any water-cooled engine is in trouble.

      At last, the road widens and we come to Vail. It’s the American idea of a picture-postcard town, like the place in Austria we skied when we were kids. Only it’s blown up five times normal size. It reminds me of Santa Cruz: Twentieth Century National Forest style, everything wood and glass.

      We