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I’m going on about this because there were few strike-outs or strike-overs in the finished manuscripts of The Lightning Storm, The Terrible Generation, and Highway 19. The spiral notebooks, on the other hand, were full of cross-outs, some so heavy they had torn the pages. Other pages had been entirely scribbled over, as if in a fury. There were marginal notes, like What happens to Tommy? and Remember the bureau!!! There were a dozen of those notebooks in all, and the one at the bottom was pretty clearly a trial run at The Lightning Storm. It wasn’t terrible… but it wasn’t very good, either.
Thinking of Ruth’s final question—also of my mother’s distress call in 1978—I found the banker’s box containing those old notebooks. I dug out the one I wanted and read some of it sitting crosslegged beneath a naked lightbulb.
A storm was coming!
Jason Jack stood on the porch watching black clouds form in the west. Thunder rolled! Lightning hit everywhere! smashed the ground like battering rams of fire! The wind began to blow howl. Jack was wicked scared but he couldn’t stop looking. Fire before rain, he thought. FIRE BEFORE RAIN!
There was a picture in those words, and there was narration, but it was hackneyed at best. On that page and the ones that followed, I could see Pop straining to say what he saw. As if he knew what he was doing wasn’t very good and kept trying, trying, trying to make it better. It was painful because it wanted to be good… and wasn’t.
I went downstairs and got a copy of The Lightning Storm from the shelf of proofs in Pop’s office. I turned to the first page and read this:
A storm was on the way.
Jack Elway stood on the porch, hands in his pockets, watching as black clouds rose in the west like smoke, blotting out the stars as they came. Thunder muttered. Lightning lit the clouds, making them look like brains, or so he thought. The wind began to pick up. Fire before rain, the boy thought. Fire before rain. The idea terrified him, but he couldn’t stop looking.
Comparing the bad (but trying so hard to be good) handwritten copy to the version in the finished book, I found myself thinking first of Butch LaVerdiere’s dump murals, then of his painting of Elvis and Marilyn on the midway, which had sold for three million dollars. I thought again that one was the bud and one was the bloom.
All over this country—all over the world—men and women are painting pictures, writing stories, playing instruments. Some of these wannabes go to seminars and workshops and art classes. Some hire teachers. The fruit of their labors is dutifully admired by friends and relatives, who say things like Wow, really good! and then forget it. I always enjoyed my father’s stories when I was a kid. They enthralled me and I thought Wow, really good, Pop! As I’m sure people passing on Dump Road saw Uncle Butch’s brash and busy murals of town life and thought Wow, really good! and then went on their way. Because someone is always painting pictures, someone is always telling stories, someone is always playing “Call Me the Breeze” on the guitar. Most are forgettable. Some are competent. A very few are indelible. Why that should be I don’t know. And how those two country men made the leap from good to good enough to great—I didn’t know that, either.
But I found out.
Two years after his brief interview with Ruth Crawford, Pop was once more inspecting the daylilies growing along the picket fence. He was showing me how outliers had begun to pop up on the other side of the fence, even on the other side of Benson Street, when I heard a muffled crack. I thought he might have stepped on a fallen branch. He looked at me with wide eyes, his mouth open, and I thought (I remember this clearly) This is what Pop looked like when he was a kid. Then he tilted to the side. He grabbed for the fence. I grabbed his arm. We both missed our holds. He fell to the grass and began screaming.
I didn’t always carry my cell—I’m not of the generation that would no more go without a phone than without underwear—but that day I had it. I called 911 and told them I needed an ambulance at 29 Benson because my father had had an accident.
I knelt next to Pop and tried to straighten his leg. He shrieked and said no-no-no, it hurts, Markey, it hurts. His face was as white as fresh snow, as Moby-Dick’s underbelly, as amnesia. I didn’t often feel old, probably because the man I lived with was so much older, but I felt plenty old then. I told myself not to pass out. I told myself not to have a heart attack. And I hoped the Harlow EMT wagon (which my father and Butch had paid for) was in the area, because an ambulance from Gates Falls would take half an hour and one from the Rock might take even longer.
I can still hear my father’s screams. Just before the Harlow EMT vehicle showed up, he passed out. That was a relief. They got him in the back with a power lift and took him to St. Stephen’s, where he was stabilized—supposing a ninety-year-old man can be stabilized—and took X-rays. His left hip had snapped. There was no attributable cause; it just happened. Nor was it a mere break, the orthopedist told me. It had exploded.
“I’m not sure how to proceed,” Dr. Patel said. “If he was your age, I would of course recommend a hip replacement, but Mr. Carmody is suffering from advanced osteoporosis. His bones are like glass. All of them. And he is, of course, of an advanced age.” He spread his hands above the X-rays. “You must advise me.”
“Is he awake?”
Patel made a call. Asked. Listened. Hung up. “He’s soupy from the pain medication but conscious and able to respond to questions. He wants to speak to you.”
Even with Covid on the decline, space was at a premium in St. Stevie’s. Still, my father was given a single room. This was because he could pay, but also because he was a celebrity. And loved in Castle County. I once gave him a tee-shirt that said ROCK STAR WRITER, and he wore it.
He was no longer as white as Moby-Dick’s belly, but he looked shrunken. His face was haggard and shiny with sweat. His hair was every whichway. “Broke my goddam hip, Markey.” His voice was little more than a whisper. “That Pakistani doc says it’s a wonder it didn’t happen, when we went to Butchie’s funeral. Remember that?”
“Of course I do.” I sat down beside him and took my comb out of my pocket.
He held up a hand in his old imperious stop gesture. “Don’t do that, I’m not a baby.”
“I know, but you look like a crazy person.”
The hand dropped to the sheet. “All right. But only because I once changed your shitty diapers.”
I guessed that had probably been Mom’s job, but I didn’t argue, just put his hair as right as I could. “Pop, the doc is trying to decide if you should have a hip repla—”
“Hush up,” he said. “My pants are in the closet.”
“Dad, you’re not going anywh—”
He rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ, I know that. Bring me my keyring.”
I found it in his left front pocket beneath a little jingle of change. He held it close to his eyes with a trembling hand (I hated to see that tremble) and picked through the keys until he found a small silver one.
“This opens the bottom drawer of my desk. If I don’t pull through this clusterfuck—”
