We Were Brothers (10 page)

PART THREE

BROTHERS

Love is not love that can only love those already flawless. That kind of love requires no enlargement of the self: It requires no love.

—
ANDREW HUDGINS

The Joker

ON THE SECOND DAY OF
December 1997, my brother phoned me from Nashville. I was working on an illustration for a new, upcoming Pennyroyal Caxton Press edition of the King James Bible, and was deep into engraving an image of the Archangels Gabriel and Michael.

Tommy called to tell me that our cousin Wayland had died the week before. It wasn’t terribly sad news to me because there had been so little communication among the three of us over the past thirty or so years and the affections that were once strong had considerably diminished. The conversation began pleasantly, as most of our telephone conversations did. Eventually the chitchat turned to family history. Tommy was retelling a story about an attempted robbery that took place in our grandfather Haggard’s grocery store before either of us were born.

Tommy with Uno, our cousin’s pup, c. 1951

Our grandfather, Will Haggard, was an ill-tempered man, a trait that he evidently passed on to his son, Floyd, though not so much to his four daughters. An oddly formal grocerman, he wore a three-piece business suit that, in photographs at least, seemed to soften his hard demeanor. He carried a pocket watch in his vest that was attached to a watch chain and a T bar. According to Tommy, the robber, who was black and probably drunk, was afraid of our grandfather and probably wished he had never started this shit. Will Haggard was a Klansman, as was his son, and he wasn’t afraid of the robber and didn’t back away from him. He probably went under the counter and brought out the billy club he kept there for just this kind of situation. The robber responded by pulling out a knife. But when the old man still showed no fear, the robber, who by now must have been about to lose control of his bowels, thrust his knife at our grandfather’s belly. But the point of the knife blade struck the watch in Will Haggard’s vest pocket and stuck in the watch’s gold cover.

Nobody knows the rest of the story. If there is an ending of some sort, neither Tommy nor I remembered it.

When he finished telling the story, I chuckled and said,

“You know, Tommy, it’s funny how we remember the same story with different details. You know damned well that we heard it told by the same storyteller. You know, like out on Velma’s porch after churning ice cream on a summer evening. And what’s funny is that I don’t remember that it was a black guy who stabbed old man Haggard, but a white guy who shot him and the
bullet
hit the pocket watch.”

Tommy’s response was immediate and terse.

“We still call ’em niggers down here.”

There was a long pause as that word echoed in my head. He had done it again. I was trying to control my anger. Then I said, quietly,

“Well, I don’t.”

“I know you don’t. Hell, you probably think it’s
OK
that we give ’em all we give ’em, too, dontcha?”

“If we keep this up, Tommy, I’m gonna get mighty pissed off.”

“So will I, just in the other direction.”

“Fuck you . . . and don’t bother ever calling me again until you can act like an adult human being.”

I slammed the phone down.

I was shaking all over, weeping deeply, wondering what it would have been like to have grown up—and old—with a brother who allowed some room for my perspective. I couldn’t work anymore because my hands were shaking. I couldn’t eat either, so I went to my bedroom and tried to sleep.

The next morning I got up at five. I cleaned out the drawers in the bathroom cabinets. I made coffee. I fed my dogs. I did the morning chores.

And then I sat down to write my brother a letter. A letter incorporating as succinctly as I possibly could what I had been thinking about all through my sleepless night and my anxious morning. This is the text of that letter:

Tommy—

I am very sorry for the way our conversation ended yesterday. I really didn’t mean to say that you shouldn’t call me unless you could act like an adult human being. When I lose my composure my mind slips out of its usual fluency and I say dumb things like that.

No, what I really meant to say—what I really wish I had had the presence of mind to say at that very moment—was that you shouldn’t call me until you can act like something other than an ignorant fucking redneck.

I have spent the better part of thirty-five years—in my classrooms and in my work—combating your brand of blind and stupid prejudice, your simpleminded and ignorant bigotry, and your arrogant and malignant notions of white superiority and supremacy. It saddens me beyond anything you can imagine that you, my brother, are the purebred and banal embodiment of all the things I hate.

Over the years I have tolerated your racial slurs in every conversation we have had, painful to me as they have been. I have suffered your insensitive slurs about women, too, especially painful since I am the father of three women whom I adore and the grandfather of five little girls. (“You know why they spank babies when they’re born? So they’ll knock the dicks off the dumb ones.”) And I have endured your arrogant airs of superiority about matters that (as you confessed to me) you know nothing about—especially national and international politics. I have not called you to account for these things as I would have anybody else. I should have, because every time I have looked the other way, every time I have turned the other cheek, every time I have kept my mouth shut, my innate humanity has been diminished. And so has yours, though you don’t know it.

And you are wrong that “we still call them niggers down here.” I am still a southerner myself despite my place of residence—and if you don’t understand that you do not understand what it means to be a true southerner. I travel throughout the South (far more than you, even though you live there) teaching and lecturing at places like Clemson and the Universities of Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, and the like. I am close friends with many of the finest southern writers, educators, and journalists. And I can tell you that educated and cultured people in the South most assuredly do not think the way you think and do not call
them
niggers. Fortunately they, and not you and your ilk, are the ones who are molding the future of the American South.

The only people today who do think and speak the way you think and speak (in the South and elsewhere) are the ones who, like you, are full of hate, fear, and anger. And, curiously, they also seem to be the ones who, like you, speak inarticulately, slur their words, and are utterly incapable of correctly conjugating verbs. Their/your positions are not only intellectually indefensible, they are morally corrupt and contribute to the perpetuation of the greatest sickness of our age—racism.

You are an embarrassment to me, Tommy. You are an embarrassment because of your sadly comic sense of superiority and your outrageously bigoted attitudes. But mostly because of your persistent, rabid, and unapologetic racism. I am hurt and diminished by these things every time we talk and I do not wish to endure it ever again. I am ashamed that I am kin to you and will continue to be ashamed of our kinship as long as you harbor these perverted values and persist in rubbing my nose in them as you have done all my life. If you only knew how much pain you have inflicted on me over the past fifty years or so you couldn’t help but be ashamed. If you can ever see the world from a slightly broader perspective than middle Tennessee, then perhaps we can salvage something of value from a brotherhood that has never amounted to very much—the saddest fact of my life.

Barry

December
3
,
1997

FOUR MONTHS LATER,
in April 1998, I was in Redlands, California, giving a talk at a conference of elementary school teachers. The talk had not gone well. It was the wrong speech for the wrong audience. The person who introduced me said (without querying me beforehand) that my presentation was going to be “fun.” It was not. As soon as I was free of my obligations I walked back to the B&B where I was staying. I was down in the mouth because the morning had not gone well, so I lay down on the bed, thinking about my ineffectual speech. I picked up the phone and called home. When Cara, my oldest daughter, answered the phone, I asked her if there were any problems that needed my attention. She said,

“No. But you have a letter here from your brother.”

I sat up and asked her if it was a thin envelope or a fat one.

“A fat one.”

I bunched up a couple of pillows, lay back against them, and asked her to read the letter to me. What follows is the letter my brother wrote to me.

(For the record, I do not remember a Mary at the Country Club, nor a Johnnie B. Tommy always had a better memory for names than I have. I do remember Jimmy, the bartender. I have no idea who Nobie or Delores are or were, and neither do Tommy’s sons. Why he brings up our cousin Helen Haggard as he does is not at all clear to me. He mentions watching
Huckleberry Finn
and is referencing a 1985 PBS film.)

Barry,

I am going to answer your question without any bullshit. I am going to save the first question for last. But first I want you to think, use that head of yours for something other than drawing pictures and writing letters showing off your intellectual wizardry.

Frankly the tone of your first letter has made me wonder if you deserve this letter. I too have not gone a day without thinking of you and you must believe that what I am about to tell you is the truth. At this late stage of our lives the air must be cleared.

First, don’t believe anything Helen might tell you. In all our younger years, I can never remember seeing Helen on more than three or four occasions. She was never there. She doesn’t have an opinion. If my memory serves me I think she failed to show up at Floyd’s funeral. I could be wrong.

Helen like you left your roots of Shallowford Road. Hers at an early age. Teens I think. She literally fucked her way through the ranks of the Navy until she married Merle then dumped him for her present husband. The only reason she has contact with you is because of your esteem and stature.

Second: Wayland was a liar and a cheat. Maybe he will or has made it through the pearly gates, if so it was because he did take care of Bettye in her last years and days. I give him credit and respect for that.

When Velma died she had approximately $15,000.00 in a checking account and her will stated that money was to be split equally between you, Wayland, and myself. When I asked Wayland about the money he said that he and Bettye were on the signature for that account and that Velma said when she died all that money was to go to them because they took care of her. Bullshit!

Also to address that will: Bob gave the
Scamp
and Studebaker to me not Velma but when the boat was sold (to a guy named Earhardt) she took the money. When I traded the car for the ’54 Ford blue convertible, Velma refused to sign the title over to me until I paid her some money. I don’t remember how much. And she
never
put
any
money in an account for me much less $500.00 for an airline ticket. In 1962 you could fly anywhere in the U.S. for $60.00. Velma was a vicious bitch and very selfish. In her later years I had very little to do with [her] because of the way she treated Mother and Annie Lee. Bobbie is convinced to this day that my arthritis is pay back for the way I made fun of her and her pain. It’s worth it! (What happened to the two bronze statues, the clocks, and the cook books? I thought you had them?)

Use some common sense about Bob. I loved him very much—he was like a second dad. But when Arthur died I stayed with Bob and Velma, you with Grandmother and that evil witch Minnie, they were partial to you. Big deal, forget it. Also Barry, you were different than any of us, Bob, Dad, and myself. I liked to hunt, fish, play ball, while you were more interested in your art and books. You even eluded [
sic
], to this in your
A Family Letter
. Your statement was “Industry and manliness are premium to this family which respects gun collections more than libraries, and measured a man by his business acumen and his ability to play football.” Again big fucking deal.If we were all alike we would be boring and quite honestly sometimes I find you very boring simply because we don’t have the same interests.

Now I want to get to the important stuff. My God I am so sorry for what you must have gone through as a child at my hands being bullied and all but honestly afterward I always felt bad. I remember once I pushed you down in front of Jimmy Livingood’s house and you cut your leg bad and was bleeding. It scared the shit out of me. When mother put you in the tub it made the bleeding worse. I can hear you to this day saying “I’m going fast, I’m going fast.”

When we became teens I wanted to whip your ass because you were so goddamn lazy. You would never help do anything, cut grass, paint, take out clinkers, stoke the furnace, nothing.

Barry this is the honest to God truth. When I was in the sixth grade and from that time on I never asked Mother or Dad for a dime. I worked cutting grass and painting wicker furniture with the spray painter I bought. Later working in service stations and foundries. I worked all my life, hard! When you were at Auburn where do you think your money came from? Mother and Dad didn’t have it. I’m the one who put money in your checking account, not a lot but some. You even called me from Auburn one Sunday afternoon (I was fucking Anna Sue at the time). I told you that Mom and Dad were not at home and you said [that you] just wanted to talk to [me] not them. After our conversation I went outside and cried. I missed you so much.

Now I want to tell you about pain as a child. When I was three and Minnie was keeping us she would lock me in that dark pantry off the kitchen with no window, those high shelves and that trap door in the floor. She would leave me there for hours and stand outside making weird sounds. She would whip me unmercifully. In today’s society she would be in prison.
Maybe
I took that out on you later. I never forgot those days and nights in that pantry. I was eighteen or so before I could sleep in a room without a light. I’ll trade you a little taste of blood for that.

Charlie Chaplin said, “A day without laughter is a day wasted.” The blacks and women are just subjects of humor, just like my crossed eye. I don’t hate blacks but I do hate affirmative action, racial preference, and equal opportunities. We have been forced in this great country of ours to accept the black man as a race rather than an individual. These feelings I have now are not the same feelings I had twenty years ago and has nothing to do with the way we were brought up. When we lived at the Country Club did the blacks not like me the same as you? I know they did, if not better. I ate in the kitchen with them, laughed with them, and always treated them with respect. Mary sent me brownies when I was at Fort Sill, Johnny B. wrote me letters. Jimmy drove me to the bus station when I went in the Army. I have black friends, I could give you names and numbers. These people feel no prejudice from me. I sent money to Nobie when her son was in an auto accident; I sent airline tickets to Delores to go to California to see her dying brother. The color of their skins never come to mind. They were people that love and feel the same as me.

I, like you, do not want to have a conversation with you at this time. Your next letter, if any, will determine that. But I want to set you straight about one thing. I had to put up with the humiliation of being called stupid and ignorant at Baylor. I may speak inarticulately, slur my words, and incorrectly conjugate verbs, but by God I can read my personal financial statement which makes me superior than most. I had served as president of the Chamber of Commerce, Mortgage Bankers Association and the Rotary Club having received the Paul Harris fellowship for outstanding service. Not bad for an ignorant fucking redneck. I am also fairly well read. I’ve read Dante, I prefer L’Amour. I’ve eaten caviar, I prefer peanut butter and I’ve listened to Chopin, I prefer Jimmy Buffet.

Barry, I know everything about you and you know
nothing
about me. I proudly display your works in my home and office, tears filled my eyes when you were on the Today Show. I watched all of
Huckleberry Finn
just to see your name in the credits at the end. I have framed the articles that were in
People Magazine
and
Newsweek
and
American Artist
. I do love you.

Just,

Tom

P.S.
Don’t grade this letter.