My going to New Mexico soon became as compelling to me as gravity and the tides. During dinner, I drifted away from the adult conversation. What should I take? What would I need? I inventoried my room and was shocked to realize that a stranger walking into it would presume I was twelve: model airplanes on my bookshelves, three volumes of my old stamp collection -- my bedspread was decorated with cuddly cowboy and Indian tikes, for God's sake!
I’d need my Boy Scout camp gear -- knapsack, axe, knife, hatchet, compass, sleeping bag, waterproof match case, canteen and mess kit -- and my portable radio. A few hand tools. Ball glove, football...
As I was debating whether my BB gun was too childish to make the cut, raised voices jerked me back. "You out there in New Mexico might be happy to encourage criminal behavior, but believe you me, I'm not about to let crooks and gamblers ruin my state legislature! You let gambling in and it's the nose of the camel under the tent, Waylan! How do you think crime syndicates get rich?"
My heart sank. They were arguing about pari-mutuel betting again. Uncle Waylan brayed, "God-a-mity, May, what skin is it off your nose how other people spend their time and money? You wanna know why I never joined one of your dad-blasted Baptist churches? Because there's too dad-blasted many hypocrites who don't want anybody else to have a lick of fun but they sure as hell don't mind getting on a bus for the race track in Louisiana! They won't vote their own precinct wet but they'll drive over to the next one for a drink! Why do you think half the bars in New Mexico are on the state line?"
My new Aunt Vicky said, "Waylan, nobody in here needs a hearing aid."
Uncle Waylan fumed for a moment. "I'm sorry for shouting, May." He waited a beat but couldn't resist adding, "But there's nothing wrong with betting on a horse race."
"I'm sure it's fine for those with nothing better to do with their money," said my mother, and my father, with one eye on my awestruck sisters, abruptly passed his plate to my mother and said, firmly, "May, dish me out some more rice, please?"
They dropped the subject and paired off by gender – the men talking SMU and UT football, my mother and Aunt Vicky discussing the ingredients of the casserole we were eating.
But my heart had fallen like a bag of BBs to the pit of my stomach. I had completely forgotten the person whose opinion about my plans mattered the most. Why did Uncle Waylan have to bait my mother? Didn't he know that if you wanted to keep her in good humor, you didn't poke at her with "wrong" opinions about things that truly mattered to her? She was an earnest, moody person, and to get along with her it was best not to irritate her. With her, nothing was simple, though. She was Baptist but didn't mind my father taking a drink now and then -- we kept a bar stocked, if you'd call a dusty-shouldered bottle of Jim Beam that had stretched over three Christmases "stocked" -- and she'd take a glass of wine at holiday meals. But the family’s alcoholics had cast a shadow that made her feel that any drinking done beyond the purview of her personal control was dangerous. I guess Uncle Waylan would call that hypocrisy, but I thought I understood it, even if I couldn't have explained it then.
She was not about to let me live for three months with a man whose philosophy defined drinking and gambling as harmless recreation. I slumped in my chair and studied with sour relish her saggy chin, her crow's feet, her thin straight lips. I hated her smallness.
I hated Uncle Waylan's redneck stupidity, too. Obviously he wanted my parents to be proud of his marrying somebody with "class," so why would he undermine his own efforts to win their approval?
I hated them both for ruining the greatest opportunity that a young man had ever had.
After dinner my mother asked Uncle Waylan, "Would you like to spend the night?" which to my ear sounded more like a request for information than an invitation.
Uncle Waylan took his cue and said, "Well, thanks, May, we appreciate the offer, but we'd best get on the road. I left Iddybit with Wally, and that Merc's been heating up a little, so I'd just as soon make this last leg at night."
While my mother cleaned up the kitchen, my father went to the garage to finish taking apart the handpush mower for cleaning, a job this visit had interrupted. I helped him like a surgeon's nurse for a bit, then I said, "Daddy, what’s mother going to say about my spending the summer with Uncle Waylan and Aunt Vicky?"
"Hard to say, really. You want me to find out?"
"Please." He grinned. "You want me to put in a good word for you?"
"Or for Uncle Waylan." He laughed. "Oh, deep down she knows he's a pretty good fellow." Having so much at stake, I couldn't resist stalking them the rest of the evening. I knew nothing crucial would be said with me there, but I didn't want to be too far to eavesdrop, so I lurked just out of sight.
Eventually they settled into the wing chairs, my father with his pipe and the Dallas Morning News, and my mother with Diedre on the hassock in front of her so that her hair could be combed and braided. In the foyer I pressed my back against the wall hoping Alise wouldn't come bounding down the stairs and flush me. The adults ping-ponged boring single sentences back and forth like people in a doctor’s waiting room, now and then my father inserted snippets from the paper into the silences and my mother passed quick condemnation on the events or the persons mentioned. He: Elvis the Pelvis may appear on the Steve Allen Show, says here. She: Humpf! I sure won’t be watching!
It took a while, but eventually he said, as if stumbling upon Uncle Waylan’s picture in his newspaper, "Well, it was good to see old Waylan. He always does liven things up."
No comment.
"You know, that Vicky is sure an improvement over Noreen."
"Yes, she's quite nice. At least she seems so. You might wonder what a lady like that sees in Waylan, though."
"Oh, May!" He sounded genuinely shocked. "Now that sounds like prejudice to me. I wish to heck I could enjoy life half as much as he does."
"Thank goodness you don't!"
"Well, I mean he's witty and good-spirited, always on the upbeat, you have to admit that! I'm sure he knows how to show a gal a good time -- now, I know what you're going to say, but he's also a darned hard worker and a good provider. He's generous and good-hearted. I'd say almost any woman would think he's quite a catch."
"Oh, I suppose so. He is handsome, I admit, and he's not poor. And he can be fun." Then I heard her chuckle.
"What's so funny?"
"Oh, I was just remembering something."
"What?" She chuckled again. "Some other time."
The memory was not fit to be described before my six-year-old sister, and I cursed her presence, but that was nothing new. My sisters were like household pets, likeable nuisances who had to be fed and watered and groomed and walked.
"You could tell he's darned proud of her and wanted to show her off. I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't the whole point of the visit. Maybe she'll be a good influence on him," my father said.
"It's possible, but I sure didn't see much evidence of it yet."
"May, there's something you have to understand about men -- especially one like Waylan. I'd bet he told himself he wasn't going to get lassoed into a squabble with you. I bet he might have even promised Vicky not to. He knows how you want him to behave, but he can't cave in to you completely. He brought her to show to you that he means to behave better than he has before, you see? And that made him feel like he was losing himself, so he had to put his back up and prove to himself he didn't have to change. And you put yours up. You two bring out the worst in each other. Give him a little credit for trying."
And now, my fellow citizens, I give you the Smartest Man on Earth - my father, Frank Proctor!
Though I waited longer before Diedre came out and rousted me from my listening post, my father didn't then mention the summer job. Maybe the discussion took place when they were in bed, but he'd laid the groundwork, and soon my mother said yes.
Letters exchanged with Aunt Vicky reassured my mother that I wouldn't be imposing on them, and two days after school let out I boarded the Greyhound for New Mexico. I so itched to leave my youth behind that in my notion of myself, essence preceded existence: my life in the burly, wide-open West could not make a man of me -- I was one already -- but it would allow me to live as I now defined myself.
To my embarrassment, as the other passengers inched by and I stood fidgeting wretchedly beside the open door, my sisters hugged and kissed me. My mother wept and slobbered on my cheek, but my father purged me of the taint by giving me a grin and a firm handshake.
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