help but wander the aisles, gaze eye-level into the amber. The mothers, though drinkers themselves, warn their children of the dangers, the risks. My mother says it’s in our family, says it will destroy my muscle tone, says she will throw me out of the house. On drives through the neighboring towns she points out the bars my grandfather can no longer enter—that one for swinging on a chandelier, that one for throwing a drink in the owner’s face. She tells the story of learning to drive one snowy night in Montana, underage, her father sloshed in the backseat with a drinking buddy, instructing her to just keep it between the rock face and the drop off. Alcohol is the river we sit on the banks of, contemplating. Sometimes we watch ourselves float past, sometimes we watch ourselves sink. My grandmother, the one divorced from this grandfather before I was born, the woman who looks after my brother and me when my mother’s at work or on a date, calls ahead to the package store for her half gallon of Turner’s Special Blend, sends me in to pick it up. An electric eye bongs as you break a light beam upon entering, I take to jumping over it to surprise the man behind the counter. Dimly lit, aisle of amber, aisle of clear, Turner’s is cavernous, a crypt. Each real bottle has its own promotional bottle—plastic, dusty, oversized—lined up on a shelf along the back wall. The iconic Jim Beam, a massive Jack Daniel’s. When my grandmother comes to dinner at our house she always carries her own jar of Turner’s Special Blend. She knows how much she needs and doesn’t want to be caught short. My brother remembers her at Christmas one year, an especially weepy time for her, when she put her hands around his neck and murmured, My little angel, you wouldn’t be so hard to kill . And though he knew it was only the whiskey talking, he also knew that the whiskey talked daily. In fifth grade I write a report that I spent the weekend skiing in “Vermouth” with my grandfather, that “Vermouth” was a beautiful state. My teacher did not correct this—maybe we were all skiing in a state of Vermouth.
practical joke
(1971) Travis, just back from Vietnam, is renovating the house next door. The war’s an unending muddle. My mother bakes a blueberry pie, puts it in the window to cool, invites him over for a piece. Thirty-one, divorced ten years now, she makes a good pie. Travis is twenty-one and still looks like a Marine—his USMC tattoo, his fatigues—albeit freaky, bright-eyed, his hair going wild. Not a hippie, but drifting toward hippiedom. Trigger-hippie, you might call him, as he’s armed to the teeth, having smuggled out his M-16 and various sidearms. They begin seeing each other and, as per usual, he begins renovating our house. My mother likes a man who’s good with his hands. Skipping school one day, I’m lingering around the house alone when he pulls into the driveway, lets himself in to work on a dead outlet. I hide in my closet, hear him talk to my dog as he works, and what he says sounds insane. He tells my dog that in ’Nam he ate better-looking dogs, that over there a dog would never get so fat, that all dogs knew enough to run the other way from him instead of rolling on their backs, waiting for the knife to slip in. He tells my dog about the villages he burned and the people he killed and that not all of them were soldiers. About bulldozing a tunnel and later finding out it was filled with kids. Through the cracked closet door I can see him holding my dog’s ears and crying and I don’t dare breathe. A few months later my mother stands me in the kitchen to tell me she’s going to marry him. That’s a mistake , I say. She nods that she knows but says she’ll marry him just the same, and she does, and they’re happy, for a while. He’s fun to have around, in a frenzied sort of way. If we want to go fishing he takes us down to the Harbor, tells us to wait on the loading dock and goes off to hot-wire someone
practical joke
(1971) Travis, just back from Vietnam, is renovating the house next door. The war’s an unending muddle. My mother bakes a blueberry pie, puts it in the window to cool, invites him over for a piece. Thirty-one, divorced ten years now, she makes a good pie. Travis is twenty-one and still looks like a Marine—his USMC tattoo, his fatigues—albeit freaky, bright-eyed, his hair going wild. Not a hippie, but drifting toward hippiedom. Trigger-hippie, you might call him, as he’s armed to the teeth, having smuggled out his M-16 and various sidearms. They begin seeing each other and, as per usual, he begins renovating our house. My mother likes a man who’s good with his hands. Skipping school one day, I’m lingering around the house alone when he pulls into the driveway, lets himself in to work on a dead outlet. I hide in my closet, hear him talk to my dog as he works, and what he says sounds insane. He tells my dog that in ’Nam he ate better-looking dogs, that over there a dog would never get so fat, that all dogs knew enough to run the other way from him instead of rolling on their backs, waiting for the knife to slip in. He tells my dog about the villages he burned and the people he killed and that not all of them were soldiers. About bulldozing a tunnel and later finding out it was filled with kids. Through the cracked closet door I can see him holding my dog’s ears and crying and I don’t dare breathe. A few months later my mother stands me in the kitchen to tell me she’s going to marry him. That’s a mistake , I say. She nods that she knows but says she’ll marry him just the same, and she does, and they’re happy, for a while. He’s fun to have around, in a frenzied sort of way. If we want to go fishing he takes us down to the Harbor, tells us to wait on the loading dock and goes off to hot-wire someone
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