The Raging Elitist

My old man has this joke about Jesus on his way to be executed. The telling pivots back and forth from increasingly animated descriptions of Jesus’s torment – the crown of thorns, the weight of the cross, the spitting and jeering of the crowd – to an imitation of Jesus stoically pressing on despite his weakened state. After this goes on for some time, when Dad has worked himself up to a fever pitch and thinks his audience is on the hook, he pivots to his imitation of poor Jesus for the final time and pitifully sings, “I . . . love a parade.”

Dad’s never been much of a joke teller. His two go-tos are a redneck playing 20 questions who guesses “mule dick” way too quickly, and the reason there are 239 beans in a can (one more’d be two farty). He’s much more in his element telling stories, whether they’re about things that actually happened or wild imaginings about things that could, but likely never will, come to pass.

Dad’s had two wives, one for 17 years and another he’s been with for 20, so it’s possible that in my 39 years I have heard more of his stories than any other person who ever lived. Most of them are reruns at this point, but when he mentions riding the train down to Florida over Thanksgiving some 25 years ago, I’m surprised.

“Wait, we had Thanksgiving without you when you and Mom were still married?” I ask.

My sister is sitting on the other side of the room on the couch next to Danyelle. “Why are we talking about this?” she says. Dad’s second wife George, seated in the desk chair near the TV, keeps her eyes away from the middle of the room where the conversation is bouncing around. Wine is flowing, and the Clemson basketball game is on. The kids are in the next room drawing comic books.

“I just can’t believe I don’t remember this.”

Apparently, Dad had plans to break 20 minutes in the Turkey Trot that year. He was 46 and had been running for three years since he ran it in 31 minutes on his first try. He ran it in 27 minutes and 23 minutes in the two subsequent years. Unfortunately, the health of his marriage trended inversely to his running endurance, and when I was 15, he ended up on a train to Florida to spend Thanksgiving with his family in Hobe Sound. Their man picked him up at the depot on Wednesday night, and the next morning, Dad got up to run by himself, and about halfway through stopped and wondered, “What am I doing?”

“How can I not remember this?” I ask.

“At Hindman Avenue,” Betsey says. “Drew and Holly were there. It was weird.”

“Oh my God! I remember. We went to play basketball at that elementary school. I hated it.” Our traditional Thanksgiving basketball tournament marred by its taking place away from the beach house, in the presence of Mom’s new lover and Dad’s old friend. I’d blocked it out of my mind. “Oh God, we all went on vacation over spring break together the next year, and Matt came with us, and I puked the whole time.”

After a certain amount of drinking, the conversation usually turns to Dad’s death, and this occasion is no exception. Such talk forces George to decide between removing herself and yelling at everyone to stop. Usually, she alternates between choice A and choice B. Betsey falls in the “let’s not” camp, but she isn’t nearly enthusiastic enough to stop the freight train of Dad’s death fantasies fueled by my encouragement. She and George seem to miss the point. One day, Dad really will be dead, and he won’t be talking to us about it. Now, he’s here with us, telling stories.

This time around he says he wants a burial at sea: “Nylon cord. Cinder block, you know, concrete blocks. Chunk me over the side, and say sayonara.” He says he wants the sea creatures to benefit from the energy stored in his corpse. The boys are done with their drawings now. They start marching one behind the other through the room, in through the door to the kitchen, out through the door to the foyer. Scotty leads and plays the harmonica, making up a little tune that he loops through over and over, bobbing his head and walking to the beat, Cartter putting his hands on his brother’s shoulders like they were in a conga line, skipping and hopping to the music. Round and round they go, in one door, out the other and back again, a little parade in the old man’s den.