{"id":15572,"date":"2019-09-16T05:00:20","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T09:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bullmensfiction.com\/?p=15572"},"modified":"2022-08-03T13:13:01","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T17:13:01","slug":"did-you-never-see-dallas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/fiction\/did-you-never-see-dallas\/","title":{"rendered":"Did You Never See Dallas"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Nag<\/strong><\/p>\n

The dowager hears herself intoning the words again and again: \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be caught dead at that man\u2019s funeral.\u201d She regales first the queen who\u2019s done her hair for 20-some-odd years, then an old college roommate who chances to call, and before long the stranger from across the street who previously merited only sidewalk pleasantries. \u201cI will not,\u201d Marsha says, \u201cI will not countenance such a man.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a zippered pocket of her maroon patent leather purse is a front-page story recounting Coleman\u2019s many achievements on behalf of humanity and beloved status among those who did not know him particularly well. The thrice-folded fish wrapper, she proclaims, tells nothing but a lie about the circumstances of his death. \u201cHe did not pass away at home! He drove off that ranch the suburbs have all but swallowed out there east of Denton, went down the road a mile or so. Parked his pickup out back of a cast-off clapboard schoolhouse. Around sunrise. In a patch of blooming thistle. Put one bullet between his poor border collie\u2019s eyes and another into the roof of his own mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marsha mixed up this cocktail of fact and embellishment after chatting with a young cop, who\u2019d rung her doorbell and accepted an impromptu invitation to tea. It seemed that Coleman, a lifelong bachelor, had long ago named her husband as his executor. This was news to the widow, though she felt sure her immaculate mask betrayed nothing to the badge. It seemed, too, that the deceased had left a long but vague note apologizing to anyone he might\u2019ve hurt. Did she know what that might mean? She did not. What about a tip regarding possible Polaroids in a safe deposit box? No. No, she really remembered rather little except the broadest strokes \u2014 the family fortune, the philanthropy \u2014 and that Coleman once had the blackest locks of any white man she\u2019d ever known.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuicide is one of the gravest sins, not to mention killing a poor dog.\u201d So Marsha keeps telling her listeners. They wouldn\u2019t dream of questioning her commitment to canines or Christianity, much less imagine the ancient barnyard tang that creeps around the outskirts of her palate. It punctuates a vision in which her middle-aged son is 11 years old again, and her husband is alive, and they\u2019re all walking to the stable with Coleman. She watches him watch the boy\u2019s every move. His laugh is too loud; his nostrils flare. He cups a massive paw on the child\u2019s bottom and mounts him on a swayback mare \u2014 left foot into the stirrup, right leg up and over. \u201cHoneybee, step!\u201d Coleman says, once the boy has the reins. The nag just pins her ears. \u201cStep, you old barn-sour bitch!\u201d he hisses, slapping her rump. She bolts. Runs at the fence, pulls up short, runs back at them, turns and repeats. The boy is screaming when Coleman gets him down, holds him close, tousles his haystack of hair as if he owns him.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The (Almost Unbearable) Strangeness of Eavesdropping at the Home for Aged Persons<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Look at Mama standing there. Just look at that look on her face. Head tilted skyward with her eyes closed. That open-casket smile. Thank you, sugar, for getting this print made.
\nI\u2019m welcome? Well, thank you for that, too, young lady! Just don\u2019t call me Uncle Roland, OK? Uncle\u2019s enough. Anything but Roland. I always hated that name she gave me. Even before I had a reason, it felt like a wound.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re not young? Ha. It\u2019s all relative.<\/p>\n

Look at her, so full of preening love for that man. This might be the best picture from all her livelong days, if you cropped out all the noise \u2014 the shoppers, businessmen, me.<\/p>\n

When? Well, she didn\u2019t die that day. Or today, or yesterday. I\u2019m sure of that much. But from there it gets all gummed up.<\/p>\n

No, it\u2019s not memory loss. It\u2019s memory gain. Jungle brain. Another trillion raindrops of information every day, on and on and on, even in here, refertilizing the pre-existing condition of infinity.<\/p>\n

Sure. Go on. Look it up on your precious phone. Find her exact date of death. What\u2019s the point?<\/p>\n

My eyes? Yes, they\u2019re \u2026 leaking. They didn\u2019t do this at her funeral. It\u2019s probably just the sun. Close those curtains for me, would you, please, darling?<\/p>\n

Thank you. Much better.<\/p>\n

Or not.<\/p>\n

Maybe I\u2019m leaking because this picture\u2019s like every picture \u2014 tells too many stories, begs endless questions. No time to taste them all, spit out what we can\u2019t swallow.<\/p>\n

No, I don\u2019t want any lunch.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n

How about if we do like the doctors do, when they\u2019re testing your mental status? I carry their list of questions around and practice answering to the mirror every morning, in case they try to ambush me.<\/p>\n

Ready? Number one: What is her name? Mama. To me she\u2019ll always be Mama. How\u2019s your mom, by the way?<\/p>\n

Sorry to hear that. You tell her she\u2019ll always be my favorite cousin.<\/p>\n

Yes, I know she\u2019s my only cousin.<\/p>\n

OK. Number two: How old is Mama? It\u2019s her 30th birthday, there in the picture. Early spring. 1949. We\u2019re the party. Her and her lover and me. He\u2019s the guy with his finger on the trigger. Of that camera he\u2019s hiding behind.<\/p>\n

Yep, that\u2019s me, over at the edge of the frame. The 13-year-old evil-eyed pissant, shivering in shorts.<\/p>\n

Sixty-nine years ago, huh?<\/p>\n

I do know she lived to an overripe old age. And I\u2019m getting pretty close to rotten myself.
\nYou almost smiled at that one. Well, your cheeks twitched. Is that just a nervous tic? They say young people today live with so much anxiety. As if we didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

She loved to let bananas blacken. Fruit flies adored our kitchen. So did all the other kids in the building, at least when Mama was making banana bread. When she was home. When I wasn\u2019t living with her parents in the Bronx.<\/p>\n

I saw on one of those nature shows that the average fruit-fly fuck, not counting foreplay, lasts fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. Then they catch forty winks and are ready to go again. They put rabbits to shame. Not to mention most of the men I knew. In my younger days.<\/p>\n

Number three? OK. Where does she work? American Overseas Airlines, after Daddy died in the war. Way up in Alaska, he was. You didn\u2019t even know the Japanese invaded there, did you? Don\u2019t worry. Most folks don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

A stewardess. Flight attendant, I\u2019m supposed to say. Fly, flew, flew the coop, New York to England, Ireland, Scandinavia. And Germany. That\u2019s the one place I get to go with her, this one time. It\u2019s where she met Lover Boy, a couple of trips ago.<\/p>\n

No, I can\u2019t remember his name. But all the trivia is right here on the tip of my lips. Works at the Hamburg airport. Food service to the airlines. Used to run the kitchen at a concentration camp, down the road in Bremen. Not one of those places that gassed the Jews, he says. The kind where they worked prisoners of war to death, building U-boats. Poles, mostly. Some French. Says he hated that job. I bet.<\/p>\n

Who was it who said you get used to anything in the long run? The jury\u2019s still out on that one, as far as I\u2019m concerned.<\/p>\n

Bremen\u2019s where we are in the picture, actually. On the market square. Lover Boy couldn\u2019t wait to show off my namesake: this 15th-century limestone behemoth named Roland, which honors an eighth-century Christian-supremacist martyr. What passes for a statue of liberty in Germany. That\u2019s a magic Muslim-slaying sword he\u2019s clutching. And the little framed artwork over his crotch? You can\u2019t really tell here, but it shows an angel playing a lute. Surely singing the impossibly long and racist \u201cSong of Roland.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Roland saw the abhorred race,<\/p>\n

Than blackest ink more black in face \u2026<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all I can remember. Or can\u2019t forget.<\/p>\n

Where were we? Oh yeah. Number four: Where does she live? In the picture, wherever her wings take her. And finally lands in this hole \u2014 the one that I\u2019m now in. Quite a few of us old flight crew members here. In the wasteland between Dallas and Fort Worth, forever grounded. God knows what this suburb\u2019s called, or how anyone can tell where it stops and the next one starts. But the good news is it\u2019s right under the flight path, so even an ancient like me can hear the planes. She loved the roar to her dying day.<\/p>\n

Sweetheart, I need your help with something else. A little paperwork. Wheel me down to my so-called apartment, OK? Help me fill it out?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s to change my name.<\/p>\n

Yes, I\u2019m finally ready to get rid of Roland.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know. How about Albert, for my daddy?<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll be like starting all over again.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s never too late, is it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two tales about trying to correct the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[116,960,2081,2077,2083,1353,252,2079,2082,2078,1399,53,891],"class_list":["post-15572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-aging","tag-flight-attendant","tag-germany","tag-horse-stories","tag-islamophobia","tag-lgbtq","tag-memory","tag-motherhood","tag-nazis","tag-photographs","tag-sex-abuse","tag-suicide","tag-world-war-ii","writer-brooks-egerton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15572"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15610,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15572\/revisions\/15610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}