Читать книгу The Lyncher In Me - Warren Read - Страница 13

CHAPTER 5

"What do you want to go diggin' there for?" he’d asked. “Drunks, thieves, and jailbirds. That’s all you’ll find.” Famously, my mother’s great-uncle George had announced this to his daughter Valoyce when she expressed an interest in our family tree. She’d told this to my mother and, some years later, my mother told me.

“I don’t know what you expect to find,” she’d said when I brought up the subject of a genealogical search. “But I guess I’m a little curious, too.”

Uncle George’s words made no difference to me, really. After all, I’d seen plenty of vices in my lifetime, right on my own branch of the family tree. Alcoholism, petty theft, trials, and convictions had each made regular appearances in my family since I could remember. What stories could I possibly find in my lineage that would be more scandalous than those that existed in my own memories? I was hungry for information and eager to start looking. So, in spite of Uncle George’s warning, I pushed ahead without hesitation.

* * *

Renovating a garden can’t be done impulsively. I’ve learned that it takes planning and foresight—an understanding of where the garden stands and a vision of where it will be. Before ripping up the soil, I’d lifted the plants I’d planned to keep in my new garden—the roses, herbs, and currants—and carefully set them aside, safe from the churning blades of the tiller. A meticulous line of fluorescent-orange spray paint snaked through the square, a template I’d drawn for the path I envisioned winding through a cutting garden of color, scents, and excited bees. I wanted real change, a move from rigid predictability to a feeling of brightness and visual nourishment.

I like the warmth of a big bouquet. I get a far greater burst of pleasure gathering sunflowers, delphiniums, and lavender sprigs than I could ever get from cabbages and carrots. Even as a child, I recognized the joy that a fistful of flowers could bring. Flowers then were gifts of opportunity. Wildflowers gathered in the meadows across the road from my maternal grandmother’s house and stuffed into the neck of one of my grandfather’s beer bottles never failed to bring squeals of glee from her, and she’d tell us the story of her father’s funeral once again.

“The shops were all closed to honor him; it was like a parade, all down Main Street,” she’d say, her lips bent in a proud grin at the memory of her daddy, a revered county prosecutor. “There were so many flowers at his office and the house, you’d think there wasn’t a single bloom left atop a stem in all of Mississippi.”

As an adult, though, fresh flowers became a luxury, gifts bought from a flower shop with my hard-earned money for the benefit of others. The florist would craft a clutch of daisies or carnations for a Mother’s Day bouquet or throw together a generic arrangement to send to an acquaintance’s funeral. Now, flowers were no longer picked, they were purchased. The simple truth was, I wanted to pick flowers again.

* * *

I stood in the open space of my newly turned garden, my boots sinking in the soft black soil, my gloves gripping the rake as I pulled it through the till. I paused every few yards to turn the rake head upward and pick out the snags of roots and weeds that had found their way into the teeth. Dandelion taproots and starts of unwanted brush went into the wheelbarrow, and the gentle singsong of my youngest son Dmitry’s voice drifted from the sand pile, in cadence with the scratching of his tiny shovel and my ancient rake. It was a nursery rhyme, I’m sure, though I can’t recall exactly which one. There were a half-dozen or so in his repertoire. I’d picked up the verse with him, like I usually did, and he’d turned to look at me, smiling as the two of us finished with dramatic flair.

And the irony of it all washed over me with the sound of the nursery rhyme, just as clear, just as simple as the melody of that silly song. I was a father to a son of my own, like Mr. Brady and Mr. Eddie’s Father, and my responsibility to him was something I could not wander through blindly, like I had my garden, figuring it out along the way and hoping that I would discover the right path. I was at a place of opportunity. My son didn’t fear me, didn’t take pains to avoid me. The patterns we were beginning to create were good; small rituals that made us laugh and look forward to doing it all again.

Our children are born as clean slates, it is said, but that’s not true at all. Genetics mark us with a map already in place. A packet of seeds I put into the dirt is pretty predictable, as long as I do what’s required to raise the plant to adulthood. But climate, nutrients, pests—all can affect the plant’s life. Our family, the crucial people in our lives, are like gardeners, nurturing us through the seasons, influencing us with their actions, their habits, their words. Our son came to us when he was nearly eighteen months old; his life had already begun in earnest, so it was our task as his new parents to shepherd him the rest of the way. His genetic slate may have been already in place, but his journey was and is far from complete. For that matter, so is mine.

I realized then that if I wanted to ensure an optimal environment for my child, to completely move outside the patterns of dysfunction that continued to creep up in my life, I would need to get to a place where I understood—truly understood—the unhealthy foliage that filled my own family tree. And to do this, to grasp the origins of my flashes of anger, the discomfort of seeing and hearing my last name used in conjunction with my first, the minor recoil I did when black-and-white family photos showed resemblances to my father that were undeniable, I would need to begin clearing the soil from the roots of my family tree, scraping away at the dirt and detritus to see what was really there. Looking at the branches would give me some names and a few facts; this I knew. To get at the heart of my family—the essential elements of me—I would have to dig as well, to uncover the roots hidden deep beneath the surface.

The more we dig, of course, the more we uncover. I can still see an image of my seven-year-old self with a neighbor pal; we are using my mother’s tarnished serving spoon to excavate the remains of an old home site in the woods behind our house. The promise of buried treasure is exhilarating and even the end result, an old pint whiskey bottle, can’t quench our rabid curiosity. I found myself pulled to the treasure hunt of genealogy, the search for the ancient footprints of my family, in the same way. The very notion of finding something precious, some amazing fact that might redeem my ominous memories, was a call that grew louder the more I tried to quash it. I really wanted something good, something of which to be proud. But the path that appeared in front of me, sometimes bright, often nearly indiscernible, was one over which I had no control. A turn here, a dead end there, the trail would continue meanderingly until one night a startling, horrific find—one from which there would be no turning back.