an excerpt from my novel LULLABY CHAPTER 3 DANNY BOY Danny was a protestant. No one in town knew but Danny and me. He was born on the island of Manhattan, April first, nineteen fifty-one to two normal sized parents. Until the age of ten, Danny was as normal as the rest of the children his age; normal height, normal weight, normal dreams. Danny like most boys his age dreamed of being a cowboy. His parents even bought Danny a little straw cowboy hat for Christmas that year. Then over the summer of nineteen sixty-one, he suddenly and stopped growing. Just stopped. The other children did not. Everyone noticed, including Danny. His parents, who by anyone’s standards had done a good job of rearing Danny to that point, did not know what to do or how to handle it. Their first reaction was abject horror. They tried to hide their feelings from him- they succeeded for about to hours after the doctor confirmed their worst fears: Danny would never be any taller than four feet. The only two things on him that would continue to grow would be his heart and his hands. They would both become larger through the course of his life until they would become greatly out of proportion with the rest of his body. Then his heart or his hands would eventually theoretically burst. He told me this in the bell tower of the catholic church one Sunday morning; I had run away from home and was looking for spider to tell her I was leaving and why- he told me then that the embrace his father gave him before he and his parents entered the doctor’s office that day, was the last time he was ever touched by them. Even in anger. Danny had climbed the bell tower to find me that morning, before Don had the chance to. I will never forget him for that. So, Danny at the age of eleven was to be sent to live at a boarding school in Connecticut. His parents did not go to the train station to see him off. With his bags packed and set at the front door, they called for a taxi and stood on the stoop just outside their brownstone apartment to wait. Danny was left inside. I wonder what the last sound of home he ever heard was? Once when Danny was very drunk, he told me that he saw his father give the taxi cab driver a one hundred dollar bill and told him to wait with Danny at the station until he boarded the train. The driver agreed then promptly took Danny and the money on a one-hour detour to the nearest racetrack and lost the money. Danny missed his train. The driver left him there, alone. The next train pulled in on time, fourteen hours later. For the next four years he attended the boarding school, utterly alone. Until, by chance, he was waiting to have a cavity filled at the dentist office he picked up a copy of TIME MAGAZINE, and read an article on rodeo clowns. It was entitled: THE MOST DANGEROUS PROFESSION. It spoke of the hundreds of midgets and dwarves who work year round as clowns distracting bucking bulls and broncos in rodeos based out of the Pacific Northwest. He bought the first train ticket to Idaho and arrived the next week. What the article failed to mention is that rodeo’s, like circus’ or carnivals, spend most of their time traveling. The Rocky Mountain Rodeo was in transit and was not due back in town until December. It was February. Danny had missed the train again. So he paid someone at the bus station to buy him some whiskey, and he settled down in a Jameson bottle for a while, drinking his heartache away. He was destitute, unemployable, and at the end of his rope. Pulling himself together, enough anyway, to attempt hitchhiking, he flagged down a sympathetic truck driver, who was not particular in the size of the ear that was listening, and with all of his problems and uncertainty of his future, sat in the cab of the jet black south bound Mack-truck and listened to another soul speak of loss, of love, and of letting go. The driver told him that he didn’t usually speak so much on matters of the heart, but that he had watched the cargo he was now carrying being loaded into his trailer, and it started him thinking of the price one pays for the things one had in life. “Who decides the worth of something?” He said, “It usually isn’t until later, until hindsight, that we can weigh out the sum total of anything”. Danny’s head was spinning. He hadn’t eaten in two full days, and was coming off a long hard bender. “Pride, man. Pride is what it all comes down to. In today’s world it’s always somebody else’s fault. There is no accountability. Christ. You know, my daddy used to say to me, ‘sonny, it is the loose untangling of pride that keeps us who we are; the difference between what we expect and what we deserve’.” The driver had not looked at Danny this whole time, and suddenly realized that Danny hadn’t said a word. “Jesus, kid, I’m sorry. You look like hell. We’ll be at the end of the road in about an hour. Why don’t you lie down in the seat there and take it easy. I’ll stop talking your ear off.” But the driver did not stop talking. It was not in his nature. He did turn on the radio and country music filled the air. It reminded Danny of home. It reminded Danny of the day his mother and father had sent him away. Western music was the secret passion of Frank, Danny’s father. He would sit and listen to old country and western albums late at night for hours at a time, with a scotch in one hand and a novel in the other. Danny sitting in the cab of the Mack-truck, with the music playing took him back to the day he was forced to leave his childhood home. Danny’s mother had bathed, fed and clothed him, and was packing his bags, while his father sat in the study, drinking his scotch, and reading his novel. As Danny and his mother walked down the single flight of stairs, he could see his father through the railing, on the phone, speaking their address with his thin New York accent. Danny could hear him barely over the music. His father, then, walked from the study, and set his glass on the credenza, telling Danny to stay inside and to be still. He walked outside with his wife, and stood on the stoop and held her. The music from the study then faded and the needle slid lazily to the end of the song; Danny stood there listening faintly to his mother crying and to the soft sound of the needle moving over the center grooves of the record. The music in the truck was still playing as he lay down on the front seat, trying to tune out the drivers voice, he pulled his jacket over his face like a blanket, and in the blackness he felt his face soften as he wept. It made his heart grow large and tired. Danny slept until he felt the truck slowly turn and come to a stop. He sat up on the seat and looked out through the windshield. The sky was dropping large drops of warm summer rain, so large in fact that he leaned in close to the dashboard and looked up through the glass to see if he could catch his reflection in one. But the shower was over almost before it began, and he sat back into the seat and looked at the driver shifting the gears. The truck started to move again and they turned off from the interstate and started into town. It was early, not yet sunrise, and there was little traffic on the streets and as they drove, Danny looked down the main drag and watched the two story store fronts move by, beginning to glow from the sliver of orange creeping over the mountain range that framed the end of the city well. He began to see that the road was leading them to an infinitely laid cobble stone cul-de-sac, and at the end of it were five churches built in a semi-circle pattern, and a house just to the right of it that looked like an industrial sized chimney, with eight windows and one door. As they came closer, he could see, at the front of each church, standing in the doorway, the ministers. Each of them smiling. It looked unnatural, like men isolated in their faith. Danny told me once, they liked like the most lonesome men he had ever seen. The Mack-truck pulled around the cul-de-sac then backed up to a large concrete pedestal freshly made. It was three feet high, and six feet wide. There were four very large threaded bolts approximately four inches apart at its center. The whole thing looked like a huge gray birthday cake with four iron colored candles. And then they heard it, a far off groan of a sound. At the opposite end of the main street was a large puff of black smoke billowing out of the monster crane from the neighboring town three miles away. It was slowly making its way straight towards them. Behind the wheel was Tommy Bucker, the ‘son’ in the name of Bucker and Son Construction. As the large awkward thing made its way down the boulevard the sun crept over the mountain range, and what started as a sliver of orange glow over the town, became an early morning bright shining gash of gray across the church house roof-tops, and Tommy squinted as he drove the giant crane onward. Kirk Hodges, the driver of the black Mack-truck, was running late and had walked to the back and was opening the back doors of the semi-truck trailer. “We have about a half hour before I have to be on the road again, so we have to make this quick.” He said while putting on his thick, black stained, camel colored calfskin work gloves. “Half an hour.” The five ministers mouths dropped open simultaneously. Father O’rielly spoke first. “Half an hour, are you crazy man? The crane won’t even make it down the street for another five minutes.” The Baptist minister interrupted, “The first moving company said they would stay until the job was done!” “I’m sorry, father, pastor, but this is my livelihood, and I have to pick up a full trailer in Plummer by two this afternoon. My reputation depends on punctuality.” Kirk Hodges said, and then paused. He looked over at Danny still sitting in the cab of the truck. Danny’s eyes barely reached over the bottom of the window. Kirk recalled the conversation in the truck. “Well, shoot.” He said and turned to the ministers. “I can help out for an hour, after that you are on your own.” With that he walked purposefully to the passenger side and opened the door. He looked at Danny as he helped him down. “Remember this kid, it’s the best thing I’ve done in a long time.” Then tossed Danny one of the gloves. They both walked to the back of the truck while the ministers’ grateful eyes fell upon them. Danny could not help but notice a feeling inside of him. One he hadn’t felt before. It was a tingle of the bazaar; a feeling of something so strange and out of place that he was sure it showed on his face. And he thought to himself that this town, this situation with the ministers in front of their churches, each clutching their faith between their hands like their bibles, the sun rising behind them, that this was the first time in his life that something, someone else, was far more bazaar than he. It made him start to whistle. It made him feel like he belonged. The monster crane moved past the truck and trailer then positioned itself on the other side of the concrete pedestal. Tom Bucker shut down the engine and it rattled to a smoky silence. He hopped down and gave a half-hearted wave to the crowd of men as he walked over to the truck. “This it?” He asked, and then looked down at Danny, “Christ, kid. Who the hell are you?” “One of God’s creatures, Tommy. Where is your father this morning?” Father O’rielly said, holding back his anger. “He’s sick, father. He sent me instead.” Tommy was still staring at Danny. “I see you finally found yourself an alter boy.” “This is the last time your father drinks the night away on my time, Tommy. Now do you know what the hell you are doing?” “No problem.” Tommy said, finally looking away from Danny. “Piece of cake.” Kirk Hodges had made his way over to the massive crane during the conversation, looking and listening. He did not like what he was hearing. So as he walked back to the truck, passing Tommy, he bumped his shoulder knocking him to the ground. “Oh excuse me son. Let me help you up.” He grabbed Tommy by the nape of his neck and yanked him back to his feet. “Let my dust you off.” He lifted his hand, palm open, ready to strike Tommy on his ass. Tommy knew better and wriggled away quickly from Kirks grip. “No thank-you, sir.” He said and walked back over to the crane, dusting himself off. He began to pull the large straps from the storage box on the side of the crane, grumbling under his breath the whole time. Kirk and Danny walked to the back of the trailer, together. Kirk handed him a crowbar and said, “Time to earn your keep, kid.” Danny smiled and listened as Kirk gave him direction, they worked well with each other, and that made him feel useful for the first time. In the trailer was an enormously long wooden crate and the two of them began prying away the nails while Tommy Bucker began to position the cranes long iron arm over the pedestal and lower the thick dark cable that held a giant metal hook at the end of it. Danny could see it framed against the North West sky from the inside of the trailer. It looked as though God was fishing. He liked how it looked. It added to the oddness of the morning. The church going people of Clarks Fork had tithed and contributed generously to the Jesus fund over the past two years. Father O’rielly had come up with the idea of placing a statue in the middle of the cul-de-sac for, ‘all the world to see’, and with the other ministers, he formed a unilateral church committee to see that every respectable church going member in any of their flock would know the importance of the whole idea. Bake sales, potlucks, and raffles soon followed. One and a half years it took four churches to raise the funds to pitch in and have the piece commissioned. Now it was done. And it was finally here, waiting to be moved out of the trailer and lifted into place. Two sets of straps needed to be wrapped around the statue before it could be hoisted out and up from where it lay in the trailer. And with the crating that could not be removed, it was still a very tight fit. Tommy wanted to quit and said that ‘it couldn’t be done’ but Danny disagreed, “I can do it.” Danny said, “I can do it.” “He’s not strong enough,” Tommy said, “Besides we don’t need help from any outsiders.” Kirk was now glaring at Tommy again. “What the hell do you think I am?” and lifted Danny up to the back of the trailer. He looked Danny right in his eyes, “You know how to tie a double knot, kid?” Danny smiled wide. Danny’s father’s study was full of western memorabilia, including lassos and nooses. As a child they frightened him. But one of the few things Danny and his father had in common were knots. Danny would practice for hours at a time while his father was at work, using lengths of rope his father would leave laying around his study, and sometimes when his father came home from work he would find Danny’s rope tying handiwork placed on his desk. One of the only compliments his father ever gave Danny was on a knot he tied the day before he was sent away. The noose of rope was tied so well, so smooth, so tightly was it woven, one could not tell where the noose started or ended, that his father actually laughed when he saw it. “You can hang me with this anytime, son…” he said, quickly patting him on the head, “anytime.” Danny’s hands, like the doctor predicted had become larger, not yet hugely out of proportion with the rest of him, but noticeably bigger and swollen. While in his drunken stooper not two days earlier, Danny, in his catacomb of depression, had bought a ten-foot piece of standard rope, sat down in a dimly lit sorrow filled back alley exit to a hole in the wall bar, and tried to tie the same flawless knot he had for the affection of his father. It was impossible. The straps he was handed to put around the top of the statue were four inches across and an eighth of an inch thick, and Danny was amazed at how easy they were to work with. His hands flew one around the other like a flesh and bone machine. And he realized something as he was working: Everything in his life until now, all the countless times he felt that he did not belong, all the sorrow he had swallowed for years on end, every little thing happy or sad, good and bad, had led him to this. To now. And no one in the universe, regardless of denomination or faith, could deny him the fact that he was meant for this moment, this situation. And he paused then, just for a moment, still working away, tears escaping from his eyes from joy. He paused just long enough to acknowledge the fact that he was right with himself, and the world around him. And from the back of the truck, tying the base of the statue with the straps, Kirk called out to him, “how you feeling up there, Danny?” Danny answered with the most honest words a man can speak, “I’m perfect.” He said, and went about his work.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 20:50:02 +0000
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