My apartment is on the flight path of helicopters that go to St. Dominics, and Baptist Hospitals, and UMMC. Sometimes, they fly quite close. Early this morning, it sounded like they were going to land on my roof.
“Saigon. shit. I'm still only in Saigon. Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle.”
A lot of people think “Apocalypse Now” was made by Stanley Kubrick, but it was actually made by Francis Ford Coppola. Coming off “The Godfather,” Coppola could have done anything he wanted. What he wanted was to make a movie that convinced the industry he was nuts, nearly ruined his career, and nearly bankrupted United Artists. Although Coppola wrote the script, for most of its development, the project was attached to George Lucas to direct. Lucas, if you couldn’t figure out from “Return of the Jedi” had very specific and strong feelings about what we were doing in Vietnam.
In the film, Coppola used helicopters as metaphors for American Imperialism. Massive, demonic insects destroying villages. He wasn’t subtle. There are places where you can compare “Apocalypse Now” and “Return of the Jedi” shot for shot.
My first exposure to helicopters of any sort was when my grandfather had a heart attack, playing Gin Rummy with Carter O’Ferral and Toby Trobridge at the Jackson Country Club. Being a Friday afternoon at the Country Club, there were at least four surgeons within yards of the nineteenth hole. One of them called in the airstrike.
I just happened to be walking past the receptionist desk at Missco when the call came in. “Mr. Jim’s in the hospital!” Fay was terrified.
I put down the stack of papers I was carrying on her desk and ran toward the door. At my size, a full run can be overwhelming, but momentum and mass made sure nothing would get in my way.
Sometimes, in an emergency, my brain shifts into a sort of automatic mode. Thirty months before, I was at a girl’s house when her daddy put a .45 against his temple and pulled the trigger. My brain went into automatic mode then, too.
At the hospital, I could see the helicopter sitting on its pad, the top blade still slowly moving, not yet secured by the pilot. Having been in it a few times, I knew my way around the emergency room. Pretty soon, I got to a spot where they wouldn’t let me go any further.
My cousin, Jim Watts, found me. His brother was on a sales call. My father was at Trustmark. I don’t know where my brothers were. My sister was in high school. For minutes that seemed like years, it was just me and Jim. Sister Josephine found us.
“Come with me, Boyd.” She said. The same thing happened when my father died.
Most people never see it, and they should be grateful if they don’t. There’s a small chapel at St. Dominics just for telling people their loved ones are no more.
“Your father is coming. Mr. Jim, your grandfather, he didn’t make it.”
Sister Josephine was one of the most successful businesspeople I ever saw. She drank beer and loved baseball, but she was also a nun. I wouldn’t have admitted I needed a nun for anything, but I did.
Daddy arrived in a flurry with Rowan behind him. Sister Josephine tried to pull him into the little chapel also, but he knew what that meant. There, in the halls of St. Dominics Hospital, his head dropped down, and he braced himself against the wall with one outstretched arm. One moment, two, three, then he tugged the wrinkles out his coat and began issuing orders, including me.
“Your mother is bringing your grandmother. Go outside to meet them.”
Waiting for my mother’s car, I burned down three cigarettes in ten minutes. Al Watts and James Carr made their way into the hospital.
Sometimes, my grandmother seemed indomitable, hewn from marble. Sometimes, she seemed small and fainting. Mother dropped her off at the door and went to park her car. We called my grandmother Bubba because my brother couldn’t pronounce “Mother.” She took my elbow and then gripped my arm tightly, and we went inside.
She didn’t have time to change out of her housecoat, but she did have the presence of mind to grab a pair of gloves, waiting for my mother to come and take her to the hospital.
Sitting in the chapel with my grandmother, I’m pretty sure my brother was behind me, but I was starting to have really pronounced sensory overload by that point. That’s an artifact of ADHD. Some people describe it as kind of a drunk feeling, but for me, it’s more like a shutting down of my peripheral vision; my brain begins fighting the very things that make the ADHD mind unique.
It was decided that I should pack a bag to stay at my grandmother’s house for a while. “How long?” I asked. “That depends.” was all anyone could say. A nurse gave me a white plastic bag with my grandfather’s effects. I went home and packed a bag.
At my grandmother’s house, I was met by Pearlie, her housekeeper. Pearlie had been her housekeeper since the Korean War. Pearlie had dark skin, almost blue. She spoke absolutely perfect English and borrowed my grandmother’s books. In her time, Pearlie served tea and patented cucumber sandwiches to Eudora Welty, Carl and Mildred Wolfe, and Marie Hull.
“It’s so good to see you, baby.” I bent down so her thick arms could circle my neck. “Mrs. Campbell is lying down. Put your things in the guest room.”
After unpacking my hanging bag and underwear, I turned to the white plastic bag the hospital gave me. There was a smaller bag inside it. The smaller bag had his billfold, watch, and KA Ring. My grandmother gave me his ring in a few days, as I was the only KA in my generation. I keep it in a lock box with a copy of the ritual Knight Commander Chaney gave me.
In the other bag was his clothes. I don’t know how these things work, but his shirt was covered in blood. I suppose they hadn’t cut it off him yet when they opened his chest. None of that could be saved. Without asking anyone, I told Pearlie to hide that bag at the bottom of the trash can and save the smaller bag for my grandmother.
The next morning, breakfast came at five am because that’s when my grandfather had it. I had been in the practice of meeting my father and grandfather at six to open the mail for almost two years by that point. Wearing a light blue housecoat and covering her hair with a scarf, my grandmother said I should try on my grandfather’s clothes while she ate toast.
My grandmother and my grandfather had very different lifestyles. My grandmother had been raised with money and was very proper. My grandfather was still a country boy at heart. When their children moved out of the house for good, it was decided that my grandfather would take over my father’s small bedroom, my grandmother would have the larger master bedroom and bath for herself, including the larger closet, and my Aunt Evelyn’s room would be the guest room.
“Tonight, I want you to start sleeping in Jimmy’s room.” She said. I wasn’t expecting that. Even though they hadn’t shared a bed in thirty years, knowing that somebody was sleeping in his bed must have meant something to her.
My grandfather was something of a clothes horse. Going through his clothes might take some time. If you popped the seam in the lining, I could wear some of his jackets. The summer before, my arms peaked at twenty inches. They’d shrunk down some by then but were still considerably larger than Grandaddy’s. I was into strength sports, not bodybuilding, but I still rather enjoyed having pretty big arms.
Although I was in college, I worked full-time and wore a tie every day. In the video of my brother and me in the first Mal’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, I’m wearing a blue chalk-stripe suit and a red tie. My plan was to quit fooling around and become what everyone said I should be: a respectable businessman. Art and writing were for other people.
Paul Hardin was my English teacher. He and Ross Moore were classmates of my grandfather at Millsaps. Both were on the verge of being forced into retirement in their seventies.
At Millsaps, we have this sort of tradition of stuffing as many classes as we can into whatever building was renovated most recently. That year, it was Murrah Hall. In the amphitheater lecture hall, where Shirley Olson would later make me question my sanity, Paul Hardin held court and taught us poetry.
“I’m sorry about your grandfather. He was a year ahead of me.” Dr. Hardin said.
My grandfather and father both mentioned that Paul Hardin “never married.” For men of that generation, that meant people suspected they were gay. I have no idea if he was or not. For a man who devoted his life to poetry, it’s at least a possibility. My grandmother, I would learn, spent her life providing shelter and succor to boys who might be gay. I don’t really know what her motivation was other than she loved writing, painting, and music, and so did they.
That she didn’t love those things in me was always something of a puzzlement. I think once they decided to name me for Boyd, everyone began thinking that I would become him. I never knew my uncle, but I don't think he was very happy based on what I’ve seen in his life. You can be remarkably accomplished and still not very complete. Estranged from his wife, he moved into the upper floors of the Walthal Hotel. She nursed him toward the end, but he died there.
When they finally convinced Paul Hardin to quit coming to work, he took up painting. I have one of his oils. He took piano lessons and traveled, but Millsaps professors sometimes don’t retire well. Depression and hopelessness started to push in from the edges. When he died, he wasn’t the man I knew. You should always think twice about retiring. I’ve seen it destroy people who were doing what they loved.
Eventually, I was allowed to move back to my own home. It was strange sleeping in my grandfather’s bed. He had an unfinished Lewis Grizzard book on the nightstand. I finished it.
For the next fifteen years, I would occasionally take a call to drive my grandmother out to the farthest western edge of Jackson so she could visit Grandaddy’s grave. I kept a little spade in my trunk because she was never satisfied if dirt or grass covered the plaque even a little.
The moment the paint dried on St. Catherine’s Village, Daddy began trying to convince Bubba that’s where she needed to live. She resisted until she fell in her bathroom one day and couldn’t get up. He told me to go to her house, break the door down, and see if she was ok. There were only a few times in my life when my father acknowledged the brutish nature of my body. That was one of them.
Properly installed, it’s pretty damn difficult to break the security chain on a solid door. Hers was properly installed. I made sure of that. Trying to break through it, I started to wish I hadn’t.
After the bathroom incident, Bubba agreed she’d be better off at St. Catherine’s Village. Soon, her sister and Carter O’Ferral had apartments as well. These days, when I go out there, it’s pretty much everybody’s mom and dad. It’s comforting, actually. I don’t think she considered that it might be a problem for Daddy if, after the months he spent raising money to build St. Catherine’s, his own mother refused to live there.
Way out in West Jackson, there are brass plaques for Bubba, Grandaddy, Momma, Daddy, Aunt Margaret, Uncle Levi, a neighbor girl, a boy I initiated into KA, my Uncle Tom, My Aunt Bernice, and more. Beneath them are the mortal remains of big parts of my life. I don’t visit graveyards much. I don’t need that to hold onto the past. Having visited those graves scores of times, I’ll probably never see them again.
Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.
