CHAPTER 19--HOMECOMING

Spring 1997

T

hey say you never can go home again, and, yeah, I guess they're right, whoever they are. Probably the same ones who say you can't take it with you when you go. But you can't go home, that's for sure. Because when you go home-the place where you always say you are from when anyone ever asks you-and the only people you have to visit are residing in a dinky little cemetery down the road from the shopping mall that they leveled your grade school to build, you can't help but feel that a big part of you, the part of you that called the place home in the first place, is lying six feet under with the ones you'd come to visit. And there's no place for you to sleep that night. No mom to have you over for warm soup. How can you call it home?

And yet it was the closest thing to a homecoming I ever had all my years, Queen, those little visits I paid to the cemetery in the town of my adolescence, Flagstaff, Arizona. Yes, a part of me was down there with you, but I'd always felt that who they buried wasn't you, Queen, but the person that stole your faith. Still, it was always my practice to come by and just meditate there, whenever I blew threw town on my bike, or later with Louie in the Dodge, a place where the little I had left, after I returned from over there, was last there for me.

As we drove into town, it seemed strange, unfamiliar, like it always did. Sure, there was Humphrey's Peak, the highest spot in the whole state. Drove down the street where we lived. There were people living there. Strangers. And I remembered a time when I would drive by and it felt like it was still my home to me, and that I should be able to barge in there and say, this was my place before it was your place.

But as the years have passed, the life of a nomad has made such sentimental attachments to places a luxury I couldn’t afford. A person like me can't hang out in one place too long. And could never hang out in Flagstaff. Ginny and Louie stayed in the car to "talk."

I had had enough of their "talking" the whole drive over there, to the cemetery.

"What did he try and do?" Louie pressed her.

"I told you, it's none of your fucking business!"

When we pulled up to the cemetery, they were both in back not really even cognizant of what was going on. It was like Louie was in another world with this girl. So I got out and headed for your grave by myself.

Was sitting there, crossed-legged, just staring the headstone, when I heard Ginny's voice. "Hey Jack," she said, her voice almost a whisper.

"Hey," I said, not bothering to turn around and look at her.

"I'm sorry."

"What are you apologizing for?"

"You know, for blowing you guys off. See, what happened is I lost Louie's pager number-"

"It's OK Gin, you don't have to explain. Shit happens," I interrupted her.

She sat down next to me, pulling out a Marlboro Red.

"Got an extra?" I asked. "I left mine in the car."

She handed me a smoke, and we both sat there smoking, a light breeze blowing, staring at your headstone.

"Louie went for a walk downtown. Something about needing his space to chill," she said.

"Oh."

She sensed I was absorbed in you, Queen, glancing down at the headstone with the words "Catherine Woods Morrison" and the dates, "1950-1968" etched into the white stone.

"God, she was young, Jack," she said, noticing the dates.

"Yeah, she was-“

"My age," she said, finishing my statement.

"And she'll always be your age in my mind. I can only hope you'll live to be an old, crotchety, and wrinkled relic of a woman."

"That's the plan. I've already got the crotchety part down."

Any other time, I might have laughed.

"You really loved her, huh?"

"Yeah, I did. And I've never found anyone that quite makes me feel how she makes me feel."

"Made you feel."

"No, I mean makes. She still manages to make me feel good even in her absence."

"Why did she kill herself?"

And I related the story to her, Queen, about how, in the space of a month, you'd lost your unborn child, and then thought you'd lost your husband, and were told he had committed atrocities in Vietnam. And you were so young. After I was finished, I said, "Let's walk up the hill a bit."

Wanted to introduce her to Papa Doug and up the hill and across a winding path was where he was buried in 1976.

"So you grew up here?" she asked.

"Moved here when I was about nine," I said. "My father was a salesman and his company kept moving him around the country. But we ended up in Flagstaff for good around '63."

We'd arrived at his grave. Looked down at the grave marker, a white headstone carved with the words: Douglas "Papa Doug" Morrison 1903-1976. Always become misty-eyed at Papa's grave, and Ginny took note.

"You loved him too, huh? A whole lot?"

"Yeah. What about you? Do you love your Dad?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Then why are you here with us?"

"You don't understand I can't live with them. I just can't. I don't know. It's my mom. She's such a fuckin' bitch. And she's very, very, very fundamentalist. Think about it. Me, Ginny Seton, living in duplex in South Austin with a right wing Republican for a mother, and a sick father. It's hell."

"But don't they worry about you?"

"Don't all parents?"

"I 'spose. "Never was a parent-well I take that back-I was a parent for three months. But I don't think you have to be a parent to figure out that people worry about one another."

"Yeah, you're right. I guess I'll call at some point," she suggested.

"But don't you want to go see your dad? Aren't you afraid you're going to call and …"

"No,” she said breaking in. “Because the disease is a slow-progressing one. He's going to be around for some time to come."

"What's your plan anyway?"

"At this point, I don't know. My mother wanted me to go to Baylor University, and I didn't want to. I wanted to try and get into UT. Decided to take a year to figure out what I wanted to do. Got started in school early you know, a year ahead of everyone else.”

"So you think you might want to go to college in the fall?"

"If my parents will still pay for it. If not, I'm just gonna have to figure it out all on my own."

Looked at her eye. Larry the Lizard had really belted her.

"Do you want to share with me what happened back in Winslow?"

"Oh, that guy was such a creep. I mean, he was fun at first. But then he just got stranger and stranger. And then he wanted to like, video tape us, and take Polaroid pictures and shit. I told him no fucking way. He got real drunk and started hitting me. And so I split."

"What if he tries to come find you?"

She slowly reached into her side pocket and produced an unfamiliar set of car keys.

And smiled that Ginny Seton smile.