All the Wild Children Read online

  In Golden Gate Park Janis Joplin is playing with Big Brother and the Holding Company. My father is sitting on the grass, he has wrapped Shaun in his Levi jacket, she is sleeping on his lap. The rich smell of his tobacco wafts over me. His thumb and forefinger are stained brown. My big brother and sister are out among the dancing crowd.

  And I am standing still. Taking it all in.

  A big round earth momma lifts me up into her arms. She is a symphony ofIndian print. She is a gypsy goddess. She clutches me to her chest, swaying to the music. My head rests on her round soft bosom. I am home.

  She smells of rosemary. She smells of vanilla. She smells of fresh baked cookies and sweat. I am safe.

  It is the summer of love and for a moment my world is soft and safe.

  It is 1968 and I am 10.

  LIVE WITH IT

  From: LARKIN STALLINGS

  Subject: Re: some new shite

  Date: March 23, 7:31:54 PM PDT

  To:Josh Stallings

  Read the first 28 pages of All The Wild Children in one sitting. Tough. Hard to read and remember.

  I've wondered but never asked about the end of Mom and Dad up close. It was weird enough through Gma Smiths jaundiced eyes. Tough. Hard to read and remember.

  I am pretty sure that Lilly went to Jordan and I went to 5th grade at Escondido, though fuck it, the story is better the way you wrote it. I remember it vaguely anyway. I didn't go to detention, cause I knew how to stuff and play the game. I held it all in till it all blew up and I beat some big mouth as close to death as a 10 year-old could, with my James Bond 007 lunch pail. Sean Conery, loved that guy. Do I owe an amends?...aw fuck em.

  Parting thoughts.

  One: Yes, God does love me more.

  Two: Rough Childhood? Hell yes. But what a blast. A little crazy down the line, yes, but fuck it, crazy is what kept us sane. Who gets to do the shit we did and get to live to tell the tale? It's really a blessing. I think it really is. Maybe God loved us all more.

  I love you more,

  Lark

  From: JOSH STALLINGS

  Subject: Re: some new shite

  Date: March 23, 7:31:54 PM PDT

  To:Lark Stallings

  Brother, thanks, I now know what the next section is. It starts with your e-mail. Then this e-mail back to you. A hit man was on the Today Show, he has a memoir he’s hocking. Ann Curry (I think) is interviewing him. (side note: Could Ann Curry be any hotter?) Curry asks the man hiding behind the silhouette if he used a silencer in his work.

  “Heck no, ma’am. I used the biggest, loudest gun I can find. Broad day light in a packed restaurant. Boom! Boom! Scare the crap out of them all. No two patrons ever remember the events the same. I am alternately a six foot Black man, a short wiry Porto Rican, rotund Cuban. Almost never the average wasp I am.” Anne Curry shakes her head in disbelief and they cut to a commercial.

  All my Love and Madness,

  Josh

  In many ways I think Lark took the biggest hit from the divorce. Not that any one noticed at the time. He was stoic at ten. He had responsibility heaped on his young shoulders that would break a grown man. And he bore it, until he couldn’t and then he shot dope. But that is years away.

  It’s 1966 we’re in yet another fucked up used VW driving home to the mountains. Stanford is still weeks away. I’m in the backseat, Larkin is in the front. My mother is driving. She is crying. She’s crying all the time. She carries ratty tissues in her pocket, she always will. Later it will be for hay fever. Now it is for tears. And snot. And I’m in the back seat as we wind around La Honda, headed up to Skyline. I’m trying to imagine my life without my dad. Who’s going to fix things when they break? They always break. Who’s going to be the artistic lightness to my mother’s dark, work-will-set-you-free ethic? Who’s going to finish reading Pooh Bear to me?

  My mother stops crying. We drive without speaking for a few miles. I listen to the road under our wheels. I listen to the creak of the flexing metal. I listen to the wind blowing through the gaps in the body panels. I look at my brother. His face is empty. No emotions are leaking out. Whatever he’s feeling, a team of CIA trained therapists wouldn’t get it out of him.

  “Larkin?”

  “Yeah Mom.”

  “You’re father won’t be coming home.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That means you’re the man of the family now. I’m counting on you. You know I am.”

  “Yeah Mom.”

  I am 8, and even I can see this is some fucked up shit. Not that seeing it will keep me from heaping my share of burden on his shoulders. The guy can handle it.

  When we were kids he was the one they gave bibles to, yeah hell of a birthday gift right? Pull that on me and they would have heard about it. Never would have occurred to them to give me a bible anyway. We are all given names and labels when young, hell maybe even at birth. Lark is the solid one. Josh is the wild one. OK, they might have had some evidence to back that up. As a toddler I figured out how to get out a window and jump into the rose bushes. By the time I was four I had had my stomach pumped three times, for drinking deadly substances. At maybe four and a half I drove a jeep down a hill and into a tree. That one I lay at St. Larkin’s feet. We were playing Roy Rogers, I was Gabby Hayes to his Roy. And Gabby drove theJeep while Roy shot bad men and did other heroic acts. We were on top of a steep drive way. I don’t know who took the parking brake off but I’m guessing I didn’t do it alone. Roy jumps out, leaving Gabby to handle the driving while he runs into the house screaming “Josh is driving the Jeep!”

  Now you can take all of these disparate acts and draw a line to Josh is a trouble case. Or... just maybe... little JJ was smart enough to know he should run for the border, that the wheels were coming off this family wagon train. Maybe.

  I am 6 1/2, my father still lives with us. We are still in the mountains in the house on the hill as we called it. The hippies at Black Mountain commune called it The Land. At six and a half, I call it home. My big brother and sister are playing a game they like to call revving little JJ up and watching him spin. It doesn’t take much to get my rage meter pinned. On this particular day their tactic is to lock me out of the house. And taunt me from behind the sliding glass door.

  “It’s not fair! Open! The! Door!”

  “Make us!”

  “Yeah make us!” They are laughing.

  My face is growing red.

  My heart is pounding like a drum.

  I pick up a brick.

  I feel its weight, blood pounds in my temple.

  “Open it or I’ll...” I cock my arm, ready.

  “You won’t.” Lilly laughs at me. Lark laughs at me.

  The brick hits the sliding glass door. It shatters. Sharp glass spears spill into the living room. Nobody is laughing.

  “I told you I would!” I’m screaming. I’m afraid. No one is hurt this time.

  When my parents get home, my dad is apoplectic, rightfully so I guess. We will have to pay for the window. We will have extra chores. We will not be trusted. We will still be left alone, just not trusted, I’m not too sure what that looks like in actuality.

  In my bed that night I go over it in my head. I wonder how broken I am. I don’t feel guilt. I feel righteous.

  I am 7. My brother is walking away from me. He and his friend Mark won’t let me come with them. They tell me no babies allowed.

  It is not fair.

  They work their way down a steep incline.

  “Wait for me!” I am shouting.

  My face is growing red.

  My heart is pounding.

  I pick up a rock.

  They don’t even look back.

  The rock sails out into space.

  My brother screams. Blood pours out of his scalp, matting his hair.

  “Sit in your room and think about what you did. And don’t move until we get back.” My dad is so angry he has gone past rage to calm. I sit my ass on the bed in my room and don’t move. Three hours is lo
ng time to think about what I did. I don’t feel righteous. I feel guilty. I know I am broken. In some fundamental way I am not like my brother.

  They send me to Paul Warner. The same man who isn’t helping their marriage, doesn't help me. I don’t actually blame him for any of it. Our family is FUBAR. Who am I to judge him. I am an angry child, who will turn into an angry teenager, who will turn into an angry young man, who will beat up refrigerators and yell and frighten his own small children. I will never lay a hand on them, so maybe that’s growth. Or maybe I’m just not as honest about how I feel as my father was.

  My father left when I was eight

  Who I’d follow

  Was left up to you and fate

  I love you big brother

  You are infallible

  Most valuable

  To me

  I am 11. It is 1969. I write a song for my brother. For his birthday. Forget the extra helping of cheese and bad wordplay. Look at the sentiment. In-fucking-fallible. Try and live up to that big brother.

  I know I couldn’t.

  But what’s another pound to an elephant, right? Hell the boy had the house on his shoulders, what was one brick.

  I am 40. It is 1998. I call my brother in Texas where he now lives. I have just uncovered an unexamined falsehood. Not a lie, but not the truth.

  “Lark you son of a bitch, you told me a premature orgasm was if the man came before the woman.” I’m laughing. Teasing the bugger. “Not that any of the women I was with minded, but it was a lot of pressure for a young guy.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. One question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “How old were you when I gave you this sage but lacking advice?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Shit dude, I was fourteen. What the hell did I know.” And in that moment I get it. He was just a kid. He was always just a kid. But he was eighteen months older than me so I thought he was grown up.

  MY FATHER

  My father is an epic poem waiting to be written. My father is pin pricks of starlight. We lay on our backs and he names all the constellations. I will never look at Orion without thinking of him and the mountains and the smell of night in the upper meadow.

  I am 6. It is daybreak. I need to know what things are called. I think I will make sense of the chaos if I know names. I point at a red flower, a shooting star.

  “That’s Columbine. The purple one is a Bleeding Heart. That over there? That’s an Iris, see the black ink marks?” My father is naming all of the flowers in the fields around our house. “California Poppy. MissionBells. That one’s a Buttercup, put it under your chin to see if you are in love. The green is Miner’s Salad, you can eat it.” It tastes cool and wet. “Lupine and Clover and Fairy Lanterns” - everywhere color to be named. I have these same wildflowers tattooed spiraling up my left arm. As I type they remind me of where I come from. They remind me to be honest. They remind me to name the names. The red skinned trees are madrone. The shrubs are manzanita.

  My father is a harbor from my mother’s anger. My father is a raging storm.

  I am 50, I search for a happy memory of my parents together. I find happy memories of my mother, see her laughing in her peasant dress. I can smell yeast and flour on her hands. I have happy memories of my father. But never the two of them in the same frame.

  I call Lark, there has to be one memory tucked in there.

  There is a long pause. “I got it.”

  “OK, I’m ready, shoot.”

  “Remember them on the beach, San Gregorio?”

  I do. Bonfires, bright heat against the cold northern California air. My parents and their friends drink red mountain wine from big jugs. Me, skinny, with blue lips from cold. I snuggle into mom’s poncho. My father sits beside us, playing his dark brown time worn Martin. The adults are singing Woody Guthrie songs, protest songs, train songs. This land was made for you and me. Midnight special shine its ever loving light.

  “Were they all Quakers?”

  “I think so.” He is quiet again. He’s thinking. I can see the way his brow knits, it’s subtle, but I can see it. Or imagine I can, he’s in Houston, I’m in Los Angeles. “Hum.”

  “What?”

  “I remember now, they would have a Quaker meeting up at our house, and after they would potluck. They would drink red wine. And our parents would smile at each other. Damn, the only time our parents got along, they were drinking. And I became a drunk, any big surprise?” He’s smiling, I can hear it.

  “Yeah that’s it! If only our parents hadn’t a drunk wine, we would be able to drink like gentlemen.” We’re both laughing now. We’re both long time sober now. Lark is in his car on the way home from running an AA meeting at the Houston jail.

  In 1962 Quaker activists build a trimaran called the Everyman. Their plan is to sail deep into the Pacific ocean in an attempt to stop Christmas Island nuclear testing. My father petitions to be captain of the ship.

  I want to volunteer as one of the crew members for the voyage to Christmas Island. You will want to know my reasons as I understand them. One night while my five-year-old son was suffering from an acute attack of asthma it struck me that if there was a father anywhere in the world who could do anything that might help or protect my child no matter the cost to that man, I would expect it of him. I would not feel that he had done anything special. The fraternity of fathers brings its own unique responsibilities. Now it is my turn. I see danger impending. The fathers who cannot protect themselves or their children are waiting for my response.

  HAL STALLINGS

  My father is made captain. They don’t make it to the Christmas Island. They are arrested twelve miles out. Later my father tells me they never would have made it. The Everyman was taking on water, the crew was grossly under skilled. If they hadn’t been arrested they certainly would have drowned.

  U.S. v. Stallings, Lazar, Yoes. (ND Calif., S. Div.) 3 Defs. sailed trimaran Everyman I out of San Francisco harbor toward U.S. atomic testing area (Christmas Island) in Pacific Ocean; boarded by U.S. Atty., crew arrested for violating temporary restraining order issued without notice or hearing. Defs'. arrest 12 mi. at sea unlawful. June 7, 1962: DC after hearing found Defs. guilty of contempt; 30 days due to Defs. unwillingness to purge themselves of contempt by agreeing to obey future ct. orders. No appeals.

  At sentencing my father made the following statement.

  I feel that I have let some misconception about myself grow in this courtroom. While this may seem overly personal and irrelevant in a courtroom, it is the only thing I know. Yesterday Al Wirin and Marshall Heslep called me Captain Stallings. And up came the image of the self-sufficient seafarer striding the deck, facing the storm. It did not even hint at the cowering, afraid, sea-sick guy unable to even think for his own fear, willing to have his friends endanger themselves on that boat before himself.

  (Marshal) Cecil Poole's question yesterday always hits me with fresh new import. "Hal Stallings—are you flagrantly doing what you 'durn well please'? Where did you get the right to think you alone might be right?"

  I don't know that I'm right in any sense, I have neither divine nor human, neither internal nor external assurance that I'm right in any grand sense. I yearn sometimes for a world where I can feel truly confident that my three-year-old who tells me in wonder and expectation that he wants to be a "builder" and build a home for his mother and me has a real chance to grow to be that builder; that at the very least I have done everything I can to protect that future.

  I yearn not to remember when I put my kids to bed that there is a mother in Hiroshima putting her children to bed—their father dead—killed by radiation—killed in my and my children's "defense."

  It is 1962 and my father goes to jail for thirty days. He is a hero of the movement. My mother is left at home with four kids and wondering how to feed them. The woman's movement hasn’t reached the Quakers yet. I hate having my father gone.

  In 1963 My father is arrested blocking the entrance to the Liverm
ore Nuclear Testing Facility.

  1963 Mom and another Quaker woman pack up a VW van full of kids and head for the south. There is a firebrand young minister, Martin Luther King, Jr. leading marches. My mother is not late coming to the freedom movement. As a young student she protested not being able to sit with her Black friends in a movie house. She left Indiana and worked in an inner-city school. She had been fighting for equality long before the TV cameras started rolling.

  My siblings and me see lynching on the nightly news. We see dogs and hoses set on crowds. The drive south scares the hell out of us. We are going into enemy territory, unarmed with our arms held wide open.

  In Salt Lake City Utah I slam my thumb in the door of the van, smashing and cutting it pretty bad. Thanks to the wide gaps in VW body panels I don’t lose any flesh. I remember clearly my mother going door to door asking for ice for her son’s hurt finger. Doors are slammed in her face. She smiles and tells me they don’t have ice in Salt Lake City. For years I thought it had to do with salt water having such a low freezing temperature.

  November 22, 1963 President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. My mother sits in her rocking chair weeping openly.

  November 25, 1963 President Kennedy is buried. That brave little boy stands beside his mother at the graveside. He stands for all of us kids. He makes us proud as we stand beside our crying mothers. Two days later I turn six. I doubt there was much of a party that year. Which is as it should be.

  February 21, 1965 Malcolm X is assassinated. My family mourns.

  Summer, 1966 my father leaves. My family mourns.

  January, 1967 the nightmare that was our foray into public school ends. We have survived one semester at Escondido before our sentence is commuted. Whether it is because Lark beat that boy up (his theory) or my constant detention (my theory) or because my mother saw how unhappy wewere (her theory). It really didn’t matter. We were free, free at last, sweet lord free at last.