Barrelhouse: Community Story Project

Mama Just Wants to Barrelhouse All Night Long

2006-11-01T05:29:00.000-08:00

Daddy had fallen down the well again.

I could hear him in there, moaning and crying, singing little snatches of those Johnny Cash songs every now and then. From where I stood, looking twenty, thirty feet down into the dark tunnel of the well, he looked like one of those baby rabbits after the cat had got to it.

"Are you all right Dad?" I called out. But he didn't answer. Maybe he didn't hear me. My knees trembled and I worried that if I yelled louder maybe the effort would launch me down there too. I cried out anyway but he kept on singing.

I ran on my rubbery legs through the back porch screen door. My feet clattered through the kitchen and thudded up the carpeted stairs. I paused at the door, fist poised to knock, eyes squirting tears. Mom always got angry when I woke her from a nap.

I tapped the door lightly, "Mom?"

"What is it?" She yelled.

"Dad's fallen down the well again."

I heard some rustling and then a groan.

"Then he must be hungry." She said. "Throw down a can of soup for him."

"Ok."

"And don't forget the can opener this time."

"Ok."

Be honest, I wished we could maybe leave him down there a bit. Not starve him or nothing, just let him stew in his own juices a little, maybe think through some of what's happened lately. Then, by the time we finally strapped some sort of harness to his shoulders and lifted him back up into the daylight, he'd be good and appreciative of it. He'd be all hugs and smiles and extra allowance, the way I figured it.

Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. Everything around here had changed -- and maybe it was for good -- the minute that damn oatmeal factory went belly up.

For a long time it had been a paradise of oats here. Piping hot oatmeal for breakfast of course. I'd eat that every day with a smile. At lunch I'd sandwich meats between slices of oat bread, dip oat meal cookies into milk for afternoon snack, and at night Mom would light oat candles and soak in hot oats until she shriveled. Good for he skin, she'd tell me as I rubbed fistfuls into her shoulders before it felt like I was too old to be in the room while she bathed.

Dad started to bring home oat sacks from work and mulched the shrubs, filled the cat box, spackled the cracks in the living room walls, and when he filled my sand box overflowing with oats I'd burrow into it up to my nose and watch him craft giant geometric oat sculptures on the lawn.

I think Dad and the others were trying to save their jobs by buying all the oats.

When the factory finally closed and half of town was out of work it was time to heal. Oat sick, everybody hauled their oats downtown and piled them high in the square. We poured gasoline on the heap and torched it, dancing hand in hand in a ring around the blaze. No more oats.

When I came home, Dad was in the well the first time.

He was singing that time, too. It was those old Johnny Cash songs he loved, the ones he'd put on the record player Saturday mornings when he came home from second shift at the plant. All of us kids would be stuffing our faces with cinammon oatmeal while he drank beers and tried to make Mom dance.

"This sad mess ain't no kind of music to dance to," she'd say, but he'd grab her by the hand and swing her around anyway. Then he'd move on to us kids, holding us high up in the air and twirling us in time to "Jackson" or "Daddy Sang Bass." The music never sounded sad to me, even though Mom insisted it was. "Least he could do is put on some proper dancing music. Herman's Hermits, or The Pips."

Now Pop was down in the well belting out those same tunes, and finally I heard what Mom had been hearing all along -- the sad, lonesome wail of them, how they clung to you like something thick in the air, a kind of smoke or humidity. And he'd changed some of the words, too. It took me a few minutes of listening to figure that part out. "I Still Miss Someone" had become "I Still Miss Oatmeal." "I've Been Everywhere" was "Oatmeal's Everywhere." And "Get Rhythm" -- that was my favorite as a kid, with its peppy tempo and happy lyrics -- was now a slow dirge about a shoeshine boy with nothing to eat.

"Mom," I hollered across the lawn. "I think Pop's really lost it this time."

"No surprise there, it seems the apple didn't fall very from the tree...Go get the harness and lower it down and he can climb into it if he wants to come up but tell him that if he wants his supper, he better be back up by six o'clock sharp. I ain't waiting on him!" Mom's voice cut through the window like knife parting oatmeal, only to be swallowed up afterwards.

"Whoa, Mom. Slow it down," I said. "You're talking in run-on sentences and ellipses again. Did you remember your pill?"

"Ellipses?" she said. "Ellipses? How you know I'm talking in ellipses?" She drank down the last of her gingerbread schnapps and waved the bottle at me. "I warned you before, smartass. I don't go in for that metafictional crap. Who do you think you are, David Foster Wallace? I'll toss your ass down the well, too. Go on and try me. You and old good-for-nothing can sort out all of life's problems together down there."

"David Who What?" I said.

"Don't you worry about it." She handed me the empty bottle of schnapps. "Throw that down to your dumbass daddy and see what he thinks about that," she said. "And where the hell did you learn about ellipses?"

"Math class," I answered, and Mom looked at me funny. She planted her arms on her ample hips and sighed long and deep, her breasts heaving under her thin calico dress. Sometimes when Daddy and Mom stood next to each other it looked like Daddy was one of her kids, him skinny and youthful, her solid as a tree trunk. "Go get the harness like I said," she said, nudging me toward the well. "Before I have the mind to dump our last sack of oatmeal down that well and leave your daddy buried there."

Mom turned and waddled back into the house. She set a pot of water to boil and went into the pantry, scooping two cups of oatmeal from the remaining bag for each of them. "I don't have time for this crap, between that nitwit husband of mine and his genius son; I've got more important things to do, like barrelhousing all night long. They deserve each other, wasting my precious time on his dumber than dumb antics, let that good for nothing loser stew in his own juices,” she spat into the oatmeal, raising a fine dust before her.

I left mother to stew in her own manner. As I rounded the house to go get the harness I could hear that dad had stopped singing. Maybe he knew it was time. I found myself thinking it a shame.... Songs like that could be a hit in this town.

But as I made to pick up the harness, it all squished into goo right in my hands. Of course-- it was oatmeal too. Exhausted I looked into the sky. Poor dad. The rains were coming again.

And then I had an idea.

I was remembering Timmy Toglison, the kid with the glandular condition, and how he used to float on his back down at the swimming hole in summer, his pale, bulbous stomach rising out of the water like a small island nation, pale and shimmering with SPF 50.

That boy could float like nobody's business. He'd float for hours at a time, only paddling to shore to take his meals. The rest of us would stand there with our bare feet dug into the sand, watching, though there was nothing much to watch.

"I think he's gonna roll over soon," someone would say, and someone else would say "Nope, he flipped himself just a couple of minutes ago, he'll stay like that for a while now." And then we'd debate how he did it, whether it was some trick he'd learned or if it was something the matter with him that made him akin to a bar of soap.

Anyhow, I was remembering Timmy, and remembering what my dad said when I asked why Timmy could float so good, and I was looking up at the sky and thinking about the downpour we were fixing to get in a few hours time. And I was thinking about my poor father stuck down in that well. My poor, skinny, unfloatable father.

I took a black lawn and garden bag into the kitchen and started emptying out everything in the pantry.

Mama Just Wants to Barrelhouse All Night Long

2006-10-20T06:54:00.000-07:00

Mama Just Wants to Barrelhouse All Night Long

2006-10-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

Mama Just Wants to Barrelhouse All Night Long

2006-10-11T05:35:00.000-07:00

Mama Just Wants to Barrelhouse All Night Long

2006-10-05T13:29:00.000-07:00

Mama Just Wants to Barrelhouse All Night Long

2006-10-03T06:41:00.000-07:00

Daddy had fallen down the well again.