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jerrygabriel.net Atlas The hippies-there seems to have been universal agreement among the community on the appropriateness of this term, though I believe they identified themselves as the Fifth Regiment Peace and Justice Brigade, or something close to that- had, to the consternation of the municipality of Atlas, Ohio and its outlying communities, been camped out in Atlas Gardens Park much of that late summer and early fall. Nobody seemed to know why they'd decided on that spot nor, more importantly, how to get rid of them. Phillip had specific orders not to go anywhere near the hippies. I'd gotten the same orders myself, both from my dad and from Uncle Donald. "Those dirty bastards are on drugs," Uncle Donald had told me-specifically me-again that morning. He was sitting in his recliner in threadbare underwear. "All you know, they're sacrificing kids down there." He likely believed this. Uncle Donald Dante's mind was a unique land populated by all manner of improbable scenarios that only he could believe in or really even fathom. The police had already physically removed them once, but the action had been a public relations disaster for the town, because someone from the Columbus free paper had been on hand (one of the hippies, most likely) and portrayed the police action as unnecessarily violent. Which would've been par for the course, as far as the Columbus free paper was concerned, but there had been a recent police brutality episode in New York, and the bit about the Ohio hippies got mentioned in a paper there, and soon news crews were poking around southern Ohio. Did we have a police brutality epidemic on our hands? they wondered. This was exactly the sort of battle the town of Atlas was not prepared to fight. The hippies seemed to know this intuitively and a day or two later, they were back, just in time to make a national news program about police brutality, which I watched on the old cabinet TV downstairs because Dad didn't want to see it. It was more or less impossible during that time to avoid the topic. Nowhere was this more true than at Aunt Velma and Uncle Donald's; they lived, as I'd heard Uncle Donald say countless times, no more than a quarter mile from the park. My parents-especially my dad-were loath to agree with Uncle Donald about anything, but the hippy business was impossible to see another way. Uncle Donald reveled in the rare alignment of the stars that brought he and my father into agreement and he trotted the topic out at every lull in the conversation. Dad's chief concern, which I'd heard him go over three or four times with Uncle Donald, was that the hippies were defecating near the Highland River-he actually used that word, which was a piece of unusually technical diction for him. The Highland River brought Moraine, 20 miles downstream, its drinking water, and you could see that the thought of getting sick from hippy e-coli was something my dad imagined in great detail and with extreme repulsion. He had other concerns, too, mostly about the hippies sucking up welfare resources: free medical help, food stamps, government cheese. I knew that he also objected to their preying on the good will of Catholic kitchens, which was not a point he chose to raise around Uncle Donald because, of all the things he didn't want to talk with Uncle Donald about, religion was primary. Uncle Donald apparently had an ax to grind with Catholicism, which, as a non-practicing but probably still-believing Catholic, my dad was uncomfortable with for obvious reasons. Like other aspects of Uncle Donald's character, this just didn't make that much sense; as far as I knew, he himself espoused no particular brand of Christianity. So any source of origin for the antipathy was possible-neo-Nazi propaganda at the bolt factory, anti-Kennedy sentiment from twenty years back; it was impossible to say. My own suspicion was that it had to do with Notre Dame football. It was, in any case, Notre Dame that generally seemed to elicit it. In fact, not an hour before the business with the hippies, Uncle Donald had again been railing against Catholicism (idolatry was today's theme) for the benefit of me and my brother Donnie. Donnie, incidentally, was named after our paternal grandfather, not Uncle Donald. "Bad luck," I'd overheard my dad tell his own brother once, "Velma's husband having Dad's name." Uncle Donald had been drinking steadily through the first half of a Notre Dame-Michigan match-up in Ann Arbor. He was making quite a show of yahooing Michigan first downs and screaming obscenities at the Notre Dame players-"faggot" described everything from Notre Dame's Heisman-candidate flanker to the double reverse that scored them their first touchdown of the afternoon, as in, "that was a faggot play." My dad did not approve of Uncle Donald's diatribes-neither their language nor their content. And no doubt understanding the subtext of the anti-Notre Dame rhetoric, he slipped out of the living room and into the kitchen to join the conversation going on between my mom and her sister. Where he was going was less important than that he was going away from Uncle Donald. Uncle Donald tried to act like he didn't care, but he did. "Tell you something, Junior," he said to me, leaning forward. He lowered his voice and looked toward the kitchen-something adolescent about that look. "Those goddamn Irish aren't worth two shits." The Irish were in fact winning by 17. "You see if they all don't go to hell in the end, those goddamn idols around their necks." Donnie cracked up at this. He thought Uncle Donald was hilarious. The idea that wearing crucifixes would relegate anyone to hell was just plain funny to me and Donnie; the mild-mannered Methodist church my mom sent us to would never dare cast aspersions on another sect. To say nothing of the fact that neither of us believed in much of it anyway. Uncle Donald slugged the remainder of the beer in his hand, number four it appeared from a quick count of the empties on the coffee table, and he looked at Donnie. "Laugh, you little devil," he said. "Just don't call me when Beelzebub is sticking you in the ass with his poker." Donnie was, as a rule, not even in evidence during these visits. He preferred to hole up in Phillip's bedroom, reading Shootout at Casa Grande or the like, or to wander the neighborhood looking for cats to harass. But Uncle Donald after a few beers was something Donnie didn't like to miss and that alone was why he was still hanging around, waiting for the show. Now he was getting it and it did not disappoint. Donnie especially enjoyed the Beelzebub business. "Why's he wanna stick me in me ass?" Donnie said to me. "Is Beelzebub a faggot?" And then the laughter started-small at first, just a giggle, but it quickly morphed into a cackle and then a full body shake. After a short time, it began to infect me. Uncle Donald watched the two of us with a smirk on his face, a strange and ignorant pride at somehow being the source of this mirth. Soon the racket brought my mother into the room. "What's the matter with you?" she asked Donnie. "Do you not have any sense?" Donnie was already beyond marshaling an answer; he looked like he was having trouble breathing, he was laughing so hard. When she looked at me, I knew to suppress my own laughter and shrug. "Better check his drawers," Uncle Donald observed. "Could have ants in his pants." Now Uncle Donald was actively participating, which you had to give him some credit for. Not even Star Trek would have been able to give my brother this much joy. He was rolling around, tears in his eyes. It was a regular manic episode. I was laughing, too, at the thought of there actually being ants in my brother's pants. That would have been funny. Then my mom sent Donnie to Phillip's room. Phillip, who was a year younger than Donnie and three older than me, was at football practice. It was a shame, too, because he was usually good for some interesting touring of the neighborhood. Sometimes, he'd take us to his friend Fisk's house and we'd light off some fireworks or play video games. In three or four visits there, I'd never seen an adult. When Mom returned to the kitchen, Uncle Donald looked at me and winked, as if he and I had just succeeded in yet another gag together. We could hear Donnie in there for some time cackling. * Aunt Velma came into the living room during the third quarter and handed Uncle Donald a scrap of paper and told him to take me to Kroger's to get some provisions for the picnic later that afternoon. Dad appeared behind her and unwittingly got roped into the mission as well. Only Donnie was safe, back in Phillip's bedroom, ensconced in his 1878 world of outlaws. Dad was obviously torn between trying to get out of this and feeling a sense of responsibility for my safety; Uncle Donald was simply not a trustworthy guardian generally speaking. He appeared not to have matured past a fifteen year old's mentality, and if not for his ability to punch a clock six days a week at Atlas Bolt for the last thirty some years-hung over, sober, even drunk, he could do this; had never missed a day-the entirety of society, including his wife, would have cast him out long ago. In the end Dad of course did the right thing and signed on. After Uncle Donald put some pants on, the three of us piled into his 73 Malibu, which was rusty on the quarter panels from winter salt, but otherwise clean and waxed. I sat in the spacious back, while Dad, up in the passenger seat, fastened his waist seatbelt, a move that Uncle Donald eyed suspiciously. This was some years before it became law to wear a seatbelt in Ohio and I'd never seen Dad do it before, but before he had to turn around and tell me, I did the same. Both Uncle Donald and Dad lit one of Uncle Donald's Winstons, and then Uncle Donald put the car in reverse and backed out of the small driveway. Theirs was one of those Levitt and Sons kind of postwar jobs; the entire block looked like a 1946 Uhaul advertisement, every house and concrete drive the same postage stamp dimensions, though all of it badly weathered by the intervening thirty five years. The most unsettling thing about Uncle Donald was actually not the absurdity of his behavior but how normal it was in his neighborhood. His neighbor Chuck was out washing his car-an obsessive activity among men on the block I noticed over the years-and so we idled in front of his house for a few minutes while the two of them chit-chatted, mostly about the rumor that Atlas Bolt Incorporated was on the bidding block. Chuck apparently worked the nightshift there. "Who you got in there?" Chuck wanted to know. "Art here is married to Velma's sister. His boy's Nate." It surprised me to hear Uncle Donald use my name. I wasn't sure he actually knew it. "Ah," he said. "Folks from down Moraine." "That's right," Dad said. "I don't know if you've heard," he told Dad, squatting down so he could see Dad better. "But we've got a vermin problem in Atlas." Dad acted like he didn't know what he was talking about. "Yeah?" "Hippies," the guy belted out. "About forty or fifty hippies are camped out in our goddamn park." "That," Dad said. Chuck then shifted his weight so he could see me. "Stay away from those cocksuckers," he told me. Even though the word was in common currency at school, it was embarrassing to have to hear it in front of my dad. But I nodded. "We should go so we can get back," Dad said. "That's right," Uncle Donald agreed, puffing profoundly on his Winston and then giving Chuck a salute and putting the car into gear to drive on down Folgers Street, then Meridian, and then along Moraine. Atlas Gardens Park was spread out along Moraine Street for over a mile. On the opposite side of the park was the river and on the other side of the river was the industrial wasteland where Atlas Bolt and a half dozen other factories sat. The hippies came into view almost immediately as we turned left onto Moraine. It was like coming across a pack of javelinas in the desert: something different about the landscape invading your consciousness before you're quite aware of what it is. They were lying around in the early-afternoon sun, eating their granola or whatever. Some of them were circled around with guitars and drums. When we drew closer to the encampment, I could see their activities clearly. They had an open fire over which a pot hung from a spit. Many of them were moving about industriously, cleaning up or preparing food. Scanning their faces, I recognized easily the one among them that didn't belong. He was wearing his thigh pad girdle and his half-cut Atlas Summer Football Camp t-shirt, as if those two things alone were all that were necessary for a kid to wear for the sake of decency. Those girdles were made of mesh and you could see right through it to the underwear. He was sitting on a large Guatemalan blanket and smoking a pipe. For a moment, I was trying to imagine how this group was maybe the Atlas Junior High eighth grade football team. Maybe, I reasoned, football teams now practiced in robes and yarn-spun hats. Perhaps they were just taking a break from the action. Just about anything can make sense for a while. And then it doesn't anymore. Uncle Donald was murmuring under his breath as he drove along Moraine Street. It wasn't uncommon for him to go on in the manner of Popeye about nothing in particular; during Ohio State games, he let out an almost constant unconscious stream of self-talk. "You believe this, Art?" he asked my dad now, opening up the topic for the fourth time today. Dad, who had been actively avoiding looking toward the park, reluctantly moved his gaze in that direction. He nodded. I watched him to see if he had spotted Phillip. Something in the stiffness of his shoulders told me that he had. But he obviously had no intention of pointing this out to Uncle Donald. I thought I had some idea of what would happen if he saw Phillip. I'd not seen a full-fledged version of Donald's meanness at that point, but even the short unhappy dinner table exchanges I had seen foretold of his terrible potential. For the moment, Uncle Donald was deep into a diatribe against the kids who had gone to Canada during the last war; he himself had come of age while shooting at Japanese boys at Guadalcanal, which to hear him tell it was an experience everyone should have. In his opinion, he was saying, these draft dodgers should be hunted down and shot the way they would've been by the Soviets, whose tactics he was frequently extolling. In the midst of a stream of unrelenting vitriol along these lines-he could move seamlessly, and in the same breath, from Carter to Canada to the EPA and finally the hippies-he took one more look across the field, just to fill himself with the disgust that he liked to be filled with. He was shaking his head, clearly enjoying the scene in his way. And then, without any sound at all, without slowing down, he turned the car toward the park gently, as if it were a schooner, and drove right over the four inch curb, never dropping below thirty miles per hour. All of us hit our heads on the roof. He cut through the middle of the park toward the place where Phillip sat. The hippies, who were accustomed to all sorts of hostility, recognized the unfolding action immediately and scattered like grasshoppers. By the time Phillip recognized the approaching Malibu, he could only just sit on the blanket and wait-no recourse. And stoned anyway. We sped across Atlas Gardens Park, the windows down to catch a breeze, these latter day nomads fleeing before us in all directions, gathering drums, bags, blankets, milk cartons filled with unfiltered river water. Uncle Donald skidded to a stop across the grass not ten feet from Phillip. He looked around the car then-on the floor, in the back seat, even in the glovebox-for something, apparently, to beat his son with. Finding nothing, he decided to go ahead without a tool. He got out and left the door open and strode toward Phillip. Phillip took a quick glance at us and then looked back toward his approaching father and said, "Dad, no." But he knew better. He'd lived his whole life with Donald Dante; the single-mindedness of his father's vision of the world was as big a truth for Phillip as the rising of the sun. Uncle Donald struck him four times in the head. My dad and I watched with squeamish horror. Finally, Dad opened his door and lifted his head a little and said, "That's enough, Donald." Donald stopped, though he did not look up at Dad. Phillip was in a pile on the blanket. A few of the hippies had returned, apparently seeing that they themselves were in no danger. "That's child abuse," a young woman said. "That's fucking child abuse." Uncle Donald was in some other world, though. "Huh?" he said, only vaguely aware of the direction of the voice. "You heard me, you pig," she said. "This isn't the dark ages. You can't beat your children like that." "You can't beat your children like that," he mocked in an absurdly high voice. A couple other girls had gone over to see if Phillip was alright. He shook them away, though. He was crying, but was getting up anyway. He picked up his pants and pads and helmet and eventually came around to the back door and threw them in next to me and got in. "Mind your own business, sweetheart," Donald said, regaining his composure. "This is my business," she said. "Human life is all my business. It's my only business." "Try to raise yourself some kids in the world today," Donald said. "Drugs and bad influence everywhere. People like you on every street corner, pushing dope, shirking your duty. Raise a kid today and come back and talk to me." "Come on, Donald," my dad said now. My dad had probably noticed the gradual return of the rest of the hippies, many of them appearing above the bluffs of the river, some of these men looking like former football players themselves. It's possible that my dad was hoping to avoid an all-out confrontation with the group, which he probably figured were not quite so peace-loving as their predecessors a decade before. Donald turned to look to my dad. "Goddamn sixties ruined everything," he said. Nobody said anything more, though-not to him. One of the girls-a pretty young woman whose breasts were clearly visible through a thin t-shirt-came over to my side of the car-Phillip's window was rolled up-and reached across me and extended a brown-eyed susan toward Phillip. He was looking straight ahead. "It'll be okay, Phillip," she told him. Phillip was humiliated. He didn't look at her or take the flower. "Fuck your fucking fucking flower," he spat. That might have been enough to elicit a slap from my own dad normally, but he neither did nor said anything. Uncle Donald got back in then and slammed his door; he hadn't heard what Phillip had said, though he would likely have approved. He sat there for a moment. The rage in him was not yet extinguished. There were maybe seven or eight hippies near the car, looking at us. Dad was trying to be patient, looking straight ahead. Then Donald turned and grabbed a fistful of my t-shirt. "Get yourself an eyeful, Nate. Remember this. This is what you don't want to be. This boy is showing you how not to live." Properly speaking, Phillip and Uncle Donald were working together on the project, but I just looked at him and quietly, almost imperceptibly, nodded. My dad put his hand on Uncle Donald's arm then and Donald let go of me, turned, put the car in reverse and drove back to the street. At the store, Dad told me to go in with Uncle Donald. At first, it seemed a strange decision, but I realized that he probably wanted to talk to Phillip. So Uncle Donald and I silently picked out buns and hotdogs and beer and ketchup and some other things and threw them into a noisy-wheeled cart. There was more self-talk, but nothing addressed to me. Uncle Donald paid for the items with an unorganized wad of bills-bar cash leftovers. When we returned, Phillip was curled up, sleeping off his high. Dad was sitting silent and distant. The trip back to the house, too, was without sound. When we pulled into the driveway, Phillip and I headed up the front stairs, but as I was opening the door, I heard Dad ask Uncle Donald to wait for a minute. Phillip went on toward his room, but I lingered inside the door. From there, I could see dad and Uncle Donald through a gap in the shade covering the small diamond-shaped window. The conversation was short. Dad came around the car and stood quite close to Uncle Donald. Uncle Donald did his best to suggest that he was not afraid of my dad, but his body language gave him away. "Donald, I realize that Phillip is your boy," Dad said. "But I don't want to see or even hear of you ever laying a hand on him again." "You got your style and I got mine, Art," Uncle Donald said. "I'll not have an argument with you about it," Dad said. Their voices came through the aluminum siding clear enough. "Just don't ever do it again." Dad started to walk toward the door then and I ran on through the living room toward Phillip's room. His door was opened and he was already sitting on the floor. Donnie lay on the bed, his book face down in front of him. "The fuck you do?" Donnie was asking him. As someone who had seen his share of trouble, Donnie could smell it in the air. I stepped into the room, out of my dad's line of sight. "You were down to the park," Donnie said. Philip nodded. "Hangin out with Astral and the gang." Of course Donnie knew them. Philip wasn't even surprised. He nodded. When I thought of it, I wasn't surprised either. "You boys leave Phillip alone," Dad said now from behind me. "Go out to the yard and find something to do there." He didn't need to say, "Don't leave the yard." Donnie and I shuffled past Dad and then he closed Philip's door. Outside, I told Donnie what had happened. He listened patiently, interrupting a few times to say things like, "Then what did Dad say?" Or, "Right through the fucking park?" When I was done with the story, he nodded. "Man, if he's not careful, Dad's going to knock his dick in the dirt." He laughed at the thought of it and added,. "I for one wouldn't mind seeing it." Uncle Donald himself appeared then on the small stoop at the back door. He looked out at us as if he were surveying a vast prairie. Their yard was not much bigger than the average garage. It had a table with an umbrella and three ratty chairs in the middle. Otherwise, there was one sickly oak tree in the corner, in which Donnie was sitting. I was leaning on a sagging red fence that separated their yard from the Culpepper's grilling area. It was clear enough that he had come outside to cool down. He sat at the table and ignored us, opening a brand new pack of Winston's, tapping one out and lighting it. He smoked quietly through that first cigarette. Me and Donnie watched him and looked at each other. At one point I saw my dad appear in the window long enough to see where we were and where Uncle Donald was. "You boys have no idea," Uncle Donald was saying, perhaps feeling that presence. "About what?" Donnie said. "You know God damn and well about what. The world didn't used to be like this." "What was it like?" Donnie asked. His voice was thick with sarcasm. He was not afraid of Uncle Donald and as he came into adolescence, he was increasingly testing Uncle Donald's limits and powers-in ways that he knew better than to try at home on Mom or Dad. Uncle Donald decided not to address himself to Donnie anymore. "You didn't used to have to put up with that bullshit, Nate," he said. "Now you do," Donnie said. "Now even the hippies have equal rights, don't they?" "Your old man can't tell me how to raise my kids." Still, he was looking at me. This was dangerous territory. There was something troubling about seeing Uncle Donald so upset, because though he bitched a lot, he didn't have any real gripes with life. The bitching was just what he did, who he was. "It's just not the way it works," he said. "Maybe you shouldn't beat your son," Donnie said. "I'll decide what I should and shouldn't do." Donnie continued his assault. "Seems like maybe you won't." Uncle Donald looked at Donnie, obviously thinking better of going after him. He picked up his cigarette package and lighter and got up to go inside. "It's a whole new world," Donnie told Uncle Donald as he went. Donnie was not mean as a rule; Uncle Donald just brought something out in him, some streak of irreverence. But these words suggested a deeper knowledge of the world than he could possibly have had. At fifteen, Donnie didn't know anything about the way the world had been or in what ways it was changing. He knew only that Uncle Donald would be most disturbed by these words. You had to watch television with Uncle Donald only a few times to understand that his deepest fear was that the world was changing and for the worse. After Uncle Donald had gone inside, I said, "You're making things worse for Philip." "You're a punk," he said, turning on me. He swung on a branch and landed in the yard. "Philip knows what he needs to do," he said. "It's just that simple," I said. "I'm not asking you to believe anything, hoss. I am just telling you the way it is." The way it was was not at all satisfying. "People like him, that's all they ever talk about. They've got no idea what's in store." "You sound like someone in a movie," I said. "What are you even talking about?" "Ah, Nate. You sound like him." "Fuck you, Donnie," I said, angry at his arrogance. "Woah. Don't take it so hard, hoss," he said. "Let's go see what's on TV." * At the park, we sweated under the sun and ate our hot dogs and macaroni salad, marched through the routine of the family picnic. Nobody mentioned the fact that a half-mile upriver, the hippies were having their own Saturday afternoon festivities, but nobody needed. At least for me, and probably for Dad, they were right there with us, a very real reminder that all was not right in the world. Toward nightfall, Philip and Uncle Donald, now a team, started to run the horseshoe pit. Uncle Donald was by then good and drunk, plowed, really, and had forgiven his son. Likely forgotten everything. The whole party relocated to watch, nearly all of them ignorant of the earlier events. It was when the group was congregated close together like that, that I noticed that my dad was missing. I scanned the crowd, waited for him to return from the bathroom. His absence was particularly conspicuous because he was usually the very source of any horseshoe match up. As if from thin air, my brother appeared at my side. Actually, slightly behind me, that knowing whisperer in my ear he sometimes was. "Who you looking for?" "No one. You're strange." "I know that," he said, and then, "He's down with the hippies." "Who's down with the hippies?" "Come on, Nate. Who here is a good student?" "How do you know?" I knew exactly how he knew. He knew that I knew exactly how he knew. He smiled that infuriating smile of risk and knowledge. As if on cue, Dad emerged from the trail that ran along the bluffs up and down the park. Donnie winked. "Probably smokin himself some ganja," he said. I just looked at him blankly. I was hoping, I think, that the difference between us was more than just four years. But he seemed to see into me then; it was another of his skills, knowing when I'd had enough. "I'm just messin with you, hoss," he said. "You know that, right?" "Yeah, Donnie," I said. "I know." "Crazy shit today, huh? Nothing but par for the course, though. People do crazy shit all the time. That's what I've learned." I watched Philip hit a ringer to end the game with two of Mom's brothers. "Dad ain't going to be smoking no weed," he said, observing Dad coming toward us then. "He was just talking to them. That's all." What could my dad possibly have said to the hippies? I wondered. Don't shit near the river? I thought about just asking him, but then thought better of it. Surely he didn't attempt to explain to them why they should move on. But maybe he didn't talk to them that all; it wasn't above Donnie to fabricate the whole mess. He enjoyed intrigue. My problem was that my ignorance was big enough already without these sorts of galling mysteries. Dad approached the crowd, smoking a cigarette. He saw the show going on in the horseshoe pit-Phillip and Uncle Donald were celebrating now with a victory do-si-do, Uncle Donald himself providing the hillbilly soundtrack-and I could see in his face a frustration with the way the world sometimes was, how it did not act as it should. I wanted to reassure him, because I knew that that frustration had to do with me, with what I'd seen. But he was, finally, remote, unapproachable. For all of the will of his heart, he was finally a different species altogether from me then. So I stood where I was, Donnie already disappeared from my side, dusk's dark confusion deepening the shade of the giant maples. The crowd, distant family, second cousins and great aunts, clapped along with Uncle Donald's song, as oblivious to the rotten core of the moment as fishes of land. It was perhaps the best anyone could hope for today, I realized. Which was no easy thing to admit. In a way, I thought, the whole of it was a perfectly orchestrated drama. And everyone there seemed to be playing their parts perfectly. Including, I guess, me.