Fifty years ago, I was sit­ting on the back stoop of our house on Park Road in Crozet when the sound of shat­ter­ing glass pierced the still­ness of a sum­mer night. I looked across the side yard at my neighbor’s home. His storm door’s bro­ken pane glint­ed in the moon­light. A vol­ley of angry shouts came from inside.

Maynard’s drunk again, I thought.

I stared at the house uneasi­ly. May­nard was a binge drinker, sober for long stretch­es, then blind drunk for days on end. Late­ly, his binges had become vio­lent. He drove his fist through his bed­room wall a few months ago. Bust­ed up a cof­fee table dur­ing the last one. Now the storm door. I wor­ried that his whiskey-rage might esca­late to attacks on his wife, Birdie, or their two lit­tle boys. 

There was more shout­ing, much loud­er than the first round.

Curs­ing under my breath, I stepped down off the stoop and walked over to their car­port. The house was qui­et by the time I reached the storm door and looked inside.

The kitchen/family room was a small rec­tan­gu­lar box, the sink and appli­ances to the right of the door, a sit­ting area and tele­vi­sion to the left, the kitchen table across the room. May­nard and Birdie sat side by side at the table, fac­ing me, their backs against the far wall. They were in their thir­ties. He was aver­age height, built like a tree stump with a round bald head and thick red eye­brows that came togeth­er over his nose. Birdie was as stocky as May­nard with a per­ox­ide blonde bee-hive and a dou­ble chin.

“You guys all right?” I said.

“Come on in and see for your­self,” Birdie said.

I opened the storm door care­ful­ly so as not to get cut and stepped inside.

May­nard was shirt­less. His arm rest­ed on the table in a pool of blood, a deep wound on the meaty inside of his fore­arm run­ning from his wrist to his elbow, a half-emp­ty bot­tle of Jim Beam beside it. In Maynard’s oth­er hand he held a shot­gun, its butt propped on his thigh, the bar­rel point­ed toward the ceiling.

The two lit­tle boys, eight and ten, stub­by lit­tle repli­cas of their par­ents, sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the tele­vi­sion, star­ing wide-eyed at Maynard.

Smirk­ing, Birdie took a deep drag on a Marl­boro and casu­al­ly blew smoke across the room. “Rammed his fist through the storm door,” she said. “Damned near cut his arm off so’s he could show me what a big man he is.”

“Shut the hell up,” May­nard said. He lift­ed the shot­gun off his thigh with one hand and placed the mouth of the bar­rel under Birdie’s chin. 

Her blue eyes widened. “What you doin, May­nard?” she said softly. 

“Fix­in to blow your head off.” May­nard shoved the bar­rel upward hard, bang­ing the back of Birdie’s head against the wall, and cocked the ham­mer with his thumb.

Birdie winced. “Go ahead,” she said, through clenched teeth. “Pull the trig­ger you hate me so much.” A tear slid down her cheek.

The boys whimpered.

I swal­lowed hard and took a step toward them. “May­nard. Put the gun down.”

May­nard didn’t look at me. Hold­ing the shot­gun tight under Birdie’s chin, he glared at her, his hand steady, the mus­cles in his face tight as wire.

Scared breath­less that a sud­den move­ment might set him off, I crossed the room slow­ly and stopped on my side of the table. “Don’t do it, May­nard. Please. Think about the boys.”

His angry eyes fixed on Birdie, he didn’t even glance at me.

No one moved, the only sound the boys’ qui­et mewl­ing. Five sec­onds passed. Ten.

A crooked smile crept across Maynard’s face. He low­ered the shot­gun, propped it against the wall, and took a swig of Jim Beam.

I let out a long breath.

Birdie’s hand trem­bled as she brought her cig­a­rette to her mouth. Blink­ing back tears, she French inhaled a cloud of smoke through her nose and blew it out again. “You a piece a work,” she said under her breath. 

It took me a full minute to build up the courage to go around the table and get the shot­gun. May­nard made no move to stop me, thank God.

Stand­ing by the sink, I broke open the sin­gle-shot twelve gauge with numb hands and clum­si­ly with­drew a shell from its cham­ber. Num­ber 5 shot, designed for small game, squir­rels and rab­bits, but pow­er­ful enough at point blank range to blow Birdie’s face off. She’d have been brain-dead before her body hit the floor.

I put the shell in my pock­et and called the res­cue squad on the kitchen wall phone. Light-head­ed and nau­seous, I hung the phone on its hook and sat down at the table to pull myself togeth­er before I called the police.

The three of us said noth­ing. Birdie smoked down her Marl­boro and lit anoth­er. May­nard fin­ished off the whiskey. The edges of the oval-shaped pool of blood under his fore­arm crept out­ward across the pine-wood table-top. The boys turned on the tele­vi­sion and stared blankly at an episode of Pet­ti­coat Junc­tion, its canned back­ground laugh­ter jan­gling my frayed nerves.

When my hands stopped shak­ing, I stood and picked up the phone.

“Don’t call the law,” Birdie said.

I looked at her.

“It’s a fam­i­ly mat­ter,” she said. “It’s between me and May­nard. It’s no one else’s business.” 

I dis­agreed. In a deter­mined con­fi­dent voice, she argued with me for the next five min­utes while May­nard stared at the emp­ty bot­tle and said nothing.

“It don’t involve you,” she said. “Stay out of it. Leave it be.”

The ambu­lance pulled up in the driveway.

“Don’t tell the res­cue squad boys,” Birdie said. “Don’t tell the sheriff’s men. Don’t tell nobody.”

The EMTs ban­daged Maynard’s wound, marched him out to their van, and drove him to the hospital.

Many of the posts on this blog recount expe­ri­ences I’m proud of. This is not one of them. I didn’t tell the EMTs what May­nard had done. I didn’t call the police. I didn’t tell any­one except my wife, Cindy. 

Most peo­ple liked May­nard when he was sober. We told our­selves for­give­ness and friend­ship were the best med­i­cine for his alco­holism, but I knew bet­ter. He need­ed to be hit between the eyes with a two-by-four, “tough love” they call it today, but I didn’t have the strength of char­ac­ter to do it. No one around him did. So he kept right on drinking.

The man put a gun to his wife’s head, and I did noth­ing. Some­how I ratio­nal­ized my behav­ior back then, but as I sit here writ­ing this, I can’t under­stand it and I’m ashamed.

Cindy and I didn’t mix with May­nard and Birdie after that. Friends back home told me they split up about ten years after we moved away to Char­lottesville. If they’re still liv­ing today, they’re in their eight­ies and their sons are push­ing six­ty. The boys were nice kids. I hope they turned out okay, but it would be a mir­a­cle if they did. 

In Chap­ter 18 of The Judas Mur­ders, Deputy Toby Vess opens a bro­ken storm door to find Grover Sipe at his kitchen table press­ing a shot­gun under his wife’s chin while their two lit­tle boys cow­er in the cor­ner. Toby dis­arms Grover. Grover’s wife begs him to let Grover off. Toby arrests him, locks him up in the coun­ty jail, and calls Social Ser­vices to see after Grover’s wife and lit­tle boys.

It was a sat­is­fy­ing scene to spin out. I wish I’d writ­ten it that way fifty years ago.

Post Script: For obvi­ous rea­sons, I changed the names of my neigh­bors in this post and in The Judas Mur­ders.  

In these trou­bled times, mem­o­ry reels of my mother’s father keep rolling through my mind. He lived through the 1918 influen­za pan­dem­ic in Keo­kee, Vir­ginia, a coal-min­ing town where kids call their grand­fa­ther Papaw.

When I was lit­tle, Papaw and Nan­ny lived near our house on route 60 just west of York­town. One of my ear­li­est mem­o­ries is danc­ing with him in their liv­ing room to songs like But­tons and Bows and Swing­ing on a Star played on a crank-up Vic­tro­la. He picked me up and waltzed me around the room with soft laugh­ter that came from deep in his chest.

When I turned surly and lazy in my teen years, he tried to lift me out of my funk with heart­felt talks, but I wouldn’t lis­ten to him. I wouldn’t lis­ten to anyone.

After we moved away to White Hall and I out­grew my sour atti­tude, Papaw and Nan­ny came to vis­it us. I worked on the Maupin farm that sum­mer. On a hot as hell day we baled hay in a field beside the par­son­age. When I came home at quit­ting time, Papaw met me at the door. “I saw you out there, boy,” he said, smil­ing. “For a long time I thought you wouldn’t amount to any­thing, but it looks like I was wrong.” That moment meant a lot to me then. It still does.

When he retired from his job as a car­pen­ter for the Navy’s Cheatham Annex, he and Nan­ny moved to St. Cloud, Flori­da. On UVA’s spring break, I rolled down to Day­tona Beach for the annu­al col­lege stu­dent wild times. Mid­week, I took a break from the crazi­ness and drove over to St. Cloud.

That night after sup­per Papaw sat in a rock­ing chair on the porch, smok­ing his pipe, and we talked eas­i­ly for a while. Then he fell silent. I felt some­thing heavy com­ing, so I kept quiet.

He cleared his throat. “Your mom­ma told me how good you’re doing in school,” he said. “She says it’s because you’re smart, but I sus­pect it’s got more to do with hard work.” He paused. Crick­ets sang in the bermu­da grass. A car coast­ed down the street. He looked over at me. “You try real hard now, but that hasn’t always been your nature.”

I looked away, uncom­fort­able about the times I’d dis­ap­point­ed him.

“I want you to promise me you won’t slide back,” he said. “Promise me you’ll always try hard.”

I kept my head down, not sure I would keep such a promise. He wait­ed me out. “I’ll try,” I final­ly said in a small voice.

He stared at me for a few moments, then resumed smok­ing and rock­ing. “I’m proud of you, boy,” he said gently.

I didn’t know it then, but some­time before we had that talk the doc­tors found can­cer in his knee. They want­ed to ampu­tate his leg. He wouldn’t agree to it. Over the next two years the can­cer metastasized.

He had only a few months left when my broth­er and I drove down to St. Cloud. Papaw didn’t know we were com­ing. He was sit­ting in the liv­ing room talk­ing to my uncle when we walked in. He grabbed my arm, pulled me down to him, and pressed his cheek against mine. “I thought I’d nev­er see you again,” he choked out. It was the only time I ever saw him cry.

He took his last breath in bed at home with Mom by his side. Nan­ny had lost her will to live and had been hos­pi­tal­ized short­ly before his death. She died a month later.

Research­ing my mother’s fam­i­ly tree decades after they passed away, I came across doc­u­men­ta­tion of a mar­riage in Keo­kee in 1917 between a man with Papaw’s name and Una Mae Col­lier. Nanny’s name was Martha Alice Huff, so I thought there had to be some mis­take, but the records called out Papaw’s cor­rect birth date and occu­pa­tion as a coal min­er. I dug deep­er and found a birth reg­istry that said this cou­ple had a son, Ralph, in 1918. The details about the father fit Papaw.

These records sur­prised me, but it was the death cer­tifi­cates that took my breath away. The infant son died ear­ly in 1918. Una Mae per­ished in Octo­ber of that year dur­ing the sec­ond wave of the influen­za pan­dem­ic. She was 18 years old. Papaw lost a sis­ter two weeks lat­er. The fol­low­ing year his moth­er fell prey to the third wave of the virus.

Papaw’s father sur­vived the pan­dem­ic and strug­gled on for a decade, but he couldn’t live with the grief. The coroner’s report list­ed his cause of death as a self-inflict­ed gun­shot wound to the head.

Anoth­er death cer­tifi­cate revealed one last heart-break­ing blow. After Papaw found Nan­ny and some­how sum­moned the strength to rebuild his life, their third child, Jack, died of spinal meningitis.

None of this made sense to me. I couldn’t rec­on­cile these dev­as­tat­ing tragedies with Papaw’s steady opti­mism. The man I had known and loved was con­tent, serene, happy.

Mom was in her eight­ies when I asked her about the records I had found. “Is any of this true?”

“It’s all true. Dad­dy nev­er spoke of it, but peo­ple in Keo­kee told me about those days. They said Una Mae was his child­hood sweet­heart. She and Dad­dy had only been mar­ried a lit­tle over a year when she and the baby died.” She shook her head sad­ly. “Dad­dy was real close to his mom­ma, too.”

I asked about Papaw’s father. “I was a lit­tle girl when he killed him­self. I remem­ber Dad­dy cry­ing about it and say­ing over and over again, ‘He final­ly went and did it.’”

“How did Papaw live with so much loss?”

“I don’t know, but he kept going some­how.” She gazed past me into the dis­tance. “Dad­dy was real strong.”

I wait­ed a respect­ful time and then said, “Tell me about Jack.”

Mom said her broth­er came down with a rag­ing fever. The doc­tor told them there was lit­tle hope of sur­vival and quar­an­tined the fam­i­ly in the house. Papaw nev­er left Jack’s bed­side, wip­ing him down with ice and squeez­ing cold water from a cloth into his mouth, but the fever wouldn’t break. He died at dawn, a few days after his eleventh birthday.

“You remind me of Jack some­times,” Mom said in an off-hand­ed way. “You resem­ble him some, and he was good in school, like you.”

That casu­al com­ment sank in slowly.

When our first grand­child was born, her par­ents asked me what I want­ed her to call me. We live in Cal­i­for­nia, about as far away geo­graph­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly from Appalachia as you can get. Some­times peo­ple look at me fun­ny when one of my grand­kids calls me Papaw, but it always gives me a warm feel­ing inside.

Dur­ing this pan­dem­ic, I’m some­times fear­ful about the future and anx­ious for my fam­i­ly. I can only speak to my chil­dren and grand­kids from a dis­tance or tech­no­log­i­cal­ly, and the CDC says hug­ging them might kill me. My clos­est social con­tacts are Drs. Fau­ci and Birx. The high point of the day is walk­ing the dogs while decked out in haz­mat mask and gloves. Ruth­less­ly shel­ter­ing in place, I’m simul­ta­ne­ous­ly scared and bored.

That’s how I feel in my weak moments, but most of the time I’m okay. I have an advan­tage. When my spir­it fal­ters, I call to mind the promise I made, and I try hard to meet the stan­dard set a cen­tu­ry ago by the Papaw who came before me. Despite all his suf­fer­ing, he was a good old guy with an easy smile, unfail­ing­ly kind and patient. I nev­er saw him angry; I nev­er heard him raise his voice; and I only saw him cry once. When he was alive, I took his good humor for grant­ed. Today, I’m inspired by it.

I sang to my kids at bed­time when they were lit­tle. It start­ed with my son. I tried to get home each night in time to read him a sto­ry before tuck­ing him in. After a while, our lit­tle rou­tine began to feel mechanical. 

I thought singing him a song might jazz up our bed­time rit­u­al, but I’m not much of a singer. My moth­er said I couldn’t “car­ry a tune in a buck­et.” That was gen­er­al­ly true, but in high school I dis­cov­ered I could some­times find the buck­et by singing along with a tune on the radio when I was alone in my car and no one was listening.

I nev­er told any­one about my car radio sing-alongs and I nev­er sang in pub­lic for fear I’d wan­der off key and make a fool of myself, but I con­sid­ered tak­ing the chance with my five-year-old son in the pri­va­cy of his bed­room. The prob­lem was find­ing a song I could sing that would be fun for him to lis­ten to.

I reject­ed all the slow and sap­py lul­la­bies. I was look­ing for pizazz. Where the bough breaks and the like didn’t have enough juice. Then I thought about my old radio songs. My high school senior year, Roger Miller released King of the Road. It’s about a hobo rid­ing the rails to Ban­gor, Maine, wear­ing a worn out suit and shoes and smok­ing old sto­gies. He’s a man of means by no means, but he sees him­self as a king of the road. The lyrics are fun, and the tune is catchy.

Back in the day, I could sing that song with Roger Miller’s smooth voice and gui­tar chords cov­er­ing up my mis­takes, but I didn’t know if I could sing it solo with no music. So I prac­ticed. I mem­o­rized the lyrics, locked the door to what I hoped was our sound­proof bath­room, and rehearsed. Again and again. After about twen­ty tries, I was no Roger Miller, but I wasn’t com­plete­ly buck­et­less either. 

I was ner­vous when the time came to face the music. I read the bed­time sto­ry to my son, set the book down, took a deep breath, and start­ed singing. My voice cracked here and there, but I fin­ished strong. At the end, my son was smil­ing ear to ear. He asked me to sing it again that night and the next night. And the next. For weeks.

After a while, I had to expand my reper­toire to keep him inter­est­ed. I picked out a cou­ple of The Lovin Spoonful’s songs from the 1960’s. Jug Band Music is about a guy down in Savan­nah eat­ing cream and banana on a day so hot it made him faint. He start­ed to see things as they ain’t, so his rel­a­tives called the doc­tor. “Just give him jug band music,” the doc­tor said. “It seems to make him feel just fine.”

Bald Head­ed Lena is about a girl with a cue ball head that’s hard as lead. It’s so big she can’t wear no wig, but the singer has a thing for her any­way because, well, his alter­na­tives aren’t that great: Messy Bessy, Tricky Tessy, Sil­ly Dil­ly, Lyin Lil­ly. Lizzy’s so dizzy she went and lost her mind. Ella Mae might have saved the day but she’s deaf, dumb, and blind. 

By the time my daugh­ters came along, I’d mem­o­rized enough songs to per­form a low-grade lounge act in a cheap hotel. I sang The Big Bopper’s Chan­til­ly Lace (Oh, Baby, you know what I like!), Six­teen Tons, Day­dream, and a few oth­er stray cats and dogs. They liked those songs, but the big hits were the first three I learned, and of those, King of the Road was the hands-down champ.

That song became my favorite, too. After bob­bing and weav­ing all day to sur­vive in a big high-pow­ered law firm, the stress and ten­sion would drain off as I sang about rid­ing to Ban­gor in the third box­car on the mid­night train. It seemed to anchor my soul in stormy seas. I don’t recall a sin­gle night when singing that song to my kids failed to lift my mood.

One of the grave injus­tices in life is that your chil­dren grow up. First, they won’t let you hold their hand. Then they want to play with their friends instead of you. Before you know it, you’re tour­ing a col­lege cam­pus, and they ask you to walk far enough behind so the col­lege kids won’t know they’re with you. And some­time way before that, you don’t get to tuck them into bed any more.

I was mourn­ing our emp­ty nest when a Lath­am senior part­ner died. He was a titan among lit­i­ga­tors, the lead tri­al lawyer in the biggest case our firm had ever han­dled. At his funer­al, his adult daugh­ter spoke to a packed sanc­tu­ary. “It will prob­a­bly come as a sur­prise to the lawyers at Lath­am,” she said, “but when we were chil­dren, Dad­dy sang to us when he tucked us into bed.” I talked to her after the ser­vice. “It was a spe­cial gift,” she said, “and we loved him all the more for it.” 

Her words helped me adjust to the adult­hood of my chil­dren. They’ve grown up, I told myself, but maybe those spe­cial times with them when they were kids will live on in their memories.

A few years after that funer­al, my old­er daugh­ter chose King of the Road as the song for the father-daugh­ter dance at her wed­ding.  The cer­e­mo­ny and recep­tion were out­doors on a ranch in a canyon near Mal­ibu. We danced to King of the Road at night under lights strung in Cal­i­for­nia live oaks. As we twirled, I sang a few lines to her about worn out shoes and fat sto­gies. I was out of prac­tice and off key, but as she looked up at me with sparkling eyes, her smile said she didn’t care. For a few pre­cious moments, she was my lit­tle girl again. 

My younger daugh­ter chore­o­graphed our steps for the father-daugh­ter dance at her wed­ding. We marched to the cen­ter of the dance floor, I in my tuxe­do, she in her flow­ing gown. Our faces were seri­ous and stern. I stood straight, shoul­ders square, and bowed to her. She did a low sweep­ing curt­sy to me. That was the band’s cue to launch into a brassy melody and for the lead singer to belt out, “Bald head­ed Lena/Has any­body seen her/Cute as she can be.” As we hooked arms and danced to the rag­time tune, my younger daughter’s imp­ish grin told me she was still my lit­tle girl, too.

I was con­cen­trat­ing on my steps through most of that dance, but about half-way through our rou­tine I caught a glimpse of my son at the head table, sport­ing a big grin. He’s grown up and has his own kids now, I thought, but he’ll always remem­ber those nights I sang to him when he was a lit­tle boy. 

As I’ve grown old­er, oppor­tu­ni­ties for encore per­for­mances have arisen, and I’ve learned the hard way the down­side of screw­ing them up. 

A while back, I put one of our grand­sons to bed for an after­noon nap. When I fin­ished read­ing his sto­ry, he asked me to sing him a song. Twen­ty-five years out of prac­tice, I sang a rusty ver­sion of King of the Road. The smile I expect­ed wasn’t there at the end. “You messed up the words, Papaw,” he said. “Mom­my sings it better.”

“I’m sor­ry, Bud­dy-Beau,” I said, feel­ing ambushed by my unex­pect­ed com­peti­tor. “I’ll do bet­ter next time.”

I prac­ticed and I did bet­ter next time, but I still wasn’t as good as Mom­my. It ain’t over yet, though.