During our long car ride home, the three other boys chattered and laughed and beat on each other. The recruiter regained his former cheer. He told dirty jokes and allowed us to smoke in the car. I sat against a door, face pressed to the window. I didn’t see the land go by or listen to the others. Awash in despair, I felt like a failure, as if I’d let down the recruiter. Worse, I had no idea what to do. I’d already quit high school, hadn’t applied to any colleges, and feared being permanently trapped in my father’s house. The one act I’d taken to exert control over my life was thwarted by piss in a cup. My own body had betrayed me. I didn’t even know what albumin was.
The recruiter returned to his small office in Morehead and prepared the final paperwork for the lucky boys. I walked four miles before catching a ride to the turnoff for my home hill. I climbed the quarter-mile dirt road slowly. For twelve years I’d traveled up and down the hill on foot. I knew how the light and shadows fell, where the potholes developed, the steepness of every step. I’d walked the dirt in full dark with no moon or stars, at dawn in mist and dew, during rain and snow. At a flat curve, the only place two cars could pass, I began throwing rocks in the creek. The absolute certainty of my future was obliterated. I wondered how many rocks it would take to fill the creek. I now had that sort of time. Stuck forever in Haldeman, I could build a dam, rock by rock.
Long after night arrived, I sat in the road, clearing the space around me until I was down to dust. I went home and told my parents the news. Their reaction was the same as when I’d announced my intention to enlist. They nodded and said nothing. In my bedroom I discarded my notebook of anecdotes. I rearranged the items on my shelves—a jar of wheat pennies, a box of feathers, hundreds of comic books, and lucky rocks. My brief brush with the adult world of military service made my collections seem silly, the accumulations of a child. I lay in bed unable to sleep, tense and furious. A few months later I enrolled at Morehead State University, the only college in the hills.
I’ve since learned that albumin is a type of protein essential to building muscle and healthy plasma. Its appearance in my urine was a onetime fluke, unexplainable, never materializing again. In 1976 the army was bloated with troops and attempting to downsize, thus increasing the rigor of its requirements. I’ve often wondered how my life might have unfolded with successful enlistment. Every time I meet veterans, I feel a twinge of envy. The benefits are clear to me now: a structure that provides camaraderie, meals, clothing, lodging, and training. The potential existed for a strong role model, perhaps a man of honor and integrity. I might have hated military life or never used the GI Bill. Or maybe today I’d be mingling with bureaucrats in D.C.’s Beltway, commuting daily to Langley, working as a senior analyst. Or perhaps like the other boys with whom I enlisted, I’d have been discharged quickly, returning home with a deeper understanding of personal defeat.
Chapter Twenty
MOM HAD lived her entire life in two counties of Kentucky. She’d never lived alone. Three months after Dad’s death, the movers transported her possessions to her new home in Mississippi, a few blocks from the Oxford square. For the first time in her life, she was autonomous. Mom promptly bought a new bed and hung her favorite pictures. I’d never seen her so happy. She could sleep as late as she wanted, eat a roast beef sandwich for breakfast, and read in bed. The only rules were hers. She applied for a passport. In the ensuing year, she traveled to Germany, Spain, London, Paris, Prague, California, Texas, and Virginia.
My own house was seven miles away, in the country. After thirty-five years, our situations had reversed: Mom lived in town and I had returned to a rural environment. I saw her at least once a week, usually for a meal or a local literary event. Mom was socially adventurous, liked to laugh, and preferred her cocktails promptly at six P.M. As her young neighbors said: “Miss Jodie’s cool.” We looked forward to our time together. Our conversations were very open and honest. Now that Dad was dead and Mom no longer lived in Rowan County, she felt comfortable discussing pornography.
At times I worried about her reaction to my writing a book about Dad and my childhood. Ten years before, Dad had called me with express orders not to write about his career as a pornographer, a project he’d learned I was working on from a magazine. I explained that porn didn’t have the same negative connotation that it once had. He didn’t believe me and I appealed to his vanity, suggesting I interview John Cleve for the book. Dad’s voice took on a slightly mournful tone. “That won’t work,” he said. “Ol’ John’s clothes don’t fit anymore. He’s gone, son. He’s gone.”
A week later Mom made a rare visit to my house and asked me to abandon the book I’d begun. Surprised and irritated, I pointed out that since she and Dad had mass-produced porn without consulting their kids, I should have the same literary freedom as an adult. Mom said they’d been very careful to keep their lives separate—the wild excesses of fandom and the more sedate life in Haldeman.
“There was no overlap,” she said.