Friends ask me what I’m working on right now,
other than the sequel to The Paragraph
Ranch that Kay and are writing during NaNoWriMo. It’s the story of my colorful
and sometimes cantankerous father—and that of his three grown daughters as his
caregivers when he could no longer see, or see to his own needs. For my posting
in November—the month of his birth, and the month of voting and Veterans’
Day—here’s a passage that takes place in what would be Bill Brannon’s last year
of life.
* * *
 |
| William J. Brannon, Fort Fisher AFB, 1956 |
We
try to urge Dad to get out and go with us, to the beach, or a folk
music singalong, or a visiting author’s reading. But he finds the effort of
getting dressed to go out in public exhausting. “I’d only slow you down,” he says,
and he’s right, though that’s a concession we’re willing to make—to
change things up, lighten his spirits.
“I
tell you what,” I offer, as I finish stirring the spaghetti sauce for dinner,
on the island stovetop that separates his kitchen from the dining table where
he sits listening to a diatribe on FoxTalk Radio. “There’s a concert on campus
next Friday night that I think you’d enjoy. The Air Force Band is performing,
and I can get free tickets for all of us. Don’t you think that’s enough advance
notice for a shower and shave?”
“Well,
maybe . . . aren’t there a lot of stairs to navigate?” He turns the radio down
a notch.
“There’s
an easy ramp for handicapped access.”
“Parking
might be a problem.”
I
cut him off. “We’ll be able to get you right up front in the faculty lot. And
you’ll have plenty of help. What do you say?” I fill the pan at the sink and
put it on to heat for the noodles while I wait for his answer.
“All
right,” he replies with as much enthusiasm as a petulant child, before turning
up the volume again and rejoindering with Hannity and Colmes.
The
water comes to a boil, and I crack the package of noodles into it.
“What
a bunch of nonsense,” Dad carps to no one in particular. The topic of the radio
show seems to be the president’s sinking approval ratings and the upcoming
midterm elections. “Come on, we’re the most powerful nation on earth and we
can’t seem to take down one crazy religious fanatic hiding in a cave in the
desert? You can’t claim that Bush has done a damn thing to win this ‘war on
terror.’ Just keeps sending more troops to Iraq, getting more body bags back.
And now he’s letting those commie clowns in North Korea walk all over him.”
I
tolerate the rant for about another half a minute. And then I break. “Dad—” I
light into him, marching over to shut off the squawk box, “—not that I
necessarily disagree. But what good does it do to sit here day after day
arguing with the radio?”
He
shuts up for a second and looks at me through those thick lenses that magnify his wide expression. All is quiet except the bubbling of the
pot on the stove.
“What
I mean is, how can you just let a fine mind go to waste, doing nothing with
your energy and your intellect?”
I’ve
built up quite a head of steam, and he lets me continue. “Look. All my life you
have spouted off ideas about this and theories about that. Criticizing the way
our government is run, armchair-quarterbacking how it could’ve been done
better. Kibbitzing from the sidelines. But I have never seen you serve on a
jury. Never seen you so much as volunteer for the P.T.A. Never even seen you vote.” I punch my finger on the table in
front of him for emphasis.
Silence
again for a beat. And then he murmurs, “I’m not registered.”
“What?”
I ask, genuinely not sure what he’s said.
“I’ve
never registered to vote. Ever.”
I’m
astonished, really . . . but I shouldn’t be. If I think back about it, my
excitement at age eighteen, coming in the door after casting my first vote in a
presidential election, for our fellow Georgian Jimmy Carter—he’d never said a
word about going to the polls himself. I just assumed. Fathers served in the
armed forces, they married and had a family, they bought a car and a house, they voted. All essential elements of the
American Dream.
I
let my anger deflate.
“Take
me to register,” he says in a measured tone. “Drive me down to wherever you go, and I’ll
fill out whatever I need to do. And I’ll vote.”
* * *
It
is an arduous undertaking—first, locating a birth certificate among Mom’s old
papers, then securing a new Social Security card when Dad admits his original
had been lost in the surf along with the rest of his wallet years ago and his driver’s license is long expired; then getting him
into the car and out again at the Board of Elections. But he emerges at the end
of the day a registered North Carolina voter, just under the wire for the
national election that will take place the week of his seventy-fourth birthday.
We
accompany Dad the following week to the Air Force Band concert, escorting him
to a seat well forward where he can hear reasonably well and make out
some of the shapes of the performers. Beverly sits on one
side and I on the other, happy to see his obvious enjoyment as the evening opens
with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” We all rise and sing, hands over hearts.
There
comes another patriotic favorite midway through the program. The conductor
announces the Armed Forces Medley, a stirring arrangement of each service
anthem, during which veterans from each branch are invited to stand and be honored. But as the
music segues into Off we go, into the
wild blue yonder, Bill Brannon keeps his seat.
I
lean over to him. “Are you having trouble getting up?” I whisper in his ear.
“I’ll help.”
He
stage-whispers back, “But . . . I’m not a vet—I
didn’t serve in combat.”
I
look over at Bev and signal for her to grab an arm. We haul him to his feet and
stand alongside him, as applause for all airmen present thunders through the
auditorium. We will draw him out of his self-containment, his churlish and
perverse isolation, if it takes every one of us to do it.
* * *
On
November 7, 2006, William Joseph Brannon, ceaseless political spectator, from a
walker in the company of his two eldest daughters, punched a ballot for the
first time in his life. He did not reveal his choices to us. It didn’t matter:
he’d participated in the process. And when he held forth in
debate ever afterward—from that day to his last—it was not with that damned radio, but with one of us.
* * *
