Harry 2

All right, Harry, we're back at it. Going back to your earlier email, talking about some of the finer points at Pearl's house on the day that Howard threatened to kill us all and was hauled off by the Sheriff's Department. Normally, you know, on days when I was with Pearl, which was literally every day, my mama worked and I think I'd mentioned to you that she was a key punch operator and she was essentially the only source of income and kind of let me lay the groundwork for you. At the time, my mother and I, along with my father sometimes, lived in a house that was about a mile and a half away from Granny Pearl's house. It was a house built of brick that my great-grandfather, who was Pearl's father, his name was Robert Roberta Killian, had built with his own two hands. He was a brick mason and he's actually buried not too far away from Pearl. And Pearl had inherited this house and it had poured concrete floors in it. It was a solid house. And we essentially lived there for nothing. And for whatever reason, you know, that wasn't enough for my father. He was habitually unhappy. And I even remember that as a small child, there was a darkness that followed him everywhere he went. And, you know, I've stated before that there was an indwelling fear of him. You know, have you ever been around somebody that just when they walk into a room, there's like this shadow that sits upon their shoulder and you really don't know why that would be. And the reality is this. My DNA was linked to that darkness. And I think I felt that maybe at a very young age. So when my father was not around and at the time that he, you know, tried to bring down hell on the family, he hadn't been seen in days and days. And that's a good thing, but it's also a bad thing. Because I think that, and again, this is me projecting my thoughts on to my grandmother and certainly my mother, he knew that there was a storm coming and it hit on that day. I remember the weather was warm and we were going into summertime. So it may have been May or June. As I mentioned, Papaw had had a big truckload of sand that had been dumped in the backyard for me. And it was a mountain. It was a mountain of sand. And occupied, that sand occupied a space that was just adjacent to a chinaberry tree that Papaw would generally park his truck under. Some of the things I remember about the sandpile in particular was that, you know, my mother worked at this tractor company. And they had, are you familiar with little toys that you could get when you were a kid back in the 60s? You're a little bit younger than me, you might not remember this, but you could get cast iron or, I don't know, cast iron, cast steel, I'm not really sure, toys that had the, in this case she worked for an international harvester dealer, that were Tonka, Tonka trucks and toys, but they were red like the international harvester. And she could get these for me. And so I was as proud of these things as anything in the world. So I had a large red tractor emblazoned with the international harvester symbol on it. I had, I think my favorite toy as far as little toys you would play in the sand was actually a road scraper. Do you remember those with the big blade underneath so that you could push along the road and it would plow through the dirt in these long swaths? And what else did I have? I had a dump truck, massive dump truck, and a front end loader. And those were always there. And there was a crane as well, but I remember the cable had broke on it, you know, because, you know, when you're a kid, you're rough on everything and there was a separate crane handle. But I valued those toys. I still played with them day in and day out. And then, of course, I was a big fan of, I like GI Joes, but there was back in the 60s, you know, with the space push, my favorite toys back then were something called Major Matt Mason. And they were these kind of rubber posable figures that all looked like astronauts. And I would pretend that they were on the moon, you know, because we were trying to reach the moon at that point in time, and it was a big deal. And my aunt also worked at Michoud down in East New Orleans. So she would get me, she would get me NASA related stuff, which was really cool. You know, she was a mathematician down there. So I had kind of the best of both worlds. I love space and I love pushing dirt around like any little boy. So as was the case, I'd be out in that sand pile playing. I did one of two things. I would either play in the sand pile or I'd ride. I had a purple Swin Banansi bicycle that had been given to me and a BB gun. And those three things were my most prized possessions. And so that day I was playing in the sand pile. And I don't really know how this kind of kicked off to initiate, but if you'll just indulge me for a moment, my grandparents had a driveway that was scraped dirt, but Papa had bought, I guess, I don't know, a couple of dump trucks load of river rocks, which were real smooth. And of course, you know, in North Louisiana, you're not going to find river rocks. So I always imagine, you know, looking back that these things had to come from Arkansas somewhere up in the Ozarks or something. And they were round and smooth and beige and gold. And they were pressed down into this dirt. And it made a real solid foundation, but you could always hear tires popping on it. And I have a memory of hearing the tires pop as it hit the gravel or the stones on the driveway. And it was Howard. Now, for whatever reason, Papa was in the house and Pearl, as was her custom, was in her kitchen. And she was always looking out through her gardenia bushes at the little window that was over her sink. And I think that I got the impression, you know, thinking back about it, my grandmother hated to talk about this, but that they were probably waiting on him. Something had happened. And, you know, otherwise, my grandfather would have been out in the yard because he was always out there, Harry, always. That's where he spent his time. Because he could sit in those metal chairs adjacent to my sand pile, not talking to me, but he could chew tobacco and smoke and look at his horses. And every now and then, he'd get up and cycle over the horses. But for that day, he wasn't out there. I was out there singularly, alone. When the gravel started popping, Pearl ran to the back door of the house. Now, there's essentially only two entrances to this house. The house, it's not truly a shotgun, like you see uptown, you know, or around New Orleans. It's, you know, you couldn't, you know, shoot a shotgun from the front door to the back door. But it had two entrances, a rear door and a front door. And that front door was always locked. And I remember her coming out and quickly gathering me up and dragging me up the stairs. And there were poor concrete steps that led up to that back door. Still something that troubles me to this day. I remember I had put sand on those steps one day from that pile, and my granny came out the back door and slid on it and twisted her knee. And it just, it crushed me, because she had to go to the doctor. But she came down those steps, and she moved like she was probably 20 years old, even though she was, you know, probably in her late 50s then. And she screamed, Joey, and that's what they all called me back then, Joey, come here. And she grabs me, grabs me by the arm, brings me in the house, and the door slams. And she shut it behind her and locked it and took me into her bedroom was on the front of the house. They slept in separate bedrooms. His was on the back of the house. And she took me into her bedroom. And it's at that point, my grandfather looked up, looked out the window. And that's when, you know, all hell broke loose at that point in time. I do remember my grandfather say, he's got a shotgun. And the next thing I knew, the shotgun discharged, you know, and I, you know, looking back on it, I, you know, I know distinctly what a shot, I knew what a shotgun sounded like back then, because every male in my family fired a shotgun. I fired, I think, first time I ever fired a shotgun, I was probably seven. And of course, I was being held, my grandfather, when he did it, it was like a 16 gauge single barrel shotgun. And, you know, it's something that was familiar in our family. Everybody in the family hunted. My grandfather hunted gators, went gigging for bullfrogs, they were big on duck hunting. And of course, they would deer hunt with rifles up in Arkansas. But I remember him saying, he's got a shotgun, and it was shortly after that, that it discharged. And I had known that he had a sawed off shotgun, because he was proudly displaying it one day at the house. And it was a double barrel shotgun. It had the stock sawed off so that it had only a pistol grip on it. And it, there's one purpose that a double barrel sawed off shotgun is used for. It's an aggressive weapon, it's a threatening weapon, it's a concealable weapon. And I don't know if he fired off both barrels or not, but there were a series of shots, so he had to have reloaded. Now, during this time, I think in my mind's eye, I remember the sounds of the report of objects hitting the house. And you know, jumping forward a little bit, you know, that backyard was my universe. It's really all I had. We lived in an isolated location. I didn't have any friends, really. And I'm not trying to give you a sad story here, but really, there were no other kids around me. It was me, Pearl, and Papaw. And I had cousins, but they were nowhere near. And even some of the cousins I had were much older than me. And I remember going out in the backyard afterwards, and it looked like a hurricane had come through. You know, those places that were familiar to me, you know, the metal table where Papaw sat and would roll cigarettes, he'd roll cigarettes for the week back there. You know, he had a chair that was especially his chair, and no one either at the kitchen table, which I wrote about in the chapter called Little Gods and Chocolate Milkshakes, or those that were in the backyard would sit in his chair. It was his chair, and it was overturned and had been thrown. And the house, the backside of the house, which the windows on the backside of the house had been closed in with plywood over the years. And there were gouges inside of the house, I remember that. And things were just strewn about. It seems like there was some damage to my Papaw's truck as well, and it wasn't like a weapon being fired into it or anything like that. It was like him hitting it with something, and my Papaw's truck was everything to him, you know, because he made his living with that truck. He hauled horses and mules, and he went to work in it. And as far as kind of the vocal interaction, I had heard my daddy cuss for years. I mean, profanity was just, he worked in that realm all the time. Everything that came out of his mouth was, you know, fuck this and fuck that. And this was back in the 60s, man, you know, where there was still some level of propriety back then, particularly in rural areas. And he would talk this way in front of his mother, which, you know, is quite striking when you think about that, that he could disrespect her that way. But he did. And you could tell her, you could tell even when in normal conversation, it was like her being slapped every single time. She would wince, you know, by virtue of his descriptors. I think a lot can be told by a person, about a person who speaks that way, particularly to those that are entitled to some level of respect. It's done as an attack. You know, I guess you could say that my daddy was a profane person, but there was something more than just mere profanity. It was like words were, you know, little bullets that would fly off his mouth, you know, striking her every time. Papaw was different. I mean, Papaw cussed too, and he didn't say a lot, but he did cuss a lot and would carry on. But I have that distinct memory of, as I wrote about in Blood Beneath My Feet, of being beneath that bed and Pearl crying out to God. And I look back now at the age that I'm at now here where there have been times in my life where I had nothing, nothing at all, and I've been so broken that I would cry out to God and beg him for mercy, screaming at him, crying out, please help me, please help me. I'm not the first generation in my family to do that. I remember the tones in my granny's voice, Pearl crying out. I remember Papaw sitting in that front room across from Pearl's bedroom, and he did, he did just sit there and rub his hands together. I mentioned rabbit foot the other day, and that's why I sent you that picture of that watch because that watch means so much to me. It sits on my bureau in my bedroom. It's the only thing I have of his, the only thing. And he would, he was, maybe, maybe he was praying in his own way. I have no idea. My Papaw died in that back room of the house of cancer many years later, and I wasn't allowed to go to his funeral. He had metastatic carcinoma of the stomach and was testos to his brain. And Pearl was so proud in the wake of his death because she said that she had led him to Christ. And I thought about all the things that he had witnessed, and maybe some of the things he had done to my daddy, because I know that he treated my daddy badly when he was a boy. Daddy got drunk and he called me one night when I was working at the medical examiner in Atlanta. He told me that, he said his daddy bit him with plow lines, which, you know, you'd hook up harness mule with, plow, plow fields with. I don't know if my daddy was born mean or was made mean, I really don't. But in that chaos, I was born and that thread continued on throughout my life. The sounds intensified and Pearl continued to pray. And my memory gets cloudy, but this is what I do know. My mother showed up where she had been working to support us. And they had an additional driveway that was on the other side of the house. Now, I don't know if she drove past the main driveway and went into the other driveway, which is where Papa would generally tow his trailers out of because it was wider. And he could get in and out of that area so that he didn't wind up getting his truck and his trailer in the ditch. But she came in that way and approached the front of the house instead of the back of the house with Howard, my father, in the backyard. And the door that is locked on the front of the house, I know that my mama had to hear him screaming and carrying on. I never saw, my granddaddy never handled me roughly in my entire life. As a matter of fact, he was, with me, he was gentle as a lamb. I don't know if it's something he was trying to pay penance for something he had done years earlier with my daddy. And he regarded my mother as his daughter. But I do remember there was shouting. And he threw that front door open and screamed out her name, Louise. And she came and ran past, there was a big mass of camellia bushes on the front of the house and she ran through those bushes. And my granddaddy grabbed her and drug her into the front room of that house. My mama was crying. My Papa made her lay on the ground and that gun was discharged two more times. There was an old lady that lived next to Pearl. And I never knew her name. But every time she saw me and Pearl, she would say, hey, and I never could remember her name. And, pardon me, sorry, Harry. She had to have come out because of all the racket. She was just on the other side of, there was a hedgerow, it's the only house that was really close to us and she was a little old lady. And I just called her, hey. I would imagine that she had called the sheriff at that point in time as well. But my daddy was out there and he was saying, I'm going to kill you, son of a bitch. I'm going to kill all of y'all. I'm going to kill you all. I could hear, I could hear sirens. They didn't sound like they do today. It sounded more like what a civil defense siren sounds like, big. It wasn't high-pitched. It was, it almost rumbled. It almost rumbled like thunder. And I remember those men getting out of that car, and there were two of them. And even though, you know, I know that you know this being from Louisiana, but you know, North Louisiana isn't really Louisiana, it's more like Texas. And when I saw those guys, I remember thinking that they were cowboys like my papa. My papa always wore his cowboy hat. Always wore his cowboy hat. But they were dressed all in khaki, and they wore khaki boots. And I remember telling him, him, Howard, they were going to kill him, or they were going to shoot him, shoot your ass or something like that. And you see back then, Harry, the world and law enforcement was a different place. The Sheriff's Department knew my grandmother. My grandmother had worked at the courthouse for years. Had worked for a couple of attorneys up in Monroe, Washtenaw Parish. She was paralegal, which was real unusual for a woman that had come from her background. That's why she got married so late. And she involved herself in so many things around that parish. And they knew her. And what separates policing today from back then is that when you have a non-compliant person that is threatening to kill somebody, back then, they didn't want to put the cuffs on you. They wanted to beat the hell out of you. And they did. They beat him. They beat him. And then they put the cuffs on him. And I remember, I remember what the day that I was arrested, Deputy Sheriffs were wearing, I remember what my Papaw was wearing. Papaw was wearing overalls. And he always wore overalls with a white t-shirt when he wasn't going to work. When he was going to work, he dressed like them. Wore khaki shirt, khaki pants, cowboy boots or lace-up boots and a cowboy hat. And they had him cuffed and they put him in the back of the car. I don't, I don't recall seeing my daddy really again. I have a memory of going with my grandmother and my mother in her Chrysler. Pearl had a, I think it was actually a Dodge. They couldn't afford a Chrysler. Chrysler was considered to be a fancy car back then. Her sister had a Chrysler. Chrysler. And I remember going down to Washtenaw Parish Courthouse. And being in the car with my mama and Pearl went in, went in. And I don't know if it was a matter of posting bail or if it was a matter of visiting him, but she went in there. And I remember them telling me that my daddy was in there. And it was at that point in time that he had to make an appearance before a judge. And that judge offered him this, this opportunity. Told him, you are either going to go to prison or you're going to join the United States. United States Marine Corps. Now, my father was born in 45. So in 65, he would have been 20. By the time this all happened, he probably would have been about 29, which is a lot older than most of the kids that were getting drafted back then. And he volunteered for it and had to volunteer for the infantry. And I knew that he had been sent off to California. Because back then, if you were in the Marine Corps and still to this day, that if you're on the east, east side of the Mississippi River, you go to Parris Island for boot camp. If you're on the west side, you go to San Diego. And he went to San Diego. And in the wake of all of that, a peace began to settle over that household that, I don't know, it was a different kind of feeling about that house. It hadn't been like that before. It was almost like an abscess tooth had been extracted. And finally, there was relief. Until, of course, there wasn't. Because he eventually showed back up. But for a time in my life, that those brief few years that I had with my grandparents where it was just me and my mama and Pearl and Papa were some of the happiest times of my life. As a matter of fact, talking about that old house that we'd lived in, Pearl wound up selling that house. And they took that money and they bought me and my mama a house trailer and gave my mama and Howard the space of land adjacent to their home. And they pulled it in there and me and my mama lived in that trailer together immediately adjacent to Pearl's house. So I would, you know, I'd cut a path between that trailer and Pearl's house. Every single day, I was there, you know, kind of cocooned in that world. But still to this day here, even the man I am today, I'm 59 years old. And still to this day, I have fear of my daddy. I don't, I haven't been able to do the calculus on that. I don't know, I don't know what it extends from. I don't know where the root is. Part of me would, you know, I think like to cut it out. But I think probably cutting it out would kill part of me, the person that I am. It's a reminder in my life that I'm to be something else. I'm to be something other than him. As twisted as that is, I live my life by that. And of course, later on, you know, my mother would marry Bruce. You know, my mother would marry Bruce. And again, that was even worse than Howard. But Howard laid the foundation for that. I had other stories that had come to me over the years from other Ken folks that would talk about how violent he was and the things that he had done or was alleged to have done. And I share this with you now, and I've never spoken of this. And I beg you, please be very careful with what I'm about to say. When I was working in New Orleans, I tried to make it a point to come up to see my grandma. My father lived in a number of places. He kind of wandered everywhere. And he would leech off of her periodically, asking her for money, the little bit that she had. But I would make my way up to Monroe and go and see her. My grandpa had long since died. And it was just she and I. In an old box in a cedar chest that she had, buried down at the very bottom of it, I started digging through it. And contained in the bottom of that box was a Klan gown along with a Klan handbook that I found down there. Now, I'd heard all the stories, you know, coming from distant relatives that had told me things about the behaviors of my father and what he had done in his younger life. And it really chilled me. It chilled me to my core as a grown man standing over there and holding these items in my hand. And I didn't say nothing to my grandma about it. But after she had gone to bed at night, I remember getting back up and walking in there. And it was actually in my grandfather's bedroom. She had like three of these cedar chests that lined the walls. And I sat on the edge of my papa's old bed. And I just took those items out again and considered them, you know, and looked at them. And I thought about that deep-seated hatred that he had for everybody. The contempt that he held for everybody. The blame that he assigned to everybody that he could, whether it be blacks or Jews or whoever. There was a rotting in his body. And I don't know what wellspring it came from. I don't know if it was my grandfather or if it was just him. It's easy to say, I think, and kind of dismissive to say that it was merely, he was merely mentally ill. I've always taken exception to that when it comes to him. And I guess that's my own prejudice coming through, because it seems like a cop-out. But I know that, again, he provided an example, even in all those years of distance, he provided an example of what I was never going to be. Never going to be. you