| The MacMurray Method by Juleigh Howard Hobson First thing I do is check the television. They said it had cable. Yep, punching the remote from the dark orange quilt on the queen size bed, it's got cable. Fred MacMurray stares out at me from TVLand for a split black and white second before I click it off again. I don't need to watch. I just like knowing Fred and his family are still there. This time, it's the Desert Moon Motel with its strange unwrinkleable quilt; the air crisp – the way motel rooms always get once the air conditioner starts. Hell, it’s still like 90 degrees Fahrenheit at least outside, but in here, in here it’s just fine. Like the All-American TV dream come true. Then, right before I know what I’m doing—dozing, thinking, whatever—it all comes back to mind. Summertime. 1976. I was 13. There was no cable yet, but that was okay—the re-runs were still on from 3 to 6 every day after school. All day, on some channels, during the summer vacation… Hot afternoons soaked in warm stale sticky cheap empty cans of beer come floating back through my mind. The stump of wood I crushed them on, crushed them with an eroded sledgehammer that used to be my grandfather’s. The stump stunk like a bad old drunk. My hands stunk. And my t-shirt, where quarter-full cans sprayed up luke-warm—sometimes hot—dregs, stunk. The big black garbage bag I dragged out from the hot garage, full of empty Lucky Lager or Black Label cans, stunk. The cans on the bottom were sweaty with the stuff that dribbled out of the cans on top. Those were my grandmother’s cans. My father drained his dry. Every son of a bitch’s got one decent thing to be said for them, right? My father drained his dry. The blasting heat of those California July days worked like some sort of unholy incubator: the cans emerged wet and warm, like little alive things. Little alive belching dripping slimy hot things that came back day after summer day to be crushed. Hit straight down on top was the best way to crush them. Struck on the side still meant the edges had to smashed in --that took three swings as opposed to one, but the sledge hammer –it stunk of hot beer, too—was heavy and there was less of a chance of missing that way. When I was done with the bag, I could go in and watch TV. I got exactly nothing for doing that, I remember. That was my keep. My duty. My work. Everybody had to pull their own weight— even if they never asked to be there. Even if my father kept saying ‘shut up’ with a backhand when I asked what weight he pulled. Kept saying ‘mind your own business, you don’t know the first thing about jack, why… don’t… you…just… shut… the… hell… up’. That was his keep. My father had more important things than weight to pull. He was an artist, which meant that he was special, even if only him and my grandmother knew it. He could draw tattoo flash of both the Jimmies: Page and Hendrix, and the Hank Williams Jr. logo too. Freehand. So special. That is, that’s what he did when he did anything. Like all great artists he could only work when he was inspired—to expect him to get a real job (not mailing art to tattoo magazines and hanging with some guy who airbrushed pictures of Jesus on lowriders, but a real job like the real dads did on the shows) would be an insult. And to insult him was to insult my Grandmother. Because Grandma believed in him. Loved him. I figured if she loved him, she would have wanted the best for him. Maybe even for his kid. Yeah, right. She called me a stool pigeon when I told her about my father smoking pot all the time. I was 13, I figured she'd make him stop, make him better, make him like the other dads I knew, the way dads were supposed to be. The dads on TV. I saw them every day. Dads were like Mr. Brady. Sheriff Taylor. Mr. Douglas. Even a dad like plain old Ed Johnson who wasn’t on TV but who rented a light blue-sided ranchette across the street from Grandma. She said that the whole Johnson family was just plain white trash because they didn’t own that house. But I watched Mr. Johnson go to work every morning. His kids wore real Levi's and got driven to school in a clean tan Malibu station wagon, with bumper stickers. They had a color TV too. But, after I told her, she didn’t make my dad stop smoking pot; she just stopped liking me, instead. Put her television set in her bedroom, where I wasn’t allowed to go. I've got to stop laying here, on this cold bed, and try and get some rest now. Because I have to stop thinking now and turn on that TV -- any channel – find Fred MacMurray, and my Marlboros, and what's left in my coffee cup or I'll never make it to that meeting in the morning. And I have to make it. I have to keep making it. That's what I do. I make it. Like they do on TV. ----------------------------------------------------------- Juleigh Howard-Hobson's writings have appeared in various journals, including Flipside Magazine and the anthology Undertow. |