Life Its Ownself Read Online Free PDF Page B

him for is that you ain't gonna haunt my heart like a damned old movie star! You won't even be a memory!"
    "Is that a fact?" said Dalene. "Well, all I'll remember is your zipper go in' up and down like a window shade!"
    Life is a series of choices. I was told I could either go to California and watch Steve sell floor covering, or I could go to Mobile and watch Dalene take care of her sick mother and look for a new husband.
    Evidently, what I said to both of them was "I want to go to Uncle Kenneth's house. He likes sports and he don't holler."
    I never saw Dalene again.
    She did send me $5 every Christmas until she died when I was fourteen. She had remarried by then and given birth to three other kids. Apparently, the kids jumped up and down on the furniture so much, a headache did her in.
    Uncle Kenneth took me to the funeral in Mobile.
    It was my first funeral, but I figured out from the seating arrangement in the funeral parlor and at the cemetery that her new husband, Raymond, was the man on the front row in the windbreaker and the Schlitz cap.
    Being at the funeral was a strange feeling because I didn't know my momma at all, but the trip wasn't a complete loss. After the funeral, Uncle Kenneth and me drove up to Tuscaloosa for the Alabama-Ole Miss game.
    I saw my dad only one time after he moved to California. It was when I was a junior at TCU and we played an intersectional game against USC in Los Angeles.
    On the morning of the game, I was standing around in the lobby of the Century Plaza Hotel with Shake and Barbara Jane. We were killing time. Shake and I were waiting to board the team bus to the L.A. Coliseum. We were laughing at all of the TCU fans in their purple blazers and purple leather cowboy boots when this man came toward us, and I couldn't help staring at him because of his outfit. He wore green slacks, a pink Munsingwear shirt, a red-and-yellow-checked linen coat, and white mesh-top shoes. He had an admirable tan. I thought he was just another California nitwit who wanted an autograph from me and Shake, your basic All- Americans. He didn't look anything like Uncle Kenneth, his brother.
    "Hello, Billy," the man said, sticking out his hand. "I'm your dad."
    Before I could speak, Shake said, "What's your name?"
    "Steve." The man looked blankly at Shake. "Steve Puckett."
    "What was his mother's name?" Shake gestured.
    "Dalene."
    "What street did you live on in Fort Worth?"
    Steve stammered.
    "Uh.. .Travis. Then over on Hemphill."
    "Could be him."
    Barbara Jane folded her arms as she studied Steve. She said, "Sir, I'm sorry, but I've known Billy Clyde's mother and father a long time. They're both named Kenneth."
    Out of embarrassment for Steve, I led him aside, seeing no reason to subject him to Shake and Barbara Jane's wise-mouth.
    We had a brief visit. He said he was proud of me. He said he followed my "dipsy-dos" in the newspapers. He said he had meant to write several times over the past fifteen years, but things had been hectic in the floor-covering business. He said he'd bought a new set of MacGregor irons and they had lowered his handicap to 12.
    He glanced around the lobby at my teammates, some of whom were black.
    "How you get along with the nigs?"
    "Fine," I said. "They're good guys."
    "Nigs is?"
    "Yeah."
    "Don't steal nothin'?"
    "No."
    "Don't even borrow nothin'?"
    "No. I borrow some of their albums."
    He said, "Lord, I seen one the other day that gimme a pause. He was one of your hippie nigs? He stood there on Wilshire Boulevard and took a piss in broad daylight!"
    "No fooling?"
    "Yep, right there on Wilshire Boulevard. I said to myself, Well, is this the end of civilization as we know it, or is it just another nigger pissin' on Wilshire Boulevard?"
    "It's a great country."
    My dad apologized for having been semi-halfway responsible for making me the victim of a broken home.
    I said he didn't need to apologize for a single thing. Uncle Kenneth had given me everything I'd needed, plus a good many