Though this knave came something saucily into this world before he was sent for yet was his mother fair; there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged.
—Gloucester, King Lear
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
—Edmund, the bastard, ibid.
A year later, having scrambled to keep the bills paid doing cowboy stories for the Rodeo Sports News, I finally landed full-time steady work. Better yet, I found it to be meaningful, challenging, and satisfying, something I could see making a career of. I was public relations director for the Pikes Peak United Way. Things were coming together for Nancy and me: our first child was born and we named him Peter. With Nancy’s approval, I baptized him myself in Fountain Creek, the mountain stream that ran through our backyard.
At a weeklong management training program at United Way’s national headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, I skipped an afternoon session and took a cab to the Marine Corps archives in D.C. In just a few hours of poring over microfilmed lists of Korean Conflict KIAs, I was able to determine that no Tom Whitaker from Detroit had died in action in the summer or fall of 1951 or the winter of ’52.
But there was a record of a Tom Whitaker from Detroit, riflery coach at Parris Island Depot and later Camp Lejeune, sniper in Korea, there awarded a battlefield commission, who had spent twenty years in the corps, the latter part as an aviator. He had done a couple of tours in Viet Nam flying cargo planes before retiring as a major at NAS Pensacola.
I had written him a letter, included a photograph of myself, requested a meeting. He had called me immediately upon receipt. He was all spit and polish.
“Before I say anything further in response to your letter, I want to be very clear with you that I have consulted with my attorney regarding estate law and matters of inheritance, and you have no standing per stirpes for any claim as a descendent of mine, assuming you could prove that you are in fact such.”
I assured him I had absolutely no interest in anything of his. He didn’t pick up on the bristling sarcasm of my words.
“Good. I didn’t think you would. It’s not something you would do, if you’re a son o’ mine. And I will further stipulate that, judging from the photo you sent, there is a strong possibility we’re related.” His voice then softened, becoming wistful, nostalgic.
“And I do recall, with no small measure of fondness, the cherry blossoms in the Tidal Basin in the late spring of ’51 and a romantic picnic in Rock Spring Park with your lovely mother, Judith. If you’d like to come for a visit, son, you’re more than welcome.”
It wasn’t going to work on me. No sir. None of this tough-but-tender warrior crap impressed me. And this generous “welcome, son” bullshit didn’t fool me for one second, either. Not one second. And I didn’t give a rat’s ass if he had three sons and a daughter (more half-sibs) and a thirty-five-year marriage to a wonderful, understanding wife, and two decades of heroic, distinguished service to his country, or had given his goddamn left nut to save a fallen comrade, for Christ’s sake. I know his game. Hell, I’m the product of his game. I’m him, and he ain’t getting over on me.
It’s almost dawn, and I’m nearing the end of another epic cross-country odyssey. My destination this time is the home of the Blue Angels, sugar-white sandy beaches, and a naval air station. The home of Major Tom Whitaker, USMC aviator, retired.
Though I lack the element of surprise (and control) that I had with Judy Culkin, I fully expect to inflict shock and awe with devastating fury. This time I’m heavily armored with advance intel, resolve, and purpose. There won’t be any of that sad, weepy, huggy mother-and-child-reunion stuff. Nor will there be any longneck Buds or quarts of Beam, which nearly proved disastrous last time. It’s been almost twenty months dry now, and I’ve even driven through the night with nary a hit of speed.
For this time, I’m no longer a bewildered boy seeking sweet comforts and excuses from a long-lost mother. I’m a man, and I’m on a mission: to avenge the honor of a woman betrayed, with all the righteousness of the denied, scorned, and abandoned bastard son.
I’m about three clicks out from his place on a bayou off Perdido Bay. When he opens the door, preferably in front of as many of his family as possible, I will
1.cold-cock the jarhead motherfucker, breaking teeth and nose,
2.knock his ass to the ground,
3.say, “This is from Judy” (and stomp a boot hard in his groin),
4.say, “And this is from me” (spit a cheekful of Red Man in his proud Marine face),
5.snap a smart middle-finger salute,
6.do a crisp about-face, and
7.never look back again.
Of course it only goes like that in the movies. Bad movies. Or in my twisted imagination.
Since Judy bore little physical similarity to me (a disappointing surprise), I hadn’t given any more thought to physical resemblance. This proved to be a major miscalculation of my Major encounter. Rather than the crisp, choreographed vengeance I planned to dispense, I discovered that a close encounter, for the first time in my life, with someone whose face is an older version of my own, has a staggering effect. Staring at him in the doorway was like looking into a mirror from the future. My future. I was completely disarmed. All the righteous fury I had intended to visit upon his visage instantly dissipated, replaced by a jolt of recognition for which I was utterly unprepared.
For Tom Whitaker, I imagine the encounter was somewhat unsettling, but nothing like what rocked me. He had already seen my mug in the photograph I’d enclosed with the letter. Besides, he had three grown sons who favor him. They also look like me.
I knew I was finally at the right place when I saw the hand-painted sign proclaiming “Whit’s End” posted at the curb of the oyster-shell driveway that curved through a dense jungle of palmettos, scrub oaks, and sago palms. A middle-aged woman in an apron, her hair pinned up in a loose bun, greeted me at the door. She was plumper, and about a decade younger, than my own mom (Margaret Johnson—Judy had asked me to call her Mom, but that title will always belong to Margaret).
Mrs. Whitaker’s eyes got big and her mouth opened but nothing came out. I had been purposely vague about my arrival time, to grab what little control I could. I had insisted that I would find the place on my own. This had been a stupid, prideful mistake.
Whit’s End is way out in the sticks on a bayou of Perdido Bay, closer to the Alabama state line than it is to downtown Pensacola—something you’d never know from a mailing address. I had left Colorado Springs on a Friday afternoon and flown to Memphis, where I borrowed a cousin’s truck and headed down I-55 into the black Mississippi night. At Jackson, I left the interstate system to cut across piney woods and farmlands on two-lane blacktops, choked with slow-moving farm tractors and threshers headed to the fields in the misty gray predawn hours of Saturday. At Mobile (the first time I had ever been here, having no idea I’d be returning to settle years later), I hopped briefly onto eastbound I-10 to cross Mobile Bay, then slowly zigzagged my way south and east across rural Baldwin County behind more pokey farm trucks, finally reaching the Florida line by late morning.
Navigating Dallas in search of Judy Culkin had been a cakewalk compared to navigating Pensacola. Its roadways, conforming as they must to the irregular geography of coastal waters and bays, are a tangled mess. The Rand McNally was useless. (This was decades before GPS.) But calling Whitaker for directions was simply not an option, for reasons I chose not to examine. As a result, I spent almost as much time driving around Pensacola and its environs as it had taken me to get from Jackson to the Florida line. The whole 1,500-mile trek had required twenty hours by air and asphalt, then hubris had added three more hours of maddening drive time just circling around Pensacola.
By another measure, though, the journey had led me from Beaufort to Parris Island to New Orleans to Dallas to D.C.’s archives, then finally to this backwater bayou, and had taken thirty years to complete. What’s a few lost hours driving backroads around Perdido Bay? I simply used the frustration to fuel the rage that had been simmering since hearing Judy’s story two years earlier.
Mrs. Major Whitaker finally finds her voice. Without taking her eyes off me, she turns her head slightly and bellows, “Tom! He’s here!” then recovers her southern hospitality and says, “Well, come on in, sugar. You must be plumb wore out from your trip!” and gives me a warm hug.
I stiffen at her embrace and hear Tom bounding up steps from a lower level. I ball my hands into fists. Then I see a fifty-year-old version of myself coming at me down a hallway. He stands next to his sweet-smiling wife and extends his hand and I see myself giving him the firm handshake my father had taught me and I know he’s saying something, and so is Marilyn, and my own mouth might be moving in response but I’m not hearing any of it. There’s a roar in my ears like the “white noise” setting on Nancy’s sleep machine (a noise box she needs to sleep through my rip-snorting slumber).
Our handshake breaks and I feel myself straighten up, my chest swelling, my shoulders squaring, my stance widening, but I’m paralyzed, riveted by my own middle-aged face on this stranger.
That evening we feast on a bountiful spread of Marilyn Whitaker’s home cooking, I meet two half brothers (the elder of whom looks even more like me than Tom), and all of us talk late into the night around the table, exchanging life stories and tall tales and family histories. Tom regales us all with war stories from two Asian conflicts, the first seen from frozen foxholes, the second from the air.
Marilyn’s heard it all before. “Don’t believe a half of it, Mark,” she warns, shaking her head. Then with a laugh, “Tom never let the truth stand in the way of a good story, did ya, dear?”
Tom just frowns and shakes his head back at Marilyn.
“While you were galavantin’ off halfway ’round the world, Major Whitaker, who do you think was back here runnin’ this household fulla your kids with no daddy around? You wanna talk battlefields? It wadn’t exactly Romper Room around here all those years.” They’re grinning broadly at each other.
Tom gets up and begins clearing the table. “Look at this, now, honey. Don’t say I’m shirking my domestic duties.”
I follow his lead and take my plate toward the sink, but Marilyn shoos us both away. “Go on now, y’all just git! Outta my kitchen. You’ll only make it worse. You both got a lotta catchin’ up to do.”
Tom takes me downstairs to his den and shows me the family photo albums, starting all the way back when he was a boy in Detroit. We cover several generations of Whitakers in portraits and snapshots and lore; he tells me his father served in the navy, and if I’d like to visit him he’s buried in the military cemetery right there in Pensacola.
He says I’d have had something in common with his dad. “He did PR for GM. Like you, didn’t you say that’s what you do with the United Fund? You’re both wordsmiths.
“Me, I used to keep journals when I was overseas, thinkin’ I might turn ’em into stories if I lived through it, but when I got back stateside and reread ’em, I thought, This is crap, and never did anything with it.”
Around midnight we’ve worked our way over to the trophies and relics of his career in the corps. The rest of the Whitaker clan have long since shuffled off to bed. Tom shows me framed photos of the wreckage of a plane he crash-landed and walked away from in Viet Nam, his flight suit and pilot’s goggles and mask, his steel pot and service .45 from Korea. He points out a nick in the pistol’s barrel and explains that it came from the tooth of a North Korean infantryman who jumped into his sniper nest one night.
“I heard him just in time to roll away from his bayonet thrust. He was right on me, and there wasn’t enough space between us to get my rifle around on him, so I pulled my sidearm and backhanded him across the face with it before firing five rounds into him at point-blank range.”
Thinking back on that story years later, having had a few scrapes of my own as a cop, I have an idea of the impact that experience must have had on him. But that night, my response was to mutter something like “Wow. That was a close one” and let it drop. I was hunkered down in my own foxhole that night, too preoccupied with my own confusion and questions, struggling to muster the courage for my own confrontation.
I wish I’d asked him if he’d been scared or if it had all happened too fast for fear to even register; or if he had hesitated, even for an instant, before squeezing the trigger. Did he look into his enemy’s eyes as he fired? Did all his rounds find their target, or had he shot wildly with the first one or two? Did he get the shakes during or after? Did he check the soldier’s pockets to find out his name, see a snapshot of his family? Did he stay in that foxhole the rest of the night with his slain enemy, bracing to be overrun by more North Koreans, or did he hightail it out of there as soon as the smoke cleared? I wonder how long he had nightmares about it afterward.
Instead, after an awkward silence, I clear my throat and say, “I gotta ask you something, not about Korea or Viet Nam. I feel like we’re kinda dancing here.”
“I ain’t much for dancing,” Tom answers. “Shoot.”
“Well, when I first met Judy, I asked her about you, and she said you were dead. Killed in action, in Korea. I asked her how she knew for sure, did she get something from the Marines, or the Pentagon. She said no, of course, she never got anything official because y’all weren’t married, but she knew you were dead ’cause she got a letter from one of your buddies, a fellow Marine.” I pause and study his face. He cocks his head but holds my gaze. “How did that happen?”
He frowns. “Hmmm. Guess that’s why I never heard from her.” He muses to himself for a moment. “That would explain it.” Then he looks at me, and with a straight face tells me how there was a guy in his unit, a real oddball, eventually discharged on a “Section 8, mentally unfit” ruling, who they discovered had sent a whole series of letters to the families of other guys in the unit, with all kinds of crazy tragic stories about how their boys had been killed or were POWs or MIA.
“He caused a lotta uproar and needless heartache, you can imagine. Nuttier than a fruitcake, that guy. I guess he musta sent one of those letters to Judy.”
“But how’d this guy get the names and addresses of everybody he wrote to?”
Tom doesn’t skip a beat. “They investigated that. Discovered that he’d been getting into guys’ footlockers, finding their mail from home. Figured he got the return addresses from the envelopes.”
I’m thinking, is that the best you can do, Tom? You really expect me to buy this? A crazy guy sending bogus death notices to strangers? Besides, Judy was so pissed at you for denying paternity and skipping out to Korea, I know she never sent you any mail. In fact, didn’t you just say yourself, moments ago, that you never heard from her? So from what letter sent to you by Judy did Mr. Section 8 Crazy Guy get Judy’s return address?
I’m wondering, why don’t you just tell me the truth? You didn’t love her. It was a one-night stand. You were scared. You weren’t ready to get married, be a father. You had villages to burn, commies to kill, teeth to knock out! You were only twenty. I get that. Just tell me the truth, Tom.
But I let it go. Why make the guy squirm? Thirty years had passed. He’d been a horny young man, itching to get in the fight. I understand, more so than I’d readily acknowledge, if I were in his shoes. How honorably had I behaved at that age with some of the girls I dated?
There’s a long silence while neither of us looks upon the other.
Then he offers, in a lowered voice conferring confidentiality, “I hafta say though, and I don’t want to offend you—I don’t know how close you are to Judy—but she was a most enthusiastic lover. She was like no other woman I’ve known, before or since.”
Another long pause. I can’t face him. I’m remembering my own night of drinking and staggering with Judy, and Tom’s disclosure doesn’t surprise me. I feel torn between the urge to defend Judy—originally, my whole purpose for this visit—and a temptation to agree and commiserate with Tom. I just don’t know what to think or feel or say, so I say nothing.
But I know this: I didn’t want to hear this. It just might be the truth, but I wish I hadn’t heard it.
Definitely didn’t want to hear that about the woman who had given birth to me, even though “bastard son of a whore” had gotten me used to a bad image of my biological mother ever since the concept had been so rudely thrust into my imagination at that Boy Scout camporee so long ago.
But then, neither had I wanted to hear from her of his moral cowardice and duplicity in her time of need thirty years ago. Or maybe worst of all (or just the freshest of all my emotional wounds) to hear the outrageously, insultingly improbable whopper of a lie he’d uttered to my face only minutes ago. I feel like throwing up.