AND ITS ALL OVER NOW, BABY BLUE A short fiction by Christopher Horton Once upon a time, in a land

of cotton and cavaliers . . .oh, wait. That would be plagiarism, wouldnt it? Never mind. Anyway, strictly speaking, it isnt true. It was a land of corn, not cotton. And there twerent no cavaliers neither, though some deluded souls thought they were knights in white satin. In shit kickers. But it was a land that was behind the times, just the same. Still is, the last time I was there, a few years back. When we put Dad in the ground. We would be my brother and me. Mom had already been gone for years. But she was still around during this once upon a time in America. America, 1972. Even longer ago than it is. I mean, back then, in the public schools, male teachers still beat the boys with wooden paddles in the hallways. At least in towns that were behind the times. I think Faulkner said something like, The past is never really gone. Hell, its never even really past. We just get older and start thinking about it more. At least I do--- now that I got a lot of time on my hands, things come to the surface. Like corpses? No, not really. More like the remnants of an oil slick. Lately, Ive been thinking about my mother more. And all the other ghosts. Maybe I spend too much time sitting in the dark alone but thats not a story I want to tell. This is a ghost story. 1972 was a funny time to be fourteen in a backwater town. Probably as funny as being, say, fifty then. There was something happening, but we didnt know what it was, us Jones of any age. It was a confusing time because of the endless war. Boys my age then kinda thought that thered always been this war. Just like boys now. It had been on TV at night for as long as I could remember watching TV. But there was a draft then. So you just figured when you turned eighteen, you went. And maybe you got fucked up. You didnt talk about it though. One of the things that was confusing was that some guys went to Canada or Sweden. And some kids were fighting in the streets here. You saw that on TV at night too. Id seen it live. When I was ten, in 1968. Funnily enough, my parents hardly ever took us to Chicago, but they sure picked the wrong day that summer. It was amazing---there were kids fighting cops a few feet on the other side of the car window. At ten I was too young to really be confused---it was just happening. But, at fourteen, it was all funny in a confusing way. Especially since my father had been in the jungle in New Guinea during his war. He was no superlifer---in fact, his stories didnt make it sound like much fun. And sometimes he killed people in his sleep. Til pert near the day he died. He didnt talk to anyone about it either, because Dad was a hard ass, strong and silent. But also because 1972 was a long time ago. There wasnt WebMD then. Or cell phones. Or even fucking answering machines, for Christs sake. It was a long time ago, closer to 1911 than 2011, if you know what I mean. At least in little towns that were behind the times. It was a funny, confusing time because of all that. At least that once, the cosmic joke wasnt on me. Or if it was, it was in a good way. When I was seventeen, Saigon fell.

We danced on the tables in the high school cafeteria. Not out of disrespect but because it meant they couldnt change their minds. Then, when I turned eighteen, they stopped making people register. And when they started again, I was a year too old. Now my friends boys are turning eighteen. I give them shit----Good news, the army thinks youre a man, even if no one else does. But, now that Im old. . .well, they seem too young. And maybe boys arent supposed to be hard asses anymore. Another way it was a long time ago. But mostly it was a confusing time because I was fourteen and I was me. Its a hard age, I think, no matter what. Boys that age always feel incompetent. Worse yet, theyre usually right. I dont think that was just me. And I wasnt very big, only 5 4 or 5---I got my big growth spurt later. Worse yet, I was real smart and it wasnt a town where knowing a lot of words was an advantage. So I was kinda a loner even though I wasnt an utter geek---I had played some sports and was actually pretty good at the 500 yard freestyle. But I spent a lot of time by myself just the same. Besides during the 500 yard freestyle. Not as much as now, but were not talking about that. And not as much as a year earlier. In junior high, being real smart wasnt a disadvantage---it was a mark of Cain. I was pretty much a pariah. . .I never danced in the junior high cafeteria---after a couple of fights, I started going to the library for lunch. I suppose I could blame my parents. We were raised to be ourselves and Everybody else does it, was never an excuse for anything at my house. The response was always If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you? And my Dad kinda implied that if something was popular, it was probably stupid. By the time I was fourteen, selfsufficiency and not being very trusting were permanent Anyway, maybe because of this, the previous summer, my mother had asked me, Bill, would you like to be in a play? The funny part was that the guys doing the play were all a lot older, college kids morphing into late growth hippies. Of course they were our hippies as they were the offspring of respectable citizens. Still, its not where most mothers wouldve sent their thirteen year olds. Another chance to blame one of my parents. Not that I do. I guess my mother was a little trippy in her own way. Starting when I was about ten, shed take me to the race track once in awhile. Shed say, Honey, bet on the horse that shits on the track---they feel lighter. I dont remember her winning a lot with that system but its my second favorite memory of her. I dont know why she thought that doing a play would be fun for me. Maybe because it would have been fun for her. She had been a child actress in L. A. and had been in Shirley Temple and W. C. Fields movies before a couple of bad choices, or destiny, plopped her down in Bumfuck. Ive driven by the house in Hancock Park---a very nice hood in the 30s---where she lived as a little girl. I remember thinking, what the hell, even though acting was nothing that had occurred to me before. Maybe she was projecting. Or maybe she thought I was too withdrawn, although one of the few things that was better back then is that loner adolescents didnt walk into schools locked and loaded. Anyway, I got the small part of the younger brother

in this terrible play that one of the college hippies had written. I did like being on stage. And, unlike in junior high, the hippies didnt try to shit on me. And they knew what was happening, and at thirteen, I had no clue about adult emotions. I remember not understanding the tension the day that rehearsal came to an abrupt end when the radio--yup, the transistor radio, LOL---announced that the male lead had pulled number two in the draft lottery. We all went to a bar. Another way it was a long time ago, at least in small towns. Not that I drank anything. But, what was my mother thinking? The next year I did a school play. I sort of got along with those kids. Of course, in that school, anyone who took an interest in that sort of thing was an outcast. At least any boy---a hot cheerleader could go slumming in the theatre and emerge with her coolness intact. Besides, or maybe consequently, most of the boys were frail geeks---I could have kicked any of their asses. Except that I didnt have a chip on my shoulder. I even made a friend. This guy Blue. He said that his mother started calling him Blue because it had been his favorite color as a toddler. I became friends with him anyway. Blue was certainly an outcast, even though he wasnt that frail. He was a year and a half older than me and a lot taller. He was pretty smart. Not as smart as me---not that that had been doing me much good. And he had enormous energy. Actually, that was pretty annoying because I never had enormous energy. Still dont. Thats not a surprise---only women my age have energy. . .which is also annoying. After we became friends, Blue would lead me on these ridiculous short cuts that rarely were shorter but always included going up hill and down dale and usually involved scaling significant obstacles. We did a lot of things like that as I grew out of boyhood. Most of them, like climbing the town water tower, were his fault. Blue started spending a lot of time at our house because my mother liked him and he liked my mother. And. because his house was fucked up. It turned out that his mother had died when he was a little boy. He adored her memory although, besides his name, his main memory was her making him stand naked in the picture window after shed caught him playing doctor with a slightly older girl in the garage. My mother told me that Vera had been a wild thang and more than a little crazy. That seemed strange to me because his father seemed like an ineffectual nebbish. Blue and his father had gotten along alright. But, a few months after we started hanging out, his Dad suddenly married this shrew bitch who was---wait for it---an ex-nun. And Im not being an asshole here. I like women, even if they do have too much energy. But she had been a superlifer. As it turned out, I was right. Blue felt pretty betrayed. Thinking back on it, he acted out pretty solidly, and they must have been ready to murder him. But she was still a step mother from hell, insane ex-nun division. So Blue started spending a lot of time at our house and no one seemed to care that much. Except maybe my Dad and he kept it to himself. Blue and my mother got along famously---they both loved musicals. I only thought musicals were alright but thats partly because I didnt sing very well. Blue, by the way, was an outcast because he was smart and flamboyant---so the local dumb asses figured he was gay. This of course

was much worse than being smart back there, back then. He hated it, but there was nothing he could do. In 1972, more of those college guys rolled back into town. They had more money to bankroll a show. And they were more hippie, especially the director, who was studying theatre at Carnegie-Mellon, which was, and still is, too too for that sort of thing. They were calling themselves the Mello-Dramatics. And it was so long ago that none of the respectable citizens got the joke. They decided to do Guys and Dolls because they wanted to recoup a little more at the box office. Apparently, last summers mishmash of French socialism transmuted into third rate Tennessee Williams had not turned a profit. Despite the lure of my debut. LMAO. So this years mantra was embrace the community instead of shock the bourgeoisie. That played out on a variety of levels. Four hot high school girls were cast as the Hot Box Club dancers, and they were all embraced by the college guys over the course of the run. Blue and I were cast in small parts---we were still the youngest. The girls were two or three years older. Theyd all been around the block---Blue and I hadnt been. I remember them slouching on one hip, smoking cigarettes with the older guys. I told you it was a long time ago. And a middle-aged drunk was cast as Arvid. And my mother as the Salvation Army general. Before the rehearsals started, the director, Dennis, ran a workshop. To a fourteen year old, Dennis looked like Jesus, except maybe a little older. He was twenty-one at most. And running stuff hed learned at Carnegie Mellon. Like trust exercises, where people would fall face first off the stage into the others waiting arms. It was a new idea to me. We only dropped one person. And it was really an accident. And it was one of the girls, so she bounced. There was a lot of yoga too. That was completely new to me. I dont think that could happen today---the larger world penetrates sooner. Back then, you couldnt get fruits or vegetables out of season, much less ideas. My mother didnt come to the workshops---I guess she had some adult responsibilities, probably to my brother. So it was mostly Blue and me. Afterwards wed walk past the sleeping Victorians on silent streets late at night, talking about yoga or Dennis or the girls. It was like a whole new part of my brain had opened up. Two months earlier, Id never thought about such things, except girls and that was only theoretical. Nor had I walked the streets at midnight. Talk about a little click in the head. At least a halfway click---like a good country boy, I still thought the yoga was semi stupid, but I wanted to cooperate with Dennis. He was the director. Besides, I sensed from the way he laughed when we dropped Liz during the trust exercise that Dennis had a mean streak. It made me wary of him even though he was too cool for school---I was always sensitive that way. My problem was that it took me years to understand what I sensed. I guess thats part of that other story that keeps popping its head up. Dont worry---Ill keep beating it back down.

Blue wasnt wary though---he was always balls out. Two years later, when he was an assistant manager at McDonalds. . .well, he was insufferable. So Dennis and yoga fired Blues imaginationhe was ready to burble enthusiasm for any new mysticism beyond the boundaries of that town and the notions of his step mother. But he was a year older than me. And in general he burbled more than I did---I was still the son of a hard ass engineer even if I was doing theater. One night, there was an impromptu party after the workshop. One of the college guys parents were out of town. Blue and I had a beer, it might have been my first. Perhaps mercifully, I didnt like it enough to have more than one. Still dont. Now if theyd been serving Bordeaux. . .well, I got there soon enough, I suppose. Blue and I mostly talked to each other over the music. Sort of---remember music then? We didnt have anything intelligent to say to the college guys, and the girls, well, they didnt think we did either. We wandered into one of the bedrooms where a few people were. I think I smelled the strange, pungent smell before I saw the joint. The girls were giggling and Dennis, lounging on an elbow on the floor, had the eyes. Another first. Big night. We werent freaked or anything but I remember feeling a mix of fear and wonder just the same. Not that we smoked any dope with them. They offered and we declined. They were cool. We tried to be, although I intuitively felt our standing with the girls sinking even lower. Just another humiliation that fourteen year old boys suffer at the hands of sixteen year old girls. One of them was uncoiled by Dennis and Liz was cozy with this guy Bob on the couch. Bob was another twenty year old who seemed almost middle aged to me. Funny from here, thats for sure---but at least Bob was working up a drinking problem and the accompanying darkness, so he did seem older. I felt silly and awkward just standing there---I guess Blue did too. So we soon wandered back out. I cant decide if this was a vindication or indictment of my mothers judgment. Not that it mattered one bit in the long run. It was certainly something to talk about later on the street. We were so not curious about dope then. But I did notice that those guys were cool people and they didnt lose their minds or grow second heads. Even after the real rehearsals started, my mother didnt cross paths that much with Blue and me for awhile. Her part was confined to a couple of scenes in the second act. And when she was there it was cool. Blue started calling her Bambi, because of her false eye lashes. Soon everybody did. Except me, of course. Coming from Blue, it wasnt mean or derogatory, and it made her laugh. It mightve been a touch meaner on some of the girls lips, but she didnt care about that either. Shed say to me, Im too old to care what people think about me. Although she really wasnt. She was a reasonably young woman then, not that I thought so at the time. She wouldve been forty-two that summer. I dont know what I think about that now that I think about it. She looked good then, maybe her best. She hadnt put on weight and a little bit of age just made her high cheek bones more prominent beneath her thick, almost black hair. And of course she smoked and drank some---it was the 70s. The picture of her that I still have out on a shelf is from then---shes looking

into the mirror in the make up room. You can clearly see the eyelashes, but its a great picture. Its the one that we put on the coffin at the service too. But that was later. Guys and Dolls opens with a fast paced silent pantomime throughout the overture called Runyonland. Its really a dance reflecting a collage of life on Times Square, hookers, gamblers, pickpockets, and cops all plying their trades---at least in a castrated musical theater version. Dennis choreographed it. Blue and I, since we were the smallest men, got to be transvestite hookers in one sequence. I could tell that it tickled Dennis mean streak. What I remember now is how shocked I was that pantyhose were incredibly hot under stage lights in a Midwestern August. I got off easy---Blue didnt. At the end of that bit, I fell through a manhole that had been cut in the thrust stage. After a costume change, I was a young pickpocket---which was better. But Blue, reincarnated as a john, had to proposition one of the girls, who was supposed to be a secretary rather than a hooker. So, she slaps him on a downbeat and runs. He chases her across the stage to the musica nice enough bit, right? Except the girl, Vicki, who was tall, rangy, and was who we had seen coiled around Dennis, often forwent the stage slap shed been taught and just belted him. Either she was caught up in the reality of doing or she was being a bitch. Thats what we thought too. We rehearsed Runyonland a lot---we had to, it was a dance. And things would screw up just a few measures after Blues bit, and wed stop. And Dennis would always end his notes with a wicked smile and, Okay, everybody, once more, take it from the slap. A couple of days, we took it from the slap at rates approaching once a minute. At night, walking around, Blue would vent his outrage. Bill, he does hit deliberately! And that bitch Vicki wails on me. And then LAUGHS! I would laugh then too. . .it was kinda funny. . .But discreetly, Blues outrage, like his enthusiasm, was a swift flowing river. It was best neither to encourage it nor try to staunch the flow. People, maybe starting with Vera, always kicked Blue. I sensed he had bad juju before I was old enough to know what that meant. Maybe take it from the slap was a metaphor for his life. The show went up in The Barn---a board of education building that must have dated from the 1920s. It was all brick and wood---and hellishly hot in the summer. You only see buildings like that now in Its a Wonderful Life. The jerry rigged cast iron light board might have been that old too. If you were agile you could climb in and out the window in the backstage area and go down to the Dairy Queen on the corner. The dressing rooms were above, separated by a cat walk. In the guys, there was graffiti that read, Actors are just like other people---dumber than snake shit. I have since found that to be only too true. Almost fatally. But never mind. Its that other story again. While we sat in the sultry summer darkness waiting for our cues, wed play the cigarette game. Where you dragged on and then passed a cigarette held vertically, whoever was holding it when the ash fell off lost. These kids today with I phones dont know what theyre missing in terms of ingenuity and good clean fun, huh? And other Civil War stories.

The show was a big success. And did boffo box office---even college hippies could figure out that Damon Runyon would play well to middle-aged WWII vets who were mostly hicks who had never been to New York City. Especially if you throw in some nubile young things in showgirl costumes---this was before the feminist terror. The show probably was pretty good---by semi-pro standards. And the slap got a big response, which made it all worthwhile to Blue. But that was the kind of guy he was. And me? The die was cast---this is probably where we should question my mothers judgment. I suppose you could question her judgment for going to the cast party too, as she was one of very few actual adults. And while no one got too worked up about it, underage drinking and smoking were technically illegal even then. On the other hand, back then people did get real worked up about dope. There must have been some there, but folks were being at least discreet enough to keep Blue and I from blundering into it. Speaking of poor judgment, another of the college guys folks had gone away and that was where the party was. Everybody was happy. The girls were even talking to Blue and me without being snotty. We were drinking rum. Hows that for an indicator of a months progress? A great leap forward---people still quoted Mao then. Or cursed him and Red China. My mother had a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. We had a tacit understanding that, within some ill defined limits, we were peers for the duration. Jeez, now it sounds like The Ice Storm, but it really wasnt that creepy. It was really more of a cast party. Closer to a hippie Waiting for Guffman. This house featured a player piano and that became a nexus of interest. People were working their way through the five or six scrolls and singing. Practically prehistoric karaoke. Someone stuffed in the last unplayed scroll and out of the piano came the joyous melody of The Green Beret. I was a little ways away from the piano since I didnt sing very well. At the end of the first verse, the chorus was interrupted by almost a primal scream. ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MINDS? This guy Terry burst into the middle of the room and stopped in front of me, but facing the piano. He was practically frothing and his eyes were wild. Maybe he was high on more than dope but that probably didnt matter. Terry had gone to high school with the college guys, but he was from the other side of the tracks and hadnt gone off to college with them. Hed gone to Vietnam instead. I dont know how long hed been back and out. Right then---he was losing it. He grabbed a baseball bat that was out for some reason and advanced on the piano that was still spewing out The Green Beret, which added an extra special touch of insanity. I grabbed the bat head on his back swing. It seemed like a good idea to stop him. Even helpful. Faster than I could understand, it started to seem like a bad idea. Terry whirled around his left hand knotted my shirt around my throat as he pulled me up on my toes. I stared into his eyes, and they were like a wolfs. So, for a moment, as his grip tightened, I went to Vietnam too. And it was icky. Then, his eyes cleared and he let go of me. And started to cry. Which weirded me out. And he said, Im sorry, man, I used to crawl

down tunnels with a pistol in one hand and a grenade in the other. I didnt know what to say. Then he turned to the group. You people are fucking crazy. And then he quickly walked out of the room. Thats when I learned that crazy depends on which end of the barrel youre looking down. It really was a big summer. Someone put a different scroll into the piano. It had all happened so quickly it was almost like it hadnt happened. Thats what it felt like to me, although probably I was just skipping processing what had almost happened. I just kept thinking, Thank god Mom didnt see that or somebody mightve gotten hurt. The party overcame it, maybe it was an extra impetus. I saw Terry again in a bit and he seemed cool. I saw Mom, too---she was probably a little buzzed although I couldnt recognize it at the time, only now by thinking about the images of her in my mind. And Blue was half passed out under the pool table. Me? I was a little buzzed but was treading lightly on that peer thing. I guess I must have been because all I remember is someone shouting that the police were here---I dont have an image to go with it. But then I was alert, and through the curtains I saw their shadows starting up the front walk. Mom shouted, Blue, get up! Blue popped awake and leaped up. But hed been lying under the pool table. After the impact, he was suspended in mid air for a long moment, like Wiley Coyote. It was amazing. And then he crashed to the ground. I didnt have time to be awed though. As Blue scrambled out from under and to his feet, Mom said Bill, Blue, now! She took off toward the back door, delicately placing her drink on an end table as she went. She kept the cigarette though. As the police pounded on the front door and folks scrambled, we poured out the back. Others followed, but we were leading the pack. Kind of like when the crap game is broken up in Guys and Dolls. Mom vaulted the wooden picket fence, still with that cigarette in one hand. She was only forty-two then. We were right behind her. A quick circle through a grove of trees and we were back to the car and soon home, cheating death and the local constabulary. And that is my favorite memory of my mother. It was a long time ago, too. A few years later, after I left for college, Mom got sick and a few years later she died. I can still get sad about that, so lets skip it. At her funeral, they played When the Saints Go Marching In as per her wishes. And she wasnt a football fan. A lot of those other people are gone---thats why this feels like a ghost story. Terry ODd not too many years after the show. Later, so did Liz, his younger sister that we dropped during the trust exercise. I dont think that had anything to do with it though. When I was back to bury Mom, I heard that Bob had drank himself to death. Dennis went to Hollywood and did a couple bit parts before he came off a motorcycle in one of the canyons. Vicki is alive---I saw her on Facebook. But I dont friend people these days, even on Facebook. It would probably be a mistake anyway, and, besides, she didnt look seventeen anymore. Just kidding. Sort of. And me? Well, thats that other story I want to skip, but briefly. . .It was a formative summer for me. I did become an actor. I did some stuffbut guys in L.A. who have done a few parts in movies and TV are a dime a dozen. And there are even more who

just say they have. Do people say that anymore? I said, dime a dozen, to a kid the other day and hed never heard it. Im a little out of touch, I guess. Maybe because on my last movie, a few years ago, I got hurt a little doing a stunt. And I gotta say, the union stood by me so the settlement is okay but I cant walk so good. So I dont climb water towers anymore---or do lots of other things that I used to think were fun. What else? Before my mother died, she said, No one will ever love you like your mother. Well, she was right. Maybe because I stayed self sufficient and wary. Actually, I had a couple of serious girlfriends, and if Id played my cards right, I could be divorced now. Maybe they didnt play theirs right either, what with the settlement and my considerably reduced life expectancy. Nah, Im just being shitty because its fun and can be done sitting down. Blues a ghost, too. We stayed pretty close. For one, despite our introduction to it, we spent a lot of time smoking dope together at the other end of our teens. When Blue was in college, he realized that he was gay after all. It didnt matter to me. He went on to publish a magazine, among other things. But Blue never caught a break, he never shook the bad juju---chief among the other things he did was be sick. It was the 80s, man. For the best part of ten years, he fought and suffered and tried experimental protocols. He stayed balls out and full of energy---he just lost stamina as his light waned. He said he just wanted to live to forty. He died at thirty-nine and a half. Take it from the slap. His blood survivor was his step mother the ex nun who disregarded all his quite elaborate funeral wishes, including his choice of song, and instead got a priest who ignored Blues entire life while eulogizing him. Okay, everybody, once more, take it from the slap. See, I told you I was right about her. That was a bad day. I had a steady run of them. I knew a lot of actors and a lot of them were gay. And all of them died. This actress friend and I had a standing date for mutual funerals and afterwards, or after the wake, wed go back to her place and fuck. Speaking of fun things. . .My mother once told me that sex and death went together, that it was an affirmation for the living. She was right about that too. Anyway, that actress and I met practically once a week for years. Now we dont speak, of course. So shes like a ghost too. Thats why, even if its not literally true, I feel like the last man standing. Which is pretty funny, because since the accident it hurts a lot to stand for very long. So now I sit and think about the ghosts. Maybe I should keep it to myself. I guess it depends on which end of the barrel youre looking down. Ive gotten a lot more philosophical than I was at fourteen. My mother used to say, You grow old or you die young, thems your choices. Ignoring which one she chose, its an interesting question. I mean, if you dont jump off a cliff when everybody else does, well, you end up spending a lot of time by yourself. I like that kind of subversive riff. It seems like 1972 was the beginning and now Im pert near the end. I dont know. Maybe not. Maybe Ill man up to the pain and go out more---or better yet, take a couple more vicodines and go out more. Maybe I will try to meet some new people. And maybe Ill tell them to call me Blue. Just for the subversive riff.

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