Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [146]
A day or two later, Gaylen and my mother had a horrible argument over the situation with Eve. They were both sitting in the kitchen, yelling at each other, and Frank was with them, trying to mediate. Things got out of hand. “I do not want you to see that girl again,” my mother shouted. Gaylen shouted back: “To hell with you. You can’t tell me what to do about this. Quit trying to fucking boss me.”
My mother got up quickly, reached over to the kitchen counter and grabbed a long butcher’s knife, and before anybody could react, she had pushed Gaylen back against the wall in his chair, and was pressing the point of the knife up against his Adam’s apple. There was fire in her eyes, and her voice was slow and shaky. “You will not ever see that damn whore slut girl again. Do you understand me? If you do, I’ll kill you.”
Everybody stayed still for a long moment, not talking or moving. My mother screamed at Gaylen a few more times, then backed away and went over and put down the knife. She sat down and started to cry. Gaylen got up, tears in his eyes, and walked out the back door. He kicked the screen so hard on his way out, it sailed into the backyard. He spent the rest of the day throwing his bowie knife at the cherry tree out back, until sap streamed like blood out of the knife wounds. The cherry tree never bloomed much after that.
That was more or less the last that Gaylen got to see Eve. From what I hear, she went on to have a beautiful daughter, but Gaylen never got to see her or know her.
GAYLEN’S LIFE OUTSIDE THE HOME GOT STRANGE and mysterious after that—much like the life Gary had been living a few years before.
One night my mother and I were sitting in the kitchen, talking. A car pulled into our driveway with its lights off. It was an older sedan, and it was full of men. Something about the car’s approach triggered my mother’s fears. “Turn off the lights,” she commanded me. The men poured out of the car, rushed up on our front porch, and began pounding on the door. My mother took me upstairs and locked us into my father’s old office. From there, we could hear the men outside. “Open the goddamn door, Gaylen,” they were shouting. “We know you’re in there. Don’t make us come in.” My mother called the police. Soon, the sound of sirens came climbing up the hill. The men rushed back to their car and took off.
My mother and I went to some neighbors up the street and stayed until Frank came home from his job, at about one in the morning. When we reentered our house, we found that a back window had been broken. Gaylen’s bedroom had been ransacked.
A night or two later, Gaylen showed up, looking bedraggled. My mother told him about what had happened. Gaylen took it all in and didn’t say a word. After a few moments of sitting there, he went out and got in his car and left. It was the last we would see of him for two years. The next we heard, he was in New York, reading his poems at a club somewhere in Greenwich Village, and drinking himself unconscious whenever possible.
IN LATE AUGUST 1965, FRANK JR. WAS DRAFTED INTO THE ARMY. This was during the period when America’s involvement in Vietnam was heating up, and my mother and I worried about the prospect of my brother being sent off to fight, and perhaps die, for such a confusing and wasteful cause. Frank, though, had more metaphysical concerns. It was the belief of the Jehovah’s Witnesses that if a person served in the armed services and died on the battlefield, then it was the same as dying in a state of violence or sin. In such a case, one would forfeit his right to enter God’s kingdom. Frank had applied for the status of a conscientious