Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [159]
“I didn’t know that things were this imminent,” I told Grace.
She said: “Your mother didn’t want you to know. She wanted to protect you.”
My mother and brother had made the down payment on a small trailer and were now living in a courtyard park, down the main highway, in the semi-rural outpost of Oak Grove. They did not yet have a phone.
I went to see them. The trailer was aqua green and white, and had two small bedrooms, a bathroom, and a living room-kitchen area. There was no air-conditioning, and it was hot and sticky in there. I could tell that my mother felt crushed. As she later told me and many other people: “I died the day I moved into this place.”
I was officially parted from my family. My brother Frank would stay with my mother until the day she died, but I would never go back home, and the three of us would never sleep under the same roof again.
FOR A LONG TIME, I DID NOT LOOK BACK. I tried college for a while, but after a bad love affair, I lost the footing of my educational career and never regained it. I went on to have many other girlfriends; I went on to participate in radical politics; I went on to use numerous drugs, without ever developing any drug problems—at least not for a time. And when I tired of what I saw drugs doing to my generation, I went on to become a drug counselor—a vocation I worked at for several years.
Only one time during this period did I visit my brother Gary. It was in the aftermath of the love affair I just mentioned. The woman and I had been boyfriend and girlfriend for our last year or two of high school, and we were talking about getting married. Then one day she met a man she really liked—a born-again Christian—and within a few weeks, they were married and she was pregnant. I felt shattered. I felt that a dream— the possibility for a family of my own—had been taken away from me. I started staying up all night drinking, sleeping all day. I quit college, lost my tuition, and ran out of money. I was a mess. It was a classic case of romantic depression, and I was milking it for everything I could.
Then one Sunday, my mother and Grace talked me into accompanying them to Salem to visit Gary. I guess they thought it would do me some good. Gary and I were nervous and tentative with each other at first—we had not seen each other for years, and I was now a young longhaired man, sitting in a room with a lot of shorthaired men, some of whom weren’t looking too kindly at me. But after a few minutes of talking with my brother, I realized how much I still loved him, and how much I had missed having him around. When he asked me how I had been, I told him. I told him everything—the whole story about the bad romance and the ensuing despair. I thought he would understand. I thought, if anybody would give me sympathy, it would be him.
Instead, he sat silently for several long moments, regarding me. Finally, he smiled his crooked smile, and said: “Well, partner, that sounds rough. But anytime you want to trade your troubles for mine, let me know. I mean, hell, at least nobody has taken your youth from you. You’re still free.”
At the time, I thought: He doesn’t understand. I realize now he understood far more than I ever could. Once again, Gary was telling me the truth about our lives. Maybe if I’d understood that, things might have ended up different.
ONE DAY IN EARLY 1971, MY MOTHER CALLED ME IN A PANIC. She had a horror story to tell.
She and Grace had gone to see Gary at Oregon State Penitentiary the day before. When Gary entered the visiting room, my mother said, he was a different man than she had ever seen before. His face and hands were bloated—like the flesh of a drowning victim—and he was taking heavy steps, like a stuporous Frankenstein monster. He could barely talk; he slurred his sentences, and a stream of drool ran out of his mouth,