PARADE DAY
David McKenna
Drew stretches out next to his wife and son and pretends that stillness is sleep. His synapses crackle with useless information, old and new. A ground-breaking report on happiness — what it is, where to find it. A dancer named Dementia who slept with him for two blue Valiums. The newest data on near-death experiences. He shifts, but the images persist. A plan to permanently close parts of Detroit. A batch of bad coke from his erstwhile friend Jack Crockett.
Pam is a light sleeper, even with the white-noise machine on. She turns her back and reaches for Brian as Drew fidgets and sighs. He drifts off and dreams of a factory where Crockett is brushing white powder from his long black hair and sky-blue jeans. The powder is a lethal contaminant. The air around the plant is thick with it and with angry shouting. Drew tries to run while holding his breath. Someone grabs his shoulder and says, “Tell them to hush.”
The red digits on the clock radio spell out 3:49. Pam is nudging him, her voice like icicles. “Open the window and tell them to hush.“
A chorus of harsh laughter wakes him fully. The noise is from outside, the miscreants young males. Their chatter bounces off row homes and swirls upward on the wind. The narrow South Philadelphia street is like an amphitheater.
“Don’t shake it, you’ll waste it.”
“It’s a J, man. Can’t you spell?”
“Your mascara’s running, dude.”
Pam sits up. “I can’t take much more of this.”
“It’s just kids,” Drew says. “Turn up the noise machine.”
He jumps out of bed, throws on sweats and sneakers, staggers downstairs to turn on the TV. A pale woman in dark glasses holds a composite of the bug-eyed alien who raped her on Uranus. Lady Di approaches in a low-cut gown, followed by her shame-faced prince. A chubby cadet with dreadlocks shows shoppers how to use a virtual reality helmet. Drew recognizes him immediately. So it goes with deja vu.
It’s bitter cold, except near the electric heating panel. The wind picked up after midnight, during his 60-minute drive from work. It’s whipping through the alanthus tree and pounding on the storm door like a drunk who lost his key. The rowdies in the street cry out with each new gust.
“Oh mama, even my sideburns are cold.”
“Gimme a beer, mine froze.”
“No way. You snooze, you lose.”
Drew resists an impulse to sneak a peek through the blinds. He pads out to the kitchen, where it’s harder to hear the noisemakers, and fixes a drink. The microwave hums like an execution chamber, until an abrupt ping restores it to silence. In the TV room, he sips warm milk and pushes another button. A pair of soft white males gawk over beers at the Swedish Bikini Team. He fingers the remote until the channel-surfing rhythm feels right. The Pope waves at him. A tennis star holds up a stick of deodorant. A toothy weathergirl says “Happy New Year.“
He forgot about New Year’s as soon as he put the newspaper to bed. The midnight countdown took place while he was driving home with Miles Davis on the tape deck, blasting ice off the pine trees. Too late for the roar of Times Square, the Ascent of the Apple. It’s been years since he blew on a plastic horn and shot out fluorescent overheads with champagne corks. He phoned Pam to say he’d be late, but she already knew. Drive safely, see you next year.
Madonna is on MTV, gyrating in a gondola. A far cry from the jazz Drew used to play after work. Now he can only bear to hear good music in a moving car, watching purple sunsets or smooth, moonlit roads. His new routine at home is less taxing. Boastful jocks and bad actors distract him with pop tunes and perky late-night patter. Liza is ailing, Oscar is up for grabs. Lo, how the mighty orange men have fallen.
The 24-hour news station suits him best. South African massacres end with Super Bowl party suggestions. Starving Somalis upstage battered Bosnians. Rwandan refugees roam like mud-bathed pilgrims at Woodstock II. His distance from them is soothing. What a relief, not having to worry about their problems. His motto is “Only what’s necessary.” If he waits, the rowdies will drift away.
”I had a blue Christmas.”
“Have a hunka burnin’ love.”
“Don’t barf on my blue suede shoes.”
Drew retreats to the kitchen again and looks out the window at Brian’s Big Wheel lodged in a mound of dirty snow. A greeting card on the windowsill shows Christ in a manger surrounded by awestruck peasants and livestock. The cow appears to be singing. Even the straw is glowing with delight. Drew can’t remember the last time he felt even mild surprise. In the fall he had a vision of his tire blowing out 15 miles before it actually happened and of a truck piercing the dark with a carousel of colored lights. A pre-ordained tow job.
The biggest mystery in his life is storm windows. He removed them last spring but they vanished without a trace in the summer. Pam says he’s losing his mind. He’s lost something, for sure. The house is unarguably colder. The milk can’t stave off the chill from the windows or the dread that creeps through him after midnight. The wind kicks up. Bare branches tap the back door like a secret lover.
He slouches back to the TV room. The newsman has dished out the blood and guts, and is serving up lighter fare. Drew recognizes two stories that came over the wire at work. In Tupelo, Miss., police have arrested 15 members of a Korean Christian cult who were driving naked in a van that crashed into a phone pole. The Koreans, from Texas, had been advised by God to toss away possessions and rush east for the Last Judgment. In Phoenix, astronomers have deduced the existence of a mysterious dark matter that will hold the universe together for billions more years. The Koreans won’t believe it; neither does Drew.
Elmer from Sioux City can’t believe the Cornhuskers will start two tight ends today. Their coach wouldn’t know a post pattern from a pick-and-roll. “The phone lines are open, Nebraska fans,” says the sportscaster. “You gonna let Elmer talk like that about your coach?“
A voice in the street says, “You gonna let Sal break your balls like that, Joey?”
The sports guy leers at the camera. His tie hurts Drew’s eyes. He turns off the TV, trips over Brian’s rocket launcher, drags himself upstairs. His face in the bathroom mirror is gaunt, but his graying hair seems to be getting thicker. At 35, he looks like an old prospector who never found gold. Not even Pearl Drops can save him. The nicotine stains on his teeth remind him of the Last Resort, his hangout until five years ago, when he quit booze and drugs after a three-day binge that landed him in the slammer.
The noise machine is at full blast, but he can still hear the rowdies as he creeps back into the bedroom, pulls off his clothes and crawls under the sheets. Pam tenses when he touches her shoulder. He thinks of her sharp-eyed optimism, her aversion to all things ugly and mean. She annoys him even more than curbside cretins jabbering about Elvis Presley’s final bowel movement.
“I’m telling you, they found him next to the toilet.”
“The King fell off the throne.”
“Yeah, with his pants around his ankles.”
Pam turns with a dramatic flourish and faces Drew in the dark. “If you won’t do something, I will.”
He lurches across the room like W.C. Fields. A blast of frigid air greets him when he sticks his head outside. Where did those storm windows go? A shadowy figure prances in the glare of a streetlight, cursing. Most of Drew’s youth was misspent on streetcorners, so he has to fake indignation.
“Take your party somewhere else,” he shouts, trying to sound stern despite his nakedness. “We need to sleep.”
The chatter stops. An empty can clatters on concrete and rolls in the wind. A reply swirls upward. “Sal forgot his medication. He’s having a reaction.”
The noise resumes at a more subdued level soon after Drew shuts the window. Bottles clink, bags rustle as the rowdies move their refreshments to another stoop. One voice dominates, issuing instructions. They’re probably neighborhood kids. Most of Drew’s time is spent in transit or at work, so he can’t be sure.
He feels like an intruder when the first light of dawn reveals Brian’s hand buried in Pam’s thick red curls. She grabs the child’s arm as glass shatters and a fresh round of laughter erupts. Drew rolls out of bed and into his clothes. “Just call the police,” Pam says as he hurries downstairs.
The TV in the living room stops him. He stares at the dark tube and imagines the breaking stories. One news day is linked seamlessly to the next by a formless jumble of data and an elaborate charade of forward motion. By now, the 5 a.m. reader has been replaced by another stiff and by images of fast food in France and bored teens in Butte, Montana. Paris has embraced mediocrity. Casual sex has caught on out West.
The underwater blue of dawn is streaming between blinds and window frames. He has to be in work by 4 p.m. The rowdies have disrupted his routine. Someone yells “Strut, don’t stagger” as several empty cans hit the street at once. The command strikes a match in Drew. He unlatches the main door and shouts “Don’t you guys have a home?” The wind whips the storm door back, snapping the chain that secured it.
A dozen Elvis Presleys turn around, all wearing pancake makeup and thermal gear under pajamas imprinted with black and white vertical stripes. Some are carrying large photos of local politicians who are serving jail terms. Others are holding spray cans and standing next to a large posterboard that reads JAILHOUSE ROCK — SOUTHBOTTOM COMICS CLUB.
”Today’s the parade,” says a Las Vegas-era Elvis with a beer gut and a purple pompadour.
The parade. Drew forgot New Year’s again and the annual mummers’ strut up Broad Street. Lady Di and her lovers. Alien sex fiends and silver transvestites mincing past judges at City Hall.
“Don’t you know about the parade?” Fat Elvis says.
Drew doesn’t answer. Fat Elvis says, “What planet you from?”
Duelling sax-and-banjo bands in sequined hats and doublets. Screaming spectators waving beer cans and soft pretzels at short, round men with six-foot wings and Aztec headdresses. Blue-faced, pigtailed toughs hiking up satin dresses to piss on storefronts, defy the cold, forge new links with pagan ancestors. Their day will fly by like a dream.
Fat Elvis turns to his comrades and shouts, “This guy doesn’t know about the parade.”
Drew remains silent. Tonight, when they’re safely distant, he’ll fill the front page with mummers. He’ll join the other editors and titter at photos of pipefitters from Mars, longshoremen in fuchsia heels and fishnet stockings. It’s the flesh-and-blood mummers he has no time for.
A pickup truck turns up the narrow street and brakes outside his house. Scrambling Elvi clamp posterboard and photos to the front bumper and side panels. Loudspeakers blare the “Jailhouse Rock” intro, then fall silent. Just a test.
The Elvises climb onto the truck, and Drew yells after them. “Who’s going to clean up this mess?”
“Happy New Year to you too, pal,” Fat Elvis says.
Drew can barely move, his rage is so big. Then he bolts inside, eyeing the tube. War in Liberia didn’t lull him, the Afghan earthquake won’t. He grabs his down coat and dashes into the street just as the truck coughs up a black cloud and starts pulling away.
“Not so fast,” he says, grabbing the truckbed gate. Several laughing Elvises reach out and help him clamber over the side.
Fat Elvis is holding a bottle of Jack Daniels. He curls his lip and says, “I hope you don’t plan on raising a ruckus, friend.”
Drew shakes his head. “I just want to see the parade.”
“In that case, welcome aboard.”
He passes the bottle and Drew drinks deep. The liquor scorches his throat, explodes in his gut and settles with a soothing warmth that spreads slowly to fingers and toes, eyeballs and earlobes.
A skinny Elvis with mauve muttonchops — he looks like a young Jack Crockett — extends his hand and says, “You could use a boost, brother.”
“Much obliged, son,” Drew says, accepting two green pills and washing them down with the whiskey. “I surely could.”
The music resumes with no warning as the truck speeds deep into South Philly: an ominously modulating guitar intro, the snap of a snare drum, and then Elvis himself, snarling and spiteful and hell-bent on trouble, with back-up vocals from a full squad of fired-up disciples who can’t wait to strut their stuff.
Drew can see the parade’s starting point, which looks like a mass arrest of clowns. He holds on to Fat Elvis as the truck runs a red light and jumps a curb, just missing a bearded man pushing a cart jammed with balloons and plastic horns. The balloon man freezes, then jumps into the street, screaming oaths and gesturing obscenely.
“Happy New Year to you too, pal,“ Drew shouts, reaching for another hit of Jack.
— END —
