While this year's Dunbar Christmas will be seasoned with loss and sadness, we plan to proceed, as best we can, toward that day of days, December twenty-seventh 1:45P.M. at The White Paw County Courthouse, room 412.
I will be calling to remind you of that information and look forward to discussing the festive bounty of your holiday season. Until that time we wish the best to you and yours.
Merry Christmas,
The Dunbars
Jamboree
EVER since Dad and Rochelle threw me out I have been staying with my sister and her family. Marty doesn't want me living inside the house proper so I sleep in the garage. He says he wants me back here so I can keep an eye out for the sons of bitches who broke in and sawed the handlebars off his motorcycle.
It's a good thing nobody tried ripping off his shingles that way he'd have me sleeping on the roof.
Vicki told me I should count my blessings. 'There's plenty of people who got it a lot worse than this. People in Europe are living in drain-pipes with flies crawling all over their faces. They're eating cardboard and bathing in their own spit. Over in China they have to sleep standing up in muddy ditches. This here,' she said, spreading out her arms to indicate majesty, 'this here is nothing to look down your nose at. You're living like a king. Look at everything I've done for you.'
I looked at the carpet remnants she had laid upon the concrete floor for use as a bed, and at the table she fashioned by placing a board on top of the grill. For decoration she had nailed up a poster picturing a baby orangutan sitting behind a cluttered desk, up to his neck in paperwork. The poster reads 'One of these days I've got to get organizized.'
I used to think that Vicki had something going for her but now, when I ask myself how I ever got such a notion, I shrug my shoulders and chalk it up to my past ignorance and youth. I was maybe ten years old when Vicki decided, out of nowhere, to join her high school chorus. She auditioned and was accepted, just like that. I can recall listening to her practice all alone in her room, holding a stick of deodorant in place of a microphone. Her voice was nothing special but she never allowed that fact to dampen her spirits. 'I'm very much into music. I'm so much into the whole fucking entertainment industry that it practically scares the life out of me. I'm destined for something big, some-thing bigger than the both of us. Something huge.' I watched as she stood before the mirror, brushing out her hair and challenging her reflection. 'You are a winner, at the top of your game. You call the shots, nobody but you.' She would then change her clothes three or four times while discussing her future and all the records she would release. I would observe her, lying on the bed with a stuffed animal and see that as a record cover: Vicki, The Early Years, orPlayfully Yours, Vicki! I had it all worked out.
I figured that, once her career took off, Vicki would go through several managers before turning to me. 'Please, Chug. If you want me to beg I will. I need you now because, damn it, you're the only person I can trust.' As her manager I would ac-company her on all of her concert engagements, where ordinary people would approach her, thrilled and nervous, their faces shiny with admiration. Vicki might sign autographs and pose for snapshots but with the understanding that none of these people could ever be her true friends, only her fans. After a concert we would be led out of the stadium to a waiting tour bus equipped with a refrigerator, bathroom, and comfortable seats that fold into beds when you're ready to call it a night. Vicki would curl up in the seat beside me and whisper, 'What do you think of the way I performed 'Love Don't Stand a Chance'? Honestly, Chug, what's your opinion?' Then I would tell her, honestly, taking her fragile personality into consideration. First I would mention that her hair and makeup looked really great. 'That satin poncho is a knockout!' I would highlight all the positive aspects, and then, very gently, I might say, 'Perhaps at tomorrow night's show it would be a good idea to hold the weeping until the end of the concert.'
Vicki would nod her head and remove a small notebook from her tour purse. 'Good idea, Chug,' she would say. 'Excellent suggestion.'
The band members would twist in their seats, trying to read what she had written down but Vicki, feeling their watchful eyes, would hold the notebook tight against her chest. They would know damned good and well tomorrow but tonight it's just between Vicki and her brother. And that is what I had al-ways planned to be, her brother. Not in order to grow rich I never really thought of that. It would be her idea to make me her manager not mine. Of course I would often be surrounded by enthusiastic crowds of people asking, 'What's she really like?' That would be fun, sure, but only for a little while. I would never have used her as a ploy to get my name in the papers or to put out a record of my own. Far from it. That's some-thing our father would try. He talks like he can smell money from a distance of five miles. He'll see someone wearing a tweed cap and driving a sportscar and say, 'Now there's a guy with something in his wallet.' That, to me, is like seeing someone on crutches and guessing they have a problem with their leg. Any idiot can do that.
Our father would be the first in line, hoping to cash in on Vicki's success. He would want his own album or a guest appearance on a television special and Vicki and I would have to spend many long hours explaining that, despite what he may have read in the magazines, it really doesn't work that way. After the way he has treated us it would be both entertaining and embarrassing to hear him say, 'But a lot of people just sort of. . talk through a song. All right, OK, maybe I can't 'sing' but I sure as hell can talk, can't I? C'mon kids, you know I can pull it off. Get me a record, just one. One record for your old dad. I can make it a hit, you know I can. One hit record for Daddy.'
Vicki and I would watch him beg. Then we might call in a few record executives and watch him beg some more.
'I could do 'The Man in My Little Girl's Life,'' he would say. 'There's all kinds of songs you can do without ever actually having to sing.'
'Oh?' the record executive would say. 'Name a few others.'
Our father would massage his forehead. 'Well,' he'd say. 'There's a lot of them, a whole hell of a lot.'
In my mind Vicki and I stand in the doorway watching our father beg for a recording contract. I figure that, to keep from laughing, I will have to bite the inside of my cheeks. Blood will rise up in my throat that same bitter taste you get after absentmindedly holding a coat hanger in your mouth. Afterwards the record executive will take Vicki and me to lunch at a steak restaurant, where we will recount every moment of our father's pathetic display. 'You two are the goddamned salt of the fucking earth,' the executive might say, slicing into his twice-baked potato. 'But that father of yours, Jesus Christ, what a.
Then Vicki and I would touch hands under the table, hoping that he might come up with the perfect word. I had this all worked out in my mind.
In her second year of high school Vicki dropped out of the chorus because the teacher was an asshole.
'I'm still into music like you wouldn't believe,' she said. 'But that son of a bitch Yelverton can kiss my rosy red you-know-what if he thinks I'm going to stand in the back row and take part in his bullshit Glen Campbell medley. I don't need that shit and I practically told him that right to his face. I just about said, 'I don'tneed this bullshit.' I was going to say, 'Who the hick cares about some lonely asshole stringing up telephone lines?' I don't need this kind of bullshit in my life because I've got a career to think about. Hell, Chug, I can write my own goddamned songs and you better believe I will.'
She decided to drop out of school altogether because it was too much bullshit and, being a night owl, she hated the hours. She thought she might get herself a job in the music industry. She said it as though there was a thriving music industry in our town. Shortly after dropping out of school Vicki and Dad engaged in a violent argument when one of her boyfriends accidentally set the living room sofa on fire. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched her cram clothing into paper bags. 'The day I allow that baldheaded bastard to smack me with a bag full of frozen chicken wings is the day I die,' she said, pausing to soothe the bruise on her forehead. 'I don't need this kind of bullshit in my life, not anymore. This bird is taking wing. I am out of here, friend.' She acted as though there was an airplane in the yard, the pilot tapping his fingers against the face of his watch, waiting. 'The next time you hear from me I'll be in California. California or Reno. I'm going to a place where people don't have to live up to their necks in bullshit. This is something I've been thinking about for a long time,' she said. 'One hell of a long time. Yes, sirree, Vicki has definitely met her quota of bull-shit once and for all. It's time to grab the bull by the horns and say,
