Band on the Run

by Penn Stewart

David was a “change of life baby,” one of those children who come along when parents feel their parenting days are nearly over. One might imagine the feelings of seeing goal posts moved just as the thoughts of crossing it emerged, thoughts of a future where one’s own needs might be considered before someone else’s. That is, after all, what parents do, put their child’s needs ahead of their own. At least that’s what’s expected. So to have a glimpse of that destination and have it snatched away when the word pregnant is first uttered for the first time in years, can be difficult.

But having been through everything twice already, it was easier to fall into the ruts of routine: night feedings and diaper changes gave way to carpools and PTA meetings. They took him to temple, they bought him a Schwinn for Hanukah, and his friends would occasionally sleepover. Underneath it all though, a nagging grain of resentment grew into an ugly pearl of spite, and after ten years the broken jaw released all that had been pent up: the drinking, the infidelities, the abuse. I imagine these feelings and things not as an excuse, but as a possible answer of why.

On January 31st, 1975, David died a victim of a murder suicide. He was eleven years-old and one of my best friends.

If you were to ask his teachers at the time, they’d have said David was a clown,
disruptive and not serious about his studies. Fair enough, but he wasn’t stupid. A particular music teacher, recently married and attractive, developed a deep dislike for David. He reciprocated her disdain by circulating a petition among the students to have her fired. We’d listened in Civics class and figured it was the appropriate way to voice our grievances. I didn’t care for the teacher either, but I had already succumbed to the safety of conformity, so when David actually brought the petition with numerous “signatures” to the Principal’s office, I was surprised. Of course, my parents, the principal, and the teacher didn’t buy it. My name was second on the petition, just behind David’s—being second probably saved me from major punishment. The teacher remained in her position, but we had made her cry that day. I felt awful. David felt vindicated. At least his grin made me think so.

Violence permeated most aspects of our lives: fights at bus stops after or before school, the threat of the paddle at school, silent pinching of soft flesh by teachers who never raised their voices, and our parents with their wooden spoons, belts, and hard hands. And on Sundays I learned of eternal damnation by a God who loved me. It seemed all who cared for and looked after me were honor bound to maintain me through violence. David and I didn’t talk about things like this. We were ten and liked to ride our bikes, hunt crawdads in the storm sewers, and shoplift Hot-Wheels from K-Mart.

David’s older sister had a record collection, just like most teenage girls at the time. I imagine his brother had one too, but I have no recollection of his brother’s room. Since I also had an older brother, mine only six years older, I understood the danger of trespassing in certain locations. His sister’s wrath was more tolerable apparently. Even so, we sat in her room on the floor and listened to records. One of our favorites, or at least the one that has stuck in my mind all these years later, was Paul McCartney’s “Band on the Run.” The lyrics move from being trapped, to repentance, and then release as “the rain exploded.” Those words spoke to us on a level we felt more than we understood. David and I were a band, a band of two. As we rode our bikes through the neighborhood and the street lights came on, we longed to stay out in the night, willing to face unknown dangers rather than the ones we knew awaited us at home. As much as we wanted to “never be found,” we had to return.

David imagined running away, just as I suppose his mother did. We felt trapped in
childhood, and she felt trapped in something else, something larger. As kids we imagined pedaling our bikes so hard that we would take flight and leave the Earth behind, but in her world, she saw no escape, save one: a car idling in a closed garage.

There were no announcements at school; I didn’t go to any kind of memorial service. Since Columbine, the service of grief counselors for students who have endured trauma has become commonplace. In 1975, no one thought of such things. Trauma we experienced directly or tangentially was simply the cost of survival.

I often wonder why she took David with her. Was she afraid to go alone? Was it a way to add to the pain of those left behind? Did she want to make sure it wasn’t David who found her? Only one person knew, and David is buried next to her. I don’t know how I feel about that.

I write now to keep David alive, if only in my memory. He makes cameos in my short stories as an irreverent pudgy redhead, prone to fart jokes and burping the alphabet. In doing so, I keep that part of me alive too, the part that existed before January 31st, 1975.

Penn Stewart lives and writes in Wichita Falls, Texas. His latest  fiction appears in The Westchester Review, Iron Horse Literary Review,  Waccamaw, and he's the author of The Water in Our Veins--a chapbook of stories--and the novel Fertile Ground.