Strawberry Milkshakes with the Birdman of Alcatraz by Layla Ormbrek

“Freddie, it’s time to go. Get in.”

Ballard. July 1967. There’s nothing better than Seattle in July. You’ve been liberated from Monroe Junior High School for the summer. The clock means nothing. You could go anywhere on your bike. You even know how to take the bus downtown. If life were fair, you and your friend Ben would be sneaking into one of those seedy theaters  by the Market to watch The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. You’d be back by dinner, and no one would be the wiser.

But life isn’t fair. 

When you’re 12, no one thinks you’re more than just a pee-pants baby who isn’t allowed to stay at home by himself while the adults drive out to La Push in a car that’s probably going to overheat halfway there. Your older brother Bobby has been recruited as a driver because your Old Man and all of your uncles got lit in the basement last night.  None of the women have a license. Bobby just got his last month, and he looks subtly irritated when he’s pulled out of his black-lit bedroom with its hand-painted mural of Lyndon Johnson and Hitler congratulating each other. Great job, Lyndon. Hey, thanks, Adolf! Bobby’s eyes are blood-shot and he reeks of pot. None of the grown-ups recognize the smell and they keep asking each other quietly if he’s been eating too much garlic. 

Your Old Man is still loaded, sitting on the living room couch, laughing his ass off in the breathless, silent way he does when he gets out of an obligation. I feel just awful, won’t be able to make the trip. Have to sleep it off, you know. So, he’s out. 

 You think back to last night, when he trudged up to your room in the attic, where you were up too late reading Monster Comics. He stood  glassy-eyed at the top of the stairs, and you peered up from Frankenstein fleeing from the angry villagers, their cartoon pitchforks ablaze.

“Freddie, we haven’t got a chance. We haven’t got a chance in this country.”

You nodded. “Sure, Pop.” It’s always best to agree, or he comes closer and lectures you until you do, or tries to make you spell long words like imperturbability over and over again until you get them right. In that moment, when he stood swaying in your doorway, you thought back to all the jobs that your Old Man has been able to get so easily, despite the swiftness with which he can shake them off. Any machine shop will hire him no matter how erratic he can be, and he never had to serve in the war because he was considered essential as an expert tool-and-die maker. His little black leather book of designs, hand-drawn and straight from his brain, is highly coveted, but he won’t sell it off. Yes, Arne Bergdahl has been able to feed and clothe six kids, of which you are number six. You don’t think it’s the country that’s the problem here. But you’re wise enough not to say so. 

“If our name was —Mercer or Maynard—” he puts emphasis on Maynard to make it sound posh and effete, “we’d get a lot more respect around here.” Oh yeah. That old chestnut. The long-oppressed Norwegian minority. You nod wordlessly and he turns around, going back down to the too-loud laughter from his brothers and work buddies below. 

Now, standing outside on this fine July morning, the sun so bright it makes you squint, you’re about to climb into the backseat of the Plymouth. You see your mother already in the passenger seat, her jaw set stubbornly as a bulldog, handbag clutched expectantly in her lap. This is going to be a good time, you can imagine her repeating to herself. Last night, she worked the swing shift at Ballard Hospital and took the bus home because the Old Man was too much in his cups to come pick her up. She’s picking up shifts there to contribute to the household and also, you suspect, to get out of the house. Why Ma never learned to drive when she can watch people be cut open and die is beyond you, but it’s one of those things you accept about the ladies in your family, and you wonder if you’re going to have to drive your wife everywhere someday.

You don’t notice until after it’s too late that you’ve slid into the backseat next to your Uncle Dusty. Oh no. 

Uncle Dusty can drink all night, be awake all night, still be drunk the next morning, and never stop talking. And you’re his captive for the next three hours at least. You’re in the middle. Aunt Lorraine, Dusty’s wife, slides in on the other side. She can’t stand him at times like these, so you’re the human buffer. 

Before the car even starts,  Dusty is already off to the races, yammering on about Nixon and what next year’s election looks like, and what’s going on in San Francisco and Detroit, and whether it would be worth the ticket price to see Sammy Davis, Jr. From the moment Bobby backs out of the driveway until you’re well clear of the city and driving down wooded state highways, he never stops. 

You know that he’s a smart man, a mover and shaker as Ma says. Dusty had some kind of bone cancer as a teenager and had to have a leg amputated right above the knee. He walks around with a prosthetic so well you’d never know the difference. You saw him once, swimming at the Ballard High School Pool, the artificial leg lying on the side of the pool, inert, waiting for him to reattach it when he climbed out. When anyone complains about life, Dusty just taps on his wooden leg. He was an accountant for Governor Rosellini and knows all sorts of important people. But, you think, sitting next to him in the backseat, he sure is a moron right now. 

You can feel both of the women in the car holding their breath, waiting for him to stop. It’s at this moment that Dusty leans toward you, hoping to engage you personally.

“Seen any good movies lately, Freddie? I know you like movies.” Crown Royale wafts off of him in clouds. 

You reach mentally.The most recent and best movie you’ve seen was Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, but you weren’t supposed to be staying up late enough to watch that.So you say, “Uh, The Birdman of Alcatraz,” which was a recent Movie of the Week.A fairly tame and dignified choice. Burt Lancaster, playing a convicted murderer in prison, becomes one with the birds, studying them. Internal redemption and all that.You breathe out, thinking that the conversation that follows will be equally tame. 

Dusty leans even further forward, almost nose to nose with you, and asks, “Did you know, Freddie, that the Birdman of Alcatraz was a latent homosexual?” 

“Uh, yeah.” You do your best to nod sagely. You have only a vague notion of what he means, and you’re wary of opening any conversation with the word sexual in it. So you think it best to pretend that you do know. That way, there will be no explaining. You catch Bobby’s eyes in the rearview mirror, and he is looking back at you pointedly through it. Don’t encourage him, the eyes say, and you’re gratified to see that they are not so red as they were this morning. 

“Do you know what that means, Freddie? Latent homosexual?” Uncle Dusty does his best to appear a concerned man of the world.

“Shut up, Dusty! Just shut up!” Aunt Lorraine shouts over you, slapping him in the back of the head.

“He channeled it all into studying the birds, you see.” Dusty gives you a knowing wink, then taps his wooden leg, as if to underscore his point. 

“Quit!” Another whack from Lorraine, right on the occipital lobe. Dusty is impervious to the blows, and he launches into a fast-paced monologue about what the Huskies’ chances are this season. You exhale as slowly as you possibly can. 

A half hour later, Bobby pulls in to a U-Tote-Em drive-in after Ma insists that it’s time for some food and a stretch break. Everyone gets out of the car except for you. You just sit there quietly, feeling the first of what will be many quiet rages roil inside of you like the zits waiting to erupt across your face when you turn 13 next year. It’s an inarticulate fed-up-ness, one that will dog you at various points throughout your life, its strength sudden and frightening. 

 Bobby brings back a strawberry milkshake and holds it up in front of your face. “I know it’s your favorite. Get up and take a walk. Take a leak if you need to. We’re back on the road in five minutes.”

You take the shake, staring into the cup. You walk out into the parking lot next to the drive-in, the sun beating down on your black t-shirt. You’re sweaty and tired and alone. The adults are off using the restroom or making daisy chains for all you know. The milkshake is not something you want. Right now, you want to ruin something. You tip the contents over onto the cement, walking around in a spiral, trailing pink behind you. This is for every moment that you have to be silent, that you have to placate, that you have to nod. When you’re older, you’ll never corner anyone and inflict your thoughts and opinions on them until they want to run screaming for the hills. You’ll sober up enough to take your own family on vacation, thank you very much. You’ll be in the driver’s seat.

Only you don’t put these thoughts together, really, you just feel them. Flies and ants begin to come; it doesn’t take long at all for them to find the sweetness in this moment. You toss the cup on the ground. 

“Hey, what the hell was that for?” Bobby’s voice asks. You look up. He’s standing there, his mouth open, car keys in his hand. He needs a haircut, that’s what your Old Man says. 

“I don’t know.” You shove your hands into your jeans pockets. 

“What a waste.” Bobby shakes his head. “Get back in the car. It’s only another hour.” You oblige him, accepting your fate, as Bobby and all the rest of your brothers do. 

And from there, you remember that it’s a pretty decent trip in those cabins at La Push. Dusty calms down, napping on a porch swing, until he is, as he says, in tip-top shape. Right as rain.And you’re back before you know it, back to a neighborhood that you have free rein over until school starts in September, clamping you back into six-hour a day captivity.

This summer of 1967, you don’t know how many times you will tell this story years later, to your wife, to your own children, one of whom will learn it like a catechism, who will ask you to record it for her decades later, before your throat is cut open for the second time to remove the tumors that have wound their way around your vocal cords like tentacles. 

You will make it through, like always. And you’ll be able to tell this story again and again, but who knows how many more times you’ll want to.Talk will be a bit more effort.And the recording won’t come out quite right.So, she’ll transcribe her own faulty version, making edits, embellishing sometimes. You were always the storyteller, never the writer, but for her, it’ll be the other way around.This, brief a vignette as it may be, will be your legacy, the reason why your own kid laughs at the places where others might mouth sentimental platitudes.Your gift of showing others how to stretch a moment, to elevate it.

But right now, what the hell do you know about all that? You’re just a 12 year-old kid.