Ralph Bland
ANNALAND I really don't like Republicans. I'm just going to get that little sentiment out of the way right off the bat. These days, it doesn't take a whole lot to get me on a tirade on that particular subject, maybe just a glimpse of good old George W. on the evening news or one of those conservative Christians pontificating about gay marriage, or maybe it's like right this instant- some rich bitch from the entitled side of this town who just all of a damned sudden has to decide to change lanes in her SUV without even bothering to as much as attempt to give a signal, then I get to sit at the light and watch while she checks out her hair and her makeup and chats on her hands-free phone to somebody on the other end who I'd bet good money also considers themselves superior as hell, and then, yep, there in front of my eyes, right there for me to read in her rear window is that stinking haughty "W" decal, which I am supposed to understand signifies this said bitch in front of me is a member in good standing in the holy Republican society, which is something that makes my downtrodden liberal Democrat blood boil and froth and tempts me to perhaps give this Lexus or whatever in the hell expensive piece of crap in front of me is a justifiable nudge in the rear bumper with my delivery truck just to let her know she and the rest of her GOP pals aren't the only folks breathing in the oxygen around here. All this goes through my head in about a split second as I'm behind this woman at the traffic light, and when the light turns green and the traffic starts to move I take a look around at the shops and the restaurants and the high-ceiling car lot that sells Volvos and Beamers and other vehicles folks from my side of town can't afford, and the thought is with me once again, in my head and my being, a thought so fresh and unrehearsed no one would ever dream it had been on the continuous mode play in my brain since, like, forever and a day now, or at least since those early seventies days, all those decades past, when I was young and my best friend Samuel was too, and all the world was then filled with music and movies and wine and beer and grass, and, with what was the most important item to the both of us back then, beautiful beautiful girls. Beautiful girls with money. And that's exactly where I was in my head pulling away from that traffic light on that stretch of road. I was revisiting an area where once, all those lifetimes ago, one of those exquisite rich and beautiful creatures had drawn her breath. As I drove along the road I was once more entering Annaland. I could take a breath and the past would start coming back to me, as if it had remained unchanged and never, as dreams generally do, danced away. I was a year behind Samuel at Belmont University in Nashville in 1972, except Belmont wasn't a university then but only a college. It was just this place where a guy could go and pick up a degree so in the future he wouldn't be inferior to everybody else at the neighborhood backyard barbecues. It was a place where a guy could enroll so he wouldn't have to go to Viet Nam and fight and maybe die or come back with something missing he'd always wanted with him his entire life and would now have to adapt to not having it around him anymore. Samuel was ready to graduate in the spring and I would follow him the next year, and the idea that we weren't going to die in a rice paddy but still had to face up to the fact that soon in the future we'd have to earn a living and get married and pay bills and mow the lawn, which was more than enough to make us nervous and fearful and overtly horny and inspire us to lose our fear and rationality to drugs and alcohol and the pursuit of ethereal females who would whisk us away through sex and money to a place where there weren't any worries about next week or next year but only the assurance that each sunrise and sunset would require nothing more from us than a nod of assent and a smile. In those days we both had girlfriends, and we spent our obligatory two and three nights a week taking these girlfriends out to movies or concerts or to respectable restaurants to eat or to meet friends from school or from where they attended church, but there wasn't any real action in any of those rites for either Samuel or me, only more steps on a long pathway of things that we as young men were expected to do--tasks, routines, obligations- but because we were young men and therefore had maleness virtually running out of our ears at times in trickles and at other high moments in waves and gushes, we found ourselves meeting up with each other a lot on those late nights after those required dates to drink coffee or have a beer or seven and to at times have those wild nights when there were no girlfriends and so dwell the both of us in bars and taverns and pubs and eye the tables of college girls and secretaries and Dreamboat Annies from the city who sat with their big eyes and supple bodies with hair flowing down their backs, waiting, we supposed, for fellows like us to look their way and come and rescue them for a while from their humdrum lives. Or so we liked to dream. We ventured into that particular area of town- that territory known as "Annaland"--because that was where the girl Samuel worked with at the downtown library lived. Maybe I wasn't so taken with the big houses and the spacious lawns of Annaland as Samuel was then, because I had relatives on the rich and well off side of my family who abided out that way, along the boulevard and behind the private schools and here and there bordered by the odd golf course and the long circular driveways where folks never had to turn around in their expensive cars, but Samuel was from a small town almost on the border of Tennessee and Alabama, where, he told me, he grew up with a Stuckey's, which was the main attraction the township could provide for those youths who were unfortunate enough to be born amid those surroundings and forced by that birthright to endure such an existence until they were mercifully old enough to get in an automobile and escape, so Annaland made quite an impression on him. Her name was Anna Candelaria. That name was about as poetical as her face, the straight black hair down her back, the body with its curves and perfect proportions, the way she talked and laughed, the smile that knocked a guy down out of nowhere, coupled together with the manner in which the wind blew that black hair on those spring nights when she left the library in her red Karman Ghia convertible. Samuel and I would stand in the library parking lot watching those taillights grow smaller as Anna Candelaria motored away, the car disappearing along with the sound of the music from her tape deck. The only group I seem to recall ever hearing was Derek and the Dominos. "Layla" was Anna's song of choice in those days. "Damn", one of us would consistently wind up saying. "Damn and double damn," the other would agree. On those nights when we were dateless we liked stopping at a tavern or three to get started on the road to lubrication, then procure a cooler of beer from a market and ride around Nashville with the summer wind rushing in the windows and the radio blaring out album oriented rock. I had this beat-up Fairlane that had once been hot shit in its time but was now coughing and wheezing its way toward either retirement or breakdown, whichever came first, and on many of those evenings we would cruise past Anna's house in her posh neighborhood where we didn't belong and see if we could spot the red Karman Ghia in her own personal long circular drive, and if it was there we'd stop at a phone booth and call her on her private line. Anna Candelaria was the first girl I knew whose parents had given her her own phone extension- another one of those mystical charms besides the body and the face and the red Karman Ghia and the money and the ritzy semi-mansion in Annaland that made me and old Samuel want to throw ourselves for good at her rich and beautiful feet. About the only way either of us ever had the opportunity to go anywhere with Anna Candelaria in a social setting was by supplying her with pot on a fairly regular basis. Anna was like a lot of college girls back then; when she wasn't over at ritzy Vanderbilt majoring in some form of advanced Literature she spent a lot of her free time getting high and going to movies and listening to music. Samuel discovered her illegal interests, and though he was mostly as poor as Joe's turkey he nonetheless found a way to invest in recreational drugs and have on hand a sufficient supply of alcohol to keep steadfastly lubricated and enough cash to gas up his car and take out his girlfriend and pay the measly rent at his rundown apartment and somehow or another still have enough left in his billfold to keep the enchantingly rich Miss Candelaria entertained too. He was a talented and resourceful guy. Of course I was right there with him in that portion of the quest too. If there was a beautiful girl around I could be counted on to throw my money away as recklessly and as foolishly as the next guy too. As if Anna Candelaria needed any dough from the likes of either Samuel or me. Now it didn't take a doctorate in human behavioral sciences for me to see that my buddy Samuel was doing everything in his power to charm Anna and win her over, and it didn't take a genius to see this was one of those things that wasn't going to happen. Despite all the warning signs and ominous signals Samuel went right ahead with his private plans of seduction, and I have to admit that if I hadn't been such a damn chicken and had even half the courage of my old pal I would have stuck my neck way out there for Anna Candelaria too, but I was experienced in failure with women even then. I had been the recipient of the golden shaft before. Maybe not with any female approaching the caliber of Anna Candelaria, but with a few who'd themselves possessed Triple-A fastballs I had no chance of catching up with, and there was a dead assurance deep in my soul that if I couldn't hit Triple-A pitching I sure as hell didn't need to be getting in the batter's box and facing the major league offerings of one Anna Candelaria. Steady girl friend or not, Samuel was bound and determined- as most imbecilic young men are over enticing women- he would not rest until Anna Candelaria was under his spell and the two of them were intertwined. It wasn't as though Samuel was stupid in this respect; actually, he was probably the smartest of all my friends. And you couldn't fault him for laying it on the line for Anna Candelaria, because, in a game like that, once everything is said and done, some fellow is eventually going to win out over everybody else, is actually going to be the one who drives away with a chick like Anna Candelaria for good, and Samuel figured it just might as well be him in this case as anybody else. So I stayed on the sidelines as a coward or the third wheel most of the time, while Samuel laid down every card and tried every trick in the book to see if there was some magic potion somewhere to help him in his crusade. The first time I really recall Samuel busting his belly off that high board of romance was on a night in June when the three of us rode around in the Fairlane sharing a joint while listening to my new Led Zeppelin tape. I guess the music was a bit too head-bangy for everyone but me because it didn't take long for Anna and Samuel to start saying they were hungry and couldn't we go someplace and eat and listen to somebody live do some kind of music other than this. "You know," Anna smiled, "somebody who sings lyrics that make a little bit of sense." "Led Zeppelin makes lots of sense if you'll just listen," I said defensively. "Oh, yeah?' she said. "Then just what in the world is a 'bustle in your hedgerow'?" "It's something English. I could look it up and find out." "Well, I don't want to go to the library. I'm starving. I've got the munchies and I have to get something to eat." So that was how we ended up at Rodney's Pub, this dark little place down the road from Vanderbilt with sawdust on the floor, listening to some little guy with Buddy Holly glasses who thought he was the second coming of Hank Williams. He was pretty damned close, I had to admit. I dropped an extra buck in the hat when they passed it around, even though I was broke as hell and didn't get paid for a couple of more days. We drank a lot of beer, or at least Samuel and I drank a lot of beer while Anna tried to keep up with us and crunched peanuts and looked showstoppingly beautiful and just generally shook her head and laughed at the stupid-ass things that came out of our mouths. After a final unfathomable pitcher my faculties decided at last to check out of any more active social participation for the remainder of the evening and to just simply sit and grin and vegetate like a good rutabaga. Seeing how I was now unavailable for any further conversation or dialectic interplay, was for the most part approaching the borders of being considered legally dead, Samuel decided to turn all his attention and energy toward Anna, which was probably the direction he had wanted it to be pointed in all along. In my trancelike state I watched him smile and be charming, I saw him gesture with his hands while telling a story, and I noticed him inching with his chair that his body was a part of ever so indecipherably closer to Anna. After a few moments the two of them were so involved in their own personal interplay I realized even in the midst of my stupor that we weren't really a trio anymore, that even if I'd broke rank and remained stone cold sober this would have probably been the end result of it anyhow. Some plots are just bound by the stars to unravel in one way or another whether it's unanimously agreed upon or not. I didn't want to be the odd man out, but I was out there for sure. The good thing about it was I was absolutely and undeniably blitzed, so it wasn't like the actual pain of abandonment was all that intense. Samuel and Anna couldn't just leave me at Rodney's Pub, and they couldn't just unceremoniously drop me off at home either, since it was my car we were using that night for transportation. The decision was made to stow me away in the back seat where I could continue to vegetate, and as I relinquished my keys I wondered what mysterious journey I was going to be taking in the nether regions of my own Ford Fairlane for the rest of the night. Oh well, I decided with the acceptance of one counting backward and inhaling ether, when I wake up from this anesthesia perhaps I'll be cured of all the ailments this bad and mean old world has forced upon me. I remember the lights of the dorms and the restaurants and the twinkle and glitter of upscale West End Avenue. I knew if we went east we would be downtown among the honkytonks and the tourists and the adult bookstores and the peep shows and the country music hopefuls lining the sidewalk outside Tootsie's Orchid Lounge with lines and lines of guitar cases, and if we went west we would enter into the world of boulevards and amends-making Mercedes and fine lawns and spewing fountains and dwellings with countless rooms and endless doors that opened to untold realms- Annaland, I thought. We will be in Annaland. I didn't belong in this place, but I wasn't so far gone I would not know where in the name of God I was. I closed my eyes and attempted not to give a damn where I was going. For a while there was music and voices in a hum of conversation and the forward motion of the Fairlane rolling somewhere, whether it was downtown or the rich white suburbs. I attempted keeping track of our whereabouts by occasionally peering out the back window with my besotted eye, but soon the turns and twists and stops and starts confused me and lulled me deeper into a sombulistic state, and after a time I had to admit I was lost in my thoughts and my undiscovered world and without assistance might never be found again. I can't really say I was ever totally conscious the rest of that June evening, but I do recall at some point hearing the katydids of the night and noticing the absence of traffic noise and becoming cognizant of voices that were scarcely audible because they had become whispers, but I could hear them come my way as breaths and sighs and all those other sounds that lovers make. After some mental negotiations I finally determined we were currently in Anna's circular drive and that it was late enough in the evening to warrant all the hushed tones in the car and the absence of any music so there would be less of a chance to awaken Anna's parents, who most certainly would wonder why their beautiful rich and intelligent daughter was out in their pedigreed driveway at this time of night with two ne'er do-wells from a section of town where people with brains didn't dare drive through without their doors locked and their windows up and never ever would venture into past sunset when the moon was on the rise. Those breaths and sighs I'd heard turned out not to be, as I'd fathomed, the by-products of sexual coupling in a passionate vein, but were in actuality Anna's losing battle not to throw up from all the beer she'd ingested earlier and Samuel's pathetic attempt to take advantage of her in her weakened state by pressing his carcass against her and whispering Brenda Lee sweet nothings into the air until I was certain I was also going to be simultaneously sick along with the wondrous Miss Candelaria and not from the beer and join with her in retching somewhere on a darkened portion of her father's perfectly manicured lawn. The dome light came on as she left the car, and I watched Samuel exit the driver's side in an effort to catch her before she went into the house. I could almost hear his mind telling him to hurry, that this moment might never come his way again. I saw him touch her arm as they lingered on the porch. It was dark and too far off for me to tell if they kissed, but I didn't want to know or see or witness it if it happened. I looked away. I pretended I was somewhere else. It wasn't long until Samuel came back to the car. I was only drunk north-northwest by then and had staggered out and regained my seat behind the wheel. We never worried about driving while juiced back in those days. We were, after all, young. We were everlasting. We were damn well indestructible whether the world liked it or not. "Well," I asked, "it's none of my business, but I have to know. Did you kiss her goodnight?" "I tried to. I don't know if she wanted me to or not. She moved before I could do it." "She moved?" "Yeah," he said, shaking his head disgustedly. "She moved and closed the door. I ended up kissing the goddamn screen instead." "I've never kissed a screen door before," I said, backing the Fairlane up. I could have gone forward, but I've always driven better in reverse, even drunk, even if I could have taken advantage of that damned rich-ass circular drive. "Was it good?" "Damn bitch," he said. "She closed that door on purpose. She knew what I was trying to do. She's probably up there in her room right now laughing her ass off." "Or throwing up," I offered in consolation. I was a good friend when I wanted to be. "Probably both," he reasoned. "That's about the only two reactions I ever get from a woman." * * * I deliver my bottled water to a school in a lily-white building in Annaland and point the truck toward my side of town again. In a minute I look to the left and see Anna's old house and wonder, as I always do when I pass by, where she's gone after all these years. A rich white bitch, my mind says, that's where she is, that's what she is, that's where people like her go. She's probably an old bag, has had her face lifted about a thousand and umpteen times by now. And it comes to me how I'm getting to be a pretty old fart myself. And Samuel? My friend Samuel's not around anymore. He drove his spanking-new Z-28 off the road back in his little town about a month after he graduated. He'd been drinking all over his one-horse Stuckey's burg that night, visiting beer joints and drinking Colt 45s in his car. With the way that Camaro looked he never had a chance. I went to the junk yard and stood a good while looking at what was left of the automobile. It was bent and crumpled and the windows were smashed. I walked up to it and took a look inside. Beer cans were in the floorboard. Derek and the Dominos was still in the deck. I wondered if "Layla" was the selection, if that was what Samuel was listening to when he went off the road. I started to reach inside and take the tape with me as a grim souvenir, but in the end I just walked away and left it where it was. |