already out there

In my immediate family it was a popular pastime to talk about what we’d do when the rich millionaire uncle we’d never met died and left us a fortune. I remember sharing this with Duncan once – we may have been 9 or 10 – and talking about the cars I’d buy or the trips I’d take with the money. Duncan said, “I’d give up the money to have the uncle back.”

I’d give about any amount of money to have back those tapes we made in the summer of 1985 and the winter of 1986. One was just a recording of the four of us – Andrew, me, Duncan and Gavin – hanging out in the living room of 1211 Mulvane. At one point I announced the date: June 29, 1985. So it was about a week before we moved from Topeka to Monmouth. I played that tape to death during the years I lived in Monmouth. That was a time of transition and confusion (adolescence, a new and not always friendly town), and the tape was a reminder of one of the most stable parts of our life, our cousins, people who would always accept us. I’m being kind of obnoxious on the tape, and Duncan, who’s trying to play a song on the piano (he was quite good), is getting frustrated, and at one point begins singing some improvised lyrics about his frustration. When he sings “I am getting mad, to the point where I can not … be … happy,” we all break up laughing.

The other was a tape of Andrew, Duncan and me, with occasional contributions from Gavin, making serious attempts to record songs as a sort of band. This was in the TV room of 1115 Morningstar Trail. Andrew had his electric bass, Duncan was playing his keyboard, and I was singing, not because I could sing but because I couldn’t play an instrument. The song I’d most like to hear is our cover of The Honeydrippers’ “Rockin’ at Midnight,” which had been a minor hit the year before. Near the end of the song, Duncan got up from his keyboard, ran across the room, and sang a campy and hilarious solo right into the portable stereo we’d been recording with – “Yeah, yeah, rock, rock, rock, rockin’ at midnight, or maybe afternoon, oh rockin’, rockin’, how ’bout two o’clock tomorrow morning? Rock rock rockin’ rockin’ without Andrew!” I think a small part of us wanted to be mad at him for sabotaging the song we’d just worked hard to play well and record, but the whole thing was so funny and unexpected that we just sat their cracking up. Then we played the tape and cracked up again. It was an important lesson in not taking ourselves too seriously, the kind of lesson Duncan was good at teaching. Interestingly, that song contains the lyric “Hear the news about Ella Brown?” It may actually be “Ellis Brown” or “Ellard Brown,” since it seems to be referring to a “he.” But it sounds unambiguously like “Ella Brown,” and that’s how I always heard it, long before I knew anyone by that name.

For years and years I thought – and I told Duncan this – that the single happiest memory I had was of waking up on the first morning of our first Christmas on Jekyll Island, looking out the sliding door of our motel room, and seeing Duncan running by on the little playground. The beach was the backdrop. It was a memory that seemed to contain everything good in life: newness and familiarity, adventure and security, family, Christmas, love and possibility as far as the eye could see. Duncan was already out there. All we had to do was get dressed and go join him.