George Dawes Green - All the Way Back

 

 

There's a town called Surrency in the backwoods of Georgia, about an hour inland from Brunswick where I grew up. Surrency is just a Baptist church, and a holiness church and a gas station. But it was famous in South Georgia, because Surrency had two flashing lights about two blocks apart. So, if you were driving at night on Route 341 about 10 miles out of Surrency, you'd start to see this blinking. Blink, blink, blink. 

 

You don't know it's two lights, because from here, it looks like one light. But you go a mile and it seems to stretch and it starts going bubbling, bubbling, bubbling, and you just don't know what the hell you're looking at. [audience laughter] Is that aliens? [audience laughter] Is that an alien spacecraft? Am I about to get probed here? [audience laughter] 

 

After about seven or eight miles of this, you begin to get completely hypnotized. And if you don't snap out of it, you'll drive off the road into a pine tree and you'll be just another victim of the famous Surrency lights. [audience laughter]

 

When I was 19, I got summoned to Surrency. I had dropped out of high school and gone hitchhiking around the country for some years. But now, I was back in Brunswick, and I found a job at the local crisis hotline. Now, those were all the rage back in the early 1970s, because there was a nationwide war on drugs. Our crisis hotline was in this big Victorian house with live oak trees and Spanish moss. 

 

I trained there for a few weeks, so that I could man the telephones. And if anybody was having a bad trip on LSD, I could be their friend. And my bosses were Don and Calvin. They were lovely guys, very mild, but they warned me that I might get some prank calls, but I should never hang up, because sometimes a call will start as a prank. But if you wait, then the caller will start to trust you and might open up about some real problems. So, I had this old-fashioned black telephone with a long cord that I could take out onto the veranda and wait for crises. [audience laughter] But crises didn't come, and I just waited. 

 

I read novels. I read Robert Penn Warren and Flannery O'Connor. I wanted to be a writer, but I felt no inspiration. These were books about fascinating, tormented southerners. All of the people that I knew were mild, like Don and Calvin. So, I just waited. And then, finally, the phone rang and it was a teenage girl. And she said, “I'm having a bad trip.” I was trained to reflect, so I said, “You're having a bad trip?” And she said, “Oh, because there's elves in here.” 

 

I could hear people in the background going [onomatopoeia] And I said, “There's elves?” And she said, “Yeah, and they're laughing at my shoes.” And I said, “They're laughing at your shoes?” And she said, “Uh-huh, because I got them at JCPenney's in the mall and they're ugly,” and she hung up. But about three nights later, she called again. I'll call her Tara. Tara was 17, and she was a high school dropout, like I was, and she lived with her grandmother. She called night after night. No crisis. She'd just say, “Hello, my therapist,” mocking the whole therapy thing, and then, she talked. 

 

She complained about boredom, she complained about her grandmother, she'd complain about my accent. She'd say, “Well, how come you don't sound like you're from around here?” And I said, “Well, I hadn't moved to Brunswick until I was 12.” She said, “Are you really going to be a therapist?” I said, “I hope not.” [audience laughter] I said I wanted to be a writer. She said she never read books herself, but she loved stories. And so, I told her the story of this Walker Percy novel that I was reading, The Moviegoer. And she seemed to like that. 

 

She even came by the big Victorian house one night. The doorbell rang, and I opened and there she was with these long, red ringlets and kind of an angular face. And she said, “Hello, my therapist.” I had to tell her that we weren't allowed to have in person visits. She sniffed and floated away. And I told my bosses, Don and Calvin, that Tara made me uncomfortable, because it didn't feel like therapy. But they said I should hang in there, because maybe she was hiding some real pain and she'd open up. So, I hung in there, because I really wanted to do well at this job. 

 

And then, real people started to call with real problems. There was a woman in her 50s named Betty. And she'd just call and weep for hours. But once I asked her, “What she loved?” I can't do her voice, but I will try, because this beautiful, smoky voice, she'd say, “Well, I love my Valium [audience laughter] and I love my Librium, and I love my little dog, Willie, because he fights for me.” Willie was her incontinent old poodle. And I said, “How does he fight for you?” And she said, “Well, today, at the rectory, he came in and made a doo-doo on Lynette Taylor's purse. [audience laughter] And that dog just brightens my day.” 

[audience laughter] 

 

There was a guy named Albert, in his 60s, very lonesome. He had this high-country voice, and he'd say, “George, my wife almost never speaks to me.” Albert was always full of surprises. Like, often he and his buddies would go quail hunting. But Albert confessed to me once that he was a terrible shot. He said, “But you know, when you're on a quail hunt, everybody shoots at once. So, nobody ever knows who hits the quail.” [audience laughter] He said, “My friends, they all say, ‘Albert, you shot that bird. You're a good shot.’ But I think I have never shot a quail.” [audience laughter] 

 

One time, Albert told me that as a young man, he had some intimate moments with his best friend. And even now, sometimes he'd put on a jacket and a tie and drive to Savannah, and go cruising, looking for some connection. But he said, “I never do nothing. I just drive.” But then, one night, Albert called. He seemed particularly sad. I happened to ask the question, “Was it hard to be a gay man in rural Georgia?” and he bristled. And he said, “I never said I was gay. I'm married. I'm a Christian.” I felt devastated to have used that word so casually. 

 

After about an hour after we hung up, he called back and he said, “George, could you come out here? I just feel like I need to talk to somebody, face to face.” Well, he said, he lived way out past Surrency. I was terrified to go, but I called my boss, Don, and he said I should. So, I drove out there. I made it past the Surrency lights. I came to this cinder block house, Albert's world, and I could see through the window there was this old woman watching TV, Albert's silent wife. And I knocked. 

 

And you know, for all these hours of talking to Albert, I had created some picture of him in my mind. But the door opened, and instead was a girl in long red ringlets. She saw the look of astonishment on my face, and she said, “Hello, my therapist.” She said, “I thought you knew. You didn't know?” I said, “You were Albert?” And she said, “Yeah. George, I hunt quail every day, but I've never hit one.” She said, “You really didn't know?” and she turned and called her grandmother and said, “Grandma, my therapist and I are going to go sit out on the porch.” And so, we did. We sat in these wicker chairs, and this old dog came up, and she said, “That's Willie. Don't let him jump up. He'll make a doo-doo.” [audience laughter] 

 

So, Tara was also Betty. She was Betty and Albert. And I said, “Tara, why did you invent these people?” And she said, “I don't know, I'm bored. I live in Surrency.” [audience laughter] She said, “You want a Jack and Coke?” I was humiliated partly, but I was also partly dazzled. But I didn't stay for a drink. I went home. 

 

The next morning, I told Don and Calvin, and they were over the moon. They said, “This is clearly a case of multiple personality,” [audience laughter] which was the holy grail for psychologists in those days. They couldn't wait for Tara to call back. But she didn't. I waited on the veranda, but Tara never called. Nobody ever called, and the nights grew very long and I quit. 

 

I got an equivalency diploma and went to the University of Georgia, which meant I often drove through Surrency on my way back home to Brunswick. I'd always slow down when I was in front of Tara's house, but I never saw her. But once, years later, I was approaching the Surrency lights, and there was this weird glow on the right side of the road, and somebody had an accident, driven off the road into a pine tree. There were other cars pulled over. The police were on their way. 

 

But as I drove past, I could glimpse the driver. He had a jacket and a tie, and he was a small, elderly man. And I had a flash of, “Is this Albert?” But of course, it wasn't Albert. Albert was Tara's creation. She was such a powerful storyteller. And even now, when I write, I hear your voices, your character, something you did that freed me to create. And I hope that you got out of Surrency, and I hope you're not bored anymore and I hope you don't hate me for calling you Tara. I know you'd have come up with something much better, you'd have found something perfect.