Tyne Darling: a Novel Thomas James Vollman University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations December 2015 Tyne Darling: a Novel Thomas James Vollman University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Vollman, Thomas James, "Tyne Darling: a Novel" (2015). Theses and Dissertations. 1089. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/1089 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TYNE DARLING: A NOVEL by Tommy Vollman A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee December 2015 ABSTRACT TYNE DARLING: A NOVEL by Tommy Vollman The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2015 Under the Supervision of Professor George Clark Tyne Darling spent most of his youth dreaming about the saints. They came 15 to a pack with a single stick of stale, pink bubble gum. Their posters hung on his walls, and their pic- tures—cut from the Sports Illustrated magazines he got from his uncle—were tacked to his cork board and taped above his desk. His saints were Hank Aaron and Oscar Gamble, Carlton Fisk and Tom Seaver. His saints had rocket arms and sweet, smooth swings. They played a game that existed out of time on a sacred square within a circle. His saints were baseball players. Now, as he grapples with the tentacles of adulthood—what it means to be a father and a partner—he works to unravel the tangled threads of his past and come to terms with his present and future circumstances. He gazes back at mistakes and missed opportunities, cuts through a rambling lack of self-belief, and reaches deep into the marrow of his sprawling ambitions, as he attempts to destroy his vāsanā—inclinations that were formed from past perceptions, experi- ences, and impressions—and come to terms with what it might be like to actually start anew. What he finds in his rearview mirror, though, are the same kinds of things that are just beyond his windshield. Then, his friend is killed—suddenly and grotesquely—in the remote desert of Syria. Tyne Darling leans on the saints of his youth—on the stories and mythos of baseball—and upon the memory and threads of connection left by his departed friend, as well as upon his fami- "ii ly—his partner, Emma, and son, Cass—as he discovers who he was, who he is, and possibly, who he will be. "iii © Copyright by Tommy Vollman, 2015 All Rights Reserved "iv FAST-FORWARD TRACK ONE: THE WEIGHT OF ENDLESS POSSIBILITY TRACK RECORDED: FEBRUARY 2, 2016 LOCATION: NEW YORK, NEW YORK TRACK NOTES/TAGS: MANHATTAN, MIDTOWN Tyne Darling stood near the corner of 42nd and Sixth, his back to the park. He teetered on the edge of the curb. Water streamed through the gutter. The city was a ghost as silver sheets of rain pushed everything and anything out of Midtown, down, down, through the Sound, and farther away into the sea. He hoped, somehow, that the ghosts wouldn't find him again. Tyne’s mom had a refrain. Things just kind of have a way of working out for this family. It was her go-to. Over the years, that phrase rang more and more hollow. It was empty—riddled with the inconsistencies and disconnection that defined his Dad, Mom, and younger brother. There, amongst the traffic and rain, Tyne Darling felt different. And that was what made him worry. He worried about the ghosts. He was afraid they’d come back. He was terrified by the precarious and seemingly temporary state of the present moment. "1 PLAY TRACK ONE: LOVE/40 TRACK RECORDED: AUGUST 18, 2014 LOCATION: MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN TRACK NOTES/TAGS: EMMA DARLING, CASS DARLING, WISCONSIN STATE UNIVERSITY, ROOM C262, JOSH GIBSON, TED WILLIAMS I’ve scaffolded my entire existence around a gaggle of ghosts. The scaffold, itself, is complicated, multi-tiered, and as deceptive as anything M.C. Escher ever dreamed up. But the scaffold isn’t the problem. The problem is the ghosts. Of course, they’re not real ghosts. I’m not crazy. I call them ghosts because nothing else quite fits. They’re actually threads of generational memory. They’re v!san!: pieces of present consciousness formed from past experiences—expe- riences that I’ve had, as well as experiences that were modeled. They’re my habits, my disposi- tions, my behavioral patterns. And, they’re far more contrived than the scaffold ever could be. These v!san! are a problem because I’m not entirely conscious of them. They seem to come out of nowhere. But, they’re not unconscious—not quite. My v!san! are ghosts. I can’t see them; they just seem to haunt my conscious mind. My patterns are their cassettes—outdated and clunky as hell. The choices I make trigger similar behaviors in the future. The ghosts play their cassettes endlessly—loudly—starting and stopping wherever and whenever they like. The cas- settes, themselves, are static because they’re already recorded, but they change according to when, where, how, and why they’re played. Most of the cassettes contain similar tracks—ones with swollen choruses and overloaded verses that claim that there’s something wrong with me. As near as I can tell, the ghosts are using the cassettes to cover something. The recordings fill up space. The ghosts are always busy. They PLAY, PAUSE, REWIND, FAST-FORWARD, over and over and over again. "2 The ghosts and their cassettes have offered me—almost as far back as I can remember—a sense of safety and familiarity. They shield me from vulnerability and insecurity. But, if they stay, I'm afraid they might ruin everything. If they go, I'm afraid that I might ruin everything. I think about this at my desk in room 262 of the C-Building on the downtown campus of Wisconsin State University. My name, Tyne Darling, is embossed on a blue, plastic name plate screwed partially into the painted cinderblock outside the door. The school year begins next week, officially. I’m here now for meetings and other events I can’t quite describe. I’m scheduled to teach five classes this semester: a creative writing section, an American lit seminar, and three composition courses. My mind isn’t here, though. The summer’s been hard for Emma, my wife. I’ve been par- ticularly inclined these last few months to recycle old habits, to consent to the ghosts and their cassettes. The cost has been my relationship with Emma. It’s also taken a toll on our three year- old son, Cass. Outside my office windows, a handful of middle-school kids are playing a game of base- ball. They don’t have real bases, and they’ve only got a single, beaten, aluminum bat. They’re in street clothes, and they’ve arranged the field around the college’s landscape: the corner of the parking lot is first, an anorexic silver maple second, the bend in the concrete path third, and home is someone’s faded, red backpack. They’re arguing about a ground-rule double and the two tallest kids are too close to each other, one with the bat in his hand. But just as I pick up the phone to call campus police, they abandon the argument and the next batter—a short kid with a flat face—steps to the plate. Before he digs in, he yells, “Hey, Williams, Gibson, will you two pay attention? Jesus.” "3 I watch as two kids on the third-base side of the makeshift diamond pop their heads around to the batter. I assume they’re Williams and Gibson, though I’m not sure which is which. They were watching a dump truck angle itself around a stalled sedan. The dump truck took the curb too fast and nearly lost its load. And in that moment, the ghosts pick up, and I suddenly recall an argument—a seemingly endless argument that raged summer after summer out on our sandlot. Who was a better natural hitter, Ted Williams or Josh Gibson? "4 REWIND TRACK ONE: PUNK ROCK DREAMS TRACK RECORDED: AUGUST 2, 1983 LOCATION: MILFORD, OHIO TRACK NOTES/TAGS: RANDALL ALLEN, JOSH GIBSON, TED WILLIAMS The Gibson-Williams argument was a doomed enterprise, but we kept after it, year-in, year-out, under the crushing weight of midwestern humidity. The neighborhood kids and I made a baseball field in the vacant lot next to my house. We cut the grass short, which then turned brown and grew stiff as fish bones left to dry on a dock. We turned over the dirt, made base paths, and built a sort-of pitcher’s mound. Our games spanned the course of days, sometimes weeks. We chose sides in June when school was done, and those teams held until fall. Kids went on vacation, went to camp, or sometimes broke arms or ankles. We held their spaces, but never, ever reshuffled teams. Once they were picked, they stayed. Our summer days revolved, three outs at a time, and as we played, we talked baseball. We raised questions, thought about the greats and the new moderns. Our answers were specula- tions, our arguments, the flawed ones of twelve year-olds. For three days, each summer, our games paused to honor the All-Star break.