Chapter Text
Wayne Edward Munson was born August 13th, 1936 just after dawn. His mother, Lillian, kissed his wispy baby hairs and they cried together. His wails came just from the freeing feeling of his first breaths expanding in his lungs, while his mothers was a mix of the pain of childbirth and the sheer joy of holding her first child in her arms. Albert David Munson was born March 2nd, 1939 in the late evening. He cried when being held for the first time too…but it was different, it hurt Lillian’s heart the way he seemed to fight against her arms and she wept bitter tears into his dark brown curls.
If I close my eyes
I can almost hear my mother
Callin', "Neil, go find your brother
Daddy's home, and it's time for supper
Hurry on"
Thankfully, their father had steady work despite the Great Depression, in a post-prohibition world the distilleries always needed able bodied men to move barrels of bourbon. If that man didn’t mind getting paid in booze when the bosses’ money was tight…moreso the better. Lillian worked part time at a tobacco plant and once Wayne was old enough he started a paper route. When he wasn’t at school or on his paper route his main job was looking after Al - making sure he ate enough and wasn’t being bullied. For a while though…they were the perfect All American Family. Then the war came and everything changed.
And I see two boys
Racin' up two flights of staircase
Squirmin' into Papa's embrace
And his whiskers warm on their face
Where's it gone
Oh, where's it gone
Al always loved their father, Jack, more than anyone in the family - so naturally he took his leaving the hardest. Wayne took the pat on the head and goodbye from his old man with a stiff upper lip, not crying til he was in bed that night and everyone else was asleep. Without their father around Al became a menace - constantly fighting back against their mother and not doing anything she asked. Throwing food at the walls when she’d try to serve him, even his favorites, and screaming ceaselessly for his father. Instead of his shouts bringing his father back, Al lost them both their childhood home and their mother…also, though they didn’t know it at the time, their father wouldn’t be returning from the battlefield alive.
Two floors above the butcher
First door on the right
Life filled to the brim
As I stood by my window
And I looked out of those
Brooklyn Roads
Their Meemaw took them in after Lillian called her hysterical begging for a break, “just a little while mama please I can’t think with all the shouting and the mess. I can’t raise two boys alone without Jack…please.” Meemaw saw through Wayne’s stony expression right away and he soon began to flourish under her care. Al did his best to fight back and continue to argue but Meemaw wasn’t afraid to put him in his place when he’d mouth off. He spent most of their first summer in Hawkins, Indiana in time out, doing some kind of punishment chore, or with a bar of soap in his mouth…angry tears in his eyes.
I can still recall
The smells of cookin' in the hallways
Rubbers drying in the doorways
And report cards I was always
Afraid to show
When Jack died overseas, Lillian was never the same - the boys never left their Meemaws house until Wayne turned 18 and got a job at the Ford factory. He wanted to fight in Korea with his friends from school…be a strong soldier like his father, but he was too young to sign up and then it was over. His eagerness for proving his strength would come soon enough in the humid, dense jungles of Vietnam. The things he saw, the things his hands were made to do by his commanding officers, those horrors would never leave him. He couldn’t help but wonder as he crouched under tree roots, looking in every possible direction for death, if this was how his father felt all those years ago half a world away.
Mama'd come to school
And as I'd sit there softly crying
Teacher'd say, "He's just not trying
He's got a good head if he'd apply it"
But you know yourself
It's always somewhere else
Al had naturally dodged the draft, claiming flat feet, and had experienced all that the peace, love and understanding movement had to offer instead. He met Melody at a concert, fell in love immediately and once she got pregnant he married her right away. Having Eddie didn’t slow down their lives at all - they were happily toting him along in a macrame sling during the Summer of Love, he’d sat on Al’s shoulders at Woodstock, got a wobbly blue earth painted on his cheeks for the first Earth Day Celebration. Eddie’s parents thought that their love was enough to keep their family together and happy but unfortunately that time brought along much sweeter temptations too…things that would tear their family apart in time.
I built me a castle
With dragons and kings
And I'd ride off with them
As I stood by my window
And looked out on those
Brooklyn Roads
When Wayne finally got sent home from Vietnam with an honorable discharge and a letter reminding him to go to VA hospital for anything he needed, his first thought was seeing his brother and the family he’d written of, when he remembered to write at all. Before he could even knock on the door of the VW van set up at the trailer park like it was any of the other mobile homes, he could hear Melody singing softly. “And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon. Little boy blue and the man in the moon,” she cooed at Eddie as they danced in the grass behind the vehicle. Eddie stopped in shock, pointing at the tall man as he approached, before bursting into giggles and cheering “Uncle Wayne!”
Thought of going back
But all I'd see are stranger's faces
And all the scars that love erases
But as my mind walks through those places
I'm wonderin'
What's come of them
Wayne used the money he’d gotten in the service and from Meemaw’s estate to buy them both proper trailers at the park so he could make sure that Eddie had as stable of an upbringing as possible. He’d gotten a job driving tractor trailers but he always made sure to bring back a small token from his trips to make Eddie smile. He also made sure he came home at least once every two weeks because more and more lately, Al and Melody couldn’t seem to get their act together. Al was always getting picked up for petty crimes and Melody’s solution to deal with it was just to get high all the time on increasingly harder drugs. One day Wayne got a call on the radio from his dispatch that he needed to double back home asap and they’d find someone else to take his delivery…he had to go to the hospital.
Does some other young boy
Come home to my room
Does he dream what I did
As he stands by my window
And looks out on those
Brooklyn Roads
Brooklyn Roads
Wayne found Eddie sitting by his mother’s bedside at Hawkins General Hospital holding tightly to a small stuffed dragon toy that had seen better days. He held him tight against his chest as her body finally gave in and her organs shut down - too tired from all the abuse she’d put it through to keep going. Al had been picked up and this time it was going to stick for a long while; he’d been caught stealing a car that happened to belong to an off-duty cop. Eddie was signed over to Wayne with barely a glance from CPS, like they’d already written the young boy off. Wayne quit driving and went back to Ford, determined to give Eddie everything he needed - love, support and caring from someone who would never let him down. As he laid him in the only bed in the trailer that night, knowing full well he’d give it up for Eddie forever if he had to, he sang him a lullaby to help him sleep despite all the pain life had caused him thus far. “If I close my eyes…I can almost hear my mother…”