Читать книгу The Bullpen Gospels: - Dirk Hayhurst - Страница 11

Though my parents’ house was only a few miles away in Canton, I didn’t visit it very often. When I did, I didn’t have to be there long before I was reminded why I stayed away. Yet, I had to come home, they deserved to know what I was thinking. My parents were there at the start of my baseball career, and they should know how it would end.

My dad sat at the kitchen table, smoke streaming up from the cigarette pressed in his off hand. I took a seat across from him and waited for a chance to talk. A gray smog had collected in the air above us, hanging there, dimming the light. He was so silent, one might suspect he was dead, stuck in place save for the way the smoke-filled air moved when he breathed.

I didn’t know how long he was like that—minutes, hours, or days perhaps. The only way to measure was to check how much ash had accumulated in the tray in front of him. If I had to guess, he’d been motionless for about two hours.

Stomping could be heard upstairs. My mother and brother were moving about. The thumps came and went with long breaks in between—water running, toilet flushing, someone taking a shower. It was just a matter of time before they crossed paths.

I tried to think of something to say to my father as we sat, but how to begin? Small talk? Something light before telling him I really wanted to quit my dream and ruin the family’s big hope of something better for just one of its members? What was there to say?

He had no life, nothing to chat idly about. On the off chance we did speak, he’d regurgitate television programs he’d watched. Some show on how things were made. That’s all he did now. Unemployed, angry, unmotivated to live, he sat in front of the television or in the silent haze of a cigarette. We’ve passed a lot of hours like this: neither of us talking, both sitting in front of his television drug.

My mother’s voice broke in above us. The sound of my brother’s retort followed—yelling ensued, foot stomps, more yelling. Refreshed, they’d awoken to resume the fight. As much my mother’s fault as anything, she couldn’t let it go. I’m not sure I blame her, but since she was unwilling to lock him up, the fighting would just meet the same result it always did.

Today was Saturday. My brother was probably drunk last night. Came home late to my mother, who stayed up to ambush him about his debauchery. They fought, maybe something got broken, maybe someone got hit, maybe both. My dad, unwilling to stay in bed and listen, would get up and start screaming at the both of them in a voice that made you wish the world would end. Then, when he couldn’t take it anymore, he’d implode, start to cry, and wish he were dead—maybe more than wish, maybe try again. He’d say he hated his life, hated the family, hated everything. Upon losing her ally, Mom would turn on Dad. She’d say he needed to toughen up, quit being a baby, and act like the man she used to know.

Vindicated, my brother would laugh mockingly, calling them both fuckups, horrible parents, the reason for his drinking. And then there would be more screaming, more breaking, and more hitting, followed by a call to the cops, not to make an arrest, but to scare away the drunk. He’d leave, wreck his car, stumble back, and pass out on the floor in his own vomit. Come morning, when he was hung over, the fight would continue.

My dad sighed at the sound, lifted his head from his hands, and snuffed his cigarette into the ashtray. He was both as sad and angry as a person could be; you could see it when you looked at him, the way his body worked as if under some heavy, invisible weight.

Acting on the urge to leave, he reached down to put his shoes on. His crippled hands grabbed at them with all the finesse of a rusty wrench. Next, he reached for a wooden spoon, his makeshift shoehorn. He attempted shoeing his feet into his Velcro shoes, but the simple motion was too complex and he dropped the spoon. He tried to pick it up, but his fingers would not grab as instructed. Extreme frustration trumped the sadness that kept him in check and he exploded.

“Goddamn worthless fucking hands!” he screamed. Then he began clubbing his hands into the table with the same force someone would smash dry tree limbs. He couldn’t feel the blows, the same reason he couldn’t feel the shoes or the spoon. Repeatedly, he beat his hands until the frustration gave way to sadness again; then he began to sob. He slumped back into his chair defeated, head in broken hands, heaving.

At one time he built million-dollar machines. Perfect lines of metal intersecting in perfect mathematical harmony. He drafted things, complex mechanical things that would themselves build more complex mechanical things. All of it, pristine, flawless, designed never to break. Now the man behind all that perfection was broken. He couldn’t even tie his shoes, Velcro shoes.

I said nothing. I hadn’t spoken the entire time I was there—not even hello. I was a spectator in my own home. I was slowly remembering what drove me out in the first place to fight my way toward the big leagues into a better life.

The battle above us stopped. My mother must have detected my father’s outburst. She made her way downstairs, rounded the corner into the kitchen, and stood with her hands on her hips, staring at him, a puzzled look on her face. I could see the remnants of compassion in her eyes, deeply buried beneath a layer of resentment, as if her emotions moved away years ago, leaving the place to deteriorate.

She surveyed the two of us. Then, looking to me, she asked, “What’s wrong with him?”

I shrugged.

“Sam,” she said, turning to my father, “what’s the matter?”

No answer.

“Sam, tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing, just leave me alone.”

“Tell me what’s the matter. What happened? What was all the banging?” At one time, she asked the question in a sweet and caring way. Now, after years of no change, she was tired of being Mary Poppins about it. She asked in a sterile, near annoyed way.

“Nothing, goddamn it, just leave me alone!” my father roared.

My mother sighed. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked, looking at me.

“He couldn’t get his shoes on,” I said, but that wasn’t what she was really asking.

“All this screaming and banging because you couldn’t get your shoes on? Jesus, Sam.”

Anger began to win over my father again. He was so volatile—explosive one moment, despairing a second later. One more push and he’d blow, and this little family reunion would turn into chaos.

My brother began his way down the steps. His footfalls were much heavier than my mother’s. He rounded the corner, nudging her out of the way with his beer belly. Full of attitude, he now stared at the head of the house, laughing to himself like some movie villain at the failed attempts of those who would overthrow him. “What the fuck’s your problem?” he asked.

I’ll answer that one. My dad fell from the roof of our house while he was laying shingles. He fell headfirst, dropping twenty-odd feet before crashing into the rough ground below. He shattered his nose and blew out disks in his neck and back.

I can remember it all, like a memory recalled at the site of a scar. I was the only one home at the time. I heard my father shout, tumble, and hit. I ran from the house to see what had happened and found my father motionless, a pool of blood forming around his face. I asked him if he was okay, even though I knew he wasn’t, but what else is there for a thirteen-year-old son to ask?

He told me, in gurgles and gasps that he couldn’t feel his body, that he couldn’t move. He told me to walk away, to leave him because he was dying, and he didn’t want me to have to see it. I ran into the house and punched 911.

He wouldn’t walk again for two years. After all the rehab, when he could finally stand on his feet without assistance, he was a different man. A shell of one, not the father we had grown to love.

Outsiders would tell me I should be thankful he could walk, what a blessing it was, and all that jazz. I didn’t feel that way about it. Maybe I should’ve, but it wasn’t like the feel-good stories used to sell bracelets with trendy slogans. My dad could walk, but he did so like Frankenstein. He couldn’t feel his hands or his feet. His bowels didn’t wait for his consent to go. His vision suffered and his flexibility disappeared. He couldn’t tell whether he cut his legs or whether he was bleeding. He slept with constant discomfort and medicated himself heavily. When the pills stopped working on their own, he began mixing them with alcohol. The mighty perfectionist was unequipped to deal with his new imperfections. He was disgusted with everything, including himself.

For a time, things plodded along. It seemed as if, despite all of my father’s issues, the family would survive. Things were hard, but we were getting the hang of it. Then dad lost his job—the salary, the benefits, the sense of purpose were all gone. His hands, cumbersome and mangled, could not work the computer keys like they once did. When the company he worked for restructured itself, my dad was restructured by a fresh college graduate with no experience for half the salary.

The termination snuffed out the last remaining pieces my father had to build with. He could not work and so he felt useless. Having already reconciled the demise of his sports hobbies, no longer a softball or basketball player, he was at least a valued member of his work team. Now he was nothing. Coming from the generation that did not require degrees to get a job, any hope my handicapped, undereducated father had of competing in the present market was gone. He had lost his employer and the rest of his identity.

My mother’s job supported us while my father looked for work. Then she too was fired. Suddenly, we had nothing but a few waning months of unemployment. My dad had to take manual-labor jobs and simply could not keep up with the work pace. He was let go from all of them.

My brother turned to the bottle to help him cope. He fell into alcoholism about as hard as my father fell from the rooftop. He was a mean drunk, violent and irrational. He’d toss my crippled father aside like a rag doll. He’d smack my mother, choke her, and knock her down. He’d flat out beat the shit out of me. He put my head through picture frames, through coffee tables, and into hospital beds. He hated me because I was the family golden boy, sheltered by the success sports had brought me. I was the enemy—a relationship I’d become accustomed to.

My brother spent a lot of his early life getting into trouble. He had a poor self-image. ADD and a cleft pallet can do that to a person. When he grew up, failed relationships and drunk-driving charges galvanized him. He was convinced he was a bad egg because all his endeavors met with disastrous results. He dreamed as big as any kid, yet always found himself in situations where no one understood what he was dealing with. Why isn’t he normal? Why doesn’t he look like the other kids? Why can’t he stay on task? And, maybe worst of all, Why can’t he be more like his brother? He would come to wear judgment around his neck like a scarlet letter. The only time he felt relief was when he was drunk.

And so it went. Some days were worse than others, but so common was the domestic violence that the neighborhood cops knew us on a first-name basis. They’d show up and ask if anyone wanted to press charges, and my parents would both say no. When we got hurt, they’d lie about it. We wanted everyone to think we were normal, to keep up appearances. We had a great athlete in the family from a functional home. Nothing was wrong.

Once, when I was so tired of getting my head busted, I made up my mind I was going to lock up my brother and get it over with. I would put an end to the drama. My mom got on her knees and wept at my feet, soaking my ankles with her tears, begging me not to. I told her I had to. It needed to be done because we couldn’t keep living in fear of him. She told me I was just as bad as my brother and threw me out. I grudgingly dropped the charges, but I refused to live at home again. I packed up my tiny ship of dreams and set sail for the horizon. Instead of a bright future, I ran aground on the other side of the city, minutes away from my high school, employed in a run-down machine shop, living under the roof on my grandma’s asylum.

Today I made a pilgrimage back my parents to talk baseball or rather to talk about quitting baseball. Yet watching them tear each other apart, I didn’t have to ask why I should keep playing. If I did it for no other reason than just to escape my home life, it was reason enough.

I stood up from the chaos and walked through their battlefield, out the door, and into the winter wind. I stood in the drive, listening to the echoing shouts, watching them through the window, wondering how to fix it.

There had to be more than this, more to life than titles and jobs and roles to fail at. My father was a broken heap without a purpose. My brother was a drunk and branded a failure—my mother, a victim. What title would brand me? Was I to be the baseball player who didn’t make it? Would I always wear the jersey of a career minor leaguer? Would I be remembered as a washout, a failure, or a nonprospect?

I wanted to find out what I should do with my life from here on. I wouldn’t find it in the chaos of my family. I wouldn’t find hope there either, just a reason to put my key in the ignition and drive on.