Rust and Bone (5 page)

Jason's team is up 20-13 when he hits a fadeaway jumper from the elbow to win. The teams shake hands and head to the sideline, gathering duffels and water bottles. I trot over to Jason, who's speaking to a guy with a clipboard. For a moment I'm struck dumb with terror at what appears—and I feel a distinct need to stress this—what
appears
to be a cone of ghostly flame dancing atop the man's bald head. Whoa!

“Hey,” I say a bit shakily, “great game there, kiddo.”

“Yeah,” says Jason, “thanks.”

“This your father?” The fire on clipboard-guy's head is now mercifully extinguished. “Your son's a helluva player.”

“Don't think I don't know it.” I clamp a hand around Jason's neck, give a friendly squeeze. “Gonna redefine the game, this kid. Aren't you?”

Wincing, Jason shrugs out of my grip. “When do we play next?”

“Championship game goes in about forty-five minutes.”

“Alrighty then,” I say once clipboard-guy has wandered off. “What do you say me and you grab a bite to eat before the big game.”

“I don't know. We were gonna set things up—defensive assignments, rotations, that sort of thing.”

Dart a glance at Jason's teammates, big Al and lanky Kevin Maravich. “Boys don't mind if I steal this guy for a bit, do you?”

The two of them shrug in that mopey skeptical way kids their age have: as though, instead of asking could I take Jason to lunch, I'd suggested enrolling him in seminary college.

“Great! Have him back in time for the game. Honest injun.”

WE HEAD TO THE MIKADO
and find seats on the patio. Afternoon sunlight hits the scalloped glass tabletops, splintering in blazing pinwheels and fanwise coronets. Tempered light falls through the patio umbrella, touching the beaded perspiration on Jason's upper lip.

Lola's dog, a nasty-looking Rottweiler chained to the wrought-iron patio fence, yammers as its owner waddles outside.

“Back again, misser?” Lola's sun-blotting bulk towers above me, Lola tapping a toothmarked Dixon Ticonderoga against an order pad. “What'll y'have?”

“A Bud and a shot a rye. This fella'll have a Bud, too.”

“He gots ID?”

“Dad, I got a game.”

“Sweet Jesus, Lola, he's got a game!” Suddenly I'm angry—furious, really—at Lola for permitting my son to drink before a ball game. “Get him a Coke and a grilled cheese—you
do
grilled cheese, don't you?”

“Kin whip one up.”

“Fine. Wonderful.” Shake my head, disgusted. “He's got a
game,
for Christ's sake. The
championship
.”

Lola shrugs and wanders off to fill the order. I say, “Hey, got any grape soda?”

“Nope,” Lola says without turning back. “Coke and ging-a-ale.”

I wink at Jason. “Never hurts to ask. Know how much you love your grape pop.”

An inside joke of ours. A few years back Jason and some buddies had a pickup game going when I returned from a morning shift. Head to the kitchen for something to wet the whistle and on the counter spy a bottle of grape pop I'd bought earlier that week—
dead empty
. Don't know why, but this pissed the almighty hell out of me; guess maybe I'd been thinking about it at the drill press—a tall cool glass of grape soda, all purple and bubbly. Sounds ridiculous, but at the time I could've spat nails and thundered outside brandishing the empty bottle.

“Which one a you shits drank my pop?”

The driveway game ground to a halt, everyone standing about staring at their sneakers. After a moment Jason said, “I did, Dad. Hardly any left, really.”

I stalked over and rapped his head with the bottle. Thin plastic made an empty
wok
off his skull.

“You drank it
all?
Couldn't leave a goddam glassful for your old man?”

“There wasn't even a glassful left.” Jason rubbed his scalp. “There was like, only enough that it filled those dents, the, the
nubbins
at the bottom of the bottle. And it was flat, anywa—”

Hit him again—
wok!
—and again—
pok!
—and for good measure—
tok!
Silence except for big Al Cousy dribbling the basketball and the hollow glance of plastic off my son's head. Jason's eyes never left mine, though they did go a bit puffy at the edges, skin above his cheeks pink and swollen as though some horrible pressure were building there.

“It's not the grape pop,” I said, intent on teaching my son a valuable life lesson. “It's the …
principle
. Now get on your horse—I mean
right now
—ride down to Avondale and pick up a fresh bottle.”

Jason pulled his bicycle out of the garage. “Guys oughta head home.”

“Yeah, why don't you boys skedaddle. Jason's got an errand to run.”

He rode down the street round the bend. I stood rooted like a stump until he came back, bottle swaying in a plastic bag tugged over the handlebars. By then my anger had ebbed so I only swatted him good-naturedly and made him sink twenty three-pointers. Pretty silly, when you think back on it—I mean,
grape pop,
right? Which is why we can make a joke of it now.

Lola comes out with the drinks. Bolt back the shot of rye, suck down half a bottle of Bud, lean back in my chair. Feeling a little calmer, more inside myself, breathe deeply and smile.

“How come you didn't tell me about this—know how I like to watch you play.”

“Sort of a last-minute thing.” Jason cracks an icecube between his molars. “The other guy came down sick. Didn't want to, but they were in a bind.”

“Well, good thing—woulda got creamed without you.”

“Didn't
want
to,” he says with emphasis. “They were hard up.”

“Yeah, the whole tourney's below your skill level; you're too good for these chumps. So, any offers from down south yet? About that time of year.”

“One, from Kentucky-Wesleyan.” A shrug. “Like, partial scholarship or something.”

“Kentucky-Wesleyan? But … they're Div II.”

Jason stares out across the courtyard, telephone wires bellied under a weight of blackbirds. “Yeah, Div II. Maybe nobody's gonna come calling. So what? There's other things I could do.”

“Other things? Like what?”

“I dunno … could be, like, a nutritionist or something.”

“A nutritionist? What, with the carbs and proteins? The food pyramid and … oh god, the
wheat grass
? Don't be an idiot. This is just the start. You're gonna want to hold off for the best offer—and hey, might even want to declare straight out of high school.”

“Declare for what?”

“Declare for what, he says—the
draft,
dopey. The NBA draft.”

Jason shakes his head and for a split second I want to reach over and haul off on him. Instead I finish my beer and when Lola comes out with the sandwich order another.

“How's your ma doing?”

“Fine.” Jason takes a bite of grilled cheese. “She's fine.”

“Must be weird,” I say hopefully, “the two of you roaming around that big ole house all by your lonesome.”

“Not really.”

Jason's mother and I are experiencing marital difficulties. The crux of the problem seems to lie in the admission I may've married her with an eye towards certain features—her articulate fingers, coltish legs, strong calves—that, united with my own physical makeup, laid the genetic groundwork for a truly spectacular ball player. She claims our entire relationship is “false-bottomed,” that I ought to be ashamed for aspiring to create some “Franken-son” with little or no regard for her “feelings.” She refuses to accept my apology, despite my being tanked and overly lugubrious at the time of admission. I feel this not only petty of her but verging on un-motherly, what with our boy at such a crucial juncture in his development.

“Who's gonna string up the Christmas lights this year, huh?” I ask, despite having gone derelict on this particular household duty for years. “You'll be away at school.”

“Do it before I go, Mom asks me to.”

Lola arrives with another beer. “Well, anyway, this'll all come out in the wash. Me and your ma just need some time apart. Lots of couples go through it, don't worry.”

“I'm not worried.”

Something in his tone gets my dander up: it's the tone of a truth-hoarder, a secret-keeper and now I really
am
going to smack the taste out of his mouth but my hand's arrested by the arrival of a pretty young thing who strikes up a conversation with Jason. Short but amply endowed—
built like a brick shithouse,
my old TRW crony Ted Russell would say—leaning over the patio rail in lavender tubetop, cheeks dusted with sparkling glitter, she says, “Hey there, cutie,” in a high breathy voice. My son smiles as they ease into typical adolescent conversation: what so-and-so said about so-and-so, so-and-so's having a bush party tonight, so-and-so's an angel, so-and-so's a creep but drives a Corvette and all the while I'm staring—say “staring,” but I suppose “leering” is more apt—at the girl, picturing her a few years down the road, that knockout body grinding up and down a brass pole or something. Leering at a ditzy cocktease no older than your son, a man is forced into one of two admissions: either (
a
) your son is more or less grown up, or (
b
) you're a lecherous perv.

“Look at my boy,” I say, brimming with drunken pride. “All grown up and talking to girls.”

“C'mon, Dad,” Jason says nervously, as though addressing the drunken uncle gearing up to spoil a wedding. The girl, who up 'til now has treated me with the brusque inattention reserved for houseplants, seems baffled and somewhat sickened to learn Jason is the fruit of my loins: like discovering the Mona Lisa was painted by a mongoloid.

“Got to see a man about a horse.” Swaying to my feet, I add, “Forgot to hit the bank. Spot your old man a few shekels, wouldya?”

Jason sighs in a manner that suggests he'd been expecting this all along. Reaching into his duffel, he lays a twenty on the table.

“That's a good lad. Knew your ma wouldn't send you out empty-handed.”

“It's
my
money, Dad. I like, earned it. At my
job
.”

“Sure you did, sonny boy.” Tip him a wink. “Sure you did.”

Stumbling through the patio doors, I hear the girl say: “So that's your dad?
Weird
.”

BATHROOM WALLS PAPERED
in outdated concert flyers and old cigarette signs. Piss rises wicklike up the drywall in hypnotic flame-shaped stains. A fan of dried puke splashed round the base of the lone commode, dried and colorful gobbets. Disgusting, yes, but I cannot say with utter certainty I am not the culprit: the sequence of this morning's events remains hazy.

Relieving myself, my eyes are drawn to a snatch of graffiti on the stall:
For Sale: Baby Shoes. Hardly Worn
. Beneath this is written,
How about ten bucks?,
and under that a crude etching of a droopy phallus with what appears to be a flower growing out the pisshole. Stare up at a lightbulb imprinted with blackened silhouettes of charred insects, which for some reason remind me of the holographic shadows burnt onto brickwork at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Standing there in the piss and puke and dim unmoving puppetshow thrown by the bugtarred bulb, a sense of grim desolation draws over me—a sensation of
psychological dread
. Through the smeared casement window phantom shapes dart and cycle, dark tongues licking beneath the warped frame. The stall presses in upon me, walls buckle-crimping like the lungs of some great primordial beast. A trilling voice invades my skull:
Weird-Weird-Weird-Weird-Weird
. Reel from the stall and in the crack-starred mirror glimpse my eyes punched out and dangling on sluglike stalks and there deep in the cratered sockets spy another pair of eyes, red and raw and slitted lengthwise like a cat's, peering back without pity or remorse.

The episode passes and everything's a bit cheerier when I get back outside. Jason and the girl are gone. Lola's cleared away the bottles and settled the bill. Pocket the change, leave no tip. The Rottweiler barks wrathfully—has it been trained to sniff out skinflints like those airport drug dogs? “Hush'n, Biscuits,” comes Lola's voice from inside.

With a few minutes to spare before Jason's game, pop into the liquor store. A homeless man squats outside the door begging bus fare. Where's the guy need to get to so badly? He doesn't ask anything from me. Wander air-conditioned aisles, past cognacs and brandies and aged scotch whiskies, arriving at a cooler stocked with screw-top Rieslings, boxed Chardonnays and malt liquors. Settle on a smoky brown bottle, label stamped with a snorting bull: a plucky malt best enjoyed on those occasions one finds oneself a bit down at the heel. Paying the cashier with the coins my son hadn't bothered to pick up, it strikes me I may've hit a new low.

It's not kosher to drink in public so I hunt through the liquor store dumpster. An empty Big Gulp cup—bingo! A wasp inside, big angry bastard must've crawled down the straw to get at the crystallized globes of Orange Crush clinging to the waxed insides. It buzzes away as I pour in the contents of the brown bottle, re-fasten the lid, and step onto the sidewalk well pleased with this subterfuge. Sucking merrily on the neon pink straw, I pause to consider who else's lips it may've come in contact with. Could've been anybody, you got to figure—a bum's, Christ, some scabby diseased
bum,
cracked lips rich with fungal deposits and now I'm wondering if 7-Eleven even
sells
soda to the homeless, if they conduct a brisk trade with this sort of clientele, and while I come to the reasonable conclusion that no, they clearly do
not,
I cannot help but feel the earlier sense of lowness I experienced was merely a staging area, a jumping-off point for this profound, near-subterranean, even lower low.