The Ha-Ha

by Dave King

  Ryan’s still milking the Harrison connection when they troop back from the play area. “We’re not related, but he like lives with us,” he tells Ibrahim. “There’s five of us in like a nontraditional household.” I wonder where he got that phrase, and when the kid wrangler stares at me I really don’t care. Let her imagine I live in a group home, a gay bar, a commune, a shoe. The scarred man has no need for the grass widow’s blandishments. I live with Sylvia, in a Silly Putty house.

  “Technically, though, I live with my mom,” Ryan goes on. “But I’ma do the same thing when I grow up, just a big house with all my friends, and if you ever want somebody to play with or eat breakfast with, they’re right there! That’s how I know Harrison will want to coach pitching. It’s like a brotherhood, man.” Sammy Sosa says he’s going to do the same thing when he grows up, and how about if they lived in the same big house, just the Snakes. And I never thought of myself as living with my friends, but there you go.

  38

  RYAN’S SHOWN LITTLE INCLINATION to pitch, but he’s certainly keen on getting Nat to coach. “You, me, Harrison, man. We three are gonna be the heart of the Snakes.” But when we arrive home the house is empty, as it so often is, and after a little television he drifts off, and then I do, too. I wake in darkness in the middle of the night, and it’s a minute before I can fix my coordinates; then the draperies of the parlor fall into place, and the roughness against my cheek becomes the nubby couch fabric, and the soft lump that figured so heavily in my dreaming merely a pillow I’ve doubled up under my crotch. The big chair where Ryan had been is empty, and the television’s off. Upstairs, he snores lightly on the futon, curled against a pillow of his own.

  Laurel’s door is closed, my own open doorway a swatch of dark. I should get to bed. I go into the bathroom and brush my teeth, then lean on the sink, staring at myself in the mirror. Laying a hand over my scar, I consider my gray eyes, my even, rather supple mouth. My face would be more lined, I think, if I’d spent years using my mouth, and I pantomime talking, just to see what I’d look like. With my hand still covering my brow, I watch my jaw move, my tongue flash, my lip catch the overhead light; then I raise my eyebrows to make some imagined point. I smile wryly and go serious: I’m a teacher, an actor, a motivational speaker. Maybe I’m persuasive. I’m not—I wouldn’t have been—bad-looking, I think, with my kind mouth and strong features. Just a nice-looking, middle-aged man with gray eyes, clear skin, and thinning hair. Sexy, maybe. Maybe even a catch. Then I move my hand, and my scar appears like a splatter of grease.

  I go downstairs and slip out the front door. I’m not going anywhere, just getting some air. The warm night smells familiar but indefinable: pollen, I guess. Not a car rolls down the street. I don’t linger on my porch but set out purposefully, though I’m not sure what I want. I can’t think when I’ve felt so restless. Along my street, one house after another is shut down for the night, showing only the occasional blue of a television or the pale glow of a night-light. Up ahead, where the wide avenue crosses my street, a motorcycle passes, the sound inflating to fill the intersection, then collapsing and moving off.

  At the crossroads, I turn south. In eleventh grade I learned to drive and fell in love, and I’ve been turning south at this corner ever since—it’s this way to the convent and Sylvia’s and the ball fields and anywhere else I might want to go. But in all those years I never came on foot. Now the road is a file of streetlamps whose peach-colored realms I enter and depart one by one, crossing residential streets very much like mine and wide boulevards where cars wait at traffic lights. As the bluestone sidewalks of my own neighborhood give way to concrete, I feel not like myself but like some stranger I’m merely watching to see what he’ll do; I’m the walking man or the lonely man or the hopeful man or the man who just wants another chance, the man who, in all of these guises, keeps on going, lamp by lamp. After a while the road splits, two lanes curving off to the right, and it’s necessary to cross one fork to follow the other. I’m in the middle of the roadway when I pull my shirt off over my head and stretch out my arms, letting the warm air wash around my elbows and armpits. A traffic signal changes from yellow to red, but there’s no one around, and I’d like to strip off all my clothes, kick my work boots in the gutter, leave my jeans in a V on the sidewalk and my boxers figure-eighted under a bush. But of course, I only hang the shirt from my neck, as we used occasionally to do on commando. Entering a fancy residential area where each long driveway is guarded by a lamppost, I take my shirt from my neck and hurl it into the branches of a tree, where it hangs in effigy.

  I come to the large traffic circle which was the turnoff in my teen years for visiting Sylvia. In the center of the circle sits a small white monument or temple, the sight of which meant I was almost there. How broadly I’d spin through the big curve, one hand on the wheel, then descend from this wealthy plateau to the more modest blue house where she was waiting! Now Sylvia lives farther away, and this is my halfway point, but I pause for a moment, and as I step toward the little edifice, my longing deepens. Round, with white columns and a domed cap, the temple is like something in Washington, DC, though I’ve never observed it very closely before.

  The traffic island’s planted symmetrically, with radiating fans of red and white annuals. As I watch, one of the beds shimmers suddenly, like water, then resolves into a figure—a genie—that stands stiffly and moves toward the temple steps. The genie is taller than I am, with a messy beard and long hair thinning atop a seed-shaped head, and even in darkness his shirt and trousers appear filthy. It’s that ragged man I’ve spotted occasionally at curbside. I freeze, and for a moment I’m once again watching myself. I’m high above the traffic circle, and there’s my figure and his, as if we’re trapped in a kaleidoscope of impatiens. We face off across the patterns of the flower beds, then he says, “Bro,” and I swoop down into my skin. He offers a hand, and as I step closer to slap his fingertips I enter a pungent cloud of body odor, the smell of the street, and some metallic scent I can’t quite identify. I’d back away, out of the cloud, but he gets me in a kind of secret handclasp, thumb to thumb. Slowly he looks me over, nodding sagely at my scar and my bare chest. “Yeah, I know, man,” he murmurs. “Timothy knows.” I extract my hand, and he says, “Timothy,” again, louder. I can’t give my own name.

  Timothy’s eyes are large and protuberant, with whites that swell around his tacklike pupils. He holds my gaze belligerently, moving his lips as if reminding himself of how much he knows, and I step away, wiping my hand on my pants. A moment later he calls out, “Fuckin’ vet, man!” and when I look again he’s at the edge of the flower bed, staring dully at me as he fiddles with his fly. He takes his dick out and sprays one arc, then another, over the sheet of white flowers, never shifting his hard, white eyes from mine. “Fuckin’ vet.”

  I turn hastily, then think I’d better not look away from this guy, and I turn once more and start to back toward the roadway. Timothy glares at me as his stream ends; then he drops his dick, as if forgetting it’s there. The whites flash off as he closes his eyes, and he spits deliberately, the way some guys do after urinating. The spit dribbles from his chin to his dirty shirt, but he doesn’t open his eyes. “C’mere, c’mere,” he hisses, grappling at his trousers. They slip away from him and fall to his knees. I’m at the curb when he stumbles backward and goes down suddenly, and his head makes a terrible clunk on the concrete.

  I stop short. Already Timothy’s attempting to stand, and it doesn’t look like he even lost consciousness. But I had a head injury myself, and I’m a vet, too. For a moment, struggling to organize his pants, he’s like a roped calf, and I tell myself he’ll be up in a moment. Then I’ll take off. But he only makes it to his hands and knees before toppling hard and full on his face, and at this I rush over and clutch his arm.

  I help him shuffle to the steps of the little temple and get him leaning against a column. There’s blood on his head, but when I reach up, he flinches and looks dangerous. I’m not
eager to touch him any more than necessary, so I hold up my palms—okay, okay!—and I’m backing away when I think something should be done about his poor, bare ass. Averting my face from the terrible smell of him, I gingerly raise his pants and hitch the fastener at his scrawny abdomen. I won’t touch his dick, though, and when tugging the fabric doesn’t jiggle it inside, I leave it snagged on the zipper. It’s like an animal in a snare, but I doubt Timothy gives a shit. He’s still clutching the column when the metallic smell hits me. It’s the slag of a strung-out body processing pharmaceuticals. I’ve met guys like this before.

  Timothy says, “I fought in a war.” He looks hazily at me, and I wonder if this is my old friend Timmy, who lived next door to Radnor and preceded me to the jungle. Many years ago, Timmy was a long-haired teenager with slit eyes and a pointed jaw. He ran with a rougher, more delinquent crowd than Sylvia and I, but whenever we ran into him he was surprisingly affectionate. Now I gaze at this bearded wreck of a guy and wonder if there’s anything I recognize, and the eyeballs flash and he says, “Gimme a dollar.” Baring his teeth, he says, “I killed people, motherfucker,” and I think then you’ve got me beat, thank God. If this poor guy is Timmy, he doesn’t recognize me, either.

  Timothy pokes my dollar in his fly, then draws it out, looks at it, and pokes it in a hip pocket. “I do. I fuckin’ kill people,” he says. He puts his dick away and starts to zip up, but topples facedown on the marble floor. This is clearly my cue to take off, but Timothy says defiantly, “Asian people,” and suddenly I’m afraid to move. I inch down opposite him, my bare back against a pillar, and Timothy turns his face in my direction. “Asians,” he says, his cheek flattened by the marble floor. “Never killed no American dudes. That I know of. Saw a guy run down by a tank once, ran some gook down with a tank myself once, too. Didn’t I? Naw, that wasn’t me. But this one guy, motherfuckin’ nine-life bastard, couldn’t kill ’im. Couldn’t kill ’im with a, with a, with a—with a knife! Got a motherfuckin’ bouncin’ betty, got lots of sharp sticks, got all the firepower you could—got North America, man, North fuckin’ America, tanks and shit, napalm, though I rather use my damn fists myself, and you put your napalm up against some cocksucker who builds fuckin’ burrows, you go in with your own sharp sticks, say, ‘Take this, take this sharp stick, little slant-eyed shitboy, take it right up your narrow fuckin’ ass.’ But this one guy, this one guy, this one guy, this one guy, this one motherfuckin’ nine-life guy . . .” He goes on, dribbling saliva on the marble, maybe remembering my presence, maybe not.

  Timothy’s story doesn’t make any sense, and his voice gets flatter and flatter, then trails off completely. I stay where I am, feeling suddenly too tired for the long walk home. Every so often a car rounds the circle, its headlights illuminating the columns one by one, and after a while a girl appears, walking slowly on the far side of the roadway. When I look again there are two girls, one dark and one blonde, and when the blonde girl leans on a lamppost and lights a cigarette she looks like something from a vision. I wonder if they’re streetwalkers. It’s not the neighborhood for it, but I’m out of touch. And the blonde one’s pretty, with her hair cut tight to her skull. The girls stay a long time, languidly chatting, and I wonder if they see me here, by the pile of rags that is Timothy. I wonder if I, too, am a vision, and I imagine how I must look from afar: a small figure, haggard and sleepless, propped by a pillar. The hair on my bare chest is thick but graying as I grow older and more naked; the fat scar on my forehead never changes. I could be turned to stone here and remain sheltered by this little structure, and Timothy and I would become a monument. A monument to what?

  The next thing I know, the girls are gone and the sky is yellow in the east. Timothy hasn’t budged except to wet himself, creating a paisley of urine that catches a column top in its reflection. Stepping around it, I think the water looks unpleasantly dark. I take another buck from my pocket and flick it at Timothy, trying to aim it so it lands near his face, but the bill flutters lazily to the edge of the puddle, and I get the hell out of there. On the far side of the circle a landscaper’s truck is parked, and two men are unloading a John Deere. They stare at me as I hurry into the early morning traffic, and I wonder if waking Timothy is their regular ritual. I might come back someday and inquire about work, I think, then shudder the idea away. How would I explain myself if I were recognized?

  39

  I SLIP IN THE FRONT DOOR, shower and shave upstairs, and join Laurel in the kitchen. Shifting a saucepan on the stove, she says, “Did you get up early, Howard?” I think of my open bedroom door. So I nod as I get to work on our eggs. Let her think I’ve taken up jogging.

  Nit and Nat are up early, too. I hear them in the driveway, loading scaffolding on their van, and when breakfast is ready, I wave at them from the stoop. Nat comes in and says they’ve got a hell of a drive, and do I mind if they take an egg sandwich to go? “Thanks a lot, Howard; no disrespect. I don’t know why Stevie accepts these jobs out in the boonies.” To Ryan he says, “Not now, bub, ya mind? Tonight or later, okay? Hey, Laurel, are you leaving too? Want me to move the VW?” From the driveway comes the toot of a horn, then Laurel bustles out also, and everyone heads to the salt mines.

  “Howie!” cries Ryan, in a voice of anguish. “I couldn’t talk to Harrison!” I’m so sleepy that it takes a minute, but I rub his shoulder sympathetically. We’ll catch him tonight. I yawn through my fog, and I’m very glad not to be working myself. When the dishes are done, I wander out to the catalpa and lie down in the grass for a nap.

  I wake to hear Ryan whispering, “Ruby, shut up!” Peeking through my lashes, I see him stretched on his back, like me, with an arm over his eyes, just like me, too. Ruby wheezes as she nuzzles his neck, and he bats her away. An anxious yip, then another. Ryan says, “Shhh,” but doesn’t open his eyes.

  I make one of my customary noises—a yawn in this context—and stretch so my arm falls heavily across his body. Ryan doesn’t move. I roll over and snore cartoonishly, whistling on the exhale, and ruffle my fingers against the underside of his forearm. He endures this for a moment, then cries, “Howie! You’re not asleep!” He pushes my arm away. “Wake up!”

  I sit up and look at him, stretched out like a hayseed. Ruby’s barking now and tugging his T-shirt, and in an instant I’m a canine, too. I’m up on my knees, and though I can’t match Ruby’s yap, I do what I can to growl. Ryan says, “Uh-oh. Looks like I’m surrounded by bears.” He makes some kind of kung-fu movement, then, with an “Arggh!” claps his hands to my head. I bellow back, wrapping my arms around him, and roll onto my back so he straddles my chest. He’s laughing now, in the giddy, over-the-top way of very small kids, and as I laugh back at him my stomach jiggles, tossing him like a rag doll on a mechanical bull. “We’re—We’re—We’re—” he calls out, then collapses in hilarity, leaving the thought unfinished. What has become of the Snakes’ ruthless competitor?

  At last, I roll him onto his back. The laughing jag’s died down, but he’s trying to sustain it. He pants some, then breaks into giggles. His T-shirt’s hiked up his chest, and on impulse I put my head down and kiss his brown belly. I say, “Grrr . . .”

  I feel a hand on my forehead. The touch is light; he’s fingering my scar. My flesh is damp and sticky in the heat, and my sparse hair’s plastered to my skin, but I close my eyes and offer him my face, and he carefully follows the fretwork of small lines. He moves toward the puffy central zone, where I have less sensation, and I feel him probing as if he might find fluid or pus or tapioca under the skin. But it’s only skin. At last he sighs and takes his hand away, and I roll over on my back beside him. I look up at the broken pattern of leaves on the blue sky and wonder if this is something he’s thought about for a while. I figure people either have an abiding curiosity about my scar or it grosses them out.

  Ryan stretches, letting his arm fall across me this time. “Hey, man,” he says, and I can tell from his voice that he’s a tough guy again. “We got anything doing today?”
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  40

  WE PACK A LUNCH and head for a small local pool, where I make myself useful checking out women’s figures. Toward afternoon’s end the weather changes, and we return home under a livid sky that I hope will mark an end to the heat. Ryan scampers right inside, but I stay in the yard for a while, smelling the electric air and tending to my replanted morning glory seedlings. I’m aware of him lurking at the screen door, but only later do I realize he was waiting for me.

  Coming in, I almost stumble over him. I scratch his brown neck and offer him an apple from a bowl on the counter. He shakes his head. I take one myself and head for the parlor, and I’m reaching for the remote when I hear him dialing the phone. He dials carefully—must be his first time with a rotary—then says, “Ms. Mohr, please,” in a cool, rather secretarial tone. There’s a long pause while Sylvia is fetched, then the smallest, most kidlike voice imaginable says, “Mom?”

  I ease onto the arm of the couch and go on crunching at my apple. For a while Ryan doesn’t say much, and I imagine Sylvia blathering at full throttle. “Good,” he says finally. “Uh-huh, swimming and stuff.” A moment later he says, “Different positions. Last time I caught for a while . . . No, like being the catcher, silly,” and gives me a look that comes straight from his mother: eyes rolling at the idiocy. “Yeah, but—Oh, but wait, one thing, one thing! Howie and I are going to get Harrison to teach pitching. He’s an amazing pitcher.” Then, “Harrison. Who lives here,” and that look again. “Nah, Howie’s here most of the time now . . . Me and him, mostly . . . While the others are at work.” He watches me finish my apple, then says, “Hey, did you know he eats the whole entire apple, even the core?” I know Sylvia knows this about me, and I try to imagine her telling him that she knows. I’ve never been inside that place she’s staying, but what I see is a drab room with cheap, scuffed furniture. There’s a beam of light, and Sylvia’s in a yellow dress. She smiles at the memory.