The Ha-Ha

by Dave King

  “Howard.” Robin squeezes my arm. “We should talk.” I glare darkly from my reverie. “Far be it from me to carry messages for nuns, but this feud with Sister Amity—” I push past her, nearly knocking down little Jamie. When Juliana calls for order, I position myself on the far side of the circle.

  Juliana announces they’ve lined up a real game for Saturday, a week off. A bona fide Little League team, she says. “But in the evening, okay? ’Cause all the certified umpires had day bookings. Real umps! Isn’t that exciting?” Ed says we’ll have team shirts by then, and he shows us a drawing of a big-fanged rattler forming the S in Snakes. Glancing across the circle, I get a thorny look from Robin, and I’m conspicuous, maybe, in my failure to cheer the drawing. Then, without a word about pitching, we retreat to small groups.

  Six impossibly small children gaze at an array of paper bull’s-eyes Ryan and I drew yesterday at home. Dutifully I point my finger at my eye, then tap a red center spot. Look at your target! But I forget to tell them to line up and take turns, and my go signal brings such mayhem that I have to duck to avoid a beaning. One sneaky-looking kid positions himself a foot from a target, catching the ball each time it rebounds. “Bamp . . . bamp . . . bamp,” he chants mechanically. I shoot him a baleful look and move him to a competitive distance.

  We’re starting over when the green Saturn swings under the oaks. I recognize Ms. Monetti’s lush brown hair, but when the passenger door opens she just stares straight ahead. Harrison climbs out of the car, holding a cup of take-out coffee; he’s electric in a yellow T-shirt and baggy, loud-patterned pants. He slams the door, and when the Saturn rolls off he gives the bumper a kick with one big-sneakered foot, then shakes his hand vigorously, as if he’s scalded himself.

  The old granddad’s on the bleachers, and Harrison strolls toward him, sipping through a hole in the lid. From his lazy gait you’d never guess he’s so tardy. Gramps points at Ed Mesk, now helping a tall kid locate a batting stance. Harrison runs a hand through his damp hair.

  I watch Harrison introduce himself to Ed, and I see Ed think a moment, then pump his hand. Ed beckons to Juliana, then offers Harrison his black leather glove. Ryan’s shouting, “Howie! Howie!” as he runs in from the farther field, and he points at Harrison with a toothy grin. I grin back. My little ones are clustered in idleness, but I pat the bamp kid on the shoulder. This won’t take a minute.

  Ryan charges the infield, screeching to a halt near Harrison and the others. He kicks the dirt and glares at the mound, and at first they don’t see him. Then Harrison shouts, “Heyyy, buddy!” in a voice that carries across the grass. He grabs the old Indians cap and swats Ryan on the butt with it, and Ryan does a jig in the infield. Ed Mesk is explaining something, but Harrison’s stopped listening. He squints out at the broad field, and when he locates me he spreads his arms. And yes, it’s a beautiful day! I give two thumbs up, and he makes the pistol-shooting gesture that’s part of his Joe Cool repertoire. “Awright, Howard!” he calls out, and I return to my dwarf hurlers a different man.

  When it’s time to play a few innings, Harrison prowls the baselines, slapping his gaudy pants with Ed Mesk’s glove. Five kids rotate pitching duties for his benefit, and Harrison stops the game several times to go to the mound. This makes the innings interminable, but no one minds. Now Ibrahim faces the batter, and he looks like a pitching threat, long-limbed and sallow, with a wad of gum that distends his cheek. He kicks high and fires, and the batter swings to no avail. Jeremy chucks the ball back. But with Ibrahim’s next pitch, the batter manages an infield hit, and Harrison walks to the mound and squats. I watch him draw an index finger down Ibrahim’s chest, and the boy nods seriously. The shortstop and second baseman start horsing around with the runner on second, and in the outfield Jamie and some other pipsqueak kick at a Big Mac carton, soccer-style. A plane with a white trail divides the sky. Then Harrison squares his shoulders, and Ibrahim does the same. “Play ball!” shouts Harrison, brushing the hair from his eyes.

  “Wild, isn’t it?” he says when the game’s over. “You figure out shit you weren’t sure you knew.” I nod, remembering how I broke down the throwing motion. “You know, I was so crazy about my coach when I was this age? Thought every one of my teachers was a geek, but Coach, boy . . . Guy could have been an embezzler, a drunk, a junkie, a complete, unmitigated jerk, but he was the man.” He shakes his head dubiously, biting a rogue moustache hair, but in confirmation, Ibrahim approaches and offers a shy handshake. “No problem, dude. You guys rule.”

  We stroll toward the white station wagon, and Harrison hands Ed his glove. By next week he’ll have his own, he says. “Oh, sure,” says Ed. “I mean, gosh. Thank you for pitching in, ha-ha. No pun intended!” From the far side of the wagon the kid wrangler giggles seismically and looks Harrison up and down.

  Harrison says, “You maybe noticed I’ve got no ride. Mind, Howard?” Of course not. I look toward the bleachers, where Robin and Ann are unwrapping their sandwiches, and I know I’ve a penance to serve with Robin. Then Ryan appears and slaps our palms.

  “Awright!” he says. “Hey, Harrison, you coming with us? Me and Howard go to this one place for lunch. One time my mom was even there.” Harrison says he could eat a horse, and I leave Robin and the nuns’ mission for some other day.

  At the barbecue place, the counter woman says, “Little tribe fan. I know you.” Ryan asks if she’s seen his mom, and she says, “I don’t think I know the lady.” Well, who does? Then Harrison offers to pay, and I squint at him.

  “I mean, I had a shitload of fun, okay? And you always do breakfast.” He reaches down and takes Ryan by the waist. “Course I wouldn’t of been there without that compelling appeal from my li’l buddy!” So this is what it’s like hanging out with Harrison. Or maybe this is what it’s like hanging out in general. How would I know? It’s all new ground.

  43

  I’M DRIVING, and Harrison’s on the passenger side. Ryan’s squeezed between us with a pint of Bing cherries in his lap, and we’re spitting the pits out the open windows. Harrison and I are drinking Mexican beer. The radio’s tuned to some station I never knew existed—Harrison’s choice, like the cherries and the beer—and a woman is singing an old cowboy song. I hear pops and wobbles of the tinny old technology, and I wonder how long ago the song was sung.

  The singer comes to the end of a verse, and Harrison conducts with his bottle as he sings the chorus: “I want to be a cowboy’s sweetheart!” He claps Ryan on the knee and says, “Come on there, buddy!” but Ryan says it’s a girl’s song. Harrison says, “Kind of an idea is that? Music’s music, man.” A dribble of cherry juice runs down his chin. Next time through, I hum along nasally, keeping time on the wheel, and Harrison says, “See, man? Howard’s singing, and no one’s butcher than him.” At last, Ryan bellows out the ending. “Attaboy!”

  By the time I turn into my driveway, all three of us are going to town. I ease to a stop, and Harrison says, “Don’t cut it ’til the end, okay?” I put her in park and turn the volume way, way up, and Laurel comes out the front door and stands watching from behind the petunias. When Harrison and Ryan wave, she puts up a hand, then walks down the front steps with the three of us serenading her. At the very last note, Ryan sprawls, arms spread, across my lap.

  “Hi, there, kiddo,” Laurel says. She smiles absently, and he sits back in his seat. “Didja have fun?”

  Ryan says, “Uh-huh.” He holds out the little basket of cherries, and she shakes her head, then takes one anyway. I shut off the motor.

  Laurel says, “Harrison, I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  “I was at baseball with these guys.”

  “I think you should—Listen . . .” She takes his arm as he climbs from the truck, and they move away, Harrison smiling quizzically. Ryan goes in the house and hollers for Ruby, but I pause on the porch. The night before last, we set up our new planter, and I stop to check how the seedlings are doing.

  Laurel has her hands in her back pockets.
She stares at the driveway, and Harrison does the same. In his hand, the half- finished bottle of beer. His face is ashen now, and he watches her foot trace an arc in the gravel. I snip off a few drooping blooms and poke the soil, but when Laurel looks up at me I go inside the house.

  I wait for her in the kitchen. Ryan’s in the parlor, watching a baseball broadcast. I hear Harrison climb the stairs to the third floor, then Laurel comes in and checks a pot on the stove. “Lordy,” she says, and digs around with a wooden spoon. “Y’all eat?” I nod. She puts the lid on the pot and takes an open Pepsi from the fridge. “I tried to reach him all morning at Logan’s,” she says. “When I finally got through she said they’d unplugged the phone. Well, his dad’s had a stroke.”

  I wince. My mom had a series of increasingly bad strokes in her seventies, and at the end she could no longer speak. I wonder how old Harrison’s father is; I imagine him about sixty. Laurel says, “It’s bad, I guess. The mom finally called your line midmorning, said she’d been calling both Harrison’s numbers, leaving messages. By the time she got me, she was a train wreck, let me tell you.” She crosses her arms, then nods at the upstairs. “He’s gotta fly home ASAP. Heck, they don’t even know if the dad’ll still be there. Are you sure you don’t want soup?”

  I smile, patting my stomach, then run a hand over my skull. Laurel peers out the screen door. “There’s that cat, under the bird feeders. Yo, Puff! Go on home!” I pour myself a glass of water and drink it down, and as I’m heading upstairs I hear her speaking to Ryan. “What on earth are you doing watching television on such a fine day?”

  An open suitcase lies on Harrison’s unmade bed, a couple of T-shirts and a stick of roll-on deodorant inside. Bureau drawers are open, and the floor’s covered with wrinkled clothes, but the boys’ rooms are always disaster areas. Harrison stands by the bed, picking at the drawstring of his colorful pants. “Think I should put on jeans?” he asks. I nod, and he fiddles a minute, then says, “Oh, this knot!” and pulls. Something tears, and the pants fall to his ankles, revealing red plaid boxer shorts. He says, “What the hell else?” and plops down hard on the bed. “I do not fucking know.”

  I haven’t set foot in this room since the day I helped them carry in their stuff, so I wait in the doorway. Harrison stares at the floor, his elbows on his knees, and whistles a bar of the cowboy song. Then he turns and sees me still leaning against the jamb. “Sorry,” he says. I shrug. He looks away again, and I cross to a pink laundry basket where the clothes look clean. I dig out a pair of black jeans and shake out the wrinkles, then hand them over. “Thanks, Howard,” he says bleakly. “Let’s see. Socks, shoes, razor, contact lens shit, clothes for like what, a week? How’m I supposed to know when I’m even coming back?”

  I try never to think about when my dad died. He was outside one snowy morning, brushing off his windshield, and his heart went, just like that. My mom was at work already, and I’d spent the night in the parking lot of a downtown tavern, passed out in my car. I never knew whether to call it luck that I didn’t freeze. When I finally dragged my ass home I found Dad by the walk, in his long gray coat and a hat with fur earflaps, spread out just like a snow angel. A dusting of white had fallen on his face, but just a dusting: I don’t think he’d been there long. I hauled him inside and dialed 911, and when the operator asked for our address I yelled “Na!” at the mouthpiece until she disconnected me. Somehow she managed to send the paramedics. By the time they showed up, I had Dad piled with blankets and coats and a pair of cushions from the couch to warm him up. I was pounding his chest and blowing down his throat and wailing and wailing at the top of my lungs, but the guys said they doubted he’d had a chance. They said it was the type of coronary that’s over in an instant.

  We held the service at a local church none of us had been to in years. Some neighbors came, and a few of my dad’s colleagues from Hanran’s Men’s Wear, though he’d been let go from that job a few years before. I can’t remember if Sylvia was there or not. My mother had a book group she’d joined early in her marriage, and those ladies were a great help to her. That was good, because I was no help at all.

  I would have liked to deliver a eulogy for my dad. I would have loved to tell anyone who could hear me that my dad got a rougher deal in life than he deserved, but he remained a sweet guy in spite of everything. Instead, I did mushrooms before the funeral, and as I sat in my room, swallowing the dusty things, I knew I was an awful—a truly terrible—person. I went through the ceremony and the burial and the reception with my jaw clenched and my backbone stiff, worrying I’d get giggly at inappropriate moments, but I didn’t come close. And if I had? In those days, not much was expected of me.

  Harrison says, “Fuck!” and I look up. I’ve been folding his laundry as I stand here, and I’m holding a pair of lime socks I’ve made into a ball. “I’ve got to plan for like”—his mouth goes weak—“some kind of funeral shit?”

  I don’t move, but I hope Harrison has one opportunity that I never had. More than a eulogy, I’d have liked the chance to tell Dad good-bye, and this I know I could have managed. I think of my father, gone as soon as his fur hat hit the snow, then of Harrison’s dad, now hovering in a pit between life and death. I don’t remember that pit, but I did time there myself, when everyone assumed I’d go any day. No one but a few soldiers visited my bedside, because I was green and not well known, and my important people—my mom, dad, Sylvia—were in the States, awaiting word. So I think there’s no time to waste in these situations. You plan for both the best and the worst.

  Harrison has a camel-hair sports jacket in his closet, but when he shrugs into it the armpits bunch and the sleeves telescope above his wrists. I riffle the hangers and find a green tweed jacket and plenty of khaki pants, but not even a pair of flannels. This is no wardrobe for a grown-up.

  I own two suits, though it’s been years since I wore them. My mother and I used to go out to nice dinners once in a while, and she liked me in a blue suit with pale gray pinstripes. And when her doctors told me she was dying, I bought a nice gray suit for the funeral. I made Sylvia go with me to pick it out, and it may be the last favor I ever asked of her. Ryan was just a little guy then, not even walking, and we went to Hanran’s because I thought my dad’s cronies would be there, but I’d forgotten how time flies. Sylvia let Ryan crawl around beneath the racks of jackets, and while the tailor chalked my inseam, a young salesman squatted at Ryan’s side. “Won’t be too long before we’re picking out a suit for you, too. Right, junior? Just like Daddy’s.” I remember Sylvia rolling her eyes.

  I go downstairs and look at my suits. The gray one’s newer, but the blue pinstripe is from a time when I was slimmer, and I think it will fit better. I carry it upstairs, still in its clear drapery from the cleaner’s, and find Harrison at the nightstand, listening to his mother’s messages. She does indeed sound just like a train wreck. When I hold up my suit jacket he says, “Where’d that come from?” then turns and slides into it, both arms at once.

  I’m surprised at how well it looks. I’ve always been barrel-chested, and I’d expected the fabric to flap in front, but Harrison’s broad shoulders pick up the difference. I motion for him to turn, and when he says, “How’s it look?” I tug the lapels. I feel like a haberdasher.

  I gesture for him to take off the jeans. He does so obediently. Sliding the blue pants off the hanger, I hold them out, but instead of taking them, he steps in like a boy. I hook the front, and he says, “Not bad, hey,” and reaches for his own clothes. But he’s holding the waistline with his stomach, and when I make him stand straight, the trousers drop an inch. Harrison says, “It’ll be fine, Howard. Hopefully I won’t even need—” But this should be perfect! I run to my mom’s sewing table for a safety pin, and at the back of the trousers I create a pleat, pinning it as my dad would. Get a nice white shirt, I think, a good tie; comb the hair, and I’m enjoying this until I realize I’m alone. Harrison’s lip looks as though someone’s hit him. His eyes well, and when he blinks
at the floor I freeze. Hesitantly, I touch his arm.

  Even in the service, I was not one of those physically affectionate guys, but I pat Harrison’s shoulder and wonder what I’d want in his place. Then I can only put my arms around him. He drops his head, and my suit crumples between us; his goatee tickles my neck. I think how angry I was with him earlier, but when he showed up at baseball I thought things were improving. Now he sniffs loudly, and his shoulders collapse; he gives a heartbreaking sigh. Awkwardly, I rub a hand over my blue suit jacket and think how odd it is to feel sorry for Harrison. I may even miss him.

  Behind me, Ryan says, “Harrison?” and I jump. Where did he come from? But Harrison’s still leaning on me, and his knees don’t seem secure, so I hold him up a little longer. “Excuse me, Harrison?”

  We step apart. Harrison’s eyes are red, and he runs a hand under his nose. “Yeah, man.” He pats the blue suit jacket to smooth out the wrinkles.

  “Laurel asked me to—Are you okay?”

  Harrison says, “Sure.” He takes off the jacket, and I fold it into the open suitcase. “She tell you about my dad?” Ryan nods. “Well, I’m feeling kinda upset. You know.”

  Ryan nods again. “She said to tell you she made a plane reservation.” He casts an eye around Harrison’s messy room, at the suitcase and at Harrison himself, now stepping out of my blue trousers. “At five.”

  Harrison glances at a plastic alarm clock on the dresser. “Well, that means get my sorry ass in gear. Right, guys?” He raises an arm to sniff an armpit and says, “Whoa! Sports, man. Make you stink. Hey, Ryan, how about giving me a hand while I grab a shower? Scrounge up seven pairs of socks, seven T-shirts, et cetera, et cetera? Can you do that, bub?” He gives the Indians cap a tug and disappears toward the bathroom. He seems completely recovered.