by Chris Lynch
“I do know how it is, and I also know that five fights do not constitute a scrap or two.”
This was the kind of thing that could spook you about the man. I didn’t have any idea he paid serious attention to the one or two fights I might have had in the schoolyard, but he sure did.
And as for the three other times, I’d taken fathead Siber all the way down to the old quarry—a mile and a half from school property—in order to bounce his smug face off of some granite boulders in peace and seclusion. There should have been no way Mr. Macias could know about those.
He took the wind out of me there. When I couldn’t get anything useful to come out of my slack open mouth, he took charge of the conversation.
“Five fights with one guy? What are you hoping to achieve?”
“Siber has a big mouth.”
“And you have a short temper.”
“Maybe. But he still needed to be taught some lessons. So I did it. Took him to school, five times out of five.”
“Four times out of five.”
“What?” I should have been able to keep my composure there, to deny him the satisfaction. But he had me. Siber had done all right in his last fight. He’d wriggled out of his lesson, which is why new teaching methods had been required.
“Come on, Manion. Who do you think you’re dealing with here?”
I absolutely did not know. I knew Mr. M taught Spanish and History, was a guidance counselor and wrestling coach. He had a beard. Sort of shaggy hair, too, and he wasn’t wildly fussed about fashionable attire. He sort of looked like Jesus with muscles, and gave off an air that he might be more willing to use them than Jesus probably would.
I’d once caught a glimpse of him staring down an unruly parent—some goon father of a goon sophomore who’d taken issue with his kid’s suspension. Mr. Macias didn’t know I was looking. He had this focus to him, like he was a hunter with an elk or a leopard in his sights and was going to bring it down in one sudden shot.
Both Goon and Goon Jr. had walked away that day, grumbling but accepting. The suspension stood.
“I know who I’m dealing with, sir,” I said. Respectful, but with the proper bluster.
“No, not really you don’t.”
Didn’t see that one coming.
“Okay, fair enough, I don’t. I’d like to, though.”
“Maybe at some point you will. Probably not, but maybe. And most definitely not as long as you keep going around behaving like an idiot.”
For the first time, he got my back up. I couldn’t just let that go.
“I’m not an idiot, sir. I’m not.”
“Didn’t say you were, because you most certainly aren’t. Said you were behaving like one. Which is that much worse, because you are capable of a whole lot better than you’ve been showing.”
I got a little flush of embarrassment at that. A flush of embarrassed pride, because a guy didn’t hear a thing like that too often. And he certainly didn’t hear it from the likes of Mr. Macias, who disapproved of tossing bouquets at students for getting the test scores and match victories they should have expected to get all along.
Just so things didn’t get at all mushy between us, what came out of me was this: “If I haven’t been showing it, how would you know what I was capable of?”
Sometimes embarrassment can make you say some unwise wise-guy things.
Mr. Macias simply stayed quiet. Walked a bit faster, but other than that there was no sign of irritation, distraction, contemplation—or anything else that would explain why he needed time to respond.
“Mr. Macias?” I tried, picking up my pace to match his.
“I’m not quite sure how to handle it with your dad.”
“Dad? He’ll be fine. One way or another, he’s always fine. He won’t give me too much trouble over this, so really, there’s no reason to worry about him. I’ll handle him.”
If my embarrassed pride remark made him vaguely displeased, this one removed any vagueness.
Mr. Macias sped up and then pulled in front of me, like one car cutting off another in traffic. Unlike a car in traffic, however, he pivoted and got his nose and eyes aligned really close up with mine.
“There is every reason to worry about him. He is your dad. Do you understand?”
“I understand. Of course I understand. I see the guy every morning and every evening. He just keeps coming back, is all. Can’t imagine why anyone would submit to so much time with me and my two stenchy mongrel brothers, unless he was genetically obligated to do so.”
“So you think I’m out here in the middle of the night, providing cover for your silly butt—when your silly butt deserves all the kicking it could get—simply because I want to spare you embarrassment?”
I paused, trying to work all that out. I should not have paused.
“Your father, the Mr. Manion, deserves a lot better than to be troubled with any more of your antics than necessary.”
While I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, I had the strong sense that there were more than a couple of little digs at me in there. And frankly, after listening to cops call me sixteen different kinds of scum hoodlum for an hour, I wasn’t in the mood to listen to any more of it.
“How do you know that, Mr. Macias, huh? How do you know what he deserves? Maybe I’m just exactly what he deserves.”
“How do I know he deserves better? Because everyone’s father deserves better. Better than this, that’s for sure.”
He had a step on me, so when he jerked his thumb in my direction at the word this, it was right on target, mid-chest. Felt like I took an elbow more than a thumb; it was sharp and it scored. I hated that, being thumbed at. Just hated it. I wanted to thump him one right in the kidney.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said, without a sideways glance at me.
I hated that even more. Boy, did I hate it when he came over all-seeing, all-knowing, like some Navajo shaman or an Indian mystic or something. Blood-boiling stuff, and he knew it. He probably thought I was going to take a nutty over it. Which was why a nutty was exactly what I would not be taking. Because I’d rather hold it inside and risk dying from my own toxic internal combustion than allow him the Triple Crown of knowitallability.
“You have to breathe eventually, Danny,” he said with the easy humor of a guy who is, in fact, always right.
It came bursting out like a particularly angry belch I’d been holding in. “You’re not always right, y’know, Mr. Macias. You don’t know everything.”
And I’m sure he also knew that I needed this, needed to be provoked into blowing off steam, because he just turned around and kept walking. He quickened his pace a little and possibly even chuckled as I continued snarling in his direction.
“Because you can’t know everything. Nobody can. Nobody does. Nobody knows everything there is to know about anything, never mind knowing everything about everything. Nobody knows me, I’ll tell you that right now. Nobody knows me and nobody’s gonna, either, because that’s the way I like it. And you don’t know my life or my house or the people who live inside it or what goes on in there. You don’t know. Maybe you know about where you came from, what maybe your own father did or didn’t do that’s got you so worked up on the whole sacred father deal, but that’s you, not me. Maybe …” I let myself fade out there for a few seconds. Not because I was finished with my mission yet, but because I’d caught the scent of a joke that was going to aid my cause nicely. “For all you know, my father might be completely lame.” I chuckled there, fake and mean, whinnied loudly like a deranged horse. Even though any kind of laugh felt suddenly, deeply unfunny.
And yet I persisted, of course I did. To this day I have no idea why. “Maybe I’m the ratman I apparently am as a direct result of having the lamest lame spaz of a father anybody ever had.” I even did the little hand spasm thing my dad did, just in case I hadn’t already qualified as the worst rotten-apple son who ever lived. “Ever think of that, Mr. Macias?”
He had never thought
of that. And he surely wasn’t thinking it now as he wheeled on me with a fury I had never known. He practically left his feet in the effort of giving my snotty mug the full brunt of his furious stare.
Nobody had ever looked at me like that.
“I have watched that father of yours drag himself to every meet, every match you or your brothers ever wrestled. I saw him shovel his car out of the school lot, one-handed, while all three able-bodied Manion boys were too dazzled by a sudden snowstorm to do anything more useful than pelt one another with snowballs in the face. I heard him holler and heard him cheer in some of those godforsaken icebox gyms halfway across the state, until it was obvious that the effort was taking the very breath out of him. Then he’d take a break and be back at it five minutes later. I saw the effort that man put into supporting you unstintingly. Even, on occasion, when attitudinal unwellness meant that the effort his son brought that day was not entirely worthy of that support.”
“Listen, Mr. M, I—”
“No. You listen. Your father deserves your respect. Doing all that father business is hard enough, and a lot of guys don’t have the guts to stick around to see it through the way he has. And that’s guys with two good arms, legs, and lungs. And a mother, by the way, probably carrying eighty percent of the workload at home.”
I had by then gone from hanging my head to embedding my chin a good four inches deep into my collarbone. I was on the verge of burrowing through my own core, to retreat out through the back of myself, when some words managed their way out of me.
“I know. I’m sorry, and I know. Don’t know why I said that at all.”
“Well, I do,” he growled. Mr. Macias got up close to my face. I had the clear impression that this was one of those gentlemen you never, ever wanted to push beyond their limit. “But that’s a conversation for another day. The conversation for this day is, I don’t care even a little bit what drove you to it. You ever speak about your old man in those terms again and the thing that’s gotten into you is going to be me.” He jabbed my chest sharply enough to leave a puncture hole. “Understood?”
I took an extra silent beat to clarify for both of us how much I understood, even though I needed no such beat.
“I never understood a thing more comprehensively in my whole life, Mr. Macias, sir.”
Mr. Macias sat next to me as I waited for the judge to enter the room.
We hadn’t exactly kept the fact that I was headed to court from Dad, but Mr. M had told him that it wouldn’t be a big enough deal that my father needed to miss any work over it. After all, how many jobs were out there for typesetters in printing houses? Despite his handicap, Dad was a calligraphy whiz. He ran a small art department, where he could still hand-letter a special order now and then. There were many different ways in which my dad was one of a kind.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” Mr. Macias asked, as the judge appeared and we all rose.
“Of course I’m okay,” I said. I was always okay. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
We sat back down and the judge called up the case of some clueless dope who’d set his girlfriend’s house on fire. A crime of passion, his lawyer called it.
“A crime of mental defectiveness,” I muttered.
“Reminds me of you,” Mr. M said. “Doesn’t he remind you of you? Around the eyes a bit, and the frontal lobe area?”
“That is not me,” I hissed.
“Okay,” he said. And we both went quiet.
Stayed quiet, too, through the procession of people my father would call ne’er-do-wells. Guys who were in court for doing incredibly stupid things.
“You okay now?” Mr Macias asked again, when there were only a couple of cases left to hear.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I told you I’m always okay, so why do you keep asking?”
“Because this isn’t always, and you are not going to be okay.”
“What—?”
“The Court calls Daniel Manion.”
The Court called, and I had no choice but to answer.
The weary gray man with the gavel, Judge Salisbury, had no interest in wasting time on the likes of me.
“You’ve been here before, I see,” the judge said.
“Yes, sir,” I answered.
“In the past three years you’ve commandeered a motorbike, a boat … and a small twin-engine aircraft that did not belong to you.”
“Well, actually—” I said … before Mr. Macias put a death grip on my arm.
“True, your honor.” My court-appointed representative spoke when I could not.
“Did you actually try to jump across the old Haussler quarry?” the judge asked.
“When the wind is behind me, it’s not a problem,” I answered honestly.
He seemed to be chuckling as he dropped his head, ran his hand through his very judge-like gray hair, and studied my history. Then he looked up. “And you managed to fly that plane when you were thirteen years old?”
“More or less,” I said, feeling the pride-smile open up across my face. “It was more less than more, I guess, but I did get up to where I was no longer stuck to planet Earth. So, that counts, I figure.”
He nodded, looked down again, finger-combed his hair again. Possibly chuckled again. He was a good guy, I could tell, and he understood. I relaxed a little.
“You have a remarkable range of skills, Mr. Manion,” he said.
I was just about to thank him when I heard Mr. Macias say, “Uh-oh.”
“Your grades are excellent. You are a fine athlete. You’re obviously fearless …”
Again, I was just about to say either thank you or aw, shucks, but Mr. M trumped me with another “Uh-oh.”
“Wha-aat?” I whispered, before Judge Salisbury clarified things.
“But as impressive as all that may be, there are rules, son. There are rules that apply to living in this free society, and there are penalties that come with consistently flouting those rules. So, while I am left with very few options in dealing with a repeat offender, I am now going to be magnanimous in offering you a choice between two. You can either go to the juvenile offenders institution, or enlist in the institution that made a man out of me—the United States Marines. Because frankly, at this point, your country needs you, but I do not.”
I was rigid with shock. None of this was what I had expected.
Mr. Macias squeezed my arm in a more comforting way. I felt instantly better. He would sort this out. He gestured to the judge, who then waved him up to discuss things in private. I knew things would be okay. They talked for maybe half a minute. The judged frowned fiercely, but nodded eventually, and Mr. M came back to stand by my side.
“After considering the advice of a friend of the Court …” Judge Salisbury announced, and I could taste freedom already, “I have reconsidered.”
“Thank you,” I said to Mr. Macias.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
“Instead of the Marines, you will be permitted to enlist in … the United States Army.”
I whipped my head around to face Mr. Macias.
I was not sure if I had ever seen him smile before. But I sure was seeing it now.
* * *
My father once said I wasn’t tough enough.
Said I wasn’t tough enough, wasn’t smart enough, brave enough, strong enough, motivated enough, athletic enough, or tall enough.
That’s what he said when I told him I was trying out for the basketball team. It wasn’t exactly Go get ’em, kid, but it was better than I had expected. At least he drove me there.
When I failed to make the final cut for the team, he was there for me. There in the parking lot to pick me up in the smoky Studebaker that had both the paint color and the exhaust fumes of a tire fire. On the drive home he gave me the exact same laundry list of my shortcomings.
This might give you the impression that Dad was one of those heartless, back-breaking, sneering, overcritical ogre kind of fathers. If so, then I’d be giving the wrong impression.
/> He did say all those things, and said them lots of times, so the facts themselves are in order. The impression should be modified, however. Because he didn’t voice all that out of some kind of mean-spiritedness.
He said it because he loved me. He loved me so much that he spent every day of my existence anxious for me to be able to take care of myself, to survive whatever this rough ol’ life might throw at me. He wanted me to be a man who could beat the world, no matter what game the world was playing.
He wanted me to be the World-beater.
The World-beater that he could never be. He was always apologizing that he was physically unable to be that for me, like he thought a father was supposed to be. The polio had seen to that. I hated it so much when he apologized for himself, and I told him so, loudly and often.
That only made him switch to apologizing for something else that wasn’t his fault. For not being my mother. For nobody being my mother.
That was just stupid, and I told him so, loudly and often.
I didn’t need a mother. Didn’t care about not having a mother. Didn’t even know what I’d do with one if she showed up. It’d be a waste.
It was Dad and me and Edgar and Kent, and that seemed about right to me. Sure, there were some hilarious jokers in school who liked to compare us to the TV show My Three Sons. The program was about a family that was statistically the same as us, but was actually made up of a bunch of stiffs who wore button-down sweaters. Even my dad on his worst days was nowhere near as rigid as the father on My Three Sons.
Anyway. When he said I wasn’t tough enough, it meant a whole bunch of other things, mostly about his own heart and not my ability to get through all the come-what-mays.
Then there was this. He wanted me out of the house, away from the boys, but he never wanted this.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asked when I told him about my enlistment. “Are you sure you’re tough enough for this?” His eyes welled up as he said it.
I am riding nearly nine feet off the ground, with five tons of Asian elephant beneath me, crossing the Laotian border into the central highlands of Vietnam. I’m in the middle of a convoy of three massive beasts who could qualify as their own mountain range except for the swaying back and forth, the undulating that threatens to throw us off and into the jungle at any time.