by Jack Gantos
“See the skull?” Dad said, pointing. “Do you suppose that’s where some loser flattened his head?”
“Are you trying to scare me?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, and smiled. “I’m trying to pull you out from thinking that you need your medicine again. You got to let that idea go. You are fine. Sometimes, when you stop taking medicine, it just takes a while to adjust and you get worse before you get better.”
“Is that why you’re smoking more now?” I asked.
He peered down at me. “Yeah,” he said. “Any day I expect I’ll wake up and kick the habit.”
“Is that true?” I asked.
“Sure it is,” he said. “If I didn’t think so I’d jump off this bridge without the cord.”
There were a few people in line and we joined them and watched. Everyone was a little nervous, which helped me feel more comfortable. A teenager was being placed in the harness and then the bungee cord was snapped to a metal ring on his back. He climbed a set of wooden steps and stood on the railing of the bridge.
“Count to three and dive for the skull,” the instructor said.
The kid counted and screamed from the moment he dove until he stopped bouncing.
“I don’t think they have this ride at Disney World,” Dad said, grinning, and his usual little smile was wide open.
Each time someone jumped I felt the bottom drop out of my belly like a trapdoor. I watched them all bounce up and down with their arms and legs in a panic, and when they stopped and were unhooked they fell over to the side and only after a few minutes did they manage to stand like newborn horses and stagger up the hill.
“Jelly legs,” Dad said. “You get it from being scared. Once, I joined the army to get away from the booze and in basic training they used to fire live rounds over our heads, and that spooked me so bad I couldn’t even use my legs to crawl. This should be good.”
I thought so too. My legs were already shaking and I hadn’t done anything but watch.
“How long were you in the army?” I asked.
“About eight weeks,” he said, and shrugged. “That too was not a marriage made in heaven.”
Someone let out an awful scream and we all lunged for the rail and looked over the side expecting the worst. But it was nothing unusual. Just another bouncing person begging to get down. When we looked back it was our turn.
“You go first,” I said to Dad.
“Monkey see, monkey do,” he replied, and stepped forward. He bought two tickets and we both had to sign a piece of paper that said it wasn’t their fault if we died. They fitted Dad with the harness and snapped the hook onto the ring. He climbed up the steps and stood on the rail. “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,” he recited. “Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put that ol’ egg back together again.” When he finished he reached into his back pocket and slipped out a small brown bottle. He unscrewed the cap and drank it all down. Then he tossed the bottle to the man. “Can you put this in the trash?”
“You need a bigger bottle,” the man said, and tossed it into a bucket. “Especially if you’re trying to work up some courage.”
“Just a little medicine,” Dad replied, and winked at me as he wiped his lips with the back of his hand. Then he dove backward. I looked over the edge and watched him plunge to the bottom with his arms crossed over his chest like he was already dead, but when he bounced up he wiggled his arms and legs and began to sing, “The itsy-bitsy spider went up the waterspout, down came the rain and washed the spider out.” And that’s what he sang, bouncing up and down, until finally he came to a stop. The crane lowered him toward the ground and the man below hauled him in and unhooked him.
Dad took one step, then plopped down on his rear end. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Jelly legs!” he yelled.
By then I was strapped into the harness and the long bungee cord was hauled up by the crane and snapped onto my ring. “What happens if this breaks?” I asked.
“We all run for the hills,” the man said with a straight face. Then he laughed. “I don’t know. It’s never happened before.”
“There’s always a first time,” I said right back.
“That can be arranged,” he replied, “but it will cost you extra.”
I climbed up the steps and stood on the rail. I looked straight out at the curved horizon and felt like a pirate walking the plank. I wished Pablo was with me.
“Dive forward on the count of three,” he ordered. “One, two—”
“Two and a half,” I cut in. I was totally hyper and I couldn’t tell if I needed a patch or if I needed to come to my senses. You didn’t need to be wired to feel hyper.
“Three,” the man said, and clapped his hands. “Jump!”
I closed my eyes and because my legs had already turned to jelly I couldn’t spring forward, so I just stepped off. I screamed all the way down and I screamed with each bounce. And I was still a nervous wreck when the man below unclipped me and handed me to Dad.
“You okay, buddy?” he asked. “You look like Casper the Ghost.” He had to hold me upright by the back of my shirt because my legs were liquid.
“Let’s do it again,” I said, panting. “This is just what I need.”
“You sure?” Dad asked.
“Totally,” I said, with my voice quivering. “This is the best I’ve felt all day.”
“Okay, but don’t mess up your arm for tonight,” he warned me. “Or I’ll throw you off without the cord. And then Leezy will throw me off.”
So we each jumped five more times and all the fear and falling and screaming wiped out every hyper feeling I had and when we got home I was exhausted and went directly to my room and threw myself onto my bed and it was as if I had fallen one more time, only straight down an endless black hole.
The next thing I knew Dad was waking me. “Jump up,” he said, and tugged on my ear. “Time to get ready for the game. The big game.” He whistled. “The semifinals. How’s your arm?”
“Fine,” I said, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
“Legs?”
I stood up and squatted down then sprang forward like a frog. “Good,” I said. “The jelly’s all gone.”
“Great,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Well, get dressed and let’s go kick some butt.”
“Yeah,” I said, and felt all foggy inside. “Yeah. Who are we playing?”
“This is the semifinals, bud,” he said. “Snap to it. We’re playing a team that kicked us around before you got here. And now we’re going to return the favor. Now let’s get a move on.”
He left and I opened my closet and pulled my uniform off the hanger. I hadn’t let Grandma wash it yet, but it didn’t smell too bad. I unballed the dirty white sweat socks out of my high-top baseball cleats and put them on. I double knotted the laces, then stood up.
I looked into the mirror and flicked my hair over my little bald spot. But it wouldn’t cover it right. So I flicked it over again, then again and again. And before long that pink spot started to itch so I began to scratch it until I could begin to feel the skin heat up and get shiny like something being polished. And it kept itching even more, so I turned my finger just a bit and caught the edge of my nail on the skin and that felt good until I couldn’t stop and finally the skin split open but it wasn’t so much blood that leaked out as it was fluid like what comes out of a blister. Even then I couldn’t stop and I rubbed it a little more until the spot burned like when you put a match out with your fingertips and I stood up on my tiptoes and rubbed harder until the itch was on fire and I could think of nothing else, and feel nothing else and imagine nothing else but that burning spot which was just getting hotter and hotter until I finally yanked my hand away and jammed it into my pocket and stood there twisting my hips around like pipe cleaners and hating myself just like old times and suddenly I knew for certain the other Joey had started to catch up to me and I wondered what to do about it. I spun around as if my old
self was walking through the door. But he wasn’t. He was already inside me. I reached for my book and took the used patch I had saved and rubbed it up and down on the inside of my arm. I kept rubbing until the skin underneath hurt, and I kept hoping that there was a little medicine left in it. But it didn’t feel that way and suddenly Dad yelled out, “Hey, bud, you ready or what?”
“One sec,” I yelled back. I opened my dresser drawer and pulled a couple Band-Aids out of my bag of bathroom supplies. I unbuttoned my shirt and taped the patch to my belly. Here we go again, I said to myself. I knew it was going to be bad. How bad, I didn’t know just yet. But I never forgot how I had been, so I didn’t have to guess too much at what I’d become. My only hope was that Dad was right and I was just getting a little worse before I turned the corner and got better.
“What are you doing in there?” Dad asked. “Come on, we got a date with destiny.”
My hands were shaking as I buttoned my shirt. I screwed my baseball cap on and opened the door. “I’m ready,” I announced, and smiled my big smile, the one that always makes people think I’m okay when inside I’m ready to pop.
“That’s my caveman,” Dad said. He put down his beer bottle and curled his arm around my shoulder as we marched for the car.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, as soon as the car door closed. “Once you win this game I want to get my skull tattoo reworked, and if you want you can get your ear pierced.”
“I want to,” I said, fiddling with my earlobe, “but Mom doesn’t want me to.”
“What are you? A mama’s boy? Get it pierced.”
“I shouldn’t,” I said. “I told Mom I wouldn’t.”
“Look, your dog’s ear is pierced, so why not yours?”
“That was an accident—”
“Some accidents are good,” he said. “Like you.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. But instantly I knew what he meant because I knew what it meant when parents called their kids “accidents.” It meant they didn’t plan for them, and probably didn’t want them, that they were mistakes. And when Dad said “accident” it made me think I was less than wanted when I arrived—and suddenly I remembered when we were at Storybook Land he laughed at the Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe and said she had a “few too many accidents.”
“Joey,” Dad said, “just chill. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I want to call Mom,” I said. “I want to ask her if I was an accident.”
“She’ll tell you the same thing I have,” he insisted. “You were a happy accident.”
“If it was so happy how come you took off?”
“Because I wasn’t happy,” he said. “I was messed up.”
“And what are you now?” I asked.
“Better,” he said. “I think you’re rubbing off on me in a good way.”
He reached out to rub my head but I scooted across the seat to my door. I didn’t talk to him anymore and instead flicked the automatic door lock up and down about a million times because it was better to listen to that click, click, clicking sound than to him saying over and over that I wasn’t an accident.
As soon as the car stopped in the parking lot I grabbed my gym bag and jumped out. “Come back,” he called. “It was an accident that I called you an accident.” But by then I was headed for the bathroom where there was a pay phone.
“Think about this, Joey,” he hollered behind me. “Would I want you here now if it wasn’t my plan to keep you for good?”
That’s all I heard because after that I was only listening to my cleats crunching the gravel and the sound of my breath sucking in and pushing out. I wanted to call Mom and ask her if I was an accident but I didn’t have any phone money on me so I turned around. I lowered my head and kept walking. I passed Dad. I passed the players. I walked all the way out to the mound and marched around and around the edge and stomped the dirt down flat and nobody bothered me until the catcher threw me the ball and I threw a few warm-up pitches then said, “I’m ready.”
The other team batted first.
“Come on, caveman,” Dad hollered. “Bury this kid.”
I lobbed an easy one in there and the batter knocked it out of the park.
“Time-out,” Dad yelled to the umpire, and trotted out to the mound. “Something wrong?” he asked.
“It was an accident,” I said, and smiled. “A mistake.”
“Joey, we can talk about that later,” he said. “But for now, just pitch the ball.” He turned and trotted to the coach’s box.
I walked the next batter. And the next one.
“Time-out,” Dad called. He trotted out to the mound again. “What’s the problem?”
“Get me Leezy’s telephone,” I said. “I want to call Mom.”
“Not now, Joey,” Dad said impatiently.
“Either I call Mom now, or I’ll walk the whole team,” I replied.
“what’s gotten into you?” he asked angrily. “Huh?”
“You,” I said.
He sighed. Then he held up a finger to the ump. “Family emergency!” he yelled as he ran over to Leezy, pulled the phone out of her purse, and returned.
“Stand outside my circle,” I said to him as I took the phone, then dialed the number. He backed away.
“Hi, Mom,” I said when she picked up, and before she could say anything I blurted out, “Was I an accident?”
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“You know, was I a baby accident you didn’t want?”
“No,” she said right back. “No. Not at all. Who told you that?”
I could tell she was getting mad. Really mad. “Dad told me,” I said. “Do you want to speak to him?”
“Yes,” she said harshly. “Put him on.”
I held out the phone like it was a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse. Dad reached for it. He turned away from me and they had a few sharp words and finally he growled, “We don’t have all night to discuss this. We’re standing on the mound in the middle of a playoff game.” In a moment he handed me the phone.
“Joey,” Mom said, changing the subject, “are you taking your medication?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “I have a patch on right now.”
“Then listen to your father, Joey. I’m sure he can’t be happy with you talking on the phone during a game. And I’m not either. Now give your father back the phone and play ball. We’ll talk later. Okay? Call me after the game.”
“Okay,” I said. “I just want to know that I’m more than an accident.”
“You’re my reason for living, breathing, and grinding my teeth,” she said with a laugh. “Now mow those players down and bring that trophy home for me.”
“Okay,” I said. I handed Dad the phone. “I feel better.”
“No more tricks,” he warned me. “Or else.”
He walked off as the umpire was walking toward the mound and the other coach was yelling and the players were shouting at us from the dugout and even some parents were booing and calling for us to forfeit the game.
But after Dad left I settled down and struck out the side and that made everyone quiet. I went back to the dugout and sat with my hat down over my face. Then I remembered I had my tape player in my bag so I got it out and ran the wires up the back of my shirt and put the speakers in my ears and turned it on really loud. I started rocking back and forth and scratching at my head again.
“Hey,” Leezy said, surprising me as she tugged a speaker out of my ear. “What’s wrong with your noggin? You’re scratching like you got a family of fleas up there.”
“Yeah,” I said, and lifted the hat off my face. “I have fleas. Pablo gave them to me,”
“Well, we’ll get a flea collar for you,” she said. “And a matching one for Pablo too.”
I smiled.
“Your dad said you’re nervous,” she ventured. “Anything I can do to help?”
According to Dad I was supposed to help myself. I knew she was trying to be nice to me and I wanted to
be nice back, but there wasn’t anything in me that wanted to talk. My mouth was dry and I just felt itchy all over and the only thing that made me feel better was the music. So I covered my face with my hat, jammed the little speakers even deeper inside my ears, and nodded along, and that was good until she tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the mound.
“You’re on,” she mouthed.
I stood up and lifted my hat. I shoved the tape player into my back pocket and ran out to the mound and with the Brass playing “Tangerine” it seemed that I wasn’t nervous at all and I calmed down and just pitched and kept getting batters out and rolling along. Our team scored a few runs and I kept their team from doing any damage. But by the fifth inning my tape player batteries started to wear down and the songs got all loopy and I started to feel loopy too. I had two strikes on a batter when I looked over to Dad.
“Time-out!” I hollered, and popped the speakers out of my ears.
Dad trotted up to the mound. “What is it this time?” he asked.
“I need new batteries,” I said.
“For your arm?” he asked.
“My tape player.” I turned around and showed him the player in my back pocket and the wires running up my shirt and out my neck. “It helps me concentrate,” I said.
“You just don’t want to hear me hollering at you,” he replied.
“I don’t like it when you yell,” I said, agreeing. “I’m just trying to do my best.”
“Then just pitch,” he said. “And I won’t yell. This isn’t a dance. It’s a baseball game.”
“No batteries,” I said, “no pitching.” I held out the ball for him.
“Come on,” the ump called out. “Let’s keep the game moving.”
“Give me an inning to get them, Joey,” Dad said. “Be reasonable. I don’t have batteries in my pocket.”