Father's Day

by Buzz Bissinger

  III

  We find Boobie’s apartment over on Wadley in Midland. The day is gray and threatens rain, the few slants of blue shuttering early. He shares the apartment with Evelyn, the mother of his newest child, Evan. Boobie loves Evan, picks him up like a football and beams at him as Evan rolls with giggles. Boobie’s love is abundant in general, when he doesn’t dwell on his life.

  It is impossible for me not to think of Boobie as the perfectly sculpted teenager he was when I first met him in 1988. As a junior he once gained 332 yards on eight carries in one half. But I never got the chance to see him play at full throttle; I only saw him on film. He came back in the middle of his senior season with a knee brace after the injury. He wasn’t ready. His breakaway speed was gone. He seemed scared. He was slaughtered on the field, the defense aware he wasn’t the Boobie he once had been. He played in one game and then quit.

  His big arms still show the vestiges of strength. But he has put on considerable weight now; he will later tell me he has diabetes and weighs close to three hundred pounds. His face is round, no hard-lined jaw. He is almost forty now.

  —I’m tired, you know what I mean. I need a different surrounding. People always want something from me, man.

  —Well, they think you’re a star. They’re stopping you for autographs.

  —All the time. I go in the mall, we be in the mall, and kids come up and say, “Are you Boobie Miles?”

  He has trouble keeping jobs because he gets frustrated over something. He has no impulse control. He goes off on me in certain moments. He hates me in those moments. He feels used by me in those moments. He hates the book in those moments. Just as I sometimes do.

  When I was away on vacation with my family in Maine shortly before the trip, he called me once then twice then three times then four times. In the space of half an hour. Maybe because he was in jail for not paying a speeding ticket or a domestic abuse problem or not making a court-ordered support payment. Maybe because he was flat broke. He was furious when I didn’t call him back. He left a series of messages.

  —The least you can do is call me back, man.

  —Will you please call me back?

  —You don’t call me back. Fuck you.

  —I made your fucking book and you don’t do shit for me so fuck you, you’re like fucking everybody else.

  Eventually, I called him back, just so the messages would stop. I yelled back at him.

  —I’m the only one who fucking helps you. I give you more fucking money than I do my fucking kids.

  We started yelling simultaneously. The only distinguishable words were fuck and fuck you. I hung up. He hung up. I calmed down. He calmed down. He was my son. He knew he was killing his only lifeline.

  He called me back about ten minutes later with a whole different tone. I asked him how he could say such things to me given I helped him out repeatedly. He apologized, said he just didn’t know where else to turn. He promised this would be the last time he called me, which of course it would not be. He gave a convoluted story that he was coaching a peewee football team and they traveled to San Angelo for a game and he used a credit card for food and lodging that he was given permission to use and the card was no good and the charges were rejected and now they were coming after him and he needed a thousand bucks to stay out of jail.

  I knew it was a mistake to give him the money. But I also know that helping him is not a mistake. He is at the dark bottom of a well. No matter what steps he takes to climb out, he isn’t even close. He will always be wrapped in what could have been.

  Could have been. The three most overused and worthless words in the lexicon of athletes.

  He has a job now at Target, unloading trucks at night. It is lousy work. He is convinced he got it because of the notoriety of the film. If true, it is all he substantially got from the film.

  —It’s easy money. Just something to jump on.

  —You have to work, Boobie.

  —Yeah.

  —You need to work. I’m still surprised you can’t find something in the oil field. It’s booming again.

  There is work about forty miles to the west in Monahans. He has lived there before but it is “too little” for him. And it is little, a pop-top of a town like so many in West Texas where the wind blows dust and dirt in the winter and the sun beats down like heated foil in the summer. Boobie tells me there is no movie theater in Monahans. Boobie tells me that kids who live there have nothing to do but drink in front of the local supermarket. Boobie tells me that he has to go to Midland or Odessa if he wants entertainment.

  I have been to Monahans when Boobie lived there. We went to a playground with James and Jasmine. They were four, maybe five. They loved and adored their father, and he adored them. Jasmine went down the slide a hundred times, her legs long and graceful and her coordination inherited from her father. “Watch me, Daddy, watch me!” she yelled. Boobie watched Jasmine as he pushed James in a swing. The sky had no limits, and a little breeze went through. We were the only ones there. There was no sound except for Jasmine saying over and over, “Watch me, Daddy! Watch me!”

  There was such weariness in Boobie’s face. I looked for the vestiges of youth and could not find any. In the metal glint of the swing I studied my own face. I was nearing fifty and terrified by it. I too looked for the vestiges of the person I had once been when I wrote Friday Night Lights. I couldn’t find it either. How had both of us gotten here? What had happened? Dreams found. Dreams lost.

  The park was a perfect green rectangle in the desert sea, a thumbtack on a corkboard. It had been built by the city, or maybe it was the county, with bloodless bureaucratic precision. I heard the whine of the swing as it went back and forth. The wind became a hollow squawk.

  In the playground’s joylessness, I watched Jasmine and James in their joy. I felt selfish. I loved Boobie at that moment and knew that I would always love him. I also never felt lonelier in my life, the hollow of that wind like walking through an abandoned house and finding a toy, a teapot, coated in ageless dust.

  Zach wanders around the apartment. He explores the rooms to center Boobie in his mind by focusing on objects, a picture, a desk, a bed. As an extension of that, he wants to see precisely where Boobie works.

  —Can we go to the Target?

  —Huh?

  —Can we see your Target?

  —Yeah, we can go by Target.

  —What street is your Target on out here?

  —Midland Drive, I think.

  —How long will it take to get there from here?

  —Here. Take you roughly ten minutes. Eight to ten minutes. About five.

  Zach looks at the map of Midland he has with him.

  —Yeah so you’re on North Midland Drive is where your Target is right?

  —Yes, sir.

  —Where’s it off of?

  —It’s off of Midland Drive. There’s no other street there.

  —Remember when you played football in high school?

  —Yeah, and I was pretty damn good, wasn’t I?

  He lowers to a whisper, a distant voice from far away.

  —Pretty damn good.

  The flat-screen television is on in the afternoon. ESPN offers numbing chatter about who will win the Heisman Trophy. Boobie switches channels to a Dallas station with live coverage of police chasing a stolen car on the highway. Zach could care less about the car chase. But the physical presence of the television interests him, another way of making a link to his own life.

  —I guess that’s a flat screen right that’s what we have at home built into the wall my brother’s getting one soon for his birthday.

  Boobie watches the car chase.

  —Boobie do you have central air in this apartment?

  —Yeah, built in.

  —Yeah.

  Everything slows down, like being trapped in a tiny room without windows. Zach on the couch blurting out questions. Boobie still trying to piece back together the broken puzzle parts of his life. Two disconnected w
ires that I thought would merge.

  We mindlessly watch the car chase in Dallas. It feels interminably dull despite the best effort of the anchor to make it dramatic. It looks like a board game with little cars chasing one another. I find myself focusing on the religious artwork hanging on the white walls. I grope for things to say but can dredge up nothing. The car chase gives us something to do and allows us to be silent.

  I have told Boobie that we will go to Wal-Mart and do some shopping for Evan. I have done that with Boobie before for James and Jasmine. We walked through the aisles, indiscriminately grabbing from the racks paper-thin garments with movie and television logos and throwing them into a metal shopping cart. James, sitting in the cart, wanted everything he could touch.

  I don’t want to go to Wal-Mart. I don’t want to empty out the filled-to-the-gills shopping cart in front of a cash register clerk more glum than the clothing itself, stuffing the crap into an overabundance of plastic bags. I give Boobie the money instead, a thick roll of twenties that comes out to five hundred dollars. I tell him it’s for clothing for the kids. He nods. As we move toward the door, we tell Boobie there’s going to be a cookout tonight at the Chavezes’. He seems delighted to have been invited. He says he’ll come over before the midnight shift.

  IV

  On the way back to Odessa we hit the 2,500-mile mark on our journey. In two days we will arrive in Los Angeles. Gerry is meeting us there, but the on-the-road portion will end. I have never felt more tied to Zach than I do now. I have grown used to having him next to me. I love his peculiar yet trenchant insights, blurted out with a quirky on-the-nose brilliance. And he is happy to be with me.

  —The trip’s almost over. Are you sad?

  —A little.

  We can feel the wind across the flanks of the minivan as we enter Odessa. We stop at a 7-Eleven to get a drink. There is a car wash next to the 7-Eleven. Zach wants to get one. The car is filthy, splattered with smashed bugs. But it’s a rental car, so there is an obligation to return it filthy.

  —Why do you want to get a car wash?

  —It’s just something to do.

  We place the left front wheel of the minivan onto the track. Zach is the pilot.

  —Yes here we go.

  I realize that this is like an amusement park ride for him, a sense of liberation and freedom in the cacophony of bells and the sound of the drizzle of the presoak and the thunder of the high-pressure wash.

  We go to the cookout at the home of Brian Chavez, the tight end and brilliant student I wrote about in Friday Night Lights. Chavez went on to Harvard and has taken over his father’s law firm in Odessa. Even though Zach has barely seen the Chavez family over the past decade, he has aimed his fixation at them. A great part of it has to do with the comfort with which they embrace him, treating him as a member of the family no different from anyone else. Zach senses that Brian is a guy’s guy, always with a new girlfriend and fond of trips to Vegas, and he likes hanging with him. He also likes confiding in Brian’s father, Tony; he’s impressed by the cushy luxury of Tony’s 700 Series BMW. He tells Tony that he wishes we were driving his car across the country instead of the minivan. He really does hate that fucking minivan.

  There are two women at the cookout the same age as Zach, one Brian’s girlfriend of the moment and the other the girlfriend of his brother Adrian. Zach repeats their names in a mantra, Melissa and Prissy Melissa and Prissy. He is infatuated with them, taken in by their kindness and pretty, perky faces. He particularly likes Prissy’s blond hair that feels of summer blossoms only made in Texas. Melissa and Prissy Melissa and Prissy. Say it fast enough and they merge into one. Melissa Prissy. Melissa Prissy. They are sweet and gentle to him. They instantly take Zach for what he is, a kind and endearing person with some obvious quirks. They make no pause of reluctance or discomfort. It is the same with the Chavez family. And it strikes me as far more than ironic that it is here in Odessa, where so many people hated me and I hated certain aspects of the town with equal ferocity, that every single person we encounter treats Zach the way he should always be treated, which is just like everyone else.

  About twenty people are at the barbecue. Zach is shy with Melissa Prissy so he hovers around Brian. He asks Brian where he plays cards in Las Vegas. He tells him about Gerry. He tells him Gerry is going to Penn. He tells him he is going to see Gerry in three days in Los Angeles. He tells him the plane is scheduled to arrive at eight forty-five at night. He tells Brian he is excited to see Gerry. He tells Brian he has felt kind of bored without Gerry.

  Brian seems satisfied that he has all the information he needs on Gerry.

  —Hey, Zach, you want a beer?

  Brian thrusts one out to him.

  For the first time in his life, Zach takes a beer.

  I watch him as he laughs and is cheered and gets hearty slaps on the back, just a regular Odessa shitkicker. He takes tiny little sips, each one with a grimace because he finds the taste strange. He holds on to that bottle. His hand tightly grips the dripping base of it as if he will never let go. He is at the center of the circle. He is out with the boys. He is exactly where he wants to be.

  13. Mom and Dad

  I

  WE LEAVE ODESSA early in the morning, heading west toward El Paso on Interstate 20. Odessa has been the most powerful part of the trip, incredible given how portions of the town will always believe me guilty of writerly homicide. Odessa is also developing into a favored vacation spot; Zach, based on his love of the Chavez family, now wants to go there every opportunity possible. Once again Zach and I have set a road trip first: nobody in the history of the world, ever, has chosen Odessa for a vacation.

  In an increasing series of revelations, none has been more gratifying than Zach’s interaction with the Chavezes. The cookout reoccurs as I drive: seeing my son at the center of the circle with a sweaty bottle of beer in hand, the only accouterments missing a cowboy hat and concealed weapon, actually unconcealed and more than one, to make him a true West Texan.

  The day before the cookout, Zach asserted his independence and individuality even more. He wanted to spend the night with the Chavezes; their house was Grand Central Station, the constant in and out of children and grandchildren and associated friends, including Melissa Prissy.

  He was reluctant to ask me. He did not want to hurt my feelings by utterly dumping me on my butt at the Elegante Hotel. But that was a minor part of his reticence. He wasn’t sure if I would say yes. So he went to the matriarch, Irma Chavez, to ask me if it would be all right, a sharp strategic move of negotiating through an intermediary. If Zach had approached me directly, I would have said no because I felt it would be an intrusion. The house was already full because it was always full, the West Texas version of Cheaper by the Dozen, patriarch Tony relegated to the bathroom to watch Desperate Housewives on a black-and-white television with rabbit ears because the six other TVs in the house were being used by others.

  Irma did not mind one more body. She had been a school principal in Odessa for many years and her tenderness with children, everyone actually, was limitless. We went to the hotel so he could pack for the night. It was remarkable to me that Zach, who had not seen the Chavez family for twelve years, would want to stay there no matter how high his level of comfort and their bottomless graciousness. I thought he would be fearful given how tethered he was to routine.

  —Why do you want to stay over there?

  —Because I have never done this before I think the guests Melissa and Prissy and you know because I think you know Melissa and Prissy they’re my age you know.

  It seems incomprehensible to me. No matter how great his fondness for them and their fondness for him, they exist on a different plateau. I assumed they were years apart because of the vast differences in communication.

  —They are?

  —They’re in their twenties very close to my age.

  That distinction is increasingly crucial to him. I still view him as a man-child, but Zach, although aware of his li
mitations, never sees himself that way. In his own mind, he is a peer to others his age and it is only natural that he be with them. It is the pull of human instinct.

  —It’s more fun than being in a hotel room with me, isn’t it?

  —Yeah because I kind of get bored.

  I’ll remember that.

  I began to pack his belongings in a plastic bag. I told him he didn’t need to bring his shaving cream and razor. He was insistent because he wanted to look his best. We drove to the Chavez house on Opal.

  —All right, give me a hug and kiss.

  —Okay.

  —You have a great time.

  —Goodbye.

  He walked toward the house.

  —YOU GOT EVERYTHING??

  —Yeah.

  The door opened. “Hi Tony!” he said in his lilt of love. He disappeared from me. For a moment I felt just like I did with Gerry when he disappeared at the top of the hill in Greenwich for the school interview; I knew Gerry would never return as he once was. And now Zach was building his own wings, step by careful step, an intricate model with all sorts of tiny pieces that are difficult to fit, but still building. It was inspiring to witness, even if I went to bed at eight because I had been stiffed. As I think about it in the early stages of a 550-mile day trying to make Phoenix, I am still inspired.