Rust and Bone

by Craig Davidson

  “This your father?” The fire on clipboard-guy’s head is now mercifully extinguished. “Your son’s a helluva player.”

  “Don’t think I don’t know it.” I clamp a hand around Jason’s neck, give a friendly squeeze. “Gonna redefine the game, this kid. Aren’t you?”

  Wincing, Jason shrugs out of my grip. “When do we play next?”

  “Championship game goes in about forty-five minutes.”

  “Alrighty then,” I say once clipboard-guy has wandered off. “What do you say me and you grab a bite to eat before the big game.”

  “I don’t know. We were gonna set things up—defensive assignments, rotations, that sort of thing.”

  Dart a glance at Jason’s teammates, big Al and lanky Kevin Maravich. “Boys don’t mind if I steal this guy for a bit, do you?”

  The two of them shrug in that mopey skeptical way kids their age have: as though, instead of asking could I take Jason to lunch, I’d suggested enrolling him in seminary college.

  “Great! Have him back in time for the game. Honest injun.”

  WE HEAD TO THE MIKADO and find seats on the patio. Afternoon sunlight hits the scalloped glass tabletops, splintering in blazing pinwheels and fanwise coronets. Tempered light falls through the patio umbrella, touching the beaded perspiration on Jason’s upper lip.

  Lola’s dog, a nasty-looking Rottweiler chained to the wrought-iron patio fence, yammers as its owner waddles outside.

  “Back again, misser?” Lola’s sun-blotting bulk towers above me, Lola tapping a toothmarked Dixon Ticonderoga against an order pad. “What’ll y’have?”

  “A Bud and a shot a rye. This fella’ll have a Bud, too.”

  “He gots ID?”

  “Dad, I got a game.”

  “Sweet Jesus, Lola, he’s got a game!” Suddenly I’m angry—furious, really—at Lola for permitting my son to drink before a ball game. “Get him a Coke and a grilled cheese—you do grilled cheese, don’t you?”

  “Kin whip one up.”

  “Fine. Wonderful.” Shake my head, disgusted. “He’s got a game, for Christ’s sake. The championship.”

  Lola shrugs and wanders off to fill the order. I say, “Hey, got any grape soda?”

  “Nope,” Lola says without turning back. “Coke and ging-a-ale.”

  I wink at Jason. “Never hurts to ask. Know how much you love your grape pop.”

  An inside joke of ours. A few years back Jason and some buddies had a pickup game going when I returned from a morning shift. Head to the kitchen for something to wet the whistle and on the counter spy a bottle of grape pop I’d bought earlier that week—dead empty. Don’t know why, but this pissed the almighty hell out of me; guess maybe I’d been thinking about it at the drill press—a tall cool glass of grape soda, all purple and bubbly. Sounds ridiculous, but at the time I could’ve spat nails and thundered outside brandishing the empty bottle.

  “Which one a you shits drank my pop?”

  The driveway game ground to a halt, everyone standing about staring at their sneakers. After a moment Jason said, “I did, Dad. Hardly any left, really.”

  I stalked over and rapped his head with the bottle. Thin plastic made an empty wok off his skull.

  “You drank it all? Couldn’t leave a goddam glassful for your old man?”

  “There wasn’t even a glassful left.” Jason rubbed his scalp. “There was like, only enough that it filled those dents, the, the nubbins at the bottom of the bottle. And it was flat, anywa—”

  Hit him again—wok!—and again—pok!—and for good measure— tok! Silence except for big Al Cousy dribbling the basketball and the hollow glance of plastic off my son’s head. Jason’s eyes never left mine, though they did go a bit puffy at the edges, skin above his cheeks pink and swollen as though some horrible pressure were building there.

  “It’s not the grape pop,” I said, intent on teaching my son a valuable life lesson. “It’s the … principle. Now get on your horse—I mean right now—ride down to Avondale and pick up a fresh bottle.”

  Jason pulled his bicycle out of the garage. “Guys oughta head home.”

  “Yeah, why don’t you boys skedaddle. Jason’s got an errand to run.”

  He rode down the street round the bend. I stood rooted like a stump until he came back, bottle swaying in a plastic bag tugged over the handlebars. By then my anger had ebbed so I only swatted him good-naturedly and made him sink twenty three-pointers. Pretty silly, when you think back on it—I mean, grape pop, right? Which is why we can make a joke of it now.

  Lola comes out with the drinks. Bolt back the shot of rye, suck down half a bottle of Bud, lean back in my chair. Feeling a little calmer, more inside myself, breathe deeply and smile.

  “How come you didn’t tell me about this—know how I like to watch you play.”

  “Sort of a last-minute thing.” Jason cracks an icecube between his molars. “The other guy came down sick. Didn’t want to, but they were in a bind.”

  “Well, good thing—woulda got creamed without you.”

  “Didn’t want to,” he says with emphasis. “They were hard up.”

  “Yeah, the whole tourney’s below your skill level; you’re too good for these chumps. So, any offers from down south yet? About that time of year.”

  “One, from Kentucky-Wesleyan.” A shrug. “Like, partial scholarship or something.”

  “Kentucky-Wesleyan? But … they’re Div II.”

  Jason stares out across the courtyard, telephone wires bellied under a weight of blackbirds. “Yeah, Div II. Maybe nobody’s gonna come calling. So what? There’s other things I could do.”

  “Other things? Like what?”

  “I dunno … could be, like, a nutritionist or something.”

  “A nutritionist? What, with the carbs and proteins? The food pyramid and … oh god, the wheat grass? Don’t be an idiot. This is just the start. You’re gonna want to hold off for the best offer—and hey, might even want to declare straight out of high school.”

  “Declare for what?”

  “Declare for what, he says—the draft, dopey. The NBA draft.”

  Jason shakes his head and for a split second I want to reach over and haul off on him. Instead I finish my beer and when Lola comes out with the sandwich order another.

  “How’s your ma doing?”

  “Fine.” Jason takes a bite of grilled cheese. “She’s fine.”

  “Must be weird,” I say hopefully, “the two of you roaming around that big ole house all by your lonesome.”

  “Not really.”

  Jason’s mother and I are experiencing marital difficulties. The crux of the problem seems to lie in the admission I may’ve married her with an eye towards certain features—her articulate fingers, coltish legs, strong calves—that, united with my own physical makeup, laid the genetic groundwork for a truly spectacular ball player. She claims our entire relationship is “false-bottomed,” that I ought to be ashamed for aspiring to create some “Franken-son” with little or no regard for her “feelings.” She refuses to accept my apology, despite my being tanked and overly lugubrious at the time of admission. I feel this not only petty of her but verging on un-motherly, what with our boy at such a crucial juncture in his development.

  “Who’s gonna string up the Christmas lights this year, huh?” I ask, despite having gone derelict on this particular household duty for years. “You’ll be away at school.”

  “Do it before I go, Mom asks me to.”

  Lola arrives with another beer. “Well, anyway, this’ll all come out in the wash. Me and your ma just need some time apart. Lots of couples go through it, don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  Something in his tone gets my dander up: it’s the tone of a truth-hoarder, a secret-keeper and now I really am going to smack the taste out of his mouth but my hand’s arrested by the arrival of a pretty young thing who strikes up a conversation with Jason. Short but amply endowed—built like a brick shithouse, my old TRW crony Ted
Russell would say—leaning over the patio rail in lavender tubetop, cheeks dusted with sparkling glitter, she says, “Hey there, cutie,” in a high breathy voice. My son smiles as they ease into typical adolescent conversation: what so-and-so said about so-and-so, so-and-so’s having a bush party tonight, so-and-so’s an angel, so-and-so’s a creep but drives a Corvette and all the while I’m staring—say “staring,” but I suppose “leering” is more apt—at the girl, picturing her a few years down the road, that knockout body grinding up and down a brass pole or something. Leering at a ditzy cocktease no older than your son, a man is forced into one of two admissions: either (a) your son is more or less grown up, or (b) you’re a lecherous perv.

  “Look at my boy,” I say, brimming with drunken pride. “All grown up and talking to girls.”

  “C’mon, Dad,” Jason says nervously, as though addressing the drunken uncle gearing up to spoil a wedding. The girl, who up ’til now has treated me with the brusque inattention reserved for houseplants, seems baffled and somewhat sickened to learn Jason is the fruit of my loins: like discovering the Mona Lisa was painted by a mongoloid.

  “Got to see a man about a horse.” Swaying to my feet, I add, “Forgot to hit the bank. Spot your old man a few shekels, wouldya?”

  Jason sighs in a manner that suggests he’d been expecting this all along. Reaching into his duffel, he lays a twenty on the table.

  “That’s a good lad. Knew your ma wouldn’t send you out empty-handed.”

  “It’s my money, Dad. I like, earned it. At my job.”

  “Sure you did, sonny boy.” Tip him a wink. “Sure you did.”

  Stumbling through the patio doors, I hear the girl say: “So that’s your dad? Weird.”

  BATHROOM WALLS PAPERED in outdated concert flyers and old cigarette signs. Piss rises wicklike up the drywall in hypnotic flame-shaped stains. A fan of dried puke splashed round the base of the lone commode, dried and colorful gobbets. Disgusting, yes, but I cannot say with utter certainty I am not the culprit: the sequence of this morning’s events remains hazy.

  Relieving myself, my eyes are drawn to a snatch of graffiti on the stall: For Sale: Baby Shoes. Hardly Worn. Beneath this is written, How about ten bucks?, and under that a crude etching of a droopy phallus with what appears to be a flower growing out the pisshole. Stare up at a lightbulb imprinted with blackened silhouettes of charred insects, which for some reason remind me of the holographic shadows burnt onto brickwork at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Standing there in the piss and puke and dim unmoving puppetshow thrown by the bugtarred bulb, a sense of grim desolation draws over me—a sensation of psychological dread. Through the smeared casement window phantom shapes dart and cycle, dark tongues licking beneath the warped frame. The stall presses in upon me, walls buckle-crimping like the lungs of some great primordial beast. A trilling voice invades my skull: Weird-Weird-Weird-Weird-Weird. Reel from the stall and in the crack-starred mirror glimpse my eyes punched out and dangling on sluglike stalks and there deep in the cratered sockets spy another pair of eyes, red and raw and slitted lengthwise like a cat’s, peering back without pity or remorse.

  The episode passes and everything’s a bit cheerier when I get back outside. Jason and the girl are gone. Lola’s cleared away the bottles and settled the bill. Pocket the change, leave no tip. The Rottweiler barks wrathfully—has it been trained to sniff out skinflints like those airport drug dogs? “Hush’n, Biscuits,” comes Lola’s voice from inside.

  With a few minutes to spare before Jason’s game, pop into the liquor store. A homeless man squats outside the door begging bus fare. Where’s the guy need to get to so badly? He doesn’t ask anything from me. Wander air-conditioned aisles, past cognacs and brandies and aged scotch whiskies, arriving at a cooler stocked with screw-top Rieslings, boxed Chardonnays and malt liquors. Settle on a smoky brown bottle, label stamped with a snorting bull: a plucky malt best enjoyed on those occasions one finds oneself a bit down at the heel. Paying the cashier with the coins my son hadn’t bothered to pick up, it strikes me I may’ve hit a new low.

  It’s not kosher to drink in public so I hunt through the liquor store dumpster. An empty Big Gulp cup—bingo! A wasp inside, big angry bastard must’ve crawled down the straw to get at the crystallized globes of Orange Crush clinging to the waxed insides. It buzzes away as I pour in the contents of the brown bottle, re-fasten the lid, and step onto the sidewalk well pleased with this subterfuge. Sucking merrily on the neon pink straw, I pause to consider who else’s lips it may’ve come in contact with. Could’ve been anybody, you got to figure—a bum’s, Christ, some scabby diseased bum, cracked lips rich with fungal deposits and now I’m wondering if 7-Eleven even sells soda to the homeless, if they conduct a brisk trade with this sort of clientele, and while I come to the reasonable conclusion that no, they clearly do not, I cannot help but feel the earlier sense of lowness I experienced was merely a staging area, a jumping-off point for this profound, near-subterranean, even lower low.

  A TEEMING THRONG rings the championship court. Shove through the mob with an air of boozy entitlement—it’s my son they’re gawking at, isn’t it?—to find the game’s already started. Jason’s team is matched against a trio of blacks whose voices betray an upper New York lilt: “trow” for throw, “dat” for that, “dere” for there, “dear” for dare, so what you hear is Trow dat shit up dere—go on, I dear ya! Up from Buffalo with their dusky sunpolished skin, cornrowed hair and trash talk, figuring they’ll take these pasty Canucks to school. Some bozo with a megaphone, the announcer I guess, does not call the game so much as cap each play with an annoying catchphrase: “Boo-YA! ” or “Boom-shakalaka!” or “Dipsee-doo dunkaroo!” or “Ye-ye-ye-ye-ye-ye-YEAH!” or just “Ohhh, SNAP!”

  The other team is up 7-4 when Jason takes the ball at the top of the key. He dribbles right and bounces a pass to Al Cousy on the low block. Al rolls off his man, elevates and fires a one-legged jumper that clanks off rim.

  “Don’t pass to stone hands!” I cry. “Jesus, son—use your head! ”

  The other team’s point guard executes a smooth crossover dribble— an ankle-snapper—catching Jason flatfooted. Kevin Maravich shuffles over on helpside defense but the guard flicks the ball to Kevin’s check, who dunks two-handed and gorilla-hangs on the rim.

  “Biggedy-BAM! ” hollers the announcer.

  Jason keeps passing to his tits-on-a-bull teammates. Kevin gets blocked twice and big Al puts up enough bricks to build a homeless shelter. Their opponents dish out a constant stream of trash: Don’t go bringing that weakass shit in here, bitch—this is my house! Hope you got an umbrella, son—I’m gonna be raining on you all day! Boy, my game’s so ill I make medicine sick! The ref, a balding old shipwreck in frayed zebra getup, lets the Yanks get away with murder: pushes, holds, flagrant elbows. I give it to him both barrels.

  “Hey ref, if you had one more eye you’d be a cyclops!”

  “Hey ref, Colonel Mustard called—he said get a clue!”

  “Hey ref, if your IQ was any lower someone’d have to water you!”

  Spectators snorting and laughing, a beefy mitt slams between my shoulder blades and someone says, “Thattaboy—stick it to the man!” Take a haul on my drink and for a long vacant moment feel nothing but relentless seething hatred for the ref, the opposing team, Jason’s teammates, anyone and everyone trying to stop him from reaching the goal he’s destined for, stifle the gift that’ll take him out of this rinkydink town, far from the do-nothing go-nowhere be-nobody yokels surrounding me.

  The score’s 13-4 and Jason hasn’t taken a shot. He kicks the ball to Al who kicks it back, a stinging bullet hitting Jason in the chest. “What are you doing? Take it, man.” Jason stab-steps his defender, gives him a brisk shake-n-bake, shoots. As soon as the ball leaves his hands, you know it’s good. It passes through so clean the net loops up over the hoop and that sound—dear god, almost sexual.

  “This guy’s dialed in long distance!” the announcer brays.

  Jason
picks the point guard’s pocket on the next possession, clears beyond the three-point arc, fires. Swish. 13-9.

  “He’s shooting the lights out, folks!”

  The point guard muscles past Jason but Kevin gets a hand in his face and the shot misses short left. Al gobbles up the rebound and shovels it to Jason. The defensive rotation’s slow and he gets a clean look from twenty-two feet, burying it. 13-12 and now the other team’s a bit frazzled; “C’mon, naa,” the point guard says. “D-up. We gut these bitches.”

  But it’s too late: Jason’s entered some kind of zone. Wherever he is on the court, no matter how tight the coverage, he’s draining it. Running one-hander from the elbow—good. Fadeaway three-ball with a defender down his throat—good. High-arcing teardrop in traffic—good. In my head I’m hearing Marv Albert, longtime New York Knickerbockers play-by-play man and purloiner of women’s undergarments: Mikan takes the ball at the top of the circle, shakes his man, hoists up a prayer— YESSSSS! Twisting circus shot around two defenders—good. Step-back three launched from another zipcode—good. The lead’s flipped, 22-17; the Yanks’ faces are stamped with grimaces of utter disbelief.

  “This cat’s got the skills to pay the bills, ladies and gentlemen!”

  Throughout this shooting display Jason’s expression never changes: a vacant, vaguely disgusted look like he’s sniffed something rank. He doesn’t follow the ball after it leaves his hand, as though unwilling to chart its inevitable drop through the hoop. If you didn’t know any better, you’d almost think he wants to miss. Scan the crowd for a familiar face, my shitheel supervisor Mr. Riley maybe—See that, asshole? That’s my son! My good genes MADE that! What did your genes ever make, Riley? Oh, that’s right—a few stains on the bedsheets and a PUSSY TAX CONSULTANT!

  The game-winning shot’s a doozy. Jason passes down to Al, who is blocked but corrals the ball and shuttles it to Jason. The other point guard’s tight to his vest and Jason backs off, dribbling the ball high. Maybe it’s just the malt liquor but at this moment he appears to move in a cocoon of beatific light: glowing sundogs and sparkling scintillas robe his arms and legs. He goes right but so does his defender, swiping at the ball, almost stealing it. They’re down along the baseline, Jason’s heels nearly out of bounds and he shoots falling into the crowd, a dozen arms outstretched to cradle him and as he’s going down I hear him say, in a small defeated voice, “Glass.” The ball banks high off the backboard and through the net.