Sightings

by B. J. Hollars

  “Not old pipes,” my father grunted, tugging fistfuls of red hair from the shower drain. The pyramid continued to grow beside him, a floor mat’s worth of Uncle Clown’s shedding fur.

  “Oh, so what? You’re going to try to pin this on me?” Uncle Clown asked. “You think a few strands of somebody’s hair are going to make pipes burst like that?”

  “Somebody’s hair?” Dad gasped, leaping to his feet and slamming the last chunk of red coils onto the edge of the tub. “Who the hell else around here has red hair?”

  He had a good point – Aunt Clown’s hair was blue.

  “Oh, so now the man’s a plumber,” Uncle Clown laughed. “And a barber, too, apparently.”

  “Look, I know you’re going through a rough patch,” my father began, “but please understand that we want to help you through any way we . . .”

  “Oh, shove it up your . . .”

  Anticipating his colorful language, Aunt Clown reached for her slide whistle, overpowering him with a single breath.

  Nobody laughed at the sound.

  “Now look here . . .” Dad gritted, stepping toward him.

  “No, you look here,” Uncle Clown countered, pointing to his flower lapel.

  A stream of water squirted Dad in the eye, and this time, he was far less of a good sport.

  Dad and Uncle Clown fought their way out of the bathroom, we three spectators shouting and pleading with them to stop.

  Dad had my uncle in a chokehold, and soon they were somersaulting down the stairs, crashing into walls and shattering picture frames before returning to solid ground. They shook off the glass and leapt to their feet once more, Dad stomping on Uncle Clown’s gigantic shoes, pinning him in place like a punching bag. My father absorbed the scattershot blows, but when he returned fire, he always aimed directly for Uncle Clown’s nose, a high-pitched “honkahonka” erupting with each well placed punched. They rolled to the floor once more, their hulking bodies flattening the nearby whoopee cushions, farting sounds erupting, adding to the soundtrack that already included grunts and gasps and moans. I’d never seen my father fight anyone – he’d told me violence was barbaric – but suddenly there he was kneeing my uncle in the stomach, pressing the clown’s chalk-white face into the wall.

  “Say uncle,” Uncle Clown gasped, though, twisted against the couch, he was in no position to call any shots. “Say uncle, damn you.”

  My father didn’t, though eventually he relented, releasing my uncle from the chokehold without even making him say uncle.

  Mom, Aunt Clown, and I were left to stare out at the destruction: empty seltzer bottles piled high, a unicycle half-crushed beneath a chair. Juggling balls were scattered like landmines, hand buzzers like brass knuckles.

  It looked like some kind of face-painted massacre.

  My father limped into the kitchen, returning with an ice pack.

  “Hey, put some ice on that eye,” he said, tossing the pack to my uncle. “Nobody’s going to pay to see a black eye on a clown.”

  Uncle Clown caught the ice pack with one hand, nodding as he lifted it to his face.

  “Hey,” Uncle Clown called to him. “Thanks for not killing me back there.”

  He winked like he was joking, though his eyes appeared to have taken on some seltzer.

  Dad nodded, then sifted through the mess on the floor until stumbling upon Uncle Clown’s endless chain of handkerchiefs. He handed it over.

  “Thanks, partner,” Uncle Clown said, blowing his nose and releasing a solitary “honka.”

  Nobody said anything then – a silence so deep that even the whoopee cushions had the good sense to deflate inconspicuously.

  As I stood there, watching my aunt press the ice pack to her husband’s eye while Mom moved Dad to the den, I realized – with some comfort – that we were back to what we’d always been.

  Not better, not worse – just a family in desperate need of a punch line.

  Line of Scrimmage

  This must have been seventh grade or so.

  My father had just left to fulfill his dream of becoming an impressionist painter somewhere in the Vermont wilderness, and my football coach, Coach Housen, was busy telling us to “Whip their dicks!” and “Smack their asses!” among various other phrases that didn’t make a lot of sense to those of us sitting in the locker room.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” Housen clapped. “I want you to get out there and slap those fannies like you mean it, really dig your shoulder in right around the groin. And here’s the rub, boys: you gotta commit! Either commit or go home and nurse off your mother’s teat. None of this pantywaist bullwonky. I want nothing less than long term commitment. Bend ’em over. Ride ’em cowboy style. Wrap ’em up and sink your teeth directly into their peters,” he barked, snapping his teeth like a vise, crossing his arms.

  “Any questions?”

  We had about a million questions.

  Why were we putting our shoulders into their groins?

  Sink our teeth into their . . . peters?

  “No questions? All right, hands in,” Coach called. All thirty of us gathered round, our cleats clicking against the smooth cement. We piled sweaty hand atop sweaty hand.

  “Okay. All together, now. Whip their dicks, on three . . .”

  Housen was the harmless type. Bewildered, out of touch, but at the end of each practice he’d have us take a knee while he preached some on-the-spot sermon about what he’d witnessed out on the field that day. Something related to our dedication, our sacrifice, our grit.

  “And remember,” he concluded each sermon. “We win as a team and we lose as a team, but whatever the score, we’ll always be a team.”

  Turned out what we did best was lose as a team.

  After our stunning defeat against Central Christian (52–0), Housen lined us up on the end zone so that we might learn from our mistakes.

  “I don’t care if your parents are waiting in the car,” he paced, his hands buried deep into his windbreaker. “No one’s leaving this goddamn field till we learn how to play defense.” We were mud-soaked and tired and cold. Shivering. Our shoulder pads weighed us down, our helmets cramped our ears.

  “Yancey,” he hollered to me. “Show us some defensive mobility, would ya?”

  Some what? Did second string kickers even have that?

  “Come on, Yancey, knock it off with the dillydallying.”

  Dillydallying?

  I crouched on all fours.

  “Like this, Coach?”

  “Jesus, Yancey. Really?” he asked, throwing his hat to the grass. “Like this.”

  He demonstrated for me, clenching his fists and managing a slow rocking motion, his pelvis leading.

  “All together now!”

  We clenched our fists, tensing our buttocks and pumping forward from our crotches.

  Housen nodded.

  “Now we’re getting it. Take it nice and slow. Sometimes you gotta go in for the tackle balls first. Lead with those hips, boys, lead with those hips. Don’t be afraid to use those butt muscles.”

  We slow-humped the chilly September air until there was nothing left to hump. Humped, grunting, thrusting, thoroughly exhausted as the rain trickled down the glossy slope of our helmets.

  After ten minutes or so of demonstrating defensive mobility, Hans Rochester, a back tackle, said, “Coach, I think we gotta go.” He pointed to a crowd of bewildered parents gathering by the fence.

  “Oh really? Well I know one place ya gotta go. To the fifty and back!” He blew his whistle. “Move it! I wanna see those tight asses shake.”

  Daryl Harbeck (second string ball holder) breathed heavily beside me.

  “We could always just . . . quit,” he gasped.

  “Quit,” I agreed. “Yes . . . we could do that.”

  But our dedication was simply too great.

  Nights after practice Mom and I sat down on the kitchen stools with a telephone book and began calling Vermont’s local authorities.

  Polic
e stations, fire stations, the YMCA.

  “Yes, hello. You haven’t happened to notice a stranger in town? Frederick Yancey. About 5’9”, sort of squat. He’s a painter, you see . . .”

  She was desperate for answers, so she made me desperate, too.

  Addison County hadn’t seen him, nor had Caladonia or Chittenden or Essex.

  We had some much-needed luck in Bennington, when a police officer recalled, “Well, there used to be some painter around here. What was his name?”

  His name was Norman Rockwell.

  Mom continually excused Dad for his actions, claiming that after fourteen years of forty-hour workweeks at the insurance firm, perhaps he deserved to momentarily cut all ties.

  “We shouldn’t worry,” she assured. “I’m sure he’ll be back in no time. Most men buy a sports car, for crying out loud,” she laughed. “He’ll come back to us, right, sweetie?”

  One day, we just stopped calling Vermont all together. Still, Mom ordered phonebooks from neighboring states: New Hampshire, Delaware, and much of the New England region.

  But even after they arrived, we didn’t bother calling. We just stacked them on a shelf and used all the money we were saving on long-distance to order Kentucky Fried Chicken by the bucket.

  “That crazy father of yours . . . he’s just so . . . crazy,” she smiled, licking her fingers. “Excuse me, Rexy.” She pushed past me and locked herself in the bathroom.

  I devoured a wing and then sat by the phone, in case Vermont called back.

  The school’s annual Father-Son breakfast snuck up on everyone, and one day after practice, as we peeled ourselves out of our pads and hit the showers, Coach Housen loomed in the doorway staring at his clipboard.

  After much towel slapping and six rounds of Goldbond powder fights, we dressed and left the locker room, our backpacks slung cockily over one shoulder. Coach Housen spotted me among the herd and shouted, “Yancey, office, pronto.”

  It wasn’t much of an office – just a glorified janitor’s closet with a desk and a lightbulb squeezed in beside the boiler. He’d cluttered it with things only slightly related to football. Back issues of Sports Illustrated piled haphazardly beside a microwave. A crossword puzzle. A half-finished maze on the back of a Denny’s children’s menu. Two coffee mugs, each proclaiming him the “World’s Best Coach.”

  He leaned back in his green swivel chair, rocking gently.

  “Yeah, Coach?”

  He nodded, staying quiet for a moment, his forefingers forming a triangle in front of his lips. Finally, he spoke.

  “Doing some good work out there, Yancey. Your kick’s improving, and you’re holding nothing back in terms of really butt munching the opponent.”

  How does one munch a butt?

  Was I really good at it?

  “Uh . . . okay, Coach,” I nodded. “Well, thanks.” I started out of the office.

  “I mean that,” he said, motioning me back. I leaned against the doorframe.

  “You wanna take a seat, kid? You look restless.”

  “No, thanks.”

  He paused again, then nodded, leaning forward, adjusting the mugs on his desk.

  “Ever seen mugs like this before?” he asked, pushing them toward me.

  “Uh-huh. My dad has one. Only it says ‘World’s Greatest Dad,’ I think.”

  “Well is he?”

  I didn’t say anything. Most of the school already knew he’d vanished, so I just told them the truth: that he was commanding a nuclear sub for a top-secret mission in the Baltic.

  “Anyway, as you may have heard, they got this asinine father-son breakfast deal coming up. It’s a helluva sham, but I’ll tell you what, if you wanna get some free food out of it, I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Mind, Coach?”

  “Jesus, Rex. Head in the game, huh?” he said, tapping his forehead. “I wouldn’t mind going to the breakfast. I wouldn’t mind accompanying you to the breakfast. Not accompanying you, just sort of . . . we could both go. Together. Or separate. Just sort of sit at the same table and grab a couple of waffles on the school dime.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

  He looked up, squinting.

  “Give it to me straight: You a waffle-man, Yancey?”

  “I guess I could be.”

  “Good man.”

  I turned to leave.

  “I mean, I don’t want to make it a big deal or anything,” he continued, still rocking in the chair. “Just if you want some waffles and I want some waffles, then why the hell shouldn’t we be allowed some goddamned waffles, am I right? We pay taxes.”

  “Sure, Coach.”

  “And we live in a free, democratic society. Did you know that?”

  I nodded.

  “Good.” He reached for a pen and pulled his half-finished maze close. “Well all right then. Get the hell out of here. I got some work to do.”

  Housen was about as far from resembling my father as humanly possible. The man was a tower, one perfectly tuned, forty-year-old muscle. He had a large, doughy face and hands that could easily grip a football. Enormous feet, too, and a neck so thick his whistle turned into a choke collar. I’d never seen him wear anything but his world-famous sweatpants and collared shirt combo, but for our breakfast, he managed pants and a tie. A blazer, even, in place of the windbreaker. Complete with a clean shave, I almost didn’t recognize him. He waited for me outside the cafeteria before school, running a plastic comb through his still-wet hair.

  “Rex, two-time it,” he hissed, shoving the comb back into his pocket. “You want those waffles or what?”

  I dropped my backpack in the hall alongside the others and we took our place in the food line.

  Daryl was there with his father, Mr. Harbeck, and after Coach and I loaded up on cantaloupe and waffles and blueberry muffins, we made the slow, treacherous walk over to their table without spilling.

  “Greg Housen,” Coach said, turning to Mr. Harbeck. “Glad to know ya.” He stuck out his paw, then excused himself to “top off” his coffee.

  Daryl leaned forward in his chair.

  “So Housen’s your dad, huh?”

  I shrugged. I said there were probably worse fathers.

  Near the end of the breakfast, Principal Cody made the mistake of asking if anyone wanted to say a few words. Coach Housen wasn’t the only one to speak. Plenty of fathers did. They were all calm and self-assured, walking briskly to the microphone reeking of aftershave, checking their watches as they went.

  Each speech started off with a joke like, “The thing about the father-son breakfast is . . .” and ended with something slightly sentimental about how proud they were to be fathers.

  After four or five identical speeches (“So let’s raise an orange juice to these boys . . .”), Coach Housen got around to loitering near enough to the podium to work his way into the line-up. When he finally settled in front of the microphone, he tapped it twice.

  “This thing on?” His voice reverberated throughout the cafeteria.

  He turned to the principal.

  “Doesn’t sound like it’s on, Cody. You break it?”

  The crowd of fathers assured him that it was, in fact, in working order, and after three or four “You sure’s?” and “Testing one, two, three’s” and “Give me a wave from the back if you can hear me,” eventually he got around to believing them.

  Coach cleared his throat and said, “All right, all right, settle down now.”

  The fathers did as they were told.

  “Greg Housen, class of ’76,” he introduced himself. “Former varsity running back.” The fathers nodded, as if they too were once inducted into the fraternity of middle school football. Coach leaned an elbow on the podium and continued.

  “As you’re all aware, I’m the head football coach here at Elmwood Middle, but here’s something you probably didn’t know: it’s an honor and a privilege coaching your sons.”

  He paused, leaving room for the deafening cheers that did not come. A few clap
ped, a few returned their attention to their coffee.

  “Now, I mean that,” he said, pacing. “None of that blowing smoke up your ass bullwonky.” Principal Cody bit his lip, directing his eyes to his cufflinks. “You see, you’ve got some good boys here with you today, and as a man without children, I’ve always felt a certain . . . kinship to your kids, sort of like an uncle figure.”

  A couple of fathers murmured in agreement.

  “Regrettably,” he continued, pointing to his crotch, “the good Lord did not see fit to bless me with strong swimmers. And it’s a medical fact that I’ve got some cloggy pipes. Now, I could get into the science behind it, give you a brief lesson in sperm ducts, but I don’t want Cody to piss himself in front of all you fine gentlemen who have joined us here today. Suffice it to say, I’ve always enjoyed being the uncle. But this morning, I’m more than an uncle to one player. Because this morning, I’m here to fill in for Rex Yancey’s father – go ahead, Rex, raise your hand.”

  Did I have to?

  “Come on, Rex. Don’t be shy.”

  I raised it.

  “Anywho,” Coach continued, rapping his fingers against the podium, “I guess what I’m trying to say is, every young man needs an uncle. Also,” he continued, listing them off on his fingers, “football teams need players and equipment and water jugs and athletic tape and all of that, but that’s neither here nor there. Because I’m here to talk about my son-for-the-day, Rex Yancey, and how the kid’s a helluva kicker and you can all expect great things from him.”

  Was he talking hypothetically?

  The fathers took their cue to clap. Mr. Harbeck patted my shoulder, gave me an undeserved thumbs up.

  Housen’s tear ducts seemed to be in working order, and while he tried hiding his emotions with his gigantic palm, we couldn’t ignore the wails. He held up a finger with his opposite hand, then turned to face the wall. We watched his heaving shoulders as he wept, listened to his sea lion-like moans reverberate throughout the cafeteria.