In the backyard, a group of kids smoked under a mango tree. As Billy approached, a voice cooed, “Here comes another seeker of vice.”
He waved, walked to the back fence, and stood alone looking up at the moon. He heard soft footsteps in the grass, then Moira’s whisper: “You want me to apologize for being a rich girl?”
“You don’t have to apologize for anything, and neither do I.”
He felt warm breath on the back of his neck. She whispered, “So, seventeen years old and it’s all over but the oranges?”
Billy turned, put his hands on her shoulders, and moved her away from him. Under the mango tree, a girl he didn’t know smiled as she watched him hold Moira.
The back door burst open and a group of students spilled into the yard. A thin boy who wore a long black scarf made a sweeping gesture with delicate fingers, and said, “Good friends, I bring you news from the breach. One of our own has fallen.” He pressed a pale wrist to his forehead, closed his eyes, and staggered in mock sorrow.
Another boy stepped up behind him and announced, “We left at halftime. Some guy collapsed. They stopped the game for a long time. Ambulance on the field and all that.” He hugged himself and shuddered.
The smokers under the mango tree shed their languid poses. “Who?” “What boy?” “Where was he hurt?” “Was he… unconscious?” “Where did they take him?”
The boy in the scarf said dramatically, “Straight to the morgue.”
The group censured him with groans and rolled eyes. Billy watched the faces of his fellow Spartans. Some were scared for the boy who had been hurt. A few seemed satisfied by the news. With a sick feeling in his belly, Billy wondered who it was. He closed his eyes and saw a crackback block that tore a knee, saw Ted Street, his throwing arm extended, speared in the ribs by a red-dogging helmet. Good fans would know the boy by his number.
One shy girl, a skinny sophomore with large, dark eyes and nervous hands, whispered, “I saw blood. That poor boy. I know I saw blood.”
Moira pulled Billy away from the group, pressed her shoulder against his, her voice insistent at his ear: “I’ll make a bet with you. The guy they took to the hospital, it’s Sim Sizemore. You know him, right?”
“Of course.”
“He’s a good player?”
“Yeah,” Billy said, “he’s good.” He remembered Sim’s talent, a gift to be prayed for, a prayer rarely answered.
“Was he your friend?”
Moira eyes met his with a directness he could not match. He looked away.
She said, “I win the bet. My mom’s a doctor. Around here, she’s the last resort for people with certain kinds of problems. Bad problems. I snuck into her office and did some reading. Sim has an infection. I think it’s something called staph. They don’t know how to cure it. People die of it every day. I asked her about it.”
“You asked… ?”
“Not that way, stupid. I said I read about it in a magazine. She gave me quite a scary little lecture on hygiene.” She waited until Billy looked at her before continuing. “So, Mystery Night. What’d all you tough guys do out there in the deep, dark woods? The whole school was in an uproar about it. Tell me and I’ll write it up in the Spartan. Maybe it’s the story I’m looking for.”
Billy lied. “I didn’t do anything. That’s why I’m not a football player anymore.”
“Well, somebody hurt Sim Sizemore,” she pointed at her own thighs, “down there, and that’s why he’s playing lousy football, and that’s why the good ole Spartans are about to lose that playoff slot, and that’s why Prosser’s gonna call you in.”
Billy whispered, “I don’t know anything about what happened to Sim.”
Moira smiled, baring white teeth in the darkness. She rested her hand on his forearm. “I think you do.”
He removed her hand. The kids who had come from the game were watching them. “I have to go to work.”
“Sure.” She flicked the cigarette into the grass. “Come next Friday. I’ll be here.” She reached under the neckline of her black dress and removed something from her bra. She took Billy’s hand and pressed the crackling package into his palm. For the Prevention of Disease Only.
Billy headed for a gate at the side of the house. Mr. English leaned there, blowing pipe smoke at the moon, a glass of something stronger than grape juice in his hand.
“Leaving so soon, Bill? Well, nice to meet you.”
“You too, sir. Thanks for inviting me.”
“You’re welcome. Come again. Lovely night for it.”
Billy ran across the front yard, dodging the arcs of sprinklers, smelling the rusty, sulphurous water. In the front seat of the Fairlane, he beat his forehead against the steering wheel, repeating with each blow, “Sim, Sim, Sim.” He did it until an angry, stinging lump formed in his flesh, until tears came to his eyes, until he could promise himself that it was only this beating that made him cry.
EIGHTEEN
Black skid marks led from the street into the driveway. Billy could see written in burnt rubber how his father’s car had slid across the driveway and onto the brown grass of the front yard, uprooting a half-dead hibiscus bush. One yellow blossom hung from the chrome bumper of the old blue Mercury. Billy parked the Fairlane, got out, and looked around. Across the street, Mrs. Kudloe watched him from her front porch. Her husband, wearing a white undershirt and holding a newspaper, came out and stood beside her. He looked at the Mercury, then at Billy, shook his head, and went back inside.
Mrs. Kudloe cupped her hands to her mouth and called, “He went that way.” She hooked an angry thumb at the intersection of two oil roads.
Billy spotted his father crossing busy South Citrus Avenue a block away. It was a street of pawnshops, motels, and bars. His tie loosened and his suit coat slung over his arm, he dodged like a ballcarrier through traffic. He stopped on the median, looked both ways, and ran toward Billy, a cigarette pinched in the corner of his mouth. He waved. “Billy! Hey, Billy!”
Behind his father, on the far side of Citrus, was a bar called the Cool Room. The words were painted in wisps of snow on smoked-glass windows. Billy watched his father coming, looked back at the driveway, and did his calculations. Illuminated by scotch, his father had skidded home, found the house empty of further nourishment, and had enhanced his mood in the Cool Room.
Winded, Billy’s father walked the last thirty yards and stopped in front of him. He looked back at the traffic on South Citrus. “Whew, they almost got your old man.” He grinned and fanned his sweating face with his hand. “Cut down by a carful of tourists on the way to Cypress Gardens. What a way to go? Right, Billy-me-bye?”
Billy nodded, smiled.
Mrs. Kudloe beat her mop on the front porch railing like she was scourging flesh, turned in a cloud of dust, and closed her front door.
Inside the house, Billy’s father grandly tossed his coat onto the coffee table and sat on the couch.
Billy said, “Dad, are you—?”
“Dad? But I thought a dad, well, sort of deserves to know a little bit about what goes on with his son.” His father’s face looked like it had that day a year ago in the backyard. Billy remembered their sudden rough hug, his father’s husky whisper. I’m leaving her. I just can’t take it anymore.
Billy kept his eyes calm, his face neutral. That day in the backyard, a younger Billy had promised himself he would understand it all later on. Now he thought that if his father hugged him, he would enjoy it. Would give back a good strong hug. He would whisper words of his own into his father’s ear, though he could not imagine what they might be.
“Do you like the work at the juice plant?” His father gave him the look of serious men talking about careers, the state of commerce.
“Yeah,” Billy said, “I mean it’s hard.” He touched the side of his head. “Not mentally hard. All I do is move oranges. But it keeps me in shape, and it keeps my mind off… I mean I don’t have to think about anything in particular. And I like the money.”
The voice in Billy’s head said, Fuck this! He grabbed his dad by the shoulders, hugged him hard, pressed his cheek against his father’s, into the smell of aftershave and tobacco, scotch and sweat, and he whispered. “I love you, Dad.”
He hugged his father and stared into his streaming eyes. Then they held each other by the upper arms like two centurions in a movie. His father shook him and pulled him against his chest.
They embraced for a long time, and then Billy went to the bathroom to get a wet washcloth for his father’s face.
Billy and his father lay side by side on his father’s bed. His father had been still so long Billy thought he might be asleep. He seemed at peace after they had hugged. He seemed to need rest. He lay with his arm flung over his eyes, blocking out the light. Billy listened to his father’s breathing. A strange calm came from the gravity of his father’s body so near to his. They had not lain together like this since he was a little boy.
“Dad, why did you and Mom break up?” The question was out of Billy’s mouth before it had fully formed in his thoughts.
His father drew a deep breath, sighed it out. He did not move his arm from his eyes. “Billy, what do you know about fighter pilots?”
Billy said, “Not much.”
“Have you ever heard of the Norden bombsight?”
“No.”
“I flew a bomber in the war. You know that. I had to fly straight and level over the target, then I had to give up control to the bombardier, who operated the Norden bombsight. The only way I could do that was to believe I was dead.”
The last word hung black in the air. Dead. Billy didn’t stir. Only listened. Hoped this was not the end of it. Was not the story of the ruin of his family.
His father said, “I love your mother. She’s the love of my life. I don’t know why we couldn’t live together. We wanted to make a home, a home for you, but somehow that wasn’t enough.”
Billy lay perfectly still, listening to his father’s breathing. Outside, the traffic gusted and subsided like the wind before a storm. The familiar aroma of his father’s body, singular and pleasant, the gravity of both their bodies on the bed, the quiet in the room—these things comforted Billy.
“Fighter pilots, Billy, they believe they can’t die.” His father said, “I knew a lot of them. They believe they can beat anybody. They’re hunters. Gun fighters. They go for the kill. I was a bomber pilot. I flew straight and level over the target. I gave up control to the Norden bombsight. For me there was only one way to do that. I don’t know how other men did it, but I had to convince myself I was already dead. It’s easier than you might think. First, you imagine it. All through flight training, we heard about the ships lost to fighters and flack. Casualties were heavy. In ’43, almost 50 percent. So I started to imagine it. I saw it happen in my dreams, in my imagination. I practiced it. I made my peace—I should say, my peaces—with everything and everyone. With your mother. I never mentioned dying to her. I wrote her cheerful letters, told her I knew I would make it home and we’d have a fine life. And maybe I would make it home. Hell, I did, didn’t I? And we had you, our finest accomplishment, but the only way I could fly straight and level over the target was to believe I was already dead—and Billy, it got to be a habit.”
Billy had not thought much about death, his own or anyone else’s. He had always considered his father immortal. Hearing his father say these things made his nerves burn and his bowels writhe. Parents, he thought, were like a city with high walls and locked gates. Children tried to climb the walls and unlock the gates, but they never got in. Parents didn’t want them inside. It was better for everyone that way. He had asked his father, “Why did you and Mom break up?” and now he was inside the city, lost, and the wind blew cold down the streets and dogs howled from dark doorways.
“We made a home for you, your mother and me, but we found there was no room left in it for us. Maybe she was disappointed in me. Maybe I was in her, too. I don’t think so. I loved her. I loved the idea of a home. But when the house was built, I couldn’t live in it. No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t stay. And it wasn’t anything I was leaving for. It wasn’t the open road, another woman, going back to my youth. It was none of those things. I just went into myself. And in there I found nothing. It’s a terrible thing to learn, Billy. That you are empty. I practiced death too well.”
Billy wanted to protest. It seemed the worst revelation of all. His father could not be empty. And he could not be dead. But Billy didn’t speak.
His father said, “We were based in North Africa, Libya, and we flew up to Italy to bomb and then later into Austria and Romania, the oil fields at Ploiesti. There’s a beautiful town on the toe of the boot of Italy called Brindisi. When Spartacus rebelled against the Romans, he tried to lead his slave army there and escape by ship to Africa. He never made it. I used to fly over Brindisi and look down at the blue water and the white houses, and say to myself, Is this the day I will die? But, you see, I had practiced so well what I knew how to do, to believe I was dead, the question was only abstract.”
“Dad, I…”
His father removed his arm from his eyes, blinked at the light, got up quickly, and walked to the bedroom door. He looked at Billy for the first time with pity. “I’m sorry, son. I know you don’t understand this.”
Billy wanted to help. “I think I do, but…”
His father smiled. It was the old smile of the golf course, the first scotch smile of good feeling and fun. “Probably I shouldn’t have told you any of it. I’ve never told anyone before. But you asked me, didn’t you? I wish I understood it better myself. Will you be all right with this, Billy?”
Billy got up from the bed and walked to his father. He hugged his father again, but it was not like the last time. “Yeah, Dad, I’m all right.”
“You can’t run from the people you love, son. I’ve learned that much, and I’m worried you’re running away. I can’t tell you what to do. Once I could, but not anymore. You’re deciding things for yourself now, aren’t you?”
Billy nodded.
“Well, maybe that’s for the best. If you need me, I’m here.”
His father opened the bedroom door, and Billy stepped out into the hallway. He turned back and said, “Thanks.” He thought maybe he knew his father better now. Maybe they were more like two men now than father and son. It felt like he had shrugged off some weight, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe he had only exchanged one burden for another. His father reached out and took his hand, shook it. Then his face twisted with confusion.
“Billy, what was Cam Sizemore hinting at that day at the club? Did you do something to Sim? Did you hurt him?”
Enough truth had been told for one day. Billy kept his secret. “No, Dad. Just football. It’s a hard game.”
His father smiled and closed the bedroom door. Was he thinking, War is harder?
NINETEEN
In Billy’s mother’s old green Dodge, they drove through the mangrove and scrub oakland west of Oleander to the little town of Palmetto, to a restaurant called the Crab Shack. Billy sat in the backseat, with the warm wind blowing in his face, feeling like a chaperone. He tried not to listen to what his mother said to Karl, but the wind sent words and phrases spiraling back to him, and anyway, he could see how happy she was, asking Karl, “Can we take a ride out to the beach tomorrow?”
Karl considering it, giving a somber nod, and Billy’s mother replying, “Oh, wonderful!” as though they would be the first, the only two people ever to do such a thing.
Once she leaned toward Karl and whispered something, resting her hand on his shoulder. Billy closed his eyes, thinking, It must be something important, a thing not said in front of a boy.
The Crab Shack was an ancient barge that had been towed into a mangrove inlet and cut loose to settle and become an eatery. A redneck place with a rusting tin roof and pecky cypress walls, it was famous for fried oysters, shrimp, and crab cakes. Karl parked the Dodge in the crushed oyster shell lot and led them
through the bar where liquor bottles twinkled emerald and sapphire in the gloom and men and women laughed quietly, past the pine box that teased tourists with a sign that said, Baby rattler (inside, a baby’s rattle), and down a swaying gangplank to the back patio, the only part of the barge that still rose and fell with the tide.
They sat and Karl lit a Chesterfield, and a silence settled that made Billy’s mother blush. Then Karl took the gum from his mouth, stuck it under the table, and, like a man about to do a card trick, held out his right hand. “Look at this, kid.” He made a fist, rock-hard, the knuckles white under the tanned skin. He kept the fist tight, turned it in the sunlight. “I was in the ring. In the Corps. Won the regimental boxing championship at Pendleton, heavyweight division. You ever been to California, kid?”
Billy shook his head but looked at his mother. She nodded, confirming that he had never been there.
Karl held his hard fist close to Billy’s face. “See those scars, kid? You don’t get those wearing gloves in the ring. Those are street-fighting scars. I been in scuffles with guys who think only queers wear gloves.” He looked at Billy’s mother. “Excuse me, Marian.”
Billy’s mother shook her head. No offense.
They ordered a variety of things—fried shrimp, oysters, crab cakes, soft shells, hush puppies, and coleslaw—because Billy’s mother liked to share. It was part of the picture, Billy supposed, the new one. The three of them putting their hands into one another’s plates and once in a while Karl feeding his mother a french fry in a way that suggested… Well, it suggested. Christ, how Billy tried to like it. How he wanted this to be a good thing for his mother.
They finished eating and Billy excused himself to the rest-room. When he returned, Karl got up from his second vodka and tonic and struck a fighter’s pose. Confused, Billy came in range, they grappled, and Karl threw a few half-comic punches that Billy parried easily. Then Karl raised Billy’s hand declaring him the winner. Billy’s mother smiled at the play fight and clapped when Billy’s hand was lifted. Nearby, a table of tourists applauded too.
Fighting in the Shade Page 11