Stick

by Michael Harmon

  “Yes, sir. I’m playing for the Tigers now. You heard that, right?”

  He furrowed his brow, and his voice lowered. “If you were a man, I’d beat you to a pulp—you hear?”

  I nodded, thinking of how he’d talked about Preston. “I’d bet you would, sir, but I’m not. I’m just a kid. In fact…,” I said, “I still like playing with dolls, too.”

  His mouth snapped shut, and it looked like he would explode. His neck flushed red, and he shook his head and walked away.

  I turned toward the hall, and Preston stood there, staring at me. His expression was unreadable, just those big eyes studying my face. I realized he hadn’t been there when I’d goaded Tom into betting more on the game. “Hey,” I said.

  He barely smiled, and it reminded me of Kermit the Frog. “Well, I suppose you’re here.”

  I followed him to his room. He shut the door, then sprawled on the bed, staring at the ceiling. I stood, not knowing exactly what to do, then sat at the desk, swiveling the chair around. “You all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean, last night…”

  He looked up, ignoring me as usual. “I’m assuming, based on the last hour of him yelling about it, that you talked Tom into betting three thousand dollars on the game you are not going to play.”

  I laughed, shaking my head. “I didn’t talk him into anything. He talked himself into it just fine.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s a toad.”

  He scratched his head, then slowly patted down his hair. “You know what the difference is between being dumb and being stupid?”

  I sat back in the chair, ready for another of his sermons. “Why can’t you ever just answer a question? I asked you if you were okay. You could just answer the question. You know, like ‘I’m fine’ or ‘I’m tired.’ You know, like a normal person.”

  He went on. “Being stupid means you have the ability to understand why you’re being stupid. Being dumb means you will never comprehend why you are dumb. Tom is dumb.”

  “He deserves what he gets, as far as I’m concerned.”

  He glanced at me. “If you saw a mentally challenged person pick up a loaded gun and fire it backwards, blowing his own face off, would you say he deserved it?”

  “Oh, come on. I see what you’re saying, but…”

  Preston shrugged. “Tom wakes up every morning and shoots his face off and he doesn’t even know it. And he’s going to wake up every morning for the rest of his dumb life and do the same thing.”

  “He’s mean.”

  Preston laughed. “Only if you take anything he says or does seriously.”

  “Will you answer my question now?”

  “I already did.”

  I furrowed my brow.

  “I’m not dumb, Brett.”

  “You could just have said you were all right. Pretty easy to do.”

  He sat up, sliding on the bed, his back propped up against the wall. “As far as last night, yes, I’m fine. And so are you. And as far as your friends making it clear to me that I am the official football team punching bag for the rest of the year, yes, I’m just fine with that, too.”

  “So you have a death wish.”

  “I didn’t answer my phone when you called three times.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.”

  “I didn’t want you to think I was avoiding you. I was just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “I was thinking it’s a sign of paranoia to call somebody three times within three minutes.”

  “Are you answering another question?”

  “No.”

  “I was worried is all.” I shifted, swiveling the chair back and forth. “I just thought they might have gotten to you or something.”

  He shook his head. “They can’t. You do remember I’m a superhero, right? I put an invisible shield of protection around myself this morning.”

  Of course I had no idea if he was being serious or not, but from the bit of sarcasm in his voice and the frog smile on his face, I guessed he was joking. I hoped he wasn’t delusional. “Listen, this whole thing is a mess, Preston. I swear to God if they come after you, I’ll get them.”

  “I’d rather have you take responsibility for making my cereal every morning. I hate pouring milk.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  “Okay, whatever.”

  He slumped down, staring at the ceiling again. “How was your first day of school?”

  “Fine. LC is pretty cool. You should think about transferring.”

  “I don’t run from my problems.”

  My eyes bulged. “Hey, you were the one who put it in my head to transfer.”

  “You take everything so personally. But, then again, you’re a very narcissistic person.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m buying you a dictionary. You didn’t run from your problems—you solved them. I, on the other hand, have dealt with my kind of problems since the first day of kindergarten, and switching schools solves nothing.” He smiled, putting his hands behind his head. “Fond memories, those. Dalton Richards was particularly good at pinning me down and farting in my face.”

  “You act like you were born to be picked on.”

  “I was.”

  “Don’t be a victim.”

  He laughed. “Look who’s talking.”

  I stood. “I gotta go. I’m going to try and talk to my dad.”

  He went back to staring at the ceiling. “See you later.”

  “If you really wanted to hurt me, you’ve done a good job.” My dad sat on the back porch, watering the wilting potted plants from his chair.

  I sat on the edge of the picnic table. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you, Dad. I just want to play football.”

  He twisted the nozzle on the hose shut, letting it drop to the paving stones. “Coach Williams and I played through school together. We’ve been friends for over twenty-five years. He won’t even return my calls.”

  I thought about what Preston said about the difference between being dumb and stupid. “What if I told you I was gay?”

  He blinked, studied my face for a moment, then took a deep breath. “I, um, well, I guess I’d tell you I loved you. Can’t say that I really agree with it, but…” He looked at me, his eyes questioning. “Is that what all of this is about?”

  “Sort of. I’m not gay, Dad, but you’d accept me being gay more than you accept me playing for the Tigers. Or not playing at all.”

  “I just don’t see what the issue was, Brett. I’ve done everything in my power to help you, and you rejected it all.”

  I realized then that no matter how much I tried to explain it, my dad, for all I loved him, got up every morning and shot himself in the face when it came to what he did for me. “What would Mom do if she were here?”

  He sat back, staring over the backyard. We didn’t talk much about her. After a moment, he said, “She’d tell me I was being too rough on you.” He smiled, shaking his head. “She always said that I took things too far. That I got too involved in things. She was like the balance in my life. All the good things about her and all the bad things about me…” He went silent.

  “You loved her, huh?”

  He winced, leaning forward and putting his elbows on his knees. “She was the one for me.” He took a deep pull from his beer, craning his neck up, then idly studied the bottle in his hands. “I’ve never even bothered looking for somebody else since she died.”

  “Is that why you drink yourself to sleep every night?”

  The world stopped moving, the wind stopped blowing, the birds fell silent, and my dad wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You think I—”

  “I don’t think you do—I know you do, Dad. And I know that every time you’ve hit me, you’ve been drunk. I also know that half the time you yell at me, you don’t even remember it the next morning. You’re a mean person, Dad. You might wait until four o’clock every day to do it, but you
’re an alcoholic. You blew your knee out on the field. Then Mom died, and since then, there’s been nothing to do but put every dream you ever had on my shoulders. And I’m sorry”—I shook my head as tears sprang to my eyes—“but you ruined football for me. You made me hate it. And I let you do it. And now you’re pissed at me for trying to get it back.”

  He kept his head down, staring at his feet, his teeth clenched and his chin quivering.

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry about your life, Dad, but I’m not paying for it anymore. I’m playing ball for me now. Not you. And if you can’t at least accept that, I’d appreciate it if you’d stay out of it.”

  I sat there on the edge of the picnic table in silence, and he said nothing. Then his voice came, quiet, almost a whisper, throaty and thick with emotion. “Would you mind giving me some time? I’d appreciate that.”

  I nodded to his downturned head, then stood. “I love you.”

  He didn’t reply.

  I woke up to the sound of his voice through the walls. Bleary eyed, I glanced at my alarm clock. One-forty-five in the morning.

  I sat up in bed and listened. It sounded like he was arguing with someone. I snagged a pair of shorts and put them on, then opened my door and looked down the hall. Dim light came from the living room, but his voice wasn’t coming from there.

  Tiptoeing down the hall, I listened as his voice, muffled gibberish, floated in from the kitchen. Then I realized he was out back and that his voice was coming through the open window. “I should have…,” he said, and then his voice trailed off.

  I walked to the window, which looked out to the porch. There, in the darkness, my dad was on his hands and knees, head slung low, shoulders arched. He was talking to himself. At least a dozen empty beer bottles lay around him.

  Chest heaving, sobbing, his words slurred. “I tried. I did. I can’t do this alone, Kim. I can’t. Please. Come back. Please. Why’d you leave? Please.”

  Over and over again he begged, rocking back and forth on his hands and knees, blindingly drunk, begging for my mother to come back. Blaming her for leaving. Cursing himself and God and his life.

  I opened the back door, but he was oblivious to me. I knelt next to him and put my hand on his shoulder. He’d vomited, the stones covered in foodless beer and bile. “Dad, it’s okay.”

  “She’s gone and now he’s gone, too. Everybody is gone,” he mumbled.

  I leaned down, looking at his face. Full of slobber and with drool hanging from his lips, his face wet with tears, he turned his head, seeing me for the first time. “Brett, it’s time to get up. Practice starts soon. You can’t be late, okay, buddy? Got to get up.”

  I’d never seen him this drunk. He had so much alcohol in him that reality didn’t exist. Just whatever thoughts flitted through his saturated mind. I put my arm over his back, gripping under his arm and trying to get him upright. “Yeah, Dad. I’m ready, okay? Let’s get you up now.”

  He resisted, shaking his head and trying to crawl away, but failing. When his hands hit the lawn, he lost whatever balance he had and thudded down, his cheek resting on the turf. He still mumbled, barely loud enough to hear, but I knew what he was saying.

  I tried to get him up again, but he was deadweight. Barely conscious, arms down at his sides, half on the porch and half on the lawn, he was nothing more than an incredibly drunk and miserable beached whale. I knew I’d never get him in the house.

  I went inside and came back armed with a blanket and a pillow. I lifted his head, put the pillow under his cheek, and spread the blanket over his passed-out body, then went back to bed thinking that my dad, for whatever he did, was a broken man, and it didn’t have to do with a football.

  Three days till the game with Shadle. Two more practices to prove my worth to the Tigers. After the morning practice, Coach Larson took me aside. “You fitting in well, Patterson?”

  I took my helmet off. “You tell me, Coach.”

  “You’re doing fine. You’ve got talent, but apparently it doesn’t include math. Your grades transferred over as well as you.”

  I groaned, dreading the next few moments as much as I had with Coach Williams.

  “Your new math teacher spoke to your old math teacher to find out more about what problems you were having, and she’s getting a packet of extra credit ready for you. You get it all handed in by Friday before game time, you play.”

  I brightened. “Yessir. Will I start?”

  “You focus on your grades, I’ll focus on being the coach of this team. Got it?”

  “Yessir.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Your old teammates are hassling you.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “I didn’t know, but I know how the world works. How badly?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle, Coach. It’s all good.”

  He clicked through his cheek. “You tell me if anything happens, and I’ll get it straightened out with Coach Williams.”

  I said okay, but I definitely knew better than he did about Coach Williams. If anything, Coach Williams was giving them pointers on how to nail me to the wall.

  After school, and after getting my math packet from Miss Boreline, who happened to be incredibly hot for a math teacher, I texted Preston, asking him if we could meet for tutoring. He texted back that he was going in for one of his counselor’s counseling sessions, but that we could meet afterward.

  I picked him up on the corner of Riverside and Division. He was talking to a homeless man who was holding a sign on the corner. It read “Why Lie? I Just Want a Beer.”

  After Preston hopped in, I pulled into traffic, and he immediately began his methodical ritual of cleaning my car. I turned down the radio. “That guy begging from you?”

  He rolled a gum wrapper up and stuffed it in a Mountain Dew can. “No.”

  I glanced at him. “ ‘No.’ Just ‘No.’ You don’t know how to have a conversation, do you?”

  He neatly folded up a Big Mac box. “What would you like to have a conversation about?”

  I spoke slowly, like I was explaining something to a five-year-old. “Okay…You were talking to a bum. What were you talking about?”

  “I asked him if he enjoyed being homeless.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure he loves it.”

  “He said he did. He referred to himself as a wanderer. He’s been to every state. By the way, we can’t go to my place today. After you left last week, Tom and Diane got in a huge fight. I heard him yelling about wanting to rip your face off and use it as toilet paper.”

  “Good to know I’m causing trouble in your family, too.”

  He shrugged. “I left after a while, but she kicked him out. He’s supposed to be packing his stuff right now, and I don’t feel like listening to his pity party.”

  I changed direction and headed toward my house, wholly uncomfortable with the thought of him seeing my room. I half expected him to have cleaned the entire thing by the time we were done with the math. “I didn’t know he lived with you.”

  “He was in the process of slowly incorporating himself into living off my mom.”

  I drove, and we went on in silence, with Preston cleaning. He squished a napkin into the Mountain Dew can. “You know, if the superhero gig doesn’t work out, you’d do great going to maid school.”

  “Do well, not good. And I don’t think there is a maid school.”

  “You’re my math tutor, not my English tutor.”

  “Seventy-three percent of all job applications have grammatical errors in them. Illiteracy is a major problem in America.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  I pulled up in front of my house, my stomach squirming when I saw that my dad’s car was in the driveway. I’d checked on him this morning before I left, and he was still breathing. I’d been doing that ever since the night he’d passed out, but otherwise I’d completely avoided him. I cleared my throat. “My dad isn’t the coolest guy lately.”

  “What does that have to do with yo
ur grammar?”

  “Nothing. It just might be sort of…Never mind. Come on.”

  Dad was nowhere to be found when we got inside, and I heaved a sigh of relief. “Well, here it is. My house,” I said, ushering him as quickly as I could toward my bedroom. Once inside, I threw my pack on the bed. “I’ll get some sodas for us. Be right back.”

  I almost ran to the kitchen and looked out the window, dreading to see my dad lying there, a beer-bloated corpse gathering flies. He wasn’t, though, and I noticed that sometime in the last few days the porch had been completely cleaned. No bottles scattered about, the vomit hosed from the paving stones. I hurriedly grabbed two cans of Pepsi from the fridge and headed back to my room, seeing that Dad’s office door was shut.

  When I came back in, Preston was sitting at my desk, staring at nothing. I handed him a can. “Okay, my room, my rules. No cleaning.”

  He fidgeted, his eyes roaming over the ramshackle mess. “Okay.”

  I laughed. “I’ll make you normal if it kills me.”

  “If normal is you, I’ll kill myself instead.”

  I rummaged through my pack for the extra credit, found it, and tossed it to him. “Okay, chief, school me.”

  He caught it. “I have no Native American blood in—”

  I cut him off. “Okay. Rule number one. We’re in the normal zone. I know you’re not an Indian, and I know you’re not a chief. You don’t have to take everything literally.”

  We were forty minutes into working when the knock came on my door. “Brett?”

  I stood, walked over to the door, and opened it. The look on his face was different, but I couldn’t tell why. “Hi.”

  “Can I come in?”

  I hesitated, then opened the door wider. “Yeah.”

  He stepped in, looking at Preston. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had anybody over. I just wanted to talk to you for a minute.”