There was a time I can remember he used to want me to sit in his lap. I was little and I’d climb up onto him. We’d watch baseball and he’d rock me. I’d fall asleep with my head under his chin. I don’t think I’ve ever been that warm again. And he’d talk. See, that’s what I miss the most. He’d just talk to me. He’d explain what was going on in the game, or tell me about my mom when she was younger. It didn’t matter to me. He’d babble about how he was going to make sure I had the best pitching arm in the whole state. I didn’t even know what a pitching arm was, but I knew he wanted me to have it, and that made me want one.
Then something happened and he stopped asking me to sit with him. He’d still call me in to the living room and we’d watch the game, but it was never like before. I’d sit no the couch and we’d talk about the play at the plate, or how far outside the last ball had been. We never talked, though. That’s what I most remember about my dad. We never really talked about anything after that. I got taller and taller and my voice broke and all I ever wanted was to crawl back into his lap and have him talk to me again.
I took what I could get, though. When I lost interest in little league, I think he sort of lost interest in me. I think I may have even understood that in a very vague way at the time. I got older, went out for football, got a car and a girlfriend. He and I saw less and less of each other. We worked on that car every weekend for awhile, though. Mostly he’d point at something and grunt and I kind of knew what he wanted. It was strange that way.
Somewhere in all that, Randy was taken. I think for about a year after, my father and I were silent. I think I understand it now, in some vague way, but at the time, I didn’t know why he didn’t want to talk to me. That’s how it felt. It felt like he didn’t want me around. I didn’t know what I’d done to make him so unhappy. All I wanted was someone to put their arm around my shoulders and tell me it was going to be okay. Boys aren’t allowed to have that, though. We don’t get that once we’re older than five. We have to hide things inside. We’re supposed to, so I did. I didn’t tell anyone just how much time I spent watching all the other little kids and following them home, even though some lived way out of the way.
So, when I hear my dad’s voice on the other end of the telephone , I spend a few minutes trying to gather my thoughts. I had always been the one to make “my monthly call.” That’s how I referred to it to kindly Dr. Bledsoe, who would laugh and ask me what my father said. Our whole session after the phone call would be devoted to my father. Dr. Bledsoe might point out how nothing my dad said was offensive, but I’d feel like Dr. Bledsoe betrayed me then. I’d tell him that and he’d cock his head to the side and then we’d talk about how people don’t like me and I don’t understand why.
This time, though, my father said “hello” and I stumbled through a hello in return. I asked him how things were going. In the background, always mumbling or whispering, was my mother.
“Your mother wants you to come home for Thanksgiving,” he said. I froze. I tried to remember when the last time I’d been home was. It was two Christmases ago. I’d stayed a week.
“I’ll have to see, Dad. I don’t—I don’t know.”
There was quiet on the line for a while.
“Your mother would really like it. Things have gone to hell around here.”
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“Hank says they found some bones. Couldn’t be sure, he said, but he thinks it’s a little one. Said he didn’t know from Adam, but something about the hip bones makes him think it’s a little boy. Christ, it’s a mess. Your mother’s in quite a state,” he said.
“Where?”
“Up near Eukiah, along one of the ditches. Hank says there’s a shack out there where they found some pictures.”
I didn’t need to ask him to know what he meant. I had heard stories about things like that. In the dark of my room, I had been unable to keep away what those images might look like. No matter how hard I’d pressed on my eyes, the pictures had still come. I sat down because I felt dizzy. I didn’t tell her about the idea that had started to form in the back of my mind the past few months. Of what might have happened to Randy McPherson.
“Tell him he should come home for thanksgiving, Albert.” I could hear my mother in the background, behind dad’s steady breathing. And I knew I’d have to go home. They’re my folks. It’s not like I don’t love them, just that I feel they don’t understand me. I wonder if they ever did.
I think my mom did, once, but that stopped when I got in my first fistfight. It had been with Kevin O’Mally. He was taller than me, that I remember clearly. I was walking without looking. Truthfully, I don’t know how it is that I didn’t wind up tripping over more people. From there it was pretty much how it always goes: I tripped over his foot, my lunch tray went flying. He got covered in thin spaghetti sauce and milk. I tried to say I was sorry, but it was a little late, then.
Thing is, I saw the swing, when he hit me, but it didn’t hurt. It felt more like a pressure somewhere far off that blocked out all the sounds round me. I saw the swing plain as day and I could have ducked it. Not a day goes by I don’t see my own knuckles and think back to how O’Mally’s fist. First thing I said about those new television’s was that the picture was almost as clear as I remember things the moment O’Mally hit me. I could have counted the hairs on his fat knuckles if I’d wanted to, I guess. I didn’t get big until after sixth grade. I’d started working out, staring at the pictures in muscle magazines and stuff. I wanted to be huge. At that time, though, I was still skinny and lanky. My feet looked to large for my age. I slouched over at the stomach to try to hide just how tall I’d gotten.
I say it was a fistfight, but I guess it was more like a beating. I didn’t fight back. He punched me as I got up and I fell back down. Then he kicked me in the ribs. Coach Porter came over and made him stop, but that was it. He didn’t go to detention or anything. I never swung back.
Nobody was all that surprised, either, except my mom.
She went into a fit. She yelled at me, then yelled at my dad when he tried to explain how these things happen. She threatened to call the police. She threatened to sue the school. She just kept threatening and yelling all through dinner. I remember we had meatloaf and green peas that night with mashed potatoes. I kept hiding the peas in the mashed potatoes so I could eat faster and get away from the table. When I asked to be excused, my dad’s face fell some. I think he felt abandoned. I went up to my room and stretched across the bed.
The next day I think dad wanted to pull me aside, but never did. At the time I was pretty glad about that. The last thing I wanted to hear was about how he’d been pretty good at boxing back in the Army. He’d go on for hours about it whenever we were raking the leaves up or repainting the garage. Those times, though, I could nod and pretend that it all made perfect sense, the jabs and haymakers. I couldn’t do that after the fight, though. I got hit and didn’t even swing back.
I could see it in his face while he drove me to school he wanted to say something. He looked forward and never said anything, though, the whole time. We listened to the radio and didn’t sing. After that day, I don’t think we sang together again. That night, mom didn’t act any differently, but I could tell, things had changed. She fixed dinner and I set the table and we ate and then watched television, just like always. Only, no one really said anything.