War and Watermelon (2 page)

I don't know much about those groups, but I nod as if I do. “On a
farm
?”

“Some hippie dude's. I figure they might let me go if I take you.”

“Me?” This sounds adventurous.

“Yeah. Dad will think I'll stay out of trouble if I've got you with me.”

I've been getting stuck between Ryan and my dad a lot lately; they're battling about his “future,” which doesn't look all that great, and there's been a lot of “tell Dad this” or “see that Ryan knows.” This looks like another situation where I'll be the go-between.

“So,” he says, “you up for it?”

“Saturday?”

“It's all weekend. Friday's the day I want to go. Can you skip practice?”

“Not supposed to, but maybe Mom'll write a note.” I reach across to my dresser and tap on my football helmet. “I got a scrimmage Saturday afternoon.”

He shrugs. “We'll be back late Friday night.”

“Jenny going?”

“Of course. Skippy, too.”

Jenny is his girlfriend and Skippy is a delinquent who lives next door to her and has been her best friend for a long time. Skippy tags along with them everywhere they go. They don't seem to mind. Ryan never had a lot of close friends, so when he acquired Jenny last spring, he got two for one. That changed things for him and me kind of abruptly—I had Ryan to myself most of the time before that. Jenny's sweet, but she's with him every spare minute.

Ryan picks up a G.I. Joe from my dresser and looks at it. I've outgrown those things; just haven't gotten around to throwing them out yet. “There's like a hundred bands gonna be there,” he says. “Or maybe fifty. I don't know—a lot.”

“You ain't working?”

Ryan stocks the frozen food shelves at Shop-Rite. Full-time since he graduated from high school in June. Our parents are pissed off that he didn't even apply to college. Especially with the draft and everything.

“I'm calling in,” he says. “Twenty-four-hour virus.” He leans over with his mouth open and makes a puking sound. He laughs. “It's going around.”

I can hear our parents coming up the stairs to go to bed. They stop at my door. “Keep it low, guys, all right?” Dad says.

“I gotta shower anyway,” Ryan says, meaning he's about to leave the room. He usually leaves whatever room he's in as soon as Dad appears.

I turn the volume way down.

Ryan stands up. “You don't need the car Friday afternoon, do you?” he asks.

“Well, I don't know,” Mom says. “Were you thinking of going to the mall?”

“I was wanting to go to this . . . musical event. Friday evening. Brody wants to go, so I thought I'd take him.”

“Oh.” Mom smiles. “That sounds nice.”

“Great,” he says. “So it's okay?”

“Well, probably. Where is it?”

Ryan gazes out the window. “It's in New York.”

Mom looks horrified. “Then take the bus.”

“Upstate.”

“Oh . . . I don't know then.” She shifts her eyes to Dad. “That's so far.”

“No,” Ryan says. “It's like an hour. Less than two. It's right off the Thruway.”

The more he talks, the less likely it is that they'll let him go. Come
on
, Mom! This is gonna be great.

“Ryan, I don't know,” Mom says. “You'd be gone a long time and would end up driving in the dark.”

“I've driven in the dark plenty.”

“Yes, but close to home.”

“I can handle it.”

Mom folds her arms across her chest, but I can tell she wants to let him down easy. “There's a dance right here at the swim club on Friday night. Why don't you go to that instead? They'll be playing rock and roll, I'm sure.”

“Mom. Janis Joplin's gonna be there. Arlo Guthrie. That's not exactly what you get at a swim club dance.”

She sighs and turns to my dad. “What do you think, Alex?” When she does that, it means she's made up her mind. She just throws it over to Dad to make it unanimous.

But he stuns us all. “I think Ryan can handle it. There wouldn't be much traffic on a Friday afternoon.”

Ryan makes two fists and goes into a flex. “All right, Dad,” he says. “Solid!”

Mom frowns but goes along with it. “You take good care of Brody,” she says.

Dad lets out his breath and his lips vibrate. He's mostly bald, and his head is shiny by the end of the day. He lifts one eyebrow and peers over at Ryan. “Think about filling out that application to Drew,” he says. “We can get you in for the second semester.”

So that's the trade-off: apply to college. Ryan turns eighteen next month. Eligible for the draft. Old enough to get killed in Vietnam.

Ryan rolls his eyes, but he knows this is no time to argue. “Okay,” he says. “Like you said, I'll
think
about it.”

The four of us look back and forth at each other for a few seconds. Ryan says thanks again, then heads for the bathroom. Mom kisses me on the cheek and turns off my light.

I lie there for a couple of hours, listening to the Top Forty on the radio and the crickets out on the lawn. I imagine myself taking a handoff at midfield, dodging right, and bursting through the line. A defender gets a hand on me, but I shake loose and pivot, cutting toward the sideline and stiff-arming a linebacker. They're all chasing me now, and I tuck the ball tight to my chest and open my stride, dashing untouched to the end zone and lifting the ball high in the air.

Sometime after midnight I fall asleep.

At 4:39 I wake up to the Archies singing “Sugar, Sugar.” It's already getting light out and the birds are chirping, but there's no way I'm starting my day this early. I shut the window, turn off the music, and climb back into bed.

The Archies are comic-book characters. What the heck are they doing on my radio?

And why isn't Ryan doing everything he can to keep from getting drafted? It's not like he can stop the calendar from turning just by ignoring it.

M
y dad is up every morning by five thirty, eating stale cake and strong coffee and using the bathroom in the cellar three or four times. He listens to
Rambling with Gambling
on the radio and reads the
New York Times
before heading out the door to catch the 6:25 bus at the corner.

For eleven and a half years I was basically unaware of his early morning routine, but midway through the last school year I began spending a couple of minutes with him before he left for the city. Right after his father died. It's important to spend that time together, just the two of us, even though we hardly say a thing.

Today the radio's going on about the war.

“Gideon?” Dad says as I walk into the kitchen, pretending that he's surprised to see me. (He calls me a different name every morning.) He's got his dress shoes and pants on, but up top he's just wearing a guinea T. There's a tiny square of bloody toilet paper on his jaw where he nicked himself shaving.

“Hey,” I say, opening the refrigerator.

“Mets lost last night.”

“I heard it. They're like eight games behind already.” They suck again, like every year.

Two weeks ago it looked like the Mets would be taking over first place. Nobody thought they'd do anything this season, but they stayed close to the Cubs for most of the summer. Now they're falling apart.

“They made a good run,” he says. “Maybe next year.”

“Maybe.” Maybe next century.

Dad nods slowly, chewing. “Eat something?” he asks.

I shrug. There's a box of doughnuts on the counter, but they're those white powdered ones that I can't stand. “Maybe toast,” I say.

“How's Ferrante's arm looking?” he asks. Tommy Ferrante is our quarterback. We know him from when I was in Cub Scouts, but he quit that in fourth grade and became a borderline crook. The only real use of his arm that I know of is when he and Magrini got caught throwing rocks off the cliff to bust windows at a warehouse.

“It's okay, I guess. We never pass anyway. Ninety-nine plays out of a hundred are handoffs.”

“You getting any of them?”

“Nah. They mostly put me at linebacker.” I've carried twice in scrimmages so far. Both times I got nailed for lost yardage.

Dad pours another cup of coffee, looks at the clock, and chugs it. The empty cup is still steaming when he sets it down.

He told me once that he drinks at least twenty-five cups of coffee a day, virtually nonstop, at the office.

He goes upstairs to finish dressing and I move into his seat at the counter. The
Times
headline says, “Enemy Attacks 100 Vietnam Sites.”

I'm eating a doughnut anyway when he comes back in his suit jacket and a blue tie. He combed his hair, basically pasting the few long strands from one side over his scalp with Vitalis. He kisses the top of my head, then hesitates. “Make sure your brother sees that Vietnam headline,” he says. “This isn't Little League. He can't just take the pitch and hope for the best.”

He picks up his briefcase and heads out the door. I go to the window and watch him walk very upright and swiftly along the sidewalk. I feel sad for a minute every morning when he slips out of sight for the next twelve hours. Mom says his health has never been too good, that he might need a pacemaker in a few years.

I can't believe he brought up the Little League thing again. Ryan swears Dad's obituary will read that his only regret was that his son struck out looking.

Here's how I've heard it explained over the years. I was three when it happened, so I have no recollection.

Dad's coaching. Ryan is up to bat in an important game. It's the classic baseball situation: bottom of the last inning, two outs, bases loaded, his team down by a run. A single wins the game, but even a walk brings in a run and sets things up for the next guy.

So the count is three balls and two strikes, or maybe two balls and two strikes. Either way, you have to swing at a strike, no matter how hard you're praying it'll be called a ball. The pitch is straight over the plate, waist-high, but Ryan freezes. He doesn't swing.

Strike three.

Allegedly, the bitter aftermath of all that is why Mom wouldn't let Dad coach
my
Little League teams. And why Ryan opted out of every sport except basketball, with the stipulation that Dad not attend any of the games.

In my first baseball game, I struck out three times. But I swung at all nine pitches. Dad made a big point of saying how proud he was that I went down swinging. That I “showed some heart out there.”

He said that in front of Ryan, of course. He still brings it up every once in a while, thinking he's being subtle.

I watch a Bugs Bunny cartoon—the one where Elmer Fudd's uncle Louie died—then a Daffy Duck and another Bugs. When my mother wakes up, she fries some Taylor Ham, and I eat that and a bowl of Cocoa Krispies.

“Brody, you don't have to go to this concert with your brother on Friday if you don't want to,” she says. “We'll let him use the car even if you stay home.”

“I want to go.”

“All right. But you don't have to.”

“I know, but it'll be a blast.”

“Well,” she says, pouring coffee into Dad's cup for herself, “you
do
get carsick.”

“Ryan says it isn't far.”

“Ryan says a lot of things.” She sips the coffee, then sets down the cup and sweeps powdered sugar off the counter with one hand, catching it in the other. “He's a sweet boy, but he's as naive as they come. And they don't give you any breaks for being sweet in the army.”

 

My knee's bleeding, just a trickle below the cap where it jabbed into a stone as I tried to tackle Kenny Esposito. I was
on
my knees at the time, not exactly the best tackling posture, and when I reached for him I twisted sideways and was knocked farther back by
his
knee hitting my shoulder.

“You gotta put your weight into that tackle,” an assistant coach said to me with a snarl. “You can't do that from your knees, man.”

“I got knocked down.”

“Don't
get
knocked down,” he said, spraying out the words.

My weight: 87 pounds. Esposito weighs at least 120. He scored on the next play, barreling through the line and virtually carrying Tony and another guy with him as they tried to bring him down.

That was an hour ago, before I made a couple of actual tackles and before the wind sprints and the long laps around the field at the end of practice.

That coach acted like a jerk, but it stung.

Despite all that, I made the team. First time trying out, too. They sent Johnny Rivera home for good, which surprised the heck out of me. He's fast and he played hard, but he's new in town and Puerto Rican, so in the coaches' eyes he's suspect.

The rest of the cuts were eleven-year-olds.

So I'm in. I don't think I'll get a lot of playing time, but the point is that I made it. I'm basically lost in that crowd, hanging on as one of the least important players.

Now me and Tony are walking home, carrying our helmets by the face masks with our cleats stuffed inside.

“That field is a killer,” Tony says, examining the bloody spot on his elbow. He's no bigger than I am.

“It's like the Sea of Tranquility,” I say. The astronauts landed on that area of the moon a couple of weeks ago. We watched it in the family room with all the shades drawn and the air conditioner on high. “One small step for man . . .”