by Rich Garon
“Is my father . . .?” Lee knew he didn’t need to finish his question. The look on the faces of the doctor and the nurse had given him his answer.
“We’re very sorry,” the nurse said. “Do you want to go to your father’s room?”
Lee arose from his seat. He felt no protest from his injured ankle. Is this, he wondered, what someone says to you when your father dies –we’re sorry? He looked at the doctor who had brought the cup to his lips and took a swallow of coffee. He wondered how many times over the years the doctor had to say he was sorry and then, not able to do anything else, sipped his cup of coffee. There was probably nothing more final that someone could say other than very sorry.
He approached his father’s room as if the older Fitts were in a clearing in some fairy tale’s enchanted forest. There were his father’s legs. He stopped. He had misunderstood the doctor and the nurse. They were very sorry for something else. He believed in the magic of their medicine, a magic that had kept his father alive. He knew when he turned the corner and walked into the room, his father would be resting much as he had been that morning. But the magic had ended. The tubes were gone from his father’s body and his face had been washed and his hair combed according to how some nurse’s assistant thought it should be. The monitors were dark, the electrical frenzy wiped from their screens and their stand pushed away from the bed.
There were no tears in Lee’s eyes. He was still taking it in. His father looked no different than at any other time he was sleeping, but medicine, everything the hospital had to offer was through with Jim Fitts. No one needed to check his charts, no one would have to bring him anything to eat or drink ever again. The warmth of his father’s body was leaving. Lee pulled up the blanket to try to save that warmth for as long as possible. Maybe it was only a temporary chill. After all, who wouldn’t have such a chill after going through what Jim Fitts had been through? Lee tried, but he knew it was over.
He looked at Ellie’s Bible; the one she had gotten at her confirmation. He began to think in slow motion as he stared at the book. When she was small, it always went right back into the box after she finished reading it. He had never seen his sister as mad at him as the time he got cookie crumbs down deep into the pages of her Bible. She complained for months that she hadn’t been able to get all the crumbs out. Amidst the worn colored ribbon markers was a torn piece of white paper. Lee opened to the page; it was Psalm 91, the psalm Ellie asked Rev. Taylor to read to her father. Lee didn’t know why his sister had requested that particular passage, but Ellie and Lee both saw their father’s jaw muscles clench as the biblical music made its way to his ears. He looked at the open book then looked at his father. Lee began reading Psalm 91 – his voice seizing at some points – one last time to his father. There were words Lee didn’t understand. He didn’t know what “pinions” were and he didn’t know what a “buckler” was and he didn’t understand why if God wouldn’t let any evil come to someone who believed in Him and if he kept away “the plague that stalks in the darkness” and “the sickness that lays waste at mid-day” then why would his father not have gotten better? Maybe God didn’t think Jim Fitts believed hard enough, that he should have loved God more. “With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation.” That must be the case, Lee thought as he slowly closed the book, because his father was only forty-five years old. Lee wished that God could have been more understanding, yet as he thought more about it, maybe his father was just beginning the second part of his long life.
“Lee,” his sister said as she put her arms around him. The two stood huddled in the twilight of the psalm’s pronouncements. “He called for you. Your name was the last thing we heard him say. I thought you would be back before we lost him. Mother left an hour ago to look for you; she has Christie looking for you too.”
Lee and Ellie looked at the man lying in front of them. It was coming to them; he would never open his eyes and climb out of that bed.
The days after Jim Fitts’ funeral wobbled like mercury over the lines of the calendar. Lee sat most of the day at the table and stared into Jim Fitts’ empty chair. He slept on the couch at night. His mother realized she would have to stay longer; her son was slipping further away. He answered “yes, Mother” or “no, Mother.” Rev. Taylor had been little help, even though she found bits of sunshine in his homey sermonettes. Something about him was different to her. She noticed it first when he spoke at the funeral. It was as if he were holding back some of his compassion and keeping it for himself. Ellie would spend short periods in the morning with them and the bridge between mother and daughter that had been damaged in the maelstrom was now open to light traffic. Reid stopped by several times. If ever anyone could hold up both ends of a conversation it was Reid. He really cared about Lee. “Best friends, man. You know we’ll always be best friends,” she heard him tell her son. He brought cookies the first two visits, “Got to eat, man, you’re losing too much weight.” Both bags lay unopened on the table. “Ankle’s getting better, Mrs. Fitts, yeah, swelling’s gone down a lot.”
Christie came over after work. She had stood beside Lee, often hand in hand, at every part of the grieving process. Lee asked her nothing about the fall, about state university. His mother had heard from someone about it, but Christie painted her answers in such broad strokes of washed-out colors that no one could tell where she would be in the fall. Lee knew, and when she visited and held his hand as they sat at the table, he felt that something inside him should care. Christie’s hand, her presence, her watching television was the comfort that most soothed him, but it wouldn’t bring back his father. He had taken the big hit that makes ones that follow automatically easier to absorb. If she left for the state university, that would have to be that. He thought that would just have to be that. Christie’s hand slipped from his as she kissed him and rose from the couch to go. He feared that one time when she did that and left it would be for good.
Marian Fitts would be away for three days. There would be a lot to do. She’d call Goodwill to come for the few pieces of furniture in her apartment and assorted small appliances. She thought the paperbacks that had sheltered her in their worlds the past ten years would fill two, maybe three boxes. Some she would bring home to Lee; she would read to him. Most of her clothes would go as well. There would be no room in that small house where she and Lee would be living. She had enough in savings till Lee received his share of Jim Fitts’ life insurance which would be about ten–thousand dollars. She had been reading the classifieds. Maybe, she could get something part-time until Lee got better. She had been wrong to leave those years ago. It was her turn now. In her mind was the fierce determination of a lioness returning to cubs she had lost. Ellie could be turned. It would take some time; patience was key.
At the airport, shortly before boarding, Marian tried to reach her supervisor in the garden department; no answer again. Her boss, Reggie, short for Regina, Wilcox, hadn’t been happy about Marian’s leaving during the crucial days of setting up the spring stock of flowers, shrubs, tools, fertilizer; everything the guild of amateur gardeners emerging from their cocoons demanded. Her supervisor’s only world was the garden stock which she commanded with a well-cultivated determination that shone strongest as she raised with her fork lift to the highest level a pallet of landscaping stones. She had agreed grudgingly to let Marian leave; it was only supposed to be for a few days, but it was now seven. Her employee had taken advantage of her; Marian knew that’s what Reggie was thinking. She was probably angry and when she got that way, she drove her forklift a little more carelessly. Marian saw little hope of getting a reference which she knew she would need when she got back and looked for a job.
Lee went back to the table after opening the door. Reid followed and sat across from him. “Don’t got long, got a load of lawns to get to. Damn, the start of lawn season is one big merry-go-round. I mean the smell of that spring grass gets you pumped. We have a summer like last year though and that grass will be brown in another month.
We get paid to cut it regardless, that’s the good thing about the landscape business,” Reid said as he reached down to tie the frayed laces on his work boots. “You’re looking better man, looking better. But I tell you, you got to eat. Did you have breakfast?”
“I did not have breakfast, but I did have a glass of orange juice.”
“Glass of orange juice? You need more than that.” He got a bowl, milk and a spoon. “Lee, I’m not leaving till you finish the Raisin Bran, all of it, and I told you I ain’t got much time, so I’d appreciate you cleaning up that bowl pretty quick.”
Lee began to eat, chewing as hard and fast as he could, mouthful after mouthful.
“What’s that?” Reid asked as he pointed to a small metal box, one of the boxes that gift cookies come in, on the table next to Lee’s arm.”
“CRUNCH, GARBLE,” Lee said.
“Wait a minute, finish what’s in your mouth, I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
Lee swallowed. “I found this in my father’s closet. It was under some old sweaters.”
“Well, what is that stuff in the box?”
Lee pulled at the edges of the top which he handed to Reid. “These are some of my father’s mementoes. These are things I know are, I mean were, very important to my father.”
“What do you mean mementoes?”
Lee pulled out a sheet of paper folded into thirds, now ivory-tinged, and limp as a dollar bill due to be retired from circulation. He removed a small pin. “I got this for perfect Sunday School attendance one year. I felt bad because Ellie was going to get one too, but got really sick. I remember she was crying and my mother and father were crying, and I was crying, but she was the sickest I ever saw her, and my dad said she would have to stay home.”
“What the hell is that, some kind of model car?”
Lee lifted out a red, wooden car, with black plastic wheels. “This is the Pinewood Derby car my dad and I made when I was in the Cub Scouts. They had this big long track going downhill, and our car won the first race, but only came in second in the finals.”
“What’s that paper say?”
Lee unfolded a small piece of note paper and handed it to Reid.
“Says here, ‘Dear Mr. Fitts, I usually don’t write a note like this, but wanted you to know that I’ve been watching Lee in PE class; the boys have been playing flag football. Lee and several of the boys were kicking the football. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I watched Lee kick the ball. He had five of five over the crossbars, the last one from thirty-five yards out. He has poise, timing, and what an old kicking coach told me only the best have: quick muscle twitch that just snaps that leg around. I never saw anything like this in middle school. You may want to contact Coach Richards on the football team. Sincerely, Ed Cannon.’ So, I guess this is what started the whole thing with your father. Damn, Ed Cannon, I hated that jerk. He always had me running laps because I didn’t clean my gym uniform. Pretty clear what was the big-time thing in your father’s life. You know I found something in my father’s closet once, that was before he left, under some comforter that stunk like hell. Know what it was, a bag of skin magazines. ‘Member I brought one into school one day?”
“Yes, I do remember, but I did not think it was very nice for you to show it to those girls.”
“Whadya mean, they all seen stuff like that before. Anyway, your father was all over that kicking stuff like nothing I ever seen. Remember all the books he got you, and the kicking stand he made out of an old hacksaw, and the kicking coach, and the kicking camp. He had you in the NFL, man. Ever think about doing that anymore?
“I do not think I am in very good shape and my ankle still hurts me.”
“You’re in great shape, you walk all over the damn place all the time and that ankle will be fine. It’s gotten better already, hasn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
“See. You know dear old dad probably would be pretty happy looking down from that cloud up there and seeing his boy slamming them right between the uprights. I guess, he’s up on a cloud, he was really sorry there toward the end about the way he treated you. He probably just couldn’t help himself. I told you, he got dreams just like anyone else. Damn, look at the time, I got to get going, I’ll call you.”
Lee put everything back into the box, walked it to his bed and shoved the container underneath. He opened the closet and looked at the last of the half-dozen footballs his father had bought him. It had the LF monogram his father had written in permanent marker between the tip and white band on each of the balls.
Langford High wasn’t far from Lee’s house. He looked at the football field, still, as if resting for the fall season ahead. He saw himself at all the spots on that grass from where he had fired upon the goal post. He got home before five and Ellie was there with his dinner. She was pleased that he was getting out of the house and noted the reduced limp in her brother’s stride. She gave him a hug and left to meet D.H. Christie arrived at seven, just as she said she would. He had never known Christie to be late. As he got into the car, Christie’s perfume hit him like a body-sized powder puff.
“Your ankle seems to be getting much better,” she said, moving several magazines from the floor in front of the passenger’s seat. “But do you think you should be kicking footballs all over the place?”
“I will not be kicking footballs all over the place. I will not be kicking footballs for a while, but I wanted to go to Hank’s Sport Shop to get the footballs. You cannot get this type of football just anywhere and I hope Hank’s still has them. I want to have my footballs when I am ready to start kicking. My father always had six footballs in the mesh bag when I would go to kick.”
“Did you call to see if they have the footballs in stock?”
“I did not call because while most of the people working at Hank’s are very friendly, they sometimes do not know where everything is or sometimes things get misplaced. I could call and ask if they have the footballs I want and they would put me on hold and when they come back they could say they do not have my footballs. But it has happened before that if I went to the store and looked real hard, even in those places where the footballs are not supposed to be, I find my footballs.”
“Just got a new shipment in,” said the salesman at Hank’s. “Second aisle over, third shelf from the bottom.”
Lee gazed at four, five, six, seven; Hank’s had seven of the footballs Lee wanted. There couldn’t have been any more satisfaction on the face of a soldier of the Lord who happened upon the Holy Grail. Lee placed each one of the seven cardboard containers into his Hank’s shopping cart. Christie, like a scientist taking notes in the field, struggled to understand the mystical communion between Lee and his precious cargo. He turned the shopping cart into the main aisle and headed towards the checkout counter.
“I have to write down my plan; I have to have a plan for when I go into training. I will write my plan down when I go home,” Lee said as he reached his hand behind him to touch the two large plastic bags. He almost forgot what he planned to ask her. “I need to ask you a favor, Christie. Can you stop at Mrs. Aggarwal’s house?”
“Who?” she asked as they started out of the parking lot.
Lee explained who Mrs. Aggarwal was. He told her about Raymond. About how he would be helping him with some exercises. And how happy he thought Raymond would be to have the football.
Christie looked at Lee; her quivering smile accompanying her caress of Lee’s hair. “Lee, you are such a good, kind person helping that little boy like that. It’s no wonder that I love you.”
He smiled at her.
Christie slowed the car as she approached Lee’s house. “Lee, what exactly are you training for?”
“I am going to be in training so that I can kick the football farther and farther every time. I have to see if I can be as good as my father thought.” He thanked Christie for bringing him to Hank’s but didn’t ask her in. He didn’t even think that he was losing time he could be with her before she lef
t for state university. August twenty-fifth was what she had told him the day before; she’d be gone in three months if she decided to go.
“I will start my training tomorrow; I will walk to your house Christie. I will bring a pizza that we can have for dinner. Will you be back from work at six o’clock?”
“Yes, I will be back at six, but Lee that is too far for you to walk on your ankle. You’re going to make it worse if you’re not careful; that’s just too far to walk. I can pick you up and then we’ll get our pizza.”
“No, Christie I have to walk to your house. That is the first part of my training program that I figured out in the car. I have to start my program tomorrow. My ankle will not let me down.”
“All right, Lee,” she turned the ignition key. “I’ll see you tomorrow at six.”
Lee spent the next morning with a spiral notebook with stubs from carelessly torn pages clinging to the wire spine. He pinched the remnants away and wrote out his training plan: what exercises he would begin, estimates of the amount of time he’d have to walk each day, and when he would read the books and magazine articles on kicking he found in a shelf in his father’s closet. He made it to Christie’s house fifteen minutes earlier than he had anticipated. His ankle felt like it was ready for the deep plant of the pivot step upon which his body would rest as his leg followed across like a gun’s hammer. After pizza and a salad with the special health dressing Christie made, she drove him home so he could begin reading the books his father had bought. He walked to her house for the next five nights even after his mother came home. Marian Fitts had cut from her waist the heavy chains that for the last ten years of her life were anchored in the concrete of guilt and confusion. She was home now, more energetic than ever; she would piece it together. A large part of that energy she drew from her son. There was a new purpose in his manner that was not there when she first returned. She watched as he read and made notes, and sometimes she heard him talking to himself: “I can do that, I know I can do that. I remember Dad saying that I had done that well. I can do it again.”
