Leaving Crazy

That afternoon I saw something.
Or maybe I smelt it.
I got off the bus and started splashing my way up the sidewalk to my house, but the puddles didn’t seem so deep, something was different. I gazed up into the hazy gray sky. My nose hairs tingled and I knew something was different. I could smell the damp getting pulled from the earth and a warm freshness taking its place.
All the way up the street, as I walked home from the bus stop, I could smell it, but I didn’t quite know what it meant.
I opened the door and went into my house.
Then I turned around.
I took one step down from the front porch. A few drops splashed off the overhang and landed barely noticed on my neck. I just stared for a second at the giant red orb streaking colors into the cloudless western sky.
The rain had stopped!
Hahahaahah!
The rain had stopped

We were going to get a game in tonight!

I knew it.

I just knew it.

I ran back up the porch steps and flung open the screen door. By the time its metal frame bounced a few times and clicked itself shut, I was past the back stair-landing and on the second floor. I exploded into my bedroom, blindly struggled a t-shirt over my head
and was looking for my cleats. My brother was on the bottom bunk reading a book. It was some sort of fantasy bullshit I’m sure. He peeled his eyes up from the story just long enough to glare his annoyance at me. We locked stares for a moment, but couldn’t translate our private code quickly enough for it to turn into a fight. His face wrinkled with disapproval and he rolled over.

Fuck Him.

I didn’t have time to pummel him.

Not now, I had to get ready.

“I’ll push a few knuckles into his rib cage later, just to remind him who wiggled out of Mom's vagina first.” I thought

I kicked off my sneakers and shed the rest of my play clothes onto the floor. I opened the second drawer from the top, the one I didn’t share with my brother, and pulled out my baseball uniform. The shirt was heavy red cotton. It was embroidered with the white word Cardinals on the front and the number 15 on the back. An ironed-on patch that said “Ferguson” curved slightly off center two inches above my number. The shirt was heavy and itchy but I never noticed, once I had it on.

I slipped my head through the v-neck and let it drape over my tiny frame. Next, I spread the elastic waist of my trousers and poked my feet down into the legs. I pulled them up and slid a skinny black belt through the loops around the top. I sat on the corner of Eric’s bed. I bent over and grunted as I struggled to pull my red stockings over my white socks, stretching the stirrup across my heal, so the solid part reached up to my knee and I tucked them into my pants. Faint grass stains, that had survived many bleachings, shaded my kneecaps.

In my mind, I looked like Mickey Mantle. Someone I only read about in books, but seamed bigger than anyone I saw on T.V.

“Hey! Get off my bed.” Eric shouted over his shoulder and down the bed to me. I just ignored him and pulled my cleats out from under the bed and pulled them over my feet. I twisted the laces into double knots and stood up, tucking in my shirt. All that was left was my cap and it was soon pulled down tight over my head almost hiding my eyes. I clicked my heels together and the mud from last weeks game splintered off into a dusty jumble. I grabbed my glove from under the bed and started downstairs, but first a quick step into the bathroom to see me in my uniform.

Damn!

I puffed up my five foot frame in proud display.

I looked sharp.

I went down the stairs and out into the driveway. Mrs Graneski was going to pick me up. At least, I figured she would. I always caught a ride with them to the games. Minutes passed by and every hope that the next car would be her disappointed me deeper into panick.

My happy two-step at the end of the driveway mutated into a nervous shuffle.

After Eternity,

I went back inside and grabbed the phone off the kitchen wall. I scanned through the scribbled numbers on the pad next to the phone and dialed the Graneskis.

“Hello.” I heard from the other end.

It was Chad.

“Hey, it’s Rob. Are you coming?”

“No, My mom says it is too wet.”

“What?” my voiced strained into a squeak, “Are you kidding me?”

“Nope.” He chuckled.

That fat asswipe could care less. Baseball was some father inflicted torture he had to endure. My father barely knew I played baseball and his father assumed he was going to the majors. Both of our dads were clueless for different reasons, but they were right on target at missing the point.

Chad loved any reason not to go.

I wished my dad could find a reason to be there.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do?” I screamed.

“I don’t know and I don’t care.” He hung up the phone.

Shit!

My stepmother was working for another half hour and who knew when my dad would push his pickled ass away from the bar. My stepbrother Jeff had a car but he was up in his room with his friends. I wasn’t even allowed to knock on his door. The last time I did, I got a swirlie from him and one of his friends. After, when they were laughing and I was standing degraded on the bathroom tile with toilet water streaming down my face, I clenched my tiny fists and swung them tornado like in fury. I managed to push a few knuckles into Jeff’s nose and forced a trickle of blood out of his left nostril. He glared at me in disbelief, stunned for just a second, and then he remembered he had seven years and a hundred pounds in his favor.

Time paused.

It really did.

Years later, I can live that moment over and over again, frame by frame. I can see all four knuckles of his man sized hand growing larger as it sped towards my face. He had a small black band around his pinky and tiny blonde hairs on all his fingers.

I spun my head quickly and the blow landed on the back of my head, just above my last vertebrae. The force of the blow sent my head flying but my legs were stopped by a claw foot tub. Inertia bent me double and I slammed my face into the white cast iron. The bottom left corner of my top incisor, the heart of my smile, crumbled into powder.

I can still feel it disintegrating.

So fuck that. I ain’t asking him.

I went back out into the driveway. I kicked at some rocks and threw my glove down as hard as I could against the blacktop.

“Fuck!” I screamed and kicked my glove out into the grass.

I pushed hard against the mounds of tears that were welling up in the corner of my eyes. I didn’t want to cry. I just wanted to handle this.

It was just another let down.

I walked out into the lawn and picked up my glove then threw it against the house.

“Assholes!” I screamed.

Just then, Jeff walked out the side door with one of his buddies. He ducked, then giggled almost girlike, “Jesus, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Nothing.” I mumbled and picked up my glove.

“What the hell is the matter with you?”

“Nothing.”

“No, seriously, what the fuck is up?”

I looked over at him and he kind of looked half human.

“I don’t have a ride to my game.”

“That’s it?” He said as he nudged a Marlborough between his lips and opened the door of his Mustang. “Get in.”

I was smart enough not to question his generosity and slid into the back seat. His fat friend Steve got in the front. It was barely a ten minute ride, made shorter by his speed. Jeff cranked some Alice Cooper on the radio the whole time and had all the windows rolled down. I saw him turn his head a couple of times like he was saying something to me but I couldn’t hear a thing. I just smiled and nodded, the world muted by the clamorous whirlwind spinning around me.

Jeff pulled to a stop in the gravel parking lot next to the field. To my surprise he turned down the radio and turned to me.

“Is your old man still picking you up?”

His friend had gotten out and leaned his seat forward for my exit. I slid up until my feet were out and touching the ground.

“Yeah, “I said standing up.

“You sure? I can come back you know.”

I got mad at his sincerity and became defensive of my dad.

“He’s coming!” I barked and marched away to meet up with my team.

“Your life.” He delivered in deadpan presage.

His friend got back in and slammed the door. One of them spun the volume up on the radio. I heard his tires growl sideways across the gravel and spit a few stones backwards as he spun off.

I didn’t look back and bit down on my bottom lip because I didn’t thank him.

A game was played that night and I don’t remember a thing about it. I don’t know if we won or lost or how I played. I know at some point it ended and I got my free hot dog and soda. I remember squeezing my glove under my left arm so I could hold my soda and eat my hot dog with my right hand as I walked down the long entrance to the street.

Dad liked it if I was right at the entrance when he got there.

By the time I got out to the road, my hot dog was gone and the cup that held my soda was empty and crumpled into my back pocket.

There was this big rock just left of the gate that was my favorite. I hopped up on it and sat with my legs folded into my chest. I watched all the cars rumble out. At first I waved, then slowly started to hide my eyes as the parking lot emptied. One of the last cars to leave was my coach.

He rolled down the window. “You need a ride?”

“No, my dad’s on his way.”

He rolled up his window, turned right and rumbled off into the gray. The sun was well under the horizon and dark was falling fast. I heard a pop behind me and turned to see the lights around the ball field shut down. A few minutes later, the lady who does the announcing and seems to run the place, drove out and got out of her car. She pulled the gate shut and closed some kind of lock on it. Just before she got back into her car she saw me out of the corner of her eye.

“Holy Shit!” she screamed “You scared the shit out of me. What are you still doing here?”

“I’m waiting for a ride.”

“You sure your mom is coming? Because I can give you a ride.”

“It’s my dad and he’s coming.”

She bent down into her car and fumbled a cigarette out from her purse. She lit it and sucked in a drag, holding it in while she stared at me. I imagine she was caught in the moral dilemma of sitting with some eleven year old or meeting some guy named Lenny at the bar who sported a pornstache and would feed her shots until she was too drunk too care who was wiggling between her thighs.

Lenny won.

“O.K. see ya.”

I stared at her taillights until I was just imagining that they were there.

It was dark now.

I looked up and pointed out the constellations to myself, Cassiopeia, Hercules and the Bears. Every set of headlights made me jump up, for a while. Soon I started making bets with myself that he would be here in the next five cars…..no..no… the next five cars… or maybe the next five… and so on.

Time passed. It was probably longer in kid time than it was in adult time.

I started to get cold so pulled my arms back through the armholes of my shirt and folded them against my chest.

I looked out into the dark and ran out of games to play. I was really cold and started to get angry.

I didn’t expect much from my dad.

I knew he’d be late, but this was getting pretty shitty.

I was getting….

Some headlights turned into the street. The car was moving pretty fast and pushing out some loud music.

It was my dad.

When he pulled up he leaned across the front seat and opened the door.

“Hey! Get in!” He was smiling, oblivious to how late he was or that I was all alone.

I got in and closed the door. My dad punched it and spun his Monte Carlo around. I pushed my self as far as I could into the passenger door. He lit a Winston and cranked up the radio. I just stared out into space.

Somewhere on the way home he noticed the lifelong disappointment that was exploding from my small crumpled frame. He turned the radio down and pulled over.

“What the fuck is up with you?” His voice was loud and blistered with alcohol.

I was speechless in fear. I knew he could smell my tears but I swallowed hard to suppress any whimpers and stiffened all my muscles.

I looked at him to say something but a bubble swelled in my throat and choked down my words. I flexed my eyes trying to stop the tears. It was useless. I blinked and flushed two salty trickles out over my cheeks.

He knew he had me.

He always did.

He was my dad.

“Here’s the thing.” He began, “I came and picked you up at the normal time and then I took you out to dinner. We went to Ponderosa.”

Normally he would never even question that I would back up his lie.

“O.K.?”

“Yes.” I mumbled with a shrug.

I was mad.

Mostly....

I was scared.

We rumbled down the summer night. The music hissing out from the dashboard speakers in whiny AM, gave us an excuse not to talk.

My dad pulled into the driveway and I didn’t let the car stop before I pushed open the passenger door. I stomped in through the side door and streaked up the stairs to my bedroom. My peripheral caught my step-mom streaking into the kitchen.

“Where have you guys been? Your dinner is on a plate in the fridge. Hey!”

I pretended I didn’t hear her scream my name or her demands that I come back..

My bedroom was dark and my brother was pretending to be asleep. I pulled off my uniform and kicked it into a heap against the radiator. Slick as a melting ice cube, I hopped up onto the top bunk and slid under the covers in one motion. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to make myself disappear. Downstairs, the argument escalated and the yelling pounded its way up into our bedroom. The loud words were muffled but I definitely heard my name a couple of times.

“Please, please, don’t come up.” I screamed silently to myself. “Please don’t come up here.” My pleas shriveled unheard and disappeared into the tornado of panic swirling inside my head. My dad kicked open my bedroom door with his foot. The old door was heavy and bounced back at him off the wall with so much force, it almost seemed like it was trying to protect me. My dad bent his arm across his chest to protect himself then pinned the door against the wall.

I laid motionless under my covers, slowing my breathing into a laboring drawl trying to hide in a counterfeit sleep.

Dad didn’t buy it.

“I know you aren’t sleeping.” He barked “Get the fuck up and come down to kitchen. Pat wants to talk to you.” He didn’t wait for a response because he knew I was too scared to disobey him. He turned and ping ponged down the stairs barely keeping himself upright. I pushed off my blankets and slowly slid my body over the edge of my mattress. It seemed liked years until my feet went flat against the floor. I shuffled slowly toward the rectangle light of the doorway, trying to delay the inevitable.

“Get the fuck down here!” My dad roared in his bellowing angry voice that he used when he meant business. I could feel the corners of my eyes burn with the sting of oncoming tears and tried to focus myself back into control.

I descended off the bottom step into kitchen and put both feet into some other people’s shit.

I didn’t want this.

I didn’t ask for this.

Hell, I barely even knew these people.

Pat hadn’t even been my step mother for half a year. I only met her a couple of times before some cheesy candle lit ceremony at her parent’s house made her my new mom. She was little more than a stranger to me. All I knew about her was that she packed a lot of anger into her tiny frame and that she could make great meatballs. Oh yeah, and even at eleven years old, I knew if she was dumb enough to marry my dad, she was just desperate.

Ahh Dad.

I didn’t know him either. Yeah he raised me and he was everything to me. He was the one constant in an endless chain of moving from one place to the next. He was even my hero for a while. But, I was long past jaded by then, even for a boy so young. He was the lie that sometimes told the truth, the promise that got kept once in a while and an interest in everything but me. I never knew what version of the man was going to show up and my imagination couldn’t paint him into a champion any longer.

I looked up into the angry air of the kitchen. Pat leaned in profile with her back flat against the refrigerator. Her arms were folded in front of her in a bitter clench and she glared out across the kitchen. I rolled my eyes down her line of sight until they ran smack dab into my fathers impaling bloodshot squint.

“Tell her what we did boy,” He directed me with a slurred siss.

My senses became acute and the ordinary was exaggerated into bizarre. I watched my dad’s work worn fingers drum down on the table in a repeated rotation, each finger thundering a blast into the air. I heard the second hand, on the tea kettle clock next to the stove slide past a black hash mark and groove into another second. The pungent sting of turbulent sweat, marinated by my dad’s beer soaked exhale, jabbed into my nostrils like it had jurisdiction over my sense of smell. I watched in slow motion as Pat flung a porcelain napkin holder that just missed my dad and shattered against the wall. Dad soared to his feet, kicking his chair out from under him. All the red in his eyes evaporated into a white anger. I wanted to run but was glued to the floor with fear. I looked at Pat and she didn’t even flinch as my dad stormed up to her with in an inch of her face.

“What the fuck was that?” he blared, painting her face with spit.

Pat stood her ground, her nose almost touching his, “Don’t give me a bunch of bullshit Bob. I know where you were. I called Old Timers and know you were there. I also know you left three hours ago with that ugly slut Jane.”

Dad paused a second, not long, but long enough to cement his guilt. “Bullshit. Ask Rob where we were.”

They both turned their heads to me.

“Fuck you Bob. I know what happened.” Pat mumbled, “I don’t care if you get your stupid kid to lie for you.”

Then silence.

They stared at me.

I wanted to sell him out. I really did. He left me there alone for hours and it wasn’t the first time. I could get him back for that quick right hand that always slaps against my head whenever he gets angry enough to justify it.

But, you know, he’s my dad.

“Dad took me to Ponderosa because I hit a homerun and we won the game.” I lied, and then I laid it on even thicker, “I can’t believe you guys are fighting over this and keeping me up on a school night.”

I didn’t wait for a reaction; I just turned and ran up to my bunk.

There was only silence behind me. I managed to slip into bed and drift off to sleep before any of the monsters came after me.

I remember waking up a bit later and hearing the dampened sounds of sex.