The Peace, Disturbed

I did not grow up disadvantaged. As every other kid on my school bus, I was a spoiled brat. I like to think, at least, that I was nice for a brat. Oh, but no-one thinks they are the worst of whatever they are.

Most weekday afternoons were spent happily in the neighborhood park. I never realized, when I lived there, how upscale of a park it was. Though, I did appreciate its charm.

I often wondered if I alone were aware of the mulch shirking from my shoes, the muting of the green of the grass and the darkening of the opaque blue sky when a cloud covered the sun, or the smell of the roiled sod of the field when we played baseball. No-one acknowledged these moments out loud, so I worried I had imagined them, out of boredom.

But I could not simply have imagined the emotions which came from such acute experiences.

On Friday afternoon and evening, the park would be so full of kids it took twenty minutes to agree on any one game, and organize ourselves into teams. If too many girls were there, they’d outvote us, and we’d end up with capture-the-flag, or spud. Oh, and we’d hiss and moan, because then they were still our enemies. The girls would laugh at us, and the boys who would grow up to be troublemakers would say the bad words they’d learned from their older brothers. But the girls were called home early, anyways, so we could play football until the streetlights came on, and we scurried home down our respective lanes.

Peace was not a word in our vocabulary. Alas we were in our Eden; innocent, and incapable of comprehending our precious containment from the land of Cain and Abel. ‘One only knows a good thing when it’s gone’ applied, but partly. For it would take far longer than our adolescence to learn what we had lost. Oh, and one could lose oneself to soliloquy, thinking of how long a life one must lead to behold the beauty of one’s vanquished youth.

To be in the park on Saturday morning, you had to have your shoes tied tight. You had to be unafraid of scrapes, and of filth to fill your scrapes, and of a light scolding from your mother for being so dirty and cut up.

If it were one of the colder weeks between the seasons, the football would hurt your knuckles if it was thrown too hard. If you dived, and got mud on your neck or arms, or face it would harden there. Though it was awful cold against the skin, you couldn’t rub it off, ‘cause it was your war-paint.

Around lunchtime, and throughout the afternoon, the girls, and kids from farther away neighborhoods would come and wait to join whatever game was going on. The whole of Sunday, too, was lazy.

My mother always made waffles and bacon and eggs, before church. There was a sweetness in the milk, with the grease of the bacon still on my tongue, which I have not tasted otherwise. The smell of the incense always made me swoon, so I would lean on my father’s arm, and if it had been a good week he would smile.

By noon, I’d be on the swingset talking about the Yankees with kids who would become my closest friends, and some with whom I’d lose touch soon, but there was not an urgent thought in the world which could have kept us from playing tadpoles to our half-formed dreams; drifting, helpless, to where they should guide us. All of this was before my mother got sick, and my father could hardly look at us kids.

Whether my memory is especially powerful, or my fear, on the day I came home and saw her gray and sinking into their bed, was so great that I could not have remembered it in anything but the gravest detail is not worth considering. My father visibly grappled his urge to sob. At points, it became violent, and he’d leave the room. I wish I did not encapsulate so clearly the texture of my mother’s warm, weak hands, which held my right, while my left was touching the cotton sheet, as I thought of the Sunday mornings my siblings and I had rushed in under the covers which had seemed as vast as the ocean when it is up to your neck, and stayed a while until my mother said it was time for breakfast.

Perhaps I simply wish I knew better how to trim and weed my grief, so that I could have kept it from becoming overgrown. Perhaps I should not think myself such a coward for not squarely meeting her eyes, as she said what would be her last to me. It is all unkempt, because that is how I’ve left it.

I was alone more often than not, in the years which scarcely followed. One Wednesday afternoon, I sat on the roots of the oak at the far end of the park. A couple kids I knew were chasing each other across the grass. I fixed my eyes on a car going by, till it was out of sight. I leaned back against the bark, and my neck ached faintly. That was when Breur came over to me.

His badge was white with the sun. He held his belt, and looked off. “You’re Phil Egan’s kid, aren’t you?” and I nodded. I could not tell his intention, then he was gone. He materialized, again, holding out a football. “No thanks, sir, I don’t feel well enough for it,” and he sat on the grass, despite the clean blue uniform. “How old are you now?” after a pause. “I’m twelve since last month, mister Egan.” He looked at me, smiling at himself. “Alright, but we’ll have a catch another time, okay?” I nodded, grinning for his sake.

That night I came in to see my older sister cooking dinner, again. It was another of the many nights we did not see my father, who laid in bed whenever he was not working. I embraced my sister, and she nearly wept when she saw my face, which was so thankful of her.

I had forgotten Breur, when I was sitting, again, by the oak of which I had grown fond. I did not notice him until he spoke: “hey, kid. Don’t you owe me a catch?” I stood up and put out my hands which were imprinted with the patterns of the roots. We stayed, talking about the series and tossing the football which felt like chalk, until the streetlights went on, and he drove me home.

He was a coach for varsity, and said I had an arm. That year, if I got in trouble in school he’d find me at home, or in the park, and scold me, which always started with him showing me his hands and shaking his head.

We stayed that way for years, until I graduated, and couldn’t decide where to go to college. He’d tell me of his son who’d lost his way, and of his father with whom he could never talk honestly. I never mentioned my own father. They’d grown up together, a town or two over, so that he spoke of him as though they were kin.

We sat together for a few hours, below that oak, the day before I went upstate for my first semester. He wished me good luck, and made his way through all the pleasantries, which were so important, because of the way he said them.

He’ll be at my wedding, one-day, and I’ll be at his funeral. And though I don’t see him as often as I did when I was twelve, he is a guardian of mine. I do not know how to be precise about what he did for me, but if I were to concede to the phrase, he ‘made me a man.’ I suppose it is my prerogative to represent him well.