Painting the Black (3 page)

Brett's mother was a different story. I didn't stay away from her. She was younger than my mom. But it wasn't just that. She was different, too. Summer days she'd walk around in a thin white shirt. She wouldn't have a bra on, and I could see the outline of her breasts right through her shirt.

Sometimes she'd catch me staring. Then she'd laugh. “Naughty, naughty,” she'd say, wagging her finger at me and smiling, and I'd turn bright red. Brett glowered at me when she did that. But I couldn't help myself, and his mother thought the whole thing was a big joke.

Brett was actually younger than I was, but he acted older. He swore all the time, and he was always talking about what he would do to this girl or that girl if he ever got her alone somewhere. I smoked my first cigarette with him, and had my first beer. I knew he was trouble, but he was also exciting, and nobody else my age lived on the block.

We mainly hung out at the Community Center, shooting hoops or playing catch or hitting baseballs. But some days we'd go to the forested part of Golden Gardens Park. That's where we coughed our way through those stolen cigarettes and choked down the warm beers. But we didn't smoke or drink that much—maybe three or four times all summer. Most days we just hiked the trails and climbed trees together. Typical stuff.

Brett was always the better climber. He moved through trees like a squirrel. He was fearless. In every sport—baseball, basketball, football—I could crush him. But climbing trees, he had me.

He liked rubbing it in, too. He'd scurry up some fir tree and throw cones down at me and laugh. “You wouldn't believe all the things I can see from here,” he'd say.

I shouldn't have let it bother me. With his deranged father and his sexy mother, he needed his moment. I should have let him have it. But I didn't.

One windy afternoon in late August, Brett climbed way up in a maple. I want to say the tree was a hundred feet tall, but it was probably closer to fifty. Still, from the ground he looked small as he clung to one of the top branches.

“This is so amazing!” he shouted down. “This is the coolest thing in the whole world!”

I listened and fumed for ten minutes. Then I started climbing. I scratched myself up pretty good, and it took me a lot longer than it had taken him, but I finally made it as high as he'd gotten.

When I pulled myself up next to him, he looked pained, pained and angry. I didn't care. I felt as if big firecrackers were exploding inside me. There was nothing I couldn't do.

Then came a gust of wind, and the branches swayed. “I'm going down,” Brett said, and a second later he was gone, moving from branch to branch, down and down and down.

The breeze didn't whisper through the branches. That's what it sounds like when you're safe on the ground. When you're up there, way up there, it sounds like groaning. The wind picked up even more and the whole tree started rolling. It was as if it were trying to shake me off its back like a wet dog shakes off drops of water.

I looked down. Brett was on the trail throwing rocks into the brush. “Let's go, Ryan,” he hollered up.

“Okay,” I managed to call back.

But nothing was okay. I hugged the trunk of the tree for all I was worth, hoping to find enough courage to begin. But the courage wasn't there. “Help me, Brett!”

Brett stood at the base of the tree, looking up. “What do you want me to do?” His voice was angry.

“Get my dad!” I shouted.

“I'm not going to get your dad. You got up there; you can get down.”

I clung to the tree for what seemed like hours, but was probably only a minute or maybe two.

“I'm going home,” Brett shouted up disgustedly. “See you later.”

“You can't leave me!” I screamed.

“I'm not going to stay here all day.” He started toward the path that led out of the park.

“Wait!” I called to him. “Come back.”

But he kept walking, down the path and out of sight. I never saw him again.

I don't know how long I stayed in the tree. Probably no more than five minutes, but it seemed like hours. Finally I started down. The first ten feet were okay. Then came a long bare spot. I dangled my legs down, stretching to reach the branch below me. But I couldn't reach it. I was trying to pull myself back up when my right hand slipped. I clawed at the bark with my fingertips, clawed like a cat claws. It was no good. My left hand started slipping too. I dug my nails into the bark. I could feel the splinters going into the soft skin of my fingertips. It burned like fire, but I had to hold on. I had to hold on.

A second later I was falling. Not straight down. I'd be dead if I'd fallen straight down. No, I came down more like a pinball goes through a pinball machine. I must have bounced off twenty branches before I hit solid earth.

A woman walking her dogs found me. I don't remember much about her—only that she put her coat over me and then ran off, her dogs barking.

They drove the Medic Aide car right into the park. This man talked to me, felt my stomach, my arms and legs, and then with another man lifted me onto a stretcher.

I spent two weeks at Children's Hospital. Some of the nurses who remembered me as the Helicopter Baby visited. “Couldn't stay away,” they joked.

I didn't get a body cast, though the doctors considered it, but I did end up with casts on both legs and my left arm, and with pins and a metal plate in my right ankle. My stomach was wrapped tight, and for a while I had to wear a neck brace, though I don't know why. My neck never hurt.

When I got home it wasn't much better than being in the hospital. I couldn't go to school; I couldn't go downstairs; I couldn't even make it to the bathroom. That lasted for two months. Sometime in there Brett moved away.

Then came the day when all the casts and wrappings came off. The doctors had warned me my legs would be weak and skinny; my mom and dad had told me the same thing. I just didn't believe them. I thought that happened to everyone else, but that I'd be different, that I'd pop out of bed and be like new—able to run and jump as well as ever, better even.

And then . . . there they were. A scaly, scrawny left arm. Two skinny, pathetic-looking white strings for legs. I couldn't run—I could barely walk. My right ankle ached. I couldn't bend it, and walking stiff-legged made my left hip sore.

I was depressed for a while, but then I came out of it. I figured all I needed to do was work and I'd be as good as new.

I did my physical therapy exercises, all of them, every day. And I got stronger and was able to run a little and do things. Only not as well as before. Not nearly as well. So I worked harder, tried harder, got down on my knees and prayed to God. But things that had been so easy and natural—running, hitting, throwing, and catching a baseball—felt awkward and unnatural.

And then, one day, I faced it: I wasn't going to make it back. There was no point in endlessly banging my head against a brick wall. For five years I didn't pick up a baseball.

Until Josh Daniels.

The next morning Josh was waiting for me. His front door opened before I made it halfway up his porch steps. “Good to see you,” he said as he stepped out. He handed me a catcher's mitt and a mask and a little piece of sponge. “If you shove that in your mitt, your hand won't hurt so much.” He grinned. “And you should get yourself a cup too, unless you don't plan on having any children.”

When we reached the diamonds, I wanted to throw the ball right away. But Josh shook his head. “We've got all morning. We should stretch out first, run a little, get loose. Do it right.”

I felt my body go tense. The stretching was okay, but I didn't want to run. He'd be too fast, and I'd feel like a fool. I swallowed. “I'll stretch out,” I said, “but I'm not sure how my ankle will hold up running.”

“It's that bad?”

“It's not very good.”

Stretching has always seemed like a waste of time to me, but Josh was dead serious. Ankles, calves, hamstrings, groin, hips, torso, arms, neck—he stretched everything. I watched whatever he did and copied as best I could. The whole routine took at least half an hour. Finally he stopped. “What do you think? Seven, eight laps?”

“I'll try,” I said. “But don't you stop just because I do.”

It's about a quarter of a mile around both fields. Josh had long strides, but he wasn't churning his legs fast. My strides were short and choppy, but I was able to keep up. And my ankle didn't hurt—not at that pace.

We ran a lap, two laps, three laps. Slowly, probably without even knowing it, he picked up his pace. My breath was coming faster; my heart was thumping; my lungs burned; my side ached. As we finished our fourth lap, I slowed to a walk. “Go on,” I said.

He ran backwards for a few steps. “You okay?”

“I'm fine,” I answered. “I'm just going to walk a little.”

He nodded, and I watched as he took off by himself. Free of me, he ran effortlessly, like a dolphin moving in water. As I watched him, memories of running—of pure, painless running—came flooding back to me. There was a time when I ran the way he did, when I could get there, wherever it was, faster than anybody.

When he finished his eighth lap, Josh put his hands on his hips and walked around the outfield in wide circles. He was sweating pretty good, but he wasn't breathing hard at all. Finally he came back into the infield where I was waiting. He picked up his glove, I picked up the catcher's mitt, and we started playing catch.

“You want to put that mask on and get behind the plate?” he said after about five minutes.

“You bet,” I answered, crouching down and pulling the catcher's mask over my face for the first time.

That morning he played around with his grip, sometimes throwing with his two fingers split wide, sometimes with three fingers on the ball, sometimes with his fingers across the seams. The different grips made the ball move differently. The splitter dropped down, the three-fingered job tailed in. About every fifth pitch was just pure heat, but even his fastball always moved a little. Catching Josh was like taking a ride at an amusement park—scary, but fun. The ball was there, and then it wasn't, dipping down and either in or away.

I'd always thought that being a catcher had to be the most boring position to play. Those two days taught me otherwise. There was nothing boring about catching Josh Daniels. When a hard ball is coming at you fast, and when it's dancing, too, every single nerve in your body is alert and ready. Your eyes are wide open, and the adrenaline is pumping. It's not a feeling you want to give up, any more than you want to get off a roller coaster. And Josh wasn't even close to pushing his limits. I knew he had more. Whatever more he had, I wanted to see it. I wanted to catch it. I'd have caught him forever.

Too soon he stopped. “That's enough,” he said.

“You sure? I'm not tired.”

He was tempted, but finally shook his head. “No, I don't want to hurt my arm, and you should go easy on that ankle.”

We walked over to the drinking fountain. I splashed water on my neck and face, then took a good long drink. Suddenly I was on empty. I dropped to the grass. Josh plopped down next to me, then leaned back so the sun was on his face. We sat for a while, neither of us talking. Then he sat up.

“My old man wants to put in new copper pipes to the kitchen and bathroom. I've got to help him.”

“That sounds like fun.”

He smiled sourly. “Yeah. Right. But how about tomorrow morning? You want to do this again?”

“Sure, sounds great.” Then I remembered. “Wait a second,” I said. “I can't. Tomorrow is Sunday. I go hiking with my father on Sundays.”

“What about the afternoon?”

“Yeah,” I said. “If we're back in time.”

Before I went to bed that night I set my alarm for five-thirty. Just thinking about getting up that early put me in a foul mood. But even if we were leaving at eight-thirty, I wouldn't have wanted to go.

The strange thing is that for years I'd looked forward to those Sunday hikes with my father. I couldn't play basketball or football or baseball, but I could walk. The Issaquah Alps, Cedar River, Mount St. Helens—we hiked everywhere. On Monday I had something on the other guys at school. “I hiked to Rattlesnake Lake,” I'd say, and for a few minutes they'd be jealous of me.

But for the last year or so, the hikes have become a chore, something I do for him. The strange thing is I'm certain that in the beginning—when my ankle was so tight that every step was slow—our hikes were something he did for me.

It seemed as if I'd barely fallen asleep that night when my light went on. “Wake up, Ryan.”

“What?” I said, looking at my clock. Five-ten.

“Cougar Mountain,” he answered. “Remember, we're hiking Far Country Creek today.”

I groaned. “I thought we said five-thirty.”

“We did, but I want to get going before the trail gets crowded.”

I covered my head with my pillow. What I wanted to do was to sleep until nine or so and then pound on Josh's door and play baseball. My fingers itched to hold a hard ball again. But I had to suck it up and go.

I rolled out of bed and dressed. I checked my ankle, turning it this way and that. Just a little stiffness. Downstairs I found my dad loading up his backpack on the kitchen table. He never goes on any hike—not even a two-miler—without double-checking his stuff. I'm sure it's because of what happened to my mom when the batteries went dead. When he was satisfied he had everything, he turned to me. “You want to drive?”

We stopped at Ken's Market and picked up a loaf of peasant bread and a half gallon of orange juice. Once we reached the freeway he pulled the bread apart and handed me a chunk. It had a good hard crust, and the inside was still warm. I ate it quickly. “You want more?” he asked and I nodded. He opened the orange juice and I took a swig of that too.