Stick (15 page)

I
woke up to the sound of his voice through the walls. Bleary eyed, I glanced at my alarm clock. One-forty-five in the morning.

I sat up in bed and listened. It sounded like he was arguing with someone. I snagged a pair of shorts and put them on, then opened my door and looked down the hall. Dim light came from the living room, but his voice wasn't coming from there.

Tiptoeing down the hall, I listened as his voice, muffled gibberish, floated in from the kitchen. Then I realized he was out back and that his voice was coming through the open window. “I should have…,” he said, and then his voice trailed off.

I walked to the window, which looked out to the porch. There, in the darkness, my dad was on his hands and knees, head slung low, shoulders arched. He was talking to himself. At least a dozen empty beer bottles lay around him.

Chest heaving, sobbing, his words slurred. “I tried. I did. I can't do this alone, Kim. I can't. Please. Come back. Please. Why'd you leave? Please.”

Over and over again he begged, rocking back and forth on his hands and knees, blindingly drunk, begging for my mother to come back. Blaming her for leaving. Cursing himself and God and his life.

I opened the back door, but he was oblivious to me. I knelt next to him and put my hand on his shoulder. He'd vomited, the stones covered in foodless beer and bile. “Dad, it's okay.”

“She's gone and now he's gone, too. Everybody is gone,” he mumbled.

I leaned down, looking at his face. Full of slobber and with drool hanging from his lips, his face wet with tears, he turned his head, seeing me for the first time. “Brett, it's time to get up. Practice starts soon. You can't be late, okay, buddy? Got to get up.”

I'd never seen him this drunk. He had so much alcohol in him that reality didn't exist. Just whatever thoughts flitted through his saturated mind. I put my arm over his back, gripping under his arm and trying to get him upright. “Yeah, Dad. I'm ready, okay? Let's get you up now.”

He resisted, shaking his head and trying to crawl away, but failing. When his hands hit the lawn, he lost whatever balance he had and thudded down, his cheek resting on the turf. He still mumbled, barely loud enough to hear, but I knew what he was saying.

I tried to get him up again, but he was deadweight. Barely conscious, arms down at his sides, half on the porch and half on the lawn, he was nothing more than an incredibly drunk and miserable beached whale. I knew I'd never get him in the house.

I went inside and came back armed with a blanket and a pillow. I lifted his head, put the pillow under his cheek, and spread the blanket over his passed-out body, then went back to bed thinking that my dad, for whatever he did, was a broken man, and it didn't have to do with a football.

T
hree days till the game with Shadle. Two more practices to prove my worth to the Tigers. After the morning practice, Coach Larson took me aside. “You fitting in well, Patterson?”

I took my helmet off. “You tell me, Coach.”

“You're doing fine. You've got talent, but apparently it doesn't include math. Your grades transferred over as well as you.”

I groaned, dreading the next few moments as much as I had with Coach Williams.

“Your new math teacher spoke to your old math teacher to find out more about what problems you were having, and she's getting a packet of extra credit ready for you. You get it all handed in by Friday before game time, you play.”

I brightened. “Yessir. Will I start?”

“You focus on your grades, I'll focus on being the coach of this team. Got it?”

“Yessir.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Your old teammates are hassling you.”

“How'd you know?”

“I didn't know, but I know how the world works. How badly?”

“Nothing I can't handle, Coach. It's all good.”

He clicked through his cheek. “You tell me if anything happens, and I'll get it straightened out with Coach Williams.”

I said okay, but I definitely knew better than he did about Coach Williams. If anything, Coach Williams was giving them pointers on how to nail me to the wall.

After school, and after getting my math packet from Miss Boreline, who happened to be incredibly hot for a math teacher, I texted Preston, asking him if we could meet for tutoring. He texted back that he was going in for one of his counselor's counseling sessions, but that we could meet afterward.

I picked him up on the corner of Riverside and Division. He was talking to a homeless man who was holding a sign on the corner. It read “Why Lie? I Just Want a Beer.”

After Preston hopped in, I pulled into traffic, and he immediately began his methodical ritual of cleaning my car. I turned down the radio. “That guy begging from you?”

He rolled a gum wrapper up and stuffed it in a Mountain Dew can. “No.”

I glanced at him. “ ‘No.' Just ‘No.' You don't know how to have a conversation, do you?”

He neatly folded up a Big Mac box. “What would you like to have a conversation about?”

I spoke slowly, like I was explaining something to a five-year-old. “Okay…You were talking to a bum. What were you talking about?”

“I asked him if he enjoyed being homeless.”

“Yeah. I'm sure he loves it.”

“He said he did. He referred to himself as a wanderer. He's been to every state. By the way, we can't go to my place today. After you left last week, Tom and Diane got in a huge fight. I heard him yelling about wanting to rip your face off and use it as toilet paper.”

“Good to know I'm causing trouble in your family, too.”

He shrugged. “I left after a while, but she kicked him out. He's supposed to be packing his stuff right now, and I don't feel like listening to his pity party.”

I changed direction and headed toward my house, wholly uncomfortable with the thought of him seeing my room. I half expected him to have cleaned the entire thing by the time we were done with the math. “I didn't know he lived with you.”

“He was in the process of slowly incorporating himself into living off my mom.”

I drove, and we went on in silence, with Preston cleaning. He squished a napkin into the Mountain Dew can. “You know, if the superhero gig doesn't work out, you'd do great going to maid school.”

“Do well, not good. And I don't think there is a maid school.”

“You're my math tutor, not my English tutor.”

“Seventy-three percent of all job applications have grammatical errors in them. Illiteracy is a major problem in America.”

“I'll keep that in mind.”

I pulled up in front of my house, my stomach squirming when I saw that my dad's car was in the driveway. I'd checked on him this morning before I left, and he was still breathing. I'd been doing that ever since the night he'd passed out, but otherwise I'd completely avoided him. I cleared my throat. “My dad isn't the coolest guy lately.”

“What does that have to do with your grammar?”

“Nothing. It just might be sort of…Never mind. Come on.”

Dad was nowhere to be found when we got inside, and I heaved a sigh of relief. “Well, here it is. My house,” I said, ushering him as quickly as I could toward my bedroom. Once inside, I threw my pack on the bed. “I'll get some sodas for us. Be right back.”

I almost ran to the kitchen and looked out the window, dreading to see my dad lying there, a beer-bloated corpse gathering flies. He wasn't, though, and I noticed that sometime in the last few days the porch had been completely cleaned. No bottles scattered about, the vomit hosed from the paving stones. I hurriedly grabbed two cans of Pepsi from the fridge and headed back to my room, seeing that Dad's office door was shut.

When I came back in, Preston was sitting at my desk, staring at nothing. I handed him a can. “Okay, my room, my rules. No cleaning.”

He fidgeted, his eyes roaming over the ramshackle mess. “Okay.”

I laughed. “I'll make you normal if it kills me.”

“If normal is you, I'll kill myself instead.”

I rummaged through my pack for the extra credit, found it, and tossed it to him. “Okay, chief, school me.”

He caught it. “I have no Native American blood in—”

I cut him off. “Okay. Rule number one. We're in the normal zone. I know you're not an Indian, and I know you're not a chief. You don't have to take everything literally.”

We were forty minutes into working when the knock came on my door. “Brett?”

I stood, walked over to the door, and opened it. The look on his face was different, but I couldn't tell why. “Hi.”

“Can I come in?”

I hesitated, then opened the door wider. “Yeah.”

He stepped in, looking at Preston. “Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't know you had anybody over. I just wanted to talk to you for a minute.”

I swallowed, checking the clock on my nightstand. It was well into beer time. “No problem. This is Preston.”

Dad nodded to him. He took a breath, then spoke. “Brett told me what happened with Lance Killinger and Tilly.” He hesitated. “And that Coach Williams allowed it. It should have never happened, and I'm sorry.”

Preston stared blankly at him, in typical form, then glanced at me. I could tell he was almost bursting to say something odd, but he didn't. “That's okay. It wasn't a big deal.”

I knew then that for however blunt and literal Preston was, he was also polished at dealing with parents. My dad took another breath, uncomfortable, then went on. “I wanted to do this in private, but I learned some things today.” He fished in his pocket and took out what looked like a poker chip, staring at it for a second. He handed it to me.

I looked at it, flipping it over. It had the number 24 etched into both sides. “What is it?” I asked.

He swallowed, his eyes flitting nervously from Preston to me. “It's a 24-hour Desire Chip. I went to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting this morning.”

He could have shot me with a cannon and I wouldn't have been as blown away. I stared at the chip, then looked up to him. “Really?”

“Yes. I'm sorry, Brett.” His eyes moistened just the slightest, and he looked away. “I'm an alcoholic. I've treated you poorly, and for all the wrong reasons. I love you,” he finished, then looked to Preston. “It was nice meeting you. I'll order some pizza. It'll be on the counter.” He walked out, closing the door behind him.

I stared at the chip in my hand, speechless. I'd learned two things in the last few weeks. The first was that my father was a broken and very lonely man. The second was that he wasn't dumb. He was a human being, not just a dad.

After a moment of stunning silence, Preston spoke. “I'm allergic to pepperoni.”