Chip
“I’m jealous you landed that,” Hawk says, pointing to Nancy, who is ordering the facilities and cleaning crew around to set up an ice cream social by the pool.
She is so focused, so good at what she does.
Her dark shiny hair moves when she walks as though it’s a separate entity.
Hawk uncaps two beers as they sit on the front steps of the crew lodge.
“Then why do you sound so shitty?”
Hawk furrows his eyebrows. “We’re still in the thick of it, my friend. As my grandpa would say, it’s still the shank of the evening.” He laughs.
Hawk looks at him as if he’s reading his mind. “Tell me, brother, besides Nancy, who is a primo accomplishment—”
“She’s not an accomplishment. We like being with each other,” Chip snaps. Something about Hawk implying she’s property pisses him off.
Hawk puts up his hands. “Relax, man.” He takes a pull on his beer. “Anyway, besides the respect you have for Nancy as you two go at it like bunnies, what else do you need?”
Chip looks at him. “Why do you ask?”
Hawk’s face looks strange, and Chip can’t read it. “I was just wondering. Like did you always wish you could swim with dolphins, did you always want to drink absinthe? I don’t know, never mind, it’s a weird question. I just like hearing what people want.”
“A Mets game,” Chip said. “I always wanted to see the Mets play.” Chip sips his beer, even though he seems to be losing his sense of taste.
“They suck this season.”
Chip shrugs. “Doesn’t matter to me.” He realizes he’ll probably never get to Shea Stadium. He looks out at Red Maple and thinks this is all he’ll see.
“Then we’re going, man. A bus into Queens, some hot dogs, Cracker Jacks, you name it. Let’s do it.”
Chip looks at him and wonders where Hawk even came from. He never talks about his past or much about his family, besides mentioning his grandparents once in a while. “You mean it?”
“Hell yeah,” he says. “I’ll figure out when we’re both off this week, and we’ll get there. Maybe we’ll even bring them some luck and they’ll try winning for a change.”
“Me and luck don’t exactly go together anymore,” Chip says, holding on to his beer like he’s afraid he’ll drop it.
Two days later, Vicky takes him for another round of platelets. Afterward he feels hungry, surprisingly. They go to a café called Sweet Dreams, and he gets a BLT and an orange cooler in a glass mug with sprigs of mint. “This is right on.”
Vicky dunks her grilled cheese in her tomato soup and takes a bite. “And how are you doing, my friend?”
“Sound as a pound.” He sits back in the café chair and looks around.
Overhead ceiling fans turn slowly, and the owner waters a fern in the window.
A mother and father put their toddler into a high chair, and they take turns kissing his mop of dark hair.
“Did I tell you I’ve been going around with this girl named Nancy? ”
Vicky’s eyes widen. “No, Charles Henry. You most certainly did not.”
He grins. “She’s amazing, Vic.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” She wipes her face and reaches over and sips his drink because her water’s empty. “When are you going to introduce us?”
He feels his face flush. “Shit, I can’t. That’s too weird.”
She shakes her head. “Why don’t you get Nancy Fancy to drive you to the doctor?”
“Because I like being with you,” he says quickly. He gives her a small smile, but her face crumbles.
“God, Chip.” She blots her eyes with her napkin. “You always know how to break my heart.”
He tries to give her another smile but feels deflated. His doom always finds its way into their conversations. “See, that’s why I beat you at Battleship, because I can throw you off course.” He tries to laugh.
She reaches over and takes some of his chips. “You should be eating more.”
He holds out his arms. “I don’t want to strain my pallbearers.”
She glares at him. “You say something like that again, and you won’t have to worry about the illness,” she whispers. “Seriously, Charles Henry, not funny.”
“Yet, you still like me.”
She rolls her eyes. “So tell me about Miss Pocono, the woman who’s probably skinny-dipped her way through every Pennsylvania boy’s heart.”
“No one skinny-dips anymore, Vicky,” he says. “Except for me and her in the lake.” He dodges the piece of crust she throws.
“I’m gonna meet her,” she says, and she takes the check from the waitress and tosses it over to Chip.
The next day, he and Hawk ride the bus to Port Authority and take the PATH, then the subway, and finally the 7 train to Shea Stadium.
Hawk gets them each a Heileman’s Old Style beer, and Chip buys Hawk a bratwurst and himself a barbecued beef sandwich.
They find their seats. “Not too bad,” Hawk says.
The Mets are playing the Padres, and Chip can’t stop staring at the green field.
“Thanks for making this happen.”
“Now you just have to loan me Nancy for a night.” Hawk grins.
“Fuck off.” He takes Hawk’s hat and tips it over his eyes.
As they wait for the game to start, the National Anthem, the first ball thrown, Chip finishes his sandwich and sips his beer and puts his cigarette out on his shoe. “So what were you up to before this?” He sloshes his beer.
Hawk looks distant and not interested in the conversation. “Maybe I’ll tell you some other time.” He grabs Chip’s cigarettes off his lap and strikes a match and lights one. He groans. “Where I was was nothing good, man.”
“Oh, sorry.”
Hawk stares straight ahead for so long that Chip wonders if he’s just going to do this for the whole game. Finally, he turns to him. “So what about you, kid? You sick or what?”
Chip stares straight ahead now. “Maybe I’ll tell you some other time.”
At the top of the fourth inning, Chip heads out to the concessions and gets a huge basket of fries. He weaves through the crowds and realizes he should have grabbed some napkins. On the painted cinderblock wall is the Mets logo.
He can feel the heat of the oil coming off the fries and sets them down near the ketchup and mustard dispensers.
He salts them and holds them under the ketchup and pumps and pumps, but nothing is coming out.
In his periphery someone is waiting, so he pumps faster, hoping for just a small ounce of ketchup.
Finally, something comes out, but it splatters all over the person next to him.
He turns and sees a woman in a white lace blouse, looking shocked and then disgusted by the spray of red on her. For a second he thinks of ripping off his shirt and blotting her with it. “I’m so sorry! I’ll, uh, get some napkins,” he says, and he leaves his fries there and darts off.
He feels faint for a second, so dizzy that he might fall over. Someone is coming toward him with a carrier of five sodas, and he gets out of their way. He cuts to the front of the fry line, guys giving him shit, asks for napkins, and hurries back.
A man in a Mets T-shirt stands there with the woman now, red-faced and swearing.
“Here you go.” He holds the napkins out to her, but the man snatches them.
Chip hears the crack of a bat and the crowd cheering.
“So you’re the one who did this.” The guy jerks his thumb toward the ketchup-splattered woman.
Chip looks at her, and her face is almost as red as the stain on her shirt. “I’m really sorry.” He looks at the napkins crushed in the man’s hand.
“Let it go, Ted, it’s only ketchup,” the woman says, reaching toward his hand.
“No, you said your day’s ruined, this kid ruined it, and now he’s got to fix it.” The smell of cigarettes and whisky wafts out as spit flies from his mouth.
Chip is dizzy. He looks to the side, and everyone is going about their business.
A little boy trails his mother and bites into a hot dog, and an old woman is nudging some money toward a guy who’s paying for popcorn.
A man wheels garbage by on a cart. The announcer is saying something about a sponsor.
Chip’s mouth is dry. “Um, maybe the napkins…” Chip wonders if he should offer to pay for her dry-cleaning like in the movies.
“What are these gonna do? Huh?” The man throws the napkins in Chip’s face. “You. Better. Fix. This.” He stares straight into Chip’s eyes as he drills his finger into his chest.
The room spins. One fall could kill you.
Chip hears Dr. Palmer’s voice. He imagines what a hard punch could do.
He starts to panic and doesn’t even notice Hawk step right between them.
“Back off, or you’re going over the ledge, asshole.
” He practically growls and his eyes look different.
“I am not fucking kidding. Want to see?” He reaches out to grab the man’s shirt.
The man wobbles as he dodges Hawk’s grip and the woman is frozen beside him, watching. Chip waits for something else to happen, for Hawk to snap and lay into him, but the tension deflates.
Hawk pats Chip’s back. “Let’s get back to the game, man,” he says, and Chip collects his fries. Hawk stops as they’re about to leave and tosses the woman the zip-up sweatshirt he had tied around his waist. “Here,” he says.
As they walk away, Hawk whistles “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
On the bus ride home, they talk about the Mets winning. “We brought them back,” Chip says. They talk about that guy and Hawk says he hopes the woman leaves him flat on his ass. They talk about the people in the row in front of them who caught a foul ball.
Chip feels cold all of a sudden, and he crosses his arms and sinks down in his seat.
They pass over a bridge and are in traffic.
The sun starts to sink in the sky, and the windows are smeared and filthy, but it’s a perfect summer night.
“That’s probably my last baseball game,” Chip says, and he feels like crying.
Hawk looks at him and doesn’t say anything.
He shakes his head and stares straight ahead, those sunglasses of his not showing anything.
Chip feels himself start to fall asleep and Hawk looks over.
“We don’t know when our last thing will be, do we?
None of us does.” He gives him half a smile, which seems meant to be reassuring, and Chip sinks into sleep.
He dreams of Birdy Girl in the backyard, her dog smile as she runs over and over again to fetch whatever he’d throw.
A stick, a tennis ball, a piece of a rope.
He is clapping for her, and the tree swing stays still, and he sees the opening in the giant boxwood bush where they used to play hide-and-seek.
Birdy Girl barks because she wants him to throw the Frisbee again, and he tosses it.
It spins as it flies, blue and faded with her teeth marks in it, and Birdy Girl runs and runs.
He wishes he could sit down and just look at everything.
The squirrels, the flowers, whatever. Now Mr. Grakowski tells his team to haul their asses, and he hears the squeak of their sneakers on the gym floor during basketball season, and then the gym is the gymnasium at Red Maple, and Nancy is playing the Glen Miller record, and she is telling him to come to her.
“Be right there,” he says.
The bus hits a bump, and he opens his eyes, and realizes he has slumped to the side like he always does. On car trips to Ocean City or Aunt Dana and Uncle Everett’s house in upstate New York, Maggie always shoves him. “Back on your own side.”
He becomes aware of everything, and he hears the echo of his own snoring—he must have just stopped, been in such a deep sleep, and he feels Hawk’s shoulder against his ear.
Hawk never jostled him, unless he was sleeping too soundly and Hawk gave up, but that seems unlikely.
He looks up at Hawk’s face, the man with the past no one knows about, the man who has slept with half the women at Red Maple, the man who was willing to kill a guy with his bare hands tonight, and he has his sunglasses off and is staring straight ahead at nothing and letting Chip rest his head on his shoulder.
Chip thinks he should sit up and apologize. But he rests there a few moments longer, his body so tired, his eyes burning, and listens to the surge and rumbling of the bus.