Blockhead

As his hands mapped the ball's rough surface, he could hear and smell the summers of long ago, those primary-colored days of abandon and laughter. He was aware of his tendency to roman­ticize his childhood; he knew that his remembered back yard freedom was self-fabricated (she had told him as much in one of her colder mo­ments), but the passing of years had done half the work, retroactively sweetening his memories, blurring the facts and brightening the colors with the golden tint of an overexposed photograph. The desperate re­construction of the past was an old man's escape and surely it was too early in his life for such whiplash-inducing back­wards glancing, but he didn't fight those memories when they came. It didn't matter. Not much did right now.

He set the ball down and chuckled. It was a dry, emp­ty sound. He squeezed his temples and rubbed his tear sore eyes with the base of his palms.

She had laughed. When he had slipped in the puddle of dog piss and hit the linoleum in the foyer, still begging her from the floor, she had laughed and opened the door in his face, moving past his bulk with her stormy ease. The last he saw of her was the sole of her high heeled pump lifting and dis­appearing in an all-too simple movement past the edge of his vision.

Now, back in their bedroom, he finished packing. As he folded his favorite sweater the one she called "that wretched yellow thing" he heard the familiar snuffling sounds from the back yard.

Just like his brother in law had said earlier, "At least the dog still loves you." He smiled; he supposed that was true.

Though his friend was then quick to point out that dogs only lick people for the body salt.

Two hours ago, his brother-in-law had appeared at the door. It was painful to see him. It was also a most welcome relief. They had been best friends since before either one of them could remember and long before they were related by marriage. As always he had his coat slung over his shoulder and, as always, his face exuded that same dead pan warmth.

"You look good, Charles," he said.

Charles knew this was a pleasantry, but he smiled anyway. He looked the same as he always had: bald, dumpy, a little over­weight. As plain as plain can be. She had called him "human camou­flage" in another of her careless, hurting moments and Charles was finding it difficult to remember any other kind with her. And now with his eyes watery and red, he knew he didn't look good. He in­vited his brother in law in.

As soon as they were seated in Charles's living room, the very model of 1975 upper-middle class chic, his friend placed a cigarette between his lips and lit up.

"I thought you'd quit. Those things'll kill you, you know." Charles hoped he sounded breezy and conversational but the strain showed. He sub­consciously gripped his chair's armrests harder, knuckles showing nothing but bone.

His friend returned in that straight, honest way he had (so unlike his sister, Charles caught himself thinking), "I know, I know. I just need some­thing in my mouth." Suddenly laughing; "Very Freudian, I know."

The thought hadn't crossed Charles's mind, but he smiled.

The younger man leaned forward, looking up through his un­ruly mop of hair. Those big, serious brown eyes. "So. She finally left you."

Charles went rigid and choked, fighting back another wave of eager tears. Shame followed, burning through his cheeks.

His friend pretended not to notice. He sighed, frowned, and crossed from his chair to the stereo. "Mind if I put on some music?" Charles shook his head weakly.

Lifting a couple of albums, he loosed an amused "hmmph". "I'm surprised she let you keep these. She always had something for him." Catching himself, "But I guess you knew that."

He was referring to another of their childhood friends. Handsome, quiet, and apparently more talented than any of them suspected. He was an internationally famous concert pianist now. Charles managed a grocery store and a local Little League team.

Soft piano sounds danced over Charles's nerves and did nothing to bridge the widening chasm between the hope and inno­cence of those younger days and the smooth flight of that high heeled pump this morning. His friend re­turned to his seat. Taking a long drag on his cigarette, he started in again.

"I'm sorry, Charles. I really am. No one deserves your kind of pain. But that's my sister. She's always inflicted her wants on the world and punished those who couldn't deliver, which, let's face it, is most of us. You know it's true.

"It's been worse for you, Charles. She even forced you to love her, to marry her. You might not be able to see it, but that's how it happened. And all of your friends, myself included, just sat back and watched. Some of the blame rests on our shoulders, I guess. But she's a manipulator and intimidating as hell. I should know I grew up with her!

"She's kept you simple and easy to control. Now's your chance to find out who you could be for real and without her. You're free and you can love again. Someone else – someone better - will love you, Charles. You're a good man."

Charles dropped his head into his hands and took a deep, trembling breath. He talked at the floor. "You're right. You always are. She never really loved me. I couldn't make her happy and I tried good grief, how I tried!"

"Just think of all the other lives she's screwing up," his friend added, "At least you got it free of charge."

Charles laughed, wanting desperately for it to come out a strong, de­tached thing; instead it was the same desert sound he would expel later. His friend's own laugh was short - ending with a glance shot to the doorway. And Charles knew with sudden certain intuition who he was ex­pecting; her own brother of twenty-nine years was still scared of her. Charles understood completely and was now freshly convinced that this man sitting across from him was the only person in the world he could open his heart to.

With a long, sad tug at his face his fingers leaving quick-vanishing streaks, his eyelids pulled down like a child's boogey man impression Charles started rambling. His friend listened with almost saintly patience as that familiar end of the world voice roamed through the jagged, disjointed terri­tories of a life of failures and guilty dreams of happiness.

"I honestly think the best day of my life was the day my parents came home from the puppy farm. That was the peak right there and the rest was all downhill."

"Charles, come on..."

"No, I'm serious. As far as pure, blind happiness is con­cerned, I had that one day. How old was I? Seven? Eight? Still young enough that something fuzzy and warm with a wet nose could erase any worry, any sad­ness. Do you remember that time? The older we got the harder it got to to get rid of the bad stuff. It stays with you, sticks to you, and then – and then you get stuck…." He looked up self-consciously, "Do I sound like a pathetic geezer?"

"You sound like anybody going through a mid life crisis," his friend answered, "even if you're jumping the gun a bit. You're dwelling on a lot of regret when you should be focusing on the really good times, the people you love and who love you."

Charles frowned, "The only person who ever really loved me I turned away for her." Looking far back, catching just a glimpse of blazing red hair, he shook his head. "Oh, Pat, I blew it with you. And now.…" he stopped himself and turned mortified eyes to his friend. "Oh...oh shit, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring anything up."

His friend waved it away and drew the smoke in deeply. "That was certainly a long time ago. It's okay. What about that, though? Now we're both single."

"Yeah, I guess we are."

"I heard from them the other day. Pat and Marcy."

"Oh, yeah? How are they?"

Charles's brother in law smashed out his cigarette. "Still together."

Swallowing hard, Charles felt the unwelcome return of old, sour guilt. "You and Marcy were great together. If I had known when I left Pat f ," he choked, took a detour, "when we broke-up that she would turn around and – and-"

"They were always close," his friend interjected with a frown, a creased forehead. "I guess I just never appreciated how close."

The house was silent for a few moments. The record had ended and now the needle only bumped ceaselessly against the label. Neither got up to change it.

Charles's eyes wandered the floor once again. Scuffed hard­wood floors; cracked sidewalks; hard, flat earth it seemed his entire life Charles's most familiar horizon had been under every­one's shoes. His gaze was briefly wooed by something red peeking out from under the couch. The dog's chew toy. No one else would have ever spotted it.

"Do you still think about her? What she would be like now; what she'd have to say about all this?"

Charles, detecting the note of remorse in his friend's voice, found him lingering on the framed photo of a sunny young woman with a mass of golden hair. Sally. His baby sister. The cloud de­scended on his heart again, so different from the mountainous white clouds of his kite flying youth. Running faster, faster, being cheered on by that shining, giggling little girl. Higher, higher, but those kites never quite made it. She had loved that the best.

"All the time," Charles whispered. "Eight years this May." Eight years since the night of her high school prom. Eight years since the police came to the door at 2:30 in the morning. She hadn't been drinking, but everyone else apparently had. It had ended in a ditch off the highway.

His friend looked away, his fingers twitching for another cigarette.

"She invited me to that dance, but, well…."

And in that moment Charles realized he wasn't the only one living with indelible regrets.

Charles's friend had come to console, but now things were getting un­com­fort­able. He rubbed his knees and gave them an absent pat. "Ahh, I've got to go. Got to make sure the boys have put the paper to bed, then I'm meeting Violet for dinner."

Charles stood with him. "You're going out with Violet now?"

His friend shrugged, "Small town, what can you do? You'll give me a call?"

Charles nodded and followed him to the door.

In his mind he felt the desperation of knowing something was dying, that something would soon be lost. He and his friends had been children of the Fifties when life was buzz cuts and Howdy Doody. It was softball and kite flying. It was hearing your parents talking in hushed tones about communists and rock'n'roll. But time and biology were soon pulling at them, stretching them like Silly Putty and they were powerless to do anything but watch. As friends moved away, became famous and successful like their friend the pianist or like another who had recently become the town's first black mayor. As friends married, became parents, or died. Charles knew this really strange kid; a complete slob whose lack of personal hygiene couldn't mask his gentle nature, his kind heart. This classmate had been one of the first to be drafted out of their town and had also been the first of their number to die on the jungle floors of Vietnam.

Charles felt like grabbing his brother-in-law – his best friend through it all - and pulling him backwards to that time before they started to grow and leave and die. Back to that one perfect day when he was seven? Eight? Was there anything left of that time? His brother in law had reached the bottom step before Charles spoke again.

"What a couple of lives we've had, huh, Linus? What if we'd known about all this when we were kids?"

Pausing by the car door, his friend looked back, squinting against the sun. "We would've done the exact same things, Charlie Brown. The exact same."

Charles's dog came snuffling around the side of the house then. Twenty two years old, half blind, half deaf, and suffering a hair trigger bladder, still alive by the grace of God, it nosed its way toward its master.

"At least the dog still loves you."

That was two hours ago and Charles had done some thinking in that time; as much time as he had ever had with her around. She had made all of the de­cisions, always, but she was gone now. She was gone and he was free. For the first time since the storm swept through this morning, Charles felt the glimmer of hope inside him. Free. His possibilities were frightening. His first resolution was to walk straighter now that her weight was off him. As he carried his bags to his dad's old green station wagon, he stood straight as a soldier.

Before he walked out of the door for the last time, he paused, then went to the phone. Dialing her office number, he told himself he owed her...something. He would express his anger at her for wasting so many years of his life and his anger at him­self for having let her. He would tell her of his newfound determination and the sense of timid excitement that accompanied it. The line rang twice.

"Medical Center switchboard, can I help you?"

"Lucille Van Pelt, please." She had opened her psychiatric practice a year after their marriage. She had kept her maiden name.

"I'm sorry, sir," the clipped, automatic tones of the operator in­formed him, "but the doctor is out."

He hung up. And that was that. Amazing as it seemed to Charles, it really could end just like that. Again his eyes caught a flash of red from under the couch. The dog's toy he'd almost missed it.

Locking the door behind him, holding the well chewed and well loved toy triplane, a satisfaction began to dawn in his chest. It carried him into the back yard, to the weathered dog house under the dead tree that still held an ancient, empty bird's nest. Charles knelt and retrieved the dog's dish.

He finished packing the car and he whistled for the dog. It hobbled out to him, its black-and-white coat looking a bit ragged. Charles put Snoopy in the back seat. Snoopy licked him and panted with his same old dog smile. There was more than salt lust in that lick, Charles knew.

Taking a last look at the house, Charles sighed. He had de­cided to leave. This town in which he had been born thought it knew Charles Brown. He was going to force them to reconsider. He was going to shake things up and shake older, dustier things off. He didn't know where he was going and he didn't care. Somewhere out there was a good life for a good man. Somewhere out there was a redheaded girl just waiting for him. He remem­bered he liked red­heads.

There was only one thing left to do.

Charles held the ball with determined hands. Strong hands, stronger than he remembered them. He let out a long breath and smiled a goofy smile but the best one he had. He took several quick little steps forward and kicked the football as hard and as high as he could. It flew up and out of the yard; it flew on forever.

Charles kept on smiling. It was a good kick.

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