Fatherhood
OR
Regarding Balls
By Eugene Tower
1. Nathan
Annie King wasn’t drunk. Not yet. The clock on the wall hadn’t quite hit ten in the morning, after all. She raised the snifter to her nose and swirled the liquid inside, sniffing gently at the spicy aromas. That’s how the brandy aficionados did it, after all, and that’s all she was.
She wasn’t, in her opinion, an alcoholic. And who was around to tell her otherwise? Nathan? Her son, William Nathan King Junior, was only six years old. He didn’t even know what an alcoholic was. Kid didn’t know what much was, not yet anyways.
She took a sip. The cognac tasted like sweet fire, expensive and extravagant. Maybe she should have picked something cheaper to be her drink.
Annie set her smoldering cigarette down in the notch of the overfilled ashtray on the table and slid the tip of one uncertain finger through the blinds, letting a slice of morning light into her darkened kitchen. Squinting through the daylight that cut at her eyes like a knife she could see Nathan, AKA William Junior, sitting on the overgrown grass, his legs stretched out straight in front of him, his shorts no doubt getting smeared with green stains.
She used to care about those grass stains, used to buy all manner of products to get them out, used to tell little Nathan to be careful with his clothes, that even though he was a growing boy and he got new clothes often, he would have a little baby brother to think about some day and shouldn’t ruin his hand-me-downs.
No more little baby brother for Nathan, though. No more sons or daughters for William and Annie King; now there was only the dark kitchen, the lonely half of the loveseat, the brandy snifter, the cigarettes, and the life insurance payout in the savings account.
Annie tilted her head, looking at what Nathan was doing out there in the front yard sitting in the lawn. He had the ball between his legs on the grass. He leaned over it, his head and neck moved like he was talking. Annie had her cigarettes and cognac; little Nathan had only the ball.
Bill had gotten Nathan that ball a week before he had a heart attack and dropped dead. Annie took Nathan out of school for the rest of the year and life made a hollow semblance of continuing on. Soon afterward, Nathan started spending a lot of time with that ball; he slept with it and carried it around with him wherever he went. She thought he even talked to it.
Whatever helped him cope with his father’s sudden death was fine, she figured. Talking to a ball was a lot healthier than drinking and smoking oneself to death, especially for a six year-old.
2. William
William Douglas the Third had a shopping basket full of man food. Steak. Chili. Protein powder. Dark beer. It was a shopping basket that didn’t fuck around.
“The only thing I don’t fuck,” William Douglas the Third would say, “is around.”
He wore a shirt that showed off his muscles, athletic shorts and running shoes. He was on step three of his daily routine. Every weekday was the same thing: wake up, head to the gym for an hour, head to the grocery store, head home for a shower, then go to work. He was a developer for a software company, making the operating systems that slot machines ran on, but he was no fuckin poindexter.
After work, the evenings were his. Sometimes he’d head out to the bars to pick up chicks, sometimes he’d have a bro over and they’d get blasted while watching a movie or playing some sick Call of Duty. He was a free man after his third divorce, no more fuckin ring for him. Bitches were crazy.
He’d cheated on his first wife with his second; then the second and third ones both cheated on him, one with the mailman and the other with some fag kid from her college. Well, never again. He’d sworn off of the ball and chain for good.
“Who you likin’ in the playoffs?” the checkout guy asked.
“What?” said William the Third, having not been paying attention.
“The playoffs. Who you liking?”
“Playoffs?” William asked, his face souring, “I don’t follow that faggot shit.”
The checkout guy nodded and looked down, passing the canned chili over the scanner, followed by the steak.
“A bunch of dudes chasing each other, all sweaty, isn’t the kind of stuff I go for, bro,” William said.
“Right well, just making conversation.”
William forced himself to smile as he swiped his ATM card through the reader, then keyed in his PIN number, “Yeah sure,” he said. “Don’t worry about it, Nancy.”
The checkout guy mumbled as he handed William his receipt. William gathered up his plastic grocery bags and headed out.
The playoffs. It’s a good thing that cocksmoker didn’t mention football. William didn’t want to be a dick, didn’t want to be rude, but he fucking hated sports. He hated sports and he hated those fucks that did nothing but talk about sports, like his dad back in the day.
Football, baseball, hockey, whatever the flavor of the week was, all looked like some secret homo ritual that dudes could do but stay manly because everyone was in on the secret. Well, not William, he knew what was manly: fucking trucks and dark beer.
And there was his car—his truck—in the parking lot, a beast with double wheels in the back, the kind of car a man drove. William was a decently sized guy and he had to climb steps to get in; his last wife had to be pulled up.
The Nevada license plate read NUMBR65.
His truck always helped when he was in a sour mood. People would comment, of course, say stuff like “sorry about your dick, dude,” like the truck was some kind of compensation thing. That didn’t bother William; three wives and countless other bitches could testify that he had nothing to be ashamed of. No, he drove the truck because he liked it, because when he was behind the wheel he was a man.
Your Grandpa played football before the war, he was Number 64. I played football before my war, and I was Number 64. You’re going to carry on the tradition of Douglas men being Number 64, Junior.
Fuckin football was all Dad ever talked about.
He unlocked the doors with the remote keychain, reached high and opened the driver’s side, climbed up the two steps and swung himself in. He practically had to jump. Fuck yes.
Dad. Every time someone mentioned sports he’d spend all day thinking about Dad, that fucking asshole. It was always sports with him, always his precious Douglas Number 64 football jersey. William’s brain, like always, went back to the same memory.
William had been in the second grade; he’d gotten an A-plus on a book report. He’d shown Mom, she hugged him and said “go show your father” while pointing at the garage door.
The garage had smelled of grease and was filled with the soothing sounds of power tools and Foghat. Dad was there under that shitty old T-Bird he was always working on. There was a Budwiser or MGD or Coors or some other pussy beer in a can there next to him.
“Hi Dad,” William had said, “Guess what I did at school today?”
Dad didn’t answer.
“Dad!” William said, shaking his father’s denim-clad leg.
“Yeah Junior, what’s up?”
“Guess what I did at school today?”
His father wheeled out from under the car, his eyes bright, and said “Did you try out for peewee football?”
“No Dad, I…”
“When are you gonna join the football team, son?” he asked as the excitement drained from his face.
“I did a book report Dad, I got…”
His dad sighed, looked at the book report, and wheeled back under the T-Bird. “Go help your mother with dinner,” he said.
Football. His dad didn’t care about anything but football. Sure, William ended up trying out, but he didn’t make the team because he didn’t really want to. Dad drank more and more of his pussy light beer as the years went on, getting shitfaced and berating William for not playing sports, for not being a good son, for not being a man.
As if playing sports was the only way a man could be a man. Well, Dad had died too early to find out just how wrong he’d been. William was six foot three inches tall and weighed two-hundred pounds with only eight percent body fat. He made seventy-five thousand dollars a year, he’d fucked more bitches than Dad could ever have imagined, and he drove the sickest truck in the state.
He turned NUMBR65’s ignition key and the truck roared to life, diesel pumping through the engine, converting liquid into fire and fire into manhood.
3. Nathan
Nathan felt like the luckiest kid in the world. He didn’t have to go to school for the rest of the year, which was for another few months at least, and Mom let him spend as much time as he wanted outside with his ball. Daddy had gotten the ball for Nathan just a week or so before he went away. At first Nathan missed Daddy, wanted him to come back, but it was better now.
“Daddy,” Nathan said, holding his face close to the ball’s orange surface, “Daddy, are you there? Daddy, Daddy, come in Daddy.”
Nathan pretended he could talk to Daddy through the ball. He pretended Daddy answered him. Sometimes he didn’t know if he actually heard Daddy’s voice through the ball or if he’d imagined it.
He knew he was pretending, of course, knew that Daddy wasn’t really answering him, but he couldn’t help but wonder, just maybe, what if it was all real?
Was it real?
He leaned down over the ball, placed his ear on it, and listened. Nothing.
“Daddy?” he asked.
Then there was Daddy’s reply, echoing around from deep within the ball. Oh, happy day, it was real! Nathan jumped to his feet, picked up the ball, and spun around with it, flinging the ball into the air and catching it. Daddy was talking to him through the ball, Nathan knew it was real!
He was pretending still, of course, pretending he wasn’t pretending; under his excitement he knew that, and he was sad.
His Daddy had bought the ball along with a basketball hoop, but the hoop was still in a box in the garage. He’d asked Mom a few times if she could put together the hoop, and she said she would later that day, but she’d always just fall asleep.
She’d always look into that little glass of brown juice she carried with her, sometimes she’d smell it. Nathan pretended it was a crystal ball that she saw Daddy through.
Nathan tried it once and didn’t like it; the juice was hot like the hottest salsa ever. Why did grownups like such yucky things?
He lay back down on the grass and rested the ball against his chest. He looked up into it, it was big and orange and round, like the sun. He loved it. He loved his daddy.
“Daddy,” he said, “why do the leaves move even when there’s no wind?”
Daddy knew everything, and what he didn’t know he’d make up a funny story about. Nathan knew that this was a question deserving of a story. He waited patiently for the reply, pretended he heard one, and roared with laughter.
“Daddy!” he said as he rolled onto his stomach then stood to his feet, “Daddy, look how high I can jump!”
He slammed the ball down on the concrete walkway, bouncing it high above the house.
“Wow!” Nathan shouted as the ball landed on the roof and rolled down. It flew off the slanted roof, bounced on the concrete walkway, sailed over the grass, bounced again on the sidewalk, and rolled into the street. Nathan ran after it, his grin wide and bright and genuine.
4. William
William sat in NUMBR65 while classic rock played on the radio, the volume turned down very low so he could hear the reassuring sound of the truck’s engine as it idled at the stoplight. It sounded like barely restrained power.
He looked over at his groceries, at his six-pack of good dark beer. William couldn’t stand that pussy light stuff that Dad had always drank, to him it tasted like water that somehow found a way to spoil and go bad.
Dad drank himself into an early grave. You have to drink a lot of pussy light beer to get shitfaced, especially after a life so dedicated to the craft as William the Second’s. William the Third had still been in high school, but he was happy to see the old man go. He could finally do what he wanted; he finally didn’t have to feel bad.
So he took the classes he had always wanted to take, but still he was ashamed. Everything he did, every weight he benched, every dollar he made, every woman he conquered, he was still ashamed. Still.
The mighty NUMBR65, even though it was one better than the Douglas Number 64, was still somehow inferior.
He wished that he could speak to his father again now that he had finally become a man. He often thought about what he’d say if he had the chance, but everything sounded so small, everything made him feel like he was a tiny animal attacking a predator after being backed into a corner.
The light turned green. William the Third applied pressure to the gas pedal. The truck’s engine rumbled louder, and like a great glacier breaking its inertia, the truck pulled itself forward. William loved the power. He turned left and drove up the hill into his neighborhood.
He turned left again a block later and approached the cross street where he would make a right then park across the driveway. He always parked across the driveway, making sure to take up the whole damn thing, because he could. It was his driveway after all, and nobody else had to park there, and if they wanted to then they could park on the sidewalk, dammit.
A little ways down the street he saw a kid bounce a ball off the ground and up onto the roof of a house. The ball rolled down the roof, bounced down across the yard, then into the street. The kid began to chase it, but stopped when he saw William’s truck approaching.
William immediately saw where the ball was going. Almost without thinking he increased his speed slightly.
His front, passenger-side tire rolled directly over the ball, flattening it with a satisfyingly loud “bang!” as it popped. Out of the corner of his eye, William saw that the kid’s mouth and eyes were wide.
William looked in the rear-view mirror. A tiny hint of a smile showed on his face. The kid walked into the street and looked down at what remained of the dead and flattened ball. It was like orange road-kill.
William lost sight of the kid when he turned the corner.
I bet no one will ask him who he likes in the playoffs! He thought.
