Charlie Huston - Caught Stealing

The alarm goes off at 8:00A.M. Now that the booze has worn off I hurt everywhere, but my feet are what’s really killing me. I go to the can, sure enough: more blood. I brush my teeth and hop in the shower. Bruises are starting to well up all over my torso and the hot water feels good. I leave the shower running and walk dripping to the fridge, grab a cold beer and take it back to the shower. The water feels good, but the beer is better. It takes the edge off my hangover, kicks up the dust of last night’s drunk and gives it life. I take the washcloth from the shower caddie and gently scrub my feet.

Out of the shower now, I finish the last of the beer while trimming my toenails. I clip them very short and even and make sure there is no grit hiding at the edges. I find a clean pair of socks with no holes and get dressed. I head out the front door. There’s time for breakfast.

At the diner I have bacon and eggs and another beer. The first beer was good, but the second is even better. I’m heading into the third week of a pretty good binge and the first couple drinks of the day are always the best. I have to ease into it with beer because my job starts late. If I hit it too early I’ll be drooling by the time the shift begins. I sip the beer, eat my chow, and look over the sports pages.

As a rule, the Daily News consists of equal parts violent sensationalism, feel-good human interest, celebrity gossip and advertising. I read it every day and feel dirty all over. But it’s New York, and everybody gets dirty sooner or later. Today it’s all election coverage and stories about yet more dotcoms biting the dust. I flip past the photos of the interchangeable candidates and get to the important stuff. See, the reason I started buying this rag in the first place is because it’s the only way to get West Coast scores in the morning.Unless you have cable. I can’t afford cable.

Back in California, the Giants are suffering their usual late season collapse. A week ago they were in striking distance of first place. But after a seven-game skid, they’ve been eliminated from contention for the division and are trailing the Mets for the wild card by four games with eight games left in the season. Meanwhile the Dodgers are red hot and have the division clinched after winning twelve of their last fourteen.

I look at my watch and it’s time to go see the doctor.

I hate the Dodgers.

I’ve had this appointment for a week. I’m not here about theblood, I’m here about my feet. I’ve tried every kind of shoe and insert I can find and my feet are still killing me. So now, after years of bitching, I’m finally seeing a doctor. I could ask about the blood while I’m here, but what the hell is he gonna tell me? He’s gonna tell me to go to an emergency room and they’re gonna tell me that it’s not life-threatening. They’re gonna charge me a few thou I don’t have to tell me to rest a bit and not to drink alcohol or caffeine. I don’t drink caffeine. It makes me jittery. I sit in the waiting room and think about that second beer and how good it was.

I’m not worried about the kidney. If the kidney was serious, I’d be unconscious by now. It’s contused: my kidney is scraped and it’s bleeding a bit. Dr. Bob comes out of his office and calls my name.

Dr. Bob is a great guy. He’s an Ivy League med school graduate who came to the Lower East Side and opened a community practice. He’ll take anybody as a patient insurance or no insurance, his rates are as low as they get, and you pay your bills whenever you can. All of which suits my situation. He told me once he didn’t want to make people healthy just to make them poor. Like Isaid, a great guy.

I told him about the feet a week ago and he sent me out for some X rays. Now, in his tiny office, he turns from where theX rays are clipped to one of those light things on the wall and sits on the stool in front of me. He starts to look at my feet. He really takes his time, inspecting them. He holds each foot, first one and then the other, and kneads a bit, searching for some imperfection. All the while, he directs his eyes upward, as if they might interfere with the examination: a safecracker with his eyes shut.

– Doc?

– Shhh.

He squeezes my feet a few more times, then stands up. He’s talking now, but I’m having trouble hearing what he’s saying. He’s gesturing from my feet to the X rays. I’m thinking about getting out of here and drinking my next beer. I’m thinking how I wish I were lying down right now because I feel a little strange. He is looking at me oddly.

The roaring in my ears is not the hangover. I cannot hear over it and it occurs to me that something must be wrong. The examining table spins out from underneath me and I thump to the floor. I try to lift myself up, but I can’t. I feel a warm wetness spreading over my lap and down my legs. I can see the tops of my feet. I can see the tips of my three-hundred-dollar sneakers that are supposed to be the most comfortable things that money can buy but are not. And I can see the bloody urine trickling out the cuffs of my jeans. Something is very wrong. I sleep.

This is how life changes.

You’re born in California and raised as an only child in a pleasant suburb a ways east of San Francisco. You have a nice childhood with parents who love you. You play baseball. You are tremendously gifted at the game and you love it. By the time you are seventeen you have a room full of trophies. You have played on two teams that have competed for the Little League World Series and are the star player on your high school’s varsity squad. You’re a four-tool player: bat, glove, arm, and legs. You play center field. You lead the team in homers, ERA, RBI, stolen bases, and have no errors. Pro scouts have been coming to see you play all year and when you graduate, everyone expects you will skip college to be signed for development by a Major League club. At every game you look into the stands and your parents are always there.

In the regional championship game you are caught stealing third. You slide hard into the bag as the third baseman leaps to snare a high throw from the plate. Your cleats dig into the bottom of the base and as you pop up out of your slide, the third baseman is coming down with the ball. He lands on the ankle of your caught foot and, as you continue up, he falls down with his full weight on your lower leg.

The bone sticks straight out from your calf, and you just stare at it.

The pins they stick in your fibula restrict growth in the bone. It will not heal properly and for the rest of your life you have a hard knot of scar and bundled muscle tissue that aches in cold, wet weather. No one even pretends you will play again.

You stay away from the games and don’t see much of your old friends. You have new friends, and you get in a little trouble. You work after school and buy a Mustang and fix it up with your dad, the mechanic. You drive everywhere and drag all the local motor-heads. You always win. When there’s no one around to race, you drive fast on the back roads outside of town and get a rush from the speed. It’s not baseball, but it’s something.

Out by the cattle ranches, after midnight, a calf wanders into the road through a split in the fence. You swerve and pound down on the brake pedal. The wheel crazes out of your hand and the car heels down on the front right tire. The tire explodes. The wheel rim bites into the tarmac and the car flips up and begins to sail end over end. You are suspended in the car, held tight to the seat by the four-point harness your dad insisted you install. The car tumbles through the air and passes harmlessly over the calf. The Ford completes a full revolution, lands on its bottom, careens across the road and slams its front end into an oak.

Your friend Rich does not have his seat belt on. When you first saw the calf and slammed the brakes, Rich was kneeling on his seat, turned around and rummaging in the back for a sweatshirt.