Chris Lynch - Kill Switch

And smacks me in the ear again. If there was a game of ear hitting, he would be world senior champion. But we are not playing that game. We are playing a very different game.

I shut my face. He winds up with the fourth ball. He slings it.

He jams me on the hands and I hit another dribbler to Jarrod.

“Damn,” I say, digging in once more. The old man is laughing, pleased at still topping me, pleased I am no longer moaning. He winds up and throws.

I cream the ball. I murder it, and it does not go to any stupid damn left field, either. I have mashed the ball high in the air and as straight to dead center as possible, and Jarrod is making a lame attempt to get out there, but that is pointless, people, because I have gotten all of that one.

I am running the bases, shocked at how thrilled I am over this. Over the fence. I hit one out . I look as I round first toward second, to see the ball land.

It’s only about a foot beyond the fence. Jarrod is actually in position, and he reaches up, and if the ball hadn’t bounced right off his forehead, he would have caught it. I hit that with everything I had.

I am elated and defeated, all in one go.

I still do my homerun trot because at least I can taunt Da, which I do, pointing a big finger his way and hooting at him as I hit third.

But he’s not watching. He’s not listening. He’s not here .

Still looking up at some spot where the ball may or may not have crossed the sky several seconds ago, Da steps sideways off the mound, stands there looking up awkwardly, hands held out for balance. Then he looks at me, awkwardly, lost, and falls sideways, landing on his hip.

“Da,” I say, running straight across the diamond. I get to him, pick him up, and he winces.

“Are you okay?” I ask. “I am so sorry, this was a stupid idea. I am sorry. Are you all right?”

He stares at me. He stares and stares and stares.

It is a sandwich shop, about ten booths and a ten-foot counter. Smells like coffee. Smells like tomato soup. Smells like just enough Lysol to be reassuring.

Soup and sandwich times three.

“He will be fine,” I say to Jarrod, who looks uncharacteristically worried.

“He doesn’t look good, Danny.”

“He’ll be fine, once he gets his stuff.”

“That’s what we all say.”

“Food, for strength, then some medication, get his equilibrium back, then a good rest and he will be his old self.”

“His old, old, old self,” Jarrod quips.

I reach right across the table and grab his shirt, pulling him to me to make the booth seem a lot smaller. A teenage girl pushes a stroller across in front of us and stares as if we can’t see her. As if we are in a jackass aquarium or something. Don’t tap the glass, girlie.

I look at my balled fist, Jarrod’s balled shirt, the uncomfortable defenseless look on his face.

“How many times do you suppose this table has seen this scene?” I ask with what I hope is an apologetic smile.

Jarrod shrugs. “Probably, like, a lot?”

“What is even in this for you, man?” I ask him, still clinging to him.

“I don’t know,” he says.

I laugh. “You’re a good man,” I say right up close to his face.

“The bar on the opposite corner is that kind of place,” says the cook with the Marty Van Buren sideburns. It sounds like a joke but he appears unamused. He delivers the soups and sandwiches himself, separating the goings-on by plunking down food. The waitress is having her own food at the counter.

He walks away. I look to Da beside me and he looks rather drained of color.

“Eat,” I tell him, picking up half of his tuna sandwich, which is now bleeding watery mayo onto him. He takes the sandwich listlessly, dunks a corner into his tomato soup so that both sandwich and soup mingle into a look that could kill your appetite. He bites, crunches into too much celery.

I am very happy I got ham and cheese.

“What is your plan, Danny Boy?” Jarrod asks.

“My plan?” I ask. “What kind of plan could I have? I was going off to study philosophy in a few weeks, that was my plan. And even that was no kind of plan at all.”

Jarrod nods.

“It has to be getting worse by the day, man,” I say. “Worse for me and him both. There will be a lot to answer for, even criminal stuff, who knows. All I can say is, he’s in trouble down there, and I am not bringing him back into that, no way. I can’t.”

Jarrod nods.

I look over to Da to see that he’s getting along okay. Half the sandwich is gone, even the crust, and he is working at the soup. The management must have split a small bag of potato chips among the three of us because there are about five chips per plate and a slice of pickle, but nobody’s eating all that anyway. Da smiles a bit, winces, smiles, dunks his sandwich. I take this as progress.

Jarrod has eaten everything. Now he’s collecting pickles and chips that don’t belong to him, but hey.

“I’ll take him,” Jarrod says.

“What?”

“I’ll take him. He can live with me. At least for a while. He can share my boiler room, and as long as he does his quiet-old-guy thing more than his nutty-old-guy thing, we could probably get away with it.”

Stress is about to cause me to blow, to grab him again and emphasize how stupid and reckless the plan is.

Until I picture it.

“What?” he says, smiling broadly but uncertainly. “What? What’s so funny? Dan…”

I love this laugh. It feels so good it just perpetuates itself. Then Jarrod catches it; then, Da. It is joy.

The waitress comes over with our bill, hands it to the old guy, and says cheerfully, “Thank goodness for stoners, or we’d never move this food.”

We walk back into Venus Exotics, leaving Da in the car. He is in no running mood, a sore hip and a lit cigarette keeping him reliably planted in the backseat.

True to his word, Matt hands over a bag with a few pill bottles inside, just like the pharmacist does.

“I even gave you a little note with instructions inside, just like the pharmacist does,” he says with no small pride. “You take care of that ol’ boy. Sorry to say, kid, but I know that look. Good things don’t usually follow that look.”

It stings.

“So then, Matty, why don’t you give us one of your other products, that give an old boy a look that good things definitely do follow?”

I did not say that.

Matt quickly reaches out and bops Jarrod on the side of the head with something like a baseball bat that isn’t one. “There, that’ll give you a look.” He’s laughing; now he’s serious.

“Here’s to wash it down,” he says and grabs me a large can of something called POW energy drink off a shelf.

“Thanks,” I say warily. “But is this going to make him feel anything more than we want him to?”

“Only a little extra consciousness, I’m afraid.”

I shake his very warm, strong hand. I wait till I am out the door before giving it a precautionary wipe on my shirt.

We tear away in the Subaru after a successful excursion, feeling a little like maybe we can do this.

“All the best people are rascals,” Da says as he takes this pill and this pill and this pill with a swig of POW and we all cross our fingers.

Moods are elevated as we make the last turn into the college. Right stuff or not, the medication seems to be combining well enough in my grandfather to have produced a goodwill and camaraderie that fills the car up nicely. We are all pretty much tired of driving for now, though, and everybody’s looking forward to doing some nothing.