Victor Lavalle - Slapboxing with Jesus

I stepped backward, leaned against a building so we weren’t entertaining others in the middle of the sidewalk. He followed. — There’s one picture of you, I said.

— Where is it?

— In a drawer.

— What’s the picture of? He kicked at the building with one foot.

— It’s when you and Mom got married.

— Oh yeah? Do I look nice in it?

— You both do, I told him and they did. There are things a son is supposed to ask his father, but I didn’t know what they were; his swinging shoe was coming closer and closer to a tidy pile of dog shit. I didn’t tell him even when he went right through it. He didn’t notice. I laughed.

— What’s funny?

I pointed.

— You want to see a movie? He was running the toe of his shoe against the building to try and clean it off; I always tore off leaves and used them to wipe it all away.

Cars were babbling from Kissena Boulevard to Franklin Avenue, their horns loud and angry; I liked the specific music of Flushing traffic, it told me I was home. Then, sounds like these existed only in the piece of city where I lived.

— I don’t want to see any movies, I told him. I didn’t want to be in the dark with this man because I was friendlier to everyone when a room was one big shadow. I felt comforted and sure when the lights were out. There’s a park nearby. Sometimes I play basketball there.

— I’m too old for basketball.

— Not to play it, but there’s benches there. We could sit down.

He followed me, stopped only once to run into a corner store, came out with a brown bag. — Just something we need.

At the park the black iron gates were shut so I took my father around to the wonderful hole in the fence; I slid through easy, he took more time. Once inside, we passed kids making teams for basketball. The green benches had been repainted so they looked perfect and new. I stopped my dad from sitting, ran my hands gentle across the seats until I found one where very few splinters grew; the new paint was like camouflage, laid out like that to fool the eye. New benches were expensive. The ground in the park was old and dying concrete.

— You know where I grew up? he asked me.

— Greenland?

He laughed. — Why would you say Greenland?

— Okay. Iceland?

— No, no. Neither one.

— Lapland?

— You know the names of those places but you don’t know where Connecticut is? He laughed some more.

— I only know about interesting places. Like Uganda.

— Connecticut is interesting.

I gave him that look I had, the yeah-right look, and he nodded wildly.

— Seriously. There’s a lot of interesting things about Connecticut.

— Name fourteen, I said.

He had been sitting up straight as he protested about his new home state, but then he sat back again, defeated. — Fourteen?

— Sure. Why not? I could tell you fourteen great things about Uganda.

He got in my face like these were the kinds of challenges that mattered. — Name one.

— It’s not Connecticut.

He smiled proudly. — I knew you couldn’t.

If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought this was one of my friends, getting his chest puffed out when he proved someone else wrong or stupid. But this was my father and I couldn’t just laugh it off. — The capital of Uganda is Kampala. The flag has a white-crested crane on it and the chief mining product is copper.

My dad acted unimpressed, but he was quiet for more than a minute. — So where’d you learn all that?

— Comic book.

— You read a comic book about Uganda?

— Yes.

— Really?

— Yeah, I said and rolled my eyes.

— You sure?

— Okay, maybe I did a report.

He pointed at me. — See, I knew you were a good student.

— I am not, I protested. I’d only recently acquired this interest in some of my ancestry.

— Bet you do really well, he said. The smile on his face seemed too wide for his lips, but there it was — pride. Like he had something to do with it.

— Okay, maybe I’m a good student. I’m just not that smart.

He rubbed his hands through his messy straight hair.

— Maybe that’s what I got from you. We both were quiet and tense. So you never told me where you were from.

He began talking over the distant hum of our isolation. — I was born in Syracuse.

— Where?

— Upstate. About six hours, maybe five if you’ve got a quick bus driver.

— You lived on a farm?

— No, he laughed. Syracuse is a city. Just like New York, but smaller.

I had at least one stupid thing to say, but decided to let the old guy talk.

— You get beat up a lot? he asked me.

His asking me was a reminder that some people live with the idea of getting beaten up instead of doing the beating. — No.

— I used to get beat up all the time. I mean I would get my ass kicked. Big time.

— Who were you pissing off?

— Oh, everybody. Everyone that might beat me up, they did. My father used to tell me to find a way to deal with it, my mother taught me how to fight.

— Did it help?

— No.

The sounds of traffic began to echo in the air. — So did you run away from home or something? Get out of Syracuse?

— No. He tapped his hands on his knees, but he was half a beat off whatever he was trying to get at.

— You smoke? he asked me.

— Not yet.

— Okay. Well, that’s what I did for a while. Smoked, drank.

— Did it help?

— Yes. People stopped beating me up because I wasn’t in school so much anymore.

I laughed. — I hope you never told this story to your students.

— No. Just you. And your mother.

— What did she say when you told her?

— She said, Buy me another drink and tell me again.

— My mother doesn’t drink.

We looked at each other for the first time since we’d sat down. — You’re right, he said. I was only joking.

— So how’d you become a teacher?

— I don’t know. Sooner or later you grow up.

I wanted to laugh, but then he’d think he’d said something right. I pointed between his feet. — What’s in the bag?

— Well, I figured we might not see each other for a while.

— Yeah.

He revealed a six pack of beer. — I thought you should be able to say you had a drink with your dad.

I looked at the cool white cans with their bright red lettering; I thought I understood what sentiment my father was trying for. I appreciated it.

The sky was the oily gray of shark fins now, people were heading indoors. The handball court was empty; the kids playing basketball had grabbed up their shirts and balls, were filing out through the broken spot in the fence. Someone had left a pair of sneakers under a backboard. The toes curled upward — they were old shoes but their bright blue skin stood out like life on a desolate planet.

He handed me a beer and asked if I’d ever had any.

— I’ve had some here and there, I told him. I swallowed.

— Chug that down, my father said. I looked at him and he was smiling, finished off his first.

— You drink that fast and we’ll be done with these beers in five minutes, I said.

He petted the bag. — I bought two six packs.

I nodded, drank some more. I hated the taste of beer like I hated giving relatives hugs, but I was used to both. I was going to ask him some other things, history things — about him and my mom and me.

Finished my beer and tapped his leg. My father gave me the next one. He was so laid back it seemed as though his body had melted into the bench. I looked the same. He smiled as he drank; like always I grimaced as I forced myself to swallow. The man reached out to touch my shoulder or my face but hesitated when he got close, let his hand fall back to his lap; I pretended that drinking beer had left me oblivious.