Richard Ford - The Sportswriter

There is major silence now that Herb has told me what it’s like not to have his legs to use. It is not an empty moment, not for me anyway, and I am not discouraged. I would still like to think there’s the possibility for a story here. Maybe by going off his medicine Herb will finally come back to his senses with some unexpected and interesting ideas to bring up and end up talking a blue streak. That happens every day.

“Do you ever miss playing football, Herb?” I say, and smile hopefully.

“What?” Herb is drawn back from a muse the glassy lake has momentarily fostered. He looks at me as though he had never seen me before. I hear trucks pounding the interstate corridor to Lansing. The wind has wandered back now and a chill picks up off the black water.

“Do you ever miss athletics?”

Herb stares at me reproachfully. “You’re an asshole, Frank, you know that?”

“Why do you say that?”

“You don’t know me.”

“That’s what I’m doing here, Herb. I’d like to get to know you and write a damn good story about you. Paint you as you are. Because I think that’s pretty interesting and complex in itself.”

“You’re just an asshole, Frank, yep, and you’re not going to get any inspiration out of me. I dropped all that. I don’t have to do for anybody, and that means you. Especially you, you asshole. I don’t play ball anymore.” Herb plucks a piece of the toilet paper off his cheek and peers at it for blood.

“I’m ready to give up on inspiration, Herb. It was just a place to start.”

“Do you want to hear the dream I have over and over?” Herb rolls the paper between his fingers, then pushes himself out toward the end of the dock. I sit on the pipe bannister, looking at his back. Herb’s bony shoulders are like wings, his neck thin and rucked, his head yellowish and balding. I do not know if he knows where I am or not, or even where he is.

“I’d be glad to hear a dream,” I say.

Herb stares off toward the lake as if it contained all his hopes gone cold. “I have a dream about these three old women in a stalled car on a dark road. Two of them are taking their grandmother, who’s old, really old, back to a nursing home. Just someplace. Say New York state, or Pennsylvania. I come along in my Jeep — I had a Jeep once — and I stop and ask if I can help them. And they say yes. No one’s come by in a long time. And I can tell they’re worried about me. One woman has her money out to pay me before I even start. And they’ve got this flat tire. I shine my Jeep lights on their car and I can see this worried old grandmother, her face low in the front seat. A chicken-wattle neck. The two other women stand with me while I change the tire. And as I’m doing it I think about killing all three of them. Just strangling them with my hands, then driving off because no one would ever know who did it, since I wasn’t a killer or even known to be there. But I look around then, and I see these deer staring at me out of the trees. These yellow eyes. And that’s it. I wake up.” Herb twists his wheelchair and faces me. “How’s that for a dream? Whaddaya think, Frank? You’ve got a halo again, by the way. It just came back. You look idiotic.” Herb suddenly breaks out in laughter, his whole body rumbling and his mouth wide as a canyon. Herb, I see, is as crazy as a betsey bug, and I want nothing in the world more than to get as far away from him as I can. Interview or no interview. Inspiration or no inspiration. Interviewing a crazy man is a waste of anybody’s time who’s not crazy himself. And I’m glad, in fact, that Herb is in his chair at the moment since it’s possible he would strangle me if he could.

“It’s probably time we head back, Herb.”

He has taken his glasses off and begun wiping them on his BIONIC shirt. But he is really still laughing. “Sure, okay.”

“I’ve got all I need for a good story. And it’s getting pretty chilly out here.”

“You’re full of shit, Frank,” Herb says, smiling across the empty boat dock. On the lake a pair of ducks flies low across the surface, fast and slicing. They make an abrupt turn, then skin into the shiny water and become invisible. “Oh Frank, you’re really full of shit.” Herb shakes his head in complete amazement.

Herb pushes along beside me in his silver chair while we make our way back up Glacier Way in silence. Everything has become confused, though why, exactly, I don’t know. It’s possible I’ve had a bad effect on him. Sometimes when people realize sportswriters are just men or women they become resentful. (People often want others to be better than they are themselves.) But under these circumstances it is all but impossible to make a contribution, or to give an honest effort of any kind. It is, in fact, enough to make you want to hit the road for a pharmaceuticals house, of which New Jersey has plenty.

“We didn’t talk much about football,” Herb says thoughtfully. He is now as sane and reflective as an old sextant.

“I guess it didn’t seem it was much on your mind, Herb.”

“It really seems insignificant now, Frank. It’s really a pretty crummy preparation for life, I’ve come to believe.”

“But I’d still think it had some lessons to teach to the people who played it. Perseverance. Team work. Comradeship. That kind of thing.”

“Forget all that crap, Frank. I’ve got the rest of my life handed to me if I can figure it out. I’ve got some pretty big plans. Sports is just a memory to me.”

“You mean law school and all that.”

Herb nods at me like an undertaker. “That’s it.”

“You’ve got a lot of courage, Herb. It takes courage to be you, I think.”

“Maybe,” Herb says, considering that idea. “Sometimes I’m afraid, though, Frank. I’ll tell ya. Scared to death.” We’re just two guys jawing now. Just the way I’d hoped. Maybe a straightforward old-fashioned interview could still be worked out. I feel for my tape recorder.

“Sometimes I’m afraid, Herb. It’s natural to the breed, I’d say.”

“All right,” Herb says and chuckles, nodding in forced agreement.

I see Mr. Small wood’s yellow Checker waiting out front of Herb’s house as we round the curve, his visit to Wixom apparently gone awry. It has grown colder since we’ve been outside, and the sky has lowered. By nighttime it will be snowing to beat the band, and Vicki and I will be glad to be far from here. It is a strange turn of events, not what I would’ve expected, but I, on the other hand, am still not surprised.

As we pass by, a man wearing a brown car coat comes out of his house, holding a can of motor oil. His is a house in the same architectural order as Herb’s, though with a room added on where the driveway once went into the back. The man stands beside his car — a new Olds with its hood up — and gives Herb a wave and a “howzitgoin.”

“Primo. Numero uno,” Herb calls back with a grin and waves his arm as if he’s waving to a crowd. “This guy’s interviewing me. I’m giving him a helluva time.”

“Don’t take nobody’s crap,” the man shouts, and bends his short trunk under the murky hood of the Olds.

“The neighbors still think I play on the team,” Herb says in a hushed voice, pushing himself up Glacier Way toward his wife and home.

“How’s that?”

“Well, I keep my injury pretty well a secret. Another guy plays in my place. With my number. I hope you won’t write about that and ruin it.”

“No way, Herb. You’ve got my word on that.”

Herb looks up at me as we approach Mr. Smallwood’s cab, and gives me a look full of wonder. “How come you do it, Frank. Tell the truth.”

“How come I do what, Herb?” Though I know what’s coming.