Richard Ford - The Sportswriter

“You’re not a real bad man. I’m sorry. I don’t think divorce has worked wonders for you.” She puts the car into gear so that it lurches, yet doesn’t quite leave. “It was just a bad idea I had.”

“Your loved ones are the ones you’re supposed to trust,” I say. “Who’s after that?”

She smiles at me a sad, lonely smile out of the instrument panel twilight. “I don’t know.” I can see her eyes dancing in tears.

“I don’t know either. It’s getting to be a problem.”

X lets off on her brake and I step back in the grass. Her Citation hesitates, then hisses off from me up Coolidge and into the night. And I am left alone in the cool silence of dead Walter’s yard and MG, an unknown apartment house behind me, a neighborhood where I am not known, a man with no place to go in particular — out, for the moment, of any good ideas, at the sad end of a sad day that in a better world would never have occurred at all.

W here, in fact, do you go if you’re me?

Where do sportswriters go when the day is, in every way, done, and the possibilities so limited that neither good nor bad seems a threat? (I’d be happy to go to sleep, but that doesn’t seem available.)

It is not, though, a genuine empty moment, and as such, war needn’t be waged against it. It need not even be avoided or faced up to with particular daring. It is not the prologue to terrible regret. An empty moment requires both real expectation and its eventual defeat by the forces of fate. And I have no such hopes to dash. For the moment, I’m beyond all hopes, much as I was on the night X burned her hope chest while I watched the stars.

Walter would say that I have become neither the seer nor the thing seen — as invisible as Claude Rains in the movie, though I have no enemies to get back at, no debts to pay off. Invisibility, in truth, is not so bad. We should all try to know it better, use it to our advantage the way Claude Rains didn’t, since at one time or other — like it or not — we all become invisible, loosed from body and duty, left to drift on the night breeze, to do as we will, to cast about for what we would like to be when we next occur. That, let me promise you, is not an empty moment. And further yet from real regret. (Maybe Walter was interested in me, but who knows? Or cares?) Just to slide away like a whisper down the wind is no small freedom, and if we’re lucky enough to win such a setting-free, even if it’s bad events that cause it, we should use it, for it is the only naturally occurring consolation that comes to us, sole and sovereign, without props or the forbearance of others — among whom I mean to include God himself, who does not let us stay invisible long, since that is a state he reserves for himself.

God does not help those who are invisible too.

I drive, an invisible man, through the slumberous, hilled, post-Easter streets of Haddam. And as I have already sensed, it is not a good place for death. Death’s a preposterous intruder. A breach. A building that won’t fit with the others. An enigma as complete as Sanskrit. Full-blown cities are much better at putting up with it. So much else finds a place there, a death as small as Walter’s would fit in cozy, receive its full sympathies and be forgotten.

Haddam is, however, a first-class place for invisibility — it is practically made for it. I cruise down Hoving Road past my own dark house set back in its beeches. Bosobolo has not returned (still away in the bramble bush with plain Jane). I could talk to him about invisibility, though it’s possible a true African would know less than one of our local Negroes, and I would end up explaining a lot to start with, though eventually he would catch on — committed as he is to the unseen.

I cruise through the dark cemetery where my son is put to rest, and where the invisible virtually screams at you, cries out for quiet, quiet and more quiet. I could go sit on Craig’s stone and be silent and invisible with Ralph in our old musing way. But I would soon be up against my own heavy factuality, and consolation would come to a standstill.

I drive by X’s house, where there is bright light from every window, and a feeling of bustle and things-on-tap behind closed doors, as if everyone were leaving. There’s nothing for me here. My only hope would be to make trouble, extenuate circumstances for everybody, do some shouting and break a lamp. And I — it should come as no surprise — lack the heart for that too. It’s nine P.M., and I know where my children are.

Where is there to go that’s fun, I wonder?

I drive past the August, where a red glow warms the side bar window, and where I’m sure a lifelong resident or a divorced man sits wanting company — a commodity I’m low on.

Down Cromwell Lane at Village Hall a light still burns in the glass lobby — in the tax office the janitor stands at the front door staring out, his mop at order arms. Somewhere far off a train whistles, then a siren sings through the heavy elms of the Institute grounds. I catch the wink of lights, hear the soft spring monotone of all hometown suburbs. Someone might say there’s nothing quite so lonely as a suburban street at night when you are all alone. But he would be dead wrong. For my money, there’re a lot of things worse. A seat on the New York Stock Exchange, for instance. A silent death at sea with no one to notice your going under. Herb Wallagher’s life. These would be worse. In fact, I could make a list as long as your arm.

I drive down the cobblestone hill to the depot, where, if I’m right, a train will soon be arriving. It is not bad to sit in some placeless dark and watch commuters step off into splashy car lights, striding toward the promise of bounteous hugs, cool wall-papered rooms, drinks mixed, ice in the bucket, a newspaper, a long undisturbed evening of national news and sleep. I began coming here soon after my divorce to watch people I knew come home from Gotham, watch them be met, hugged, kissed, patted, assisted with luggage, then driven away in cars. And you might believe I was envious, or heartsick, or angling some way to feel wronged. But I found it one of the most hopeful and worthwhile things, and after a time, when the train had gone and the station was empty again and the taxis had drifted back up to the center of town, I went home to bed almost always in rising spirits. To take pleasure in the consolations of others, even the small ones, is possible. And more than that: it sometimes becomes damned necessary when enough of the chips are down. It takes a depth of character as noble and enduring as willingness to come off the bench to play a great game knowing full well that you’ll never be a regular; or as one who chooses not to hop into bed with your best friend’s beautiful wife. Walter Luckett could be alive today if he’d known that.

But I am right.

Out of the burly-bushy steel darkness down the line comes the clatter of the night’s last arrival from Philadelphia, on its way back to New York. Trainmen lean out the silver vestibules, eyeing the passing station, taking notice of the two waiting cars with workmanlike uninterest. Theirs is another life I wouldn’t like, though I’m ready to believe it has moments of real satisfaction. I’m sure I would pay undue attention to my passengers, would stand around hearing what they had on their minds, learning where they were off to, conversing with them on train travel in general, picking up a phone number here and there, and never get my tickets clipped on time and end up being let go — no better at that than I’d be at arc welding.

The local squeezes to a halt beside the station. The trainmen are down on the concrete, swinging their tiny flashes like police even before the last cars are bucked stopped. The lone taxi switches on its orange dome light and the two waiter cars rev engines in unison.