Guy Vanderhaeghe - Man Descending

It’s crazy. Lots of times when I think about it, I figure I don’t get on with the old man because I treat him nice. That I try too hard to make him like me. I’m not the way Gene is, I respect Pop. He slogs it out, shift after shift, on a shitty job he hates. Really hates. In fact, he told me once he would have liked to been a farmer. Which only goes to show you how crazy going down that hole day after day makes you. Since we moved to Saskatchewan I’ve seen lots of farmers, and if you ask me, being one doesn’t have much to recommend it.

But getting back to that business of being nice to Dad. Last year I started waiting up for him to come home from the afternoon shift. The one that runs from four p.m. in the afternoon until midnight. It wasn’t half bad. Most nights I’d fall asleep on the chesterfield with the TV playing after Mom went to bed. Though lots of times I’d do my best to make it past the national news to wait for Earl Cameron and his collection of screwballs. Those guys kill me. They’re always yapping off because somebody or something rattled their chain. Most of those characters with all the answers couldn’t pour piss out of a rubber boot if they read the instructions printed on the sole. They remind me of Gene; he’s got all the answers too. But still, quite a few of them are what you’d call witty. Which Gene is in his own way too.

But most times, as I say, I’d doze off. Let me give you a sample evening. About twelve-thirty the lights of his half-ton would come shooting into the living-room, bouncing off the walls, scooting along the ceiling when he wheeled into the driveway like a madman. It was the lights flashing in my eyes that woke me up most nights, and if that didn’t do it there was always his grand entrance. When the old man comes into the house, from the sound of it you’d think he never heard of door knobs. I swear sometimes I’m sure he’s taking a battering-ram to the back door. Then he thunks his lunch bucket on the kitchen counter and bowls his hard hat into the landing. This is because he always comes home from work mad. Never once in his life has a shift ever gone right for that man. Never. They could pack his pockets with diamonds and send him home two hours early and he’d still bitch. So every night was pretty much the same. He had a mad on. Like in my sample night.

He flicked on the living-room light and tramped over to his orange recliner with the bottle of Boh. “If you want to ruin your eyes, do it on school-books, not on watching TV in the goddamn dark. It’s up to somebody in this outfit to make something of themselves.”

“I was sleeping.”

“You ought to sleep in bed.” Keerash ! He weighs two hundred and forty-four pounds and he never sits down in a chair. He falls into it. “Who’s that? Gary Cooper?” he asked. He figures any movie star on the late show taller than Mickey Rooney is Cooper. He doesn’t half believe you when you tell him they aren’t.

“Cary Grant.”

“What?”

“Cary Grant. Not Gary Cooper. Cary Grant.”

“Oh.” There he sat in his recliner, big meaty shoulders sagging, belly propped up on his belt buckle like a pregnant pup’s. Eyes red and sore, hair all mussed up, the top of his beer bottle peeking out of his fist like a little brown nipple. He has cuts all over those hands of his, barked knuckles and raspberries that never heal because the salt in the potash ore keeps them open, eats right down to the bone sometimes.

“How’d it go tonight?”

“Usual shit. We had a breakdown.” He paused. “Where’s your brother? In bed?”

“Out.”

“Out? Out? Out? What kind of goddamn answer is that? Out where?”

I shrugged.

“Has he got his homework done?” That’s the kind of question I get asked. Has your brother got his homework done?

“How the hell would I know?”

“I don’t know why you don’t help him with his schoolwork,” the old man said, peeved as usual.

“You mean do it for him.”

“Did I say that? Huh? I said help him. Didn’t I say that?” he griped, getting his shit in a knot.

He thinks it’s that easy. Just screw the top off old Gene and pour it in. No problem. Like an oil change.

“He’s got to be around to help,” I said.

That reminded him. He jumped out of the chair and gawked up and down the deserted street. “It’s almost one o’clock. On a school night. I’ll kick his ass.” He sat down and watched the screen for a while and sucked on his barley sandwich.

Finally, he made a stab at acting civilized. “So how’s baseball going?”

“What?”

“Baseball. For chrissakes clean out your ears. How’s it going?”

“I quit last year. Remember?”

“Oh yeah.” He didn’t say nothing at first. Then he said: “You shouldn’t have. You wasn’t a bad catcher.”

“The worst. No bat and no arm – just a flipper. They stole me blind.”

“But you had the head,” said the old man. And the way he said it made him sound like he was pissed at me for mean-mouthing myself. That surprised me. I felt kind of good about that. “You had the head,” he repeated, shaking his own. “I never told you but Al came up to me at work and said you were smart back there behind the plate. He said he wished Gene had your head.”

I can’t say that surprised me. Gene is one of those cases of a million-dollar body carrying around a ten-cent head. He’s a natural. Flop out his glove and, smack, the ball sticks. He’s like Mickey Mantle. You know those stop-action photos where they caught Mickey with his eyes glommed onto the bat, watching the ball jump off the lumber? That’s Gene. And he runs like a Negro, steals bases like Maury Wills for chrissake.

But stupid and conceited? You wouldn’t believe the half of it. Give him the sign to bunt to move a runner and he acts as if you’re asking him to bare his ass in public. Not him. He’s a big shot. He swings for the fence. Nothing less. And old Gene is always in the game, if you know what I mean? I don’t know what happens when he gets on base, maybe he starts thinking of the hair pie in the stands admiring him or something, but he always dozes off at the wheel. Once he even started to comb his hair at first base. Here it is, a 3 and 2 count with two men out, and my brother forgets to run on the pitch because he’s combing his hair. I could have died. Really I could have. The guy is such an embarrassment sometimes.

“He can have my head,” I said to Pop. “If I get his girls.”

That made the old man wince. He’s sure that Gene is going to knock up one of those seat-covers he takes out and make him a premature grandpa.

“You pay attention to school. There’s plenty of time later for girls.” And up he jumped again and stuck his nose against the window looking for Gene again. Mom has to wash the picture window once a week; he spots it all up with nose grease looking for Gene.

“I don’t know why your mother lets him out of the house,” he said. “Doesn’t she have any control over that boy?”

That’s what he does, blames everybody but himself. Oh hell, maybe nobody’s to blame. Maybe Gene is just Gene, and there’s nothing to be done about it.

“I don’t know what she’s supposed to do. You couldn’t keep him in if you parked a tank in the driveway and strung barbed wire around the lot.”

Of course that was the wrong thing to say. I usually say it.

“Go to bed!” he yelled at me. “You’re no better than your brother. I don’t see you in bed neither. What’d I do, raise alley cats or kids? Why can’t you two keep hours like human beings!”

And then the door banged and we knew the happy wanderer was home. Gene makes almost as much noise as the old man does when he comes in. It’s beneath his dignity to sneak in like me.