Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree

Are of equal duration. A people without history

Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern

Of timeless moments.

And so in blessings, and so in song, and so in bottles and beatings. And so in absence and death, they pass themselves on to me, like they were torches ablaze but now seemingly without heat, without light — perhaps only a history of fire — a symbol of that which was once warm and bright and useful. My mother, ashes in the urn waiting to be spread.

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well. .

I think that I would like to leave this world with a song and a tear — that I would’ve held just enough in reserve to still have one of each, that there will be someone there to listen and watch and they in turn will whisper their secret affections — but there’s no way to be noble anymore. Perhaps there never was. “I will be true to the girl who loves me . .” There are echoes of ditties unsung, therefore promises unmade. The green tree. The yew tree. The grassy hills of England. The tarmac of Brooklyn. A concession of love, a casualty of failure, disappearing down the maw of a vacant avenue, reft of language, left with memory. A phantom who leaves no legacy, only haunting, marring who you loved and who once loved you, chilling those you are near. I shudder on the avenue. What if nothing lies beneath my spasm, my stomach’s descent? What if there are no ghosts in Brooklyn, and my love’s cheeks are unspeakable and all gone?

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.

The big broken clock hiccups the hour. There’s really no choice in the matter.

I will run.

My father had always been a lousy listener; then he started going deaf — just after his first heart attack. It had been mild enough that he’d been able to call a cab to take him to the emergency room. And during his convalescence he’d been torn between dismissing the gravity of his condition and milking it for every drop of sympathy he could get.

He’s always been an odd man. He’s never seemed to possess any discernible rage, only a kind of jazzy melancholy — lighter than the blues. Not daunting or dark: good lounge conversation — his troubles, his travels. And he was good in a lounge conversation — even toned, soft yet resonant, aloof, but not cold — with lots of high-end diction and low-end beer. I’ve always thought of him as Bing Crosby’s public persona on half a Percodan— boo-biddy-doo —breezing through life. Or Nat King Cole, just a little bit high. And it was because he was so smooth that almost everyone forgave him almost everything: the failed business ventures, the lost jobs, his potbelly and skinny legs, his balding and his absence. He was gone. It seemed ridiculous for anyone, his family, my mother, me, to attempt to retrieve him for punishment or salvation.

I don’t believe he ever considered himself gone. I shouldn’t be too hard on him. I try never to be. He was lying in bed in the ICU of the Boston VA.

“How are you doing?”

“You know, your grandfather had his first heart attack at forty-one. That’s a lot younger than me.”

“Yeah. How are you doing?”

“He lived another thirty years. You never met him.”

“I know.”

“He was the first pharmacist of his kind to practice in the city. Kenmore Drug. You know, he came up from the Carolinas with nothing. I don’t think he was even a teen.”

“Yeah.”

“They let him practice in the basement. He swept up upstairs.”

My father had torn up his knee as a high school halfback. He used to say that it cost him his free ride to Harvard but kept him out of Korea. When I was small, we’d play on the sidewalk in front of the old house. He’d call a play, break the huddle with a soft clap, and limp up to the ball, surveying the imagined defense. He’d hike it to himself and hand it off to me. After my run he’d watch me, a bit dreamily, jog back to him. “You really can hit the hole,” he’d say, taking the big ball back.

He must have sensed me regarding his scar, ashes, and bumpy, hairless follicles because he pulled at the hem of his johnny. It wasn’t long enough to cover, so I looked away.

“I’d go meet him at the store. The girl at the counter would give me a hard candy then send me down. He’d be gathering the filled prescriptions to bring upstairs. Your grandfather was very exacting.”

He scratched his stubble. His face, pockmarked from ingrown hairs, rasped like a zydeco washboard.

“He hit me once.”

He sucked on his loose teeth.

“We were just sitting down to dinner. I couldn’t have been much older than eight.”

He extended his right index finger into the air above his chest and pushed at something he saw.

“The doorbell rang. My father got up to answer it. From where I sat I could see that a policeman was at the door. My father called for me. There was another man on the porch, too. The man looked at me, turned to the policeman, and shook his head. My father told me to go sit down. I did. When he finished, he came in, sat, and said grace. I was just about to pick up my fork when all of a sudden I was on the floor. My cheek was numb. He was staring at me — cold. “Get up,” he said, really quiet. I got back in my chair. We ate dinner like nothing happened.

He inhaled thinly.

“I haven’t had a cigarette in three days.”

“That’s good. You shouldn’t smoke.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He pushed at the doorbell again and heard it ring in his head. I’d never seen a picture of my grandfather, but it had been said that he looked nothing like my old man. He never said much about his people at all except that they were “hard people. . mean people . .” That they used to own a town but were swindled out of it and had to move to northern Florida. The only one in his family he ever really loved was his maternal grandmother. She was the daughter of a medicine man. He only saw her once. My mother would roll her eyes or leave the room when he talked about her or how he thought that his father, who one day disappeared, was alive somewhere in the swamps.

“When the war came, they let him practice upstairs.”

“Then he got sick?”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“How are you — you keeping your chin up?”

Marco’s just taken out the trash. He’s on the stoop wearing a T-shirt, baggy shorts, and flip-flops. He sees me and waves. When I get closer, he points at my coffee.

“Staying up tonight?”

“Just a prop.”

He thumbs at the doorway. “Sox are on replay.”

Inside, the foyer lights are on low — halogen, recessed. They make the hall seem to curve where the walls meet the floor and ceiling — and it lengthens — a tube of soft light rimmed by shadow.

“Come on. Take a break.”

I sip the coffee. It’s weak and bitter. I haven’t watched a game all summer; perhaps out of self-punishment, perhaps because the game is no longer the game of my childhood, or perhaps it is and I’m no longer a boy. Somehow baseball lost its charm. I found it hard to root for corporate-sponsored mercenaries. From boy to man my feelings have turned from awe to envy to spite.

My father took me to Fenway. He’d watched the Braves as a boy. He’d seen Ruth’s last at bats. Then the Braves left and he became a Sox fan. He told me about the old park and the tradition: Young, Foxx, Doerr, Pesky, Williams, and what Yaz was like as a rookie. “He won the triple crown the year you were born — what a year.” He’d tell me stories — the curse, the Impossible Dream team — in that baritone crooner, Lucky Strike voice. Finally, one day he put me on his shoulders and walked us along the Charles to Kenmore Square, up Brookline Avenue, the bridge over the Mass Pike. We looked down at the cars speeding inbound and out. And then up to Lansdowne Street and the Monster with the net above. I got dizzy looking up at it in the vendor yells and smells. It seemed as though he knew, so we didn’t go in right away. He put me down among the legs and cart wheels and then disappeared up into the bodies and heads. When he returned, he handed me a sausage in a bun, flicking the peppers and onions off for me as he knelt. I ate it as we walked around the ballpark, east, behind the right-field bleachers, and then down the line toward home. I haven’t taken C yet. He hasn’t shown much interest — the Brooklyn boy. It was all I could do to keep Yankee paraphernalia out of the house — banners, hats, balls with imprints, bobble-head dolls, goodie bags from birthday parties. Once we burned a hat on the roof of our building and then tuned into the game on the radio. He fell asleep in his chair, the game he’d never played, the grandfather he barely knew, the field he’d never seen; all abstractions to him.