John Domini - Highway Trade and Other Stories

GILLARD’S PLAYING with my daughter on the park swing set. I just got here. Humming my Sunday blues, wagging my horn case in rhythm — and there they are. If the rosebushes hadn’t been so ugly, January ugly, I might have walked right into the man. I do like those roses. As it is, the best I can manage is stumbling to a halt. And then my first thought has nothing to do with getting out of there. Instead I’m looking those two over, and I’m thinking: at least he’s got the girl in the right swing. Carrie’s not two yet. She still has to be fitted as deep as she’ll go into the smallest swing, the middle one of the three on the park set. It’s made from a tire, this smallest swing, but it’s not like your classic down-home tire-swing. This is a tire cut and hung like a crescent moon. Instead of fitting her feet through a center-hole and leaving her back unprotected, Gillard has settled Carrie inside the black rubber U where the inner tube used to be. Her feet stick out the front of the crescent and her back is cradled by the rest. I wouldn’t even know it was my daughter in there, if that weren’t positively Gillard with her. There’s only one cowboy that big with “WILLARD” crimped in tin across the back of his belt.

But give the man credit, he’s making it fun. He squats in front of the girl. He’s there partly so he can catch her if she gets too crazy of course, but mostly so she can feel as if she’s the one running the show. On something like every third forward swing, he’ll puff up his chest, she’ll stiff out her feet. “Annnnd, boom!” Plus Gillard’s so wiry. Even back before the sauce had turned me into such a lard-belly, back a year ago or so when I first taught the girl the game — even then I don’t think I could have popped up after each kick as fast as old Willy Gilly.

Then finally I’ve got my brains again, I’m backing off. When I go out on a Sunday I’ve got my horn and my Jack Daniel’s, which these days I’ll put in a Diet Coke can. That’s not too much to keep quiet.

Before making any major move, I hug up the case in both arms, pinning the can to it with both hands. Don’t take my eyes from those two at the swing set for more than a look-see left-right. Makes things a little pinchy inside my coat, my old Chesterfield, and with the lapel right in my face I can smell last night’s smoke. Of course I also have to get a thumb over the opening at the top of the Diet Coke. Then with everything held up tight like that I break sideways. Backwards and sideways, when earlier all I got was maybe one glance at the bench where I figured it’d be safe. So naturally I end up going straight into one of the damn rosebushes. I clip off a dead New Year’s bud or two, break a few soggy thorns with my knuckles. One shoelace catches on something and next thing I know I’ve got to drag that foot. But Carrie goes on squealing, and Gillard keeps up his patter. I keep on telling myself that it’s an honest mistake, coming here, since there aren’t that many parks in this part of Eugene anyway and the ones down by the Willamette are nothing but lowlife.

Eventually I make it over to my bench. Clouseau’d my way through things as usual. I’d been planning to set up on the pavilion, off the other side of the swing set. But the afternoon’s on the sunny side anyway. The clouds have knuckles, but so far they’re holding off from real trouble.

And as soon as I get a decent mouthful from my Diet Coke I can do a little damage control: it’s okay, it’s okay. Yes this has got to be a mistake. No way I went out looking for my daughter and my wife’s new man. On my Sunday blow I try and keep my mind blank to that kind of situation altogether. Of course it’s not like word doesn’t get around; it’s not like either me or my ex has no idea what the other one does on a weekend. Granted. But soon as I get my mouthful and open the case on my knees, I can feel what I’m really out for.

I mean, I’ve been blowing on Sunday ever since I started doing gigs on Saturday. Going on twenty years now. I’ve found an opening about one-thirty, two o’clock, when church or brunch is done with and I’m also out of synch with the serious joggers. Everybody’s deep into whatever their home thing is. But with me it gets way too intense for home. Like now I’ve got this couple in the apartment upstairs, all their natter-natter and jumping around. I need it cleaner than that. I need to be sure I’ll catch the moment when I should put aside the Diet Coke — though I do love these sassy gold ones, the caffeine-free — and concentrate on my saxophone. There are things you can discover in a more picky and useful way, like knowing when to lift the bridge from one song and take it to another. But you might also get a whole different kind of satisfaction, just making a lot of noise out there. Or then again from time to time you’ll understand that all you honestly have to do is oil a few keys till they’re quiet again, after which if you hold one of the stoppers open and get the horn up at the right angle you can see some reflections, you can see the trees, or the pavilion itself or some people here and there, and there are moments when you can even find the roses and a couple of the park playthings, all caught and bent a little in that single clean golden stopper’s circle not much bigger than a bottle cap. After that of course I’ll play.

Except as soon as I start to put the horn together, I can see there’s another problem. If I play, Gillard will hear me.

So much for trying to get into my ready groove. I screw the top back on the cork grease. Set the Diet Coke to one side of the bench, the horn (I mean the pieces, halfway there across the velveteen fittings in the case) to the other. Then it’s round and up onto my knees so I can check out the situation on the swings. I’m so flabby now that the most comfortable I can get is by resting my gut on the topmost rail of the bench. But through the skeletons of the rosebushes I can make out Gillard’s back, Carrie’s feet. They’re still at it, swingtime boogie. She gets him a good one while I’m watching, bang in the chest hard enough to make him whoop like a smoker. Plus there’s the bouncy-animals next to the swing-set, the lion and mustang and dolphin all fixed on springs. Just past them’s the slide. Most likely the little girl’s planning on staying a while; I used to start on the swings too. And like I say word gets around, I know what my ex is saying about me these days. I know that one way or another I’d come out hurting if Gillard heard me play.

My wife after all was a woman who towards the end would say of my horn: “Let’s take it to New York.” She’d say: “Let’s take the damn fishhook to L.A ., why don’t we?” Granted, she might have looked angrier than she was. She’s got these very fine lines, the kind of tight-knit hips and shoulders I always think of when I think of Western women. She could glare like if you kissed her, you’d cut yourself on her cheekbones. And granted, also, I was no help. How much of my take on the weekends wound up going to the bar tab? But there are rules nonetheless. A person can’t go round saying she wants a kid, saying it would be so exciting to have a kid , so I’m thinking of like a hokey Christmas card with the whole family in a paper moon or something — and then as soon as the first one’s born she turns around and starts talking about L.A.? A person can’t do that. The woman was from Cottage Grove, just down the highway here, after all. Very small town, very kids-and-family. She should have known what she was getting into.