John Brandon: Further Joy

Since Garner had been back, the only weather the town had offered was that familiar reedy glare that made everybody squint like they were in pain. Today Garner had on his darkest sunglasses, and his mother wore a big visor along with her paw-printed T-shirt of faded green. His mother’s hair had reached that point where you couldn’t tell if it was light or dark or mostly gray, but her eyes were still sharp as ever. Between plays she would look over at Garner with a sly, peaceful expression, grateful to be spending time with him again.

GCU. The Georgia Coastal Marsh Cats. Garner’s mother liked to attend one game a year, to cheer the team in person, and the rest of the season she watched at home on a fifty-inch flat screen Garner had given her for her last birthday. The team was 4–0 and they were getting the upper hand again this afternoon. They’d done nothing but kick field goals but they had things under control. Garner didn’t know what conference they were in anymore, but they were still running that same spread-to-run offense half the big teams were running now. They had a plow horse of a quarterback who never failed to convert a third and short.

Garner had been raised with football, but he’d always secretly looked forward to the day he’d be done with it. Even as a child he’d sensed, though he couldn’t have put it into words back then, that the emphasis on sports in these parts was a key element of the small-town mediocrity he needed to escape. The public education system, from middle school on up, existed for no reason except to facilitate football games. A degree from Coastal saved you from driving a forklift at the factory but didn’t get you any farther than an office in the same factory. These guys Garner and his mother were watching sweat and bleed down on the field would wind up middle-managing a fishery, rather than hauling up nets.

Garner hadn’t been big enough to think about playing in college, even if he’d wanted to, but he’d played in high school, as was expected. People had been proud of Garner back then, and being an object of pride was something he’d learned to crave. His mother had taken tons of pictures of him in his uniform before the games and then beamed at him from the stands while he played. He’d had a way, on kick coverage, of getting lost in the scrum and then squirting out at the perfect moment and surprising the ball carrier. People loved it. They would compliment Garner’s mother on his pluck at the grocery or the gas station. Still, Garner had felt relief when he’d stripped off his pads for the last time, when he’d done anything in this town for the last time, knowing that in a matter of months, weeks, days, he’d be in Atlanta using his brain to the utmost among total strangers.

And now he was living back here again, almost a decade later. Back in this string of sun-faded villages, all with the same seafood in the restaurants, each with one high school and a refurbished downtown of half a dozen shaded blocks. A few bored lawyers. A trickle of docile tourists. People raised in the area spoke with the accents of people who were stuck somewhere and didn’t mind being stuck. Occasionally a chef got out, and once in a blue moon a musician.

Before halftime the Marsh Cats finally got into the end zone, on a fade pass to a lanky receiver named Forde. Garner asked his mother if she was hungry, then filed down out of the bleachers and made his way to the concession stand, which, besides the standard candy and chips, was offering a burger topped with boiled shrimp from a huge pot. Garner watched the man inside the stand pick up his coffee and sniff it, then drop the full cup into the trash. The man’s mustache was neatly kept but he had a big belly and knobby knuckles. Garner ordered two burgers and the guy started getting the buns ready. He stopped and straightened up and said, “Ethel’s boy.”

Garner nodded. He waited as the man wiped his hands and offered to shake.

“I used to work with your mom at the carpet mill,” the man told Garner. “She kept us in line. We used to call her the Vice Principal.”

Garner chuckled, not completely falsely. Since he’d been back, his own gestures often felt odd to him, forced.

“I want to tell you I’m real happy to see you down here. For more than a weekend, I mean.” The man asked if Garner’s mother was in the stands, if that’s who the other burger was for, and Garner told him she was. He made a succession of clicks in his cheek and leaned toward Garner, his eyebrows raised, an expression meant to warn Garner he was about to speak frankly.

“Buying her things is great, but coming down and spending your time — I’m real glad to see that.”

Garner didn’t know what to do but thank the man. He didn’t see burgers anywhere, though he could smell them.

“It’s not my place and I’m aware of that, but your mother deserved a good husband and didn’t get one, and she deserves a good son and it’d be gratifying as hell if she did get that. I’m not trying to run down your father to you.”

“No, you’re right,” Garner said. “She deserves good people.”

The man slid a long-handled spatula out of a drawer. “Most guys with scratch like you got, they don’t spend a whole lot of time buddying around with their old mom. Just thought somebody ought to say it to you.”

“Appreciate that,” said Garner.

The stadium loudspeakers were blaring on about some sale at a car dealership. The man slipped out the rear door of the stand, where there must’ve been a grill, and Garner stood alone.

***

Most mornings Garner rose before his mother and stared at the news on TV while hazy, fractured light swelled up behind the blinds. In the quiet dawns, Garner felt he could think, felt he could examine his circumstances calmly. The situation was that he was out of work. Almost six months. Just like every other loser who was out of work. He’d made it through a stifling Atlanta summer in a fog of denial. Finally, only a few weeks ago, he’d admitted the obvious to himself — without the income that had caused him to be rich, he was suddenly poor. That simple. He’d been a cash-burning go-getter for so long that it had become his identity, and now he had no cash. No one knew, and no one could. His mom couldn’t know. The people in town couldn’t. He’d been the kid who was too smart for these brackish burgs and had made it big on the outside, the kid who’d been good at everything he tried.

He could see now that he should’ve bailed out of his old life the day his income ceased. If he’d come home sooner, his finances wouldn’t be such a mess now, but he’d been caught up in a fever, spending every penny he managed to scrounge up. He’d sold his patio furniture, his retro Cabriolet bed, but he’d kept paying every month for his loft, and then he’d had to pay still more when he broke the lease. He’d liquidated his car and a pricey scooter he’d never ridden, had given away his exotic fish to the only person he’d found who seemed like she’d take decent care of them, but then he’d signed up for a membership at the ritziest gym in the city. He paid an exorbitant penalty a few months later to cancel out early. He’d been carrying his own health insurance and had let that lapse just last week. And now he was living with his mother again — by choice, is what people assumed. They thought he was taking a break from the city grind, a working vacation of some sort, spending time with his mom because he was such a terrific guy.

Garner had brought a couple of his Italian suits down with him, he couldn’t say why, and he had his phone working still. To cut off his phone would be to fully admit defeat. He had one last pack of Russian cigarettes out of a case he’d bought himself on a trip to Moscow back in January. He smoked one every now and then but mostly he gave them away. He didn’t like looking at the ornately decorated pack — it reminded him of all the exotic traveling he’d done for work. He remembered the view of that severe, windblown square out his hotel window. He remembered all the Russians walking around with ice cream cones even though it was freezing cold.