Truth
“Dad! Hey Dad! Ready? I’m going to burn it in!”
My son Christopher is good. At 10 years old, he can throw a ball faster and harder than I ever could. Or will. He fires the ball right at my face, a curve. I barely stop it.
“Ow! Hey, slow it down! Jesus Christ!” The ball drops out of my glove and rolls away. I pull off the glove and rub my burning palm.
“Sorry, Dad. You okay?” His concern is genuine, but I sense a certain pride in hurting my hand. “Didn’t know I could throw it that hard.”
“Neither did I. Learn the hard way, I guess. Let’s do some fielding practice for awhile until my hand stops stinging. Just lob them back to me, okay?”
I serve up a little penance, a pop fly to make him run hard. Then a bouncing grounder that I hope might catch him in the shins, but he fields it perfectly, turning his body away as he scoops it and lobs it back, in one smooth motion. Another pop fly, a line drive, and then, wanting a break, I hit him with a worm burner that he misses and has to chase. The ball rolls across the street, and Christopher has to wait for the light. It’s Ash Wednesday, our first catch of the season, and the ground is still hard.
I was home early that day, because we got out right after getting the ashes rubbed on our forehead by the bishop. My dog was going away to live at the farm. I came in the back as usual, but it was quiet. “ Mom?”
I looked through the living room picture window, and watched Buddy edging down the front sidewalk. The man from the farm was on the boulevard. The weird thing was, the guy was wearing a uniform. And Buddy hated uniforms. The mail man, the meter man, and then the mail man again, those were the three reasons Buddy had to go to the farm. If he bites this guy, maybe they won’t take him.
So here’s Buddy, my own dog I got for my eighth birthday, and he’s starting to wag his chopped-off tail. Stupid dog. Can’t you see he’s the farm man? He’s even wearing a uniform. Buddy walked on. He was short-sighted, like me. He used to squint at me when I called him from down the street. He wouldn’t run to me until he could see it was me, and that was usually about two houses away. Stupid dog.
My mom said something to the farm man, but I couldn’t hear through the picture window. The man crouched down, and whistled, and Buddy ran right up to him and licked his hand. The man laughed and scratched behind Buddy’s floppy ears, the way I did. My mom waved and then the truck was driving away.
She turned, and she was smiling, until she saw me.
“You’re home early, dear! What-”
“It’s Ash Wednesday, mom. We -”
“Dad! Heads up!”
I lifted my head. The ball bounced off my glove, and hit me just above the bridge of my nose. I felt my glasses bend, and Christopher looked all starry and then he disappeared.
That night, I skipped the Hail Mary. Father, Son, Holy Ghost: Please God, make Buddy really be at the farm, playing with the other bad dogs. He didn’t mean it, he just hates uniforms. And he didn’t bite the farm guy, so he’s good now.
I got into bed, and I knew that I wouldn’t cry until after my mom came to tuck me in. Then the tight flannel sheets would put me right to sleep. I stared at the braided rug beside my bed, and bit my lip. “Front Page Challenge” boomed down the hall. Gordon Sinclair was talking about ladies’ periods, and my dad said to no one:
“He’s such a jerk! Irene? Oh, you’re…bring me a drink after you tuck him in… GOODNIGHT ALLAN!”
I could smell my mom’s perfume. I looked up from the rug. “Buddy’s dead now, isn’t he Mom?”
“You go to sleep now, dear. It’ll all be better in the morning.”
The next day, Buddy’s food and water bowls were gone. I forgot about him until recess, when two dogs ran into the school grounds to chase our soccer ball. The black dog humped the brown dog, and we threw stones at them. Then the bell rang.
On the way home, I kept thinking about the day before, when I was sure Buddy was already at the farm, playing with the other bad dogs. Today, he was gone. The back door swung open.
“You’ve got a surprise waiting for you, mister!”
I ran into the dining room and saw a box that had “Reach” written all over it. There was a baseball glove inside, wrapped up in tissue paper. It had more laces than I had ever seen on a glove, and it didn’t have any fingers. It was like a mitt, but it wasn’t a catcher’s glove.
“It’s for baseball, right mom?
“Well it’s not for hockey dear! Uncle Ronnie got it for you, isn’t that great? You have your own glove now.”
The inside back door slammed open and hit the wall where it was cracked.
“How-dee-doody!” Uncle Ronnie and my dad stomped up the landing into the kitchen. They kept their jackets on, and Uncle Ronnie was carefully peeling back the tin foil from his Lemon Hart rum. My dad was cracking the ice-cube tray over the sink. They were talking loud.
“Hey how you doin’ kid? How’s that first baseman’s glove? Pretty nice, eh?”
Get Paul LeBel’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
“Is that why it has no fingers?”
“Oh no, not no fingers!” Uncle Ronnie pretended to spit his drink out, like Danny Thomas did on TV. “Umm, that’s the spirit. It’s a trapper, Allan, a special glove, you can catch real good with it, and you can use it anywhere on the field, right Jerome?”
My dad didn’t know anything about baseball. He grew up on a farm. He sipped his rye and water, and smacked his lips. He looked over at the glove.
“I guess. ‘ Reach,’ eh? That’s a good make, isn’t it Ronnie? Allan, you know you should — ”
“Thanks, Uncle Ronnie, it’s really neat.” I was pounding my fist into the stiff leather, harder and harder. It felt like wood. It would never get a pocket. “I love it, I really love it.”
“Aww, it’s no problem, I got it from work, they had a whole box left over, everybody got one. I tried to get you a bat too, but they were all gone.”
“Ronnie, where’s it from?” My dad was suddenly interested.
“For Chrissakes, the poor kid deserves it, Jerome! They don’t know a baseball from a bingo ball. Pass me my Lemon Hart. Did I tell you about what they did in Cross Lake?”
My dad scowled, and put his hand in front of Uncle Ronnie’s face. “Hold it. Allan, why don’t you take your glove and go practice with it?”
Practice with it? I went down the hall to my room, and sat on my bed. I pounded my glove. In the dark, I could hear perfectly.
“They’re animals,” Uncle Ronnie said. “Brand new houses, the government built them just for them, brand new, nicer than ours. They drink up all their money, they got no money for oil, they burn the furniture for heat in the winter. Brand new goddam government furniture, the best quality right from the Bay. Burnt.”
“They’re people like us, Ronnie, and they deserve-“
“They aren’t like us, they get all this stuff, everything, for free. Free university, did you get that? Nope. Did I? Nope! So big deal, some Indian kid doesn’t get to burn up that glove just for fun? Tough tittie. Allan will actually use it. And you probably don’t know it, but he’s a pretty good ball player.”
Uncle Ronnie was what my friend Gumbi called a fake uncle. He was really just a neighbour. Uncle Ronnie and his wife lived five doors down, in exactly the same kind of house as ours, except their house was a lot darker, especially in the winter. And they didn’t have a finished basement, like we did.
My dad said it was because Uncle Ronnie worked for the government. Even if you didn’t know, you could tell, because Uncle Ronnie had a grey government car, with little hub caps on the wheels, instead of wheel covers like our car. My dad said that the government saved money that way, that they wouldn’t pay extra for wheel covers or floor mats for their cars. And Uncle Ronnie didn’t really own his car like we did. But don’t worry about him, my dad said, because Uncle Ronnie gets free gas, even when he’s on holidays.
I pounded the glove. It was still like a piece of wood. That Indian kid way up north wouldn’t even want it anyways. Besides, he couldn’t get it now. It was mine. I wondered if he was waiting for it. Was Uncle Ronnie supposed to give it to him on one of his trips to the reservation? Or maybe it was a surprise, like it was for me. If it was, he wouldn’t miss it. There are so many trees on the reservation, they probably don’t even have a baseball diamond. And they’re all poor, so he probably didn’t even have a bat at his school anyways, so what would he do with a glove?
I plugged in the iron from my wood burning set, and let it warm up on the stand. I heard ice cracking over the sink, and my dad said, “Simmer down, Ronnie.” The iron was hot. I burned my initials deep into the back of the glove, just above where it said “Reach.” I was really careful. My initials looked really good.
The toilet flushed with the bathroom door open, and Uncle Ronnie said, “Hey, what’s that smell, you burning down the house in there?”
I showed him the glove.
“Attaboy,” he said, rubbing my head. “Attaboy. It’s yours now, you branded it. No one can take it away from you.”
Later, in bed, I used the glove for one ear and my pillow for the other. Uncle Ronnie and my dad were slurring now: “Jerome, listen, they actually piss on the food that we give them.” “It’s their country too,” my dad said.
The next day at school, we had softball for phys-ed. I’d been pounding the glove with my fist all morning, and it was starting to loosen up. While we were running the bases for a warm-up, Gumbi told me to put oil on it, but that sounded crazy. The ball will slip out, I said.
“Let’s see the shiny new glove, Allan.” Mr. Bryski pulled it off my hand and wiggled it on to his. The glove looked way too small. “Nice, very nice, a Reach,” he said, smacking his fist into the pocket. “Good brand. I think Reach was the guy who founded the Phillies. You’ll have to work this baby in though. Put some oil on the crease.”
I didn’t make the school team that year, but my glove got really worked in. My batting wasn’t bad, but I kept dropping the ball in practice. It would hit my glove, and I would squeeze my hand hard, but the ball would fall out, almost every time. Mr. Bryski told me to try again next year. So I kept a baseball in the glove all that winter and tied it with string. Sometimes I used it when I played goalie in road hockey, and it worked great.
The next year, I tried out for the team again, and got cut even sooner. One day in health class, Mr. Bryski held up his hand.
“How many fingers am I holding up, Allan?”
I squinted as hard as I could. “Three?”
“You’re out!” Everyone laughed, for a long time. “It’s optometrist time for Allan!”
I got my glasses a few weeks later, but I only wore them in class, because they really pinched my nose.
“Dad! Dad! Sit up, here. Watch out, your glasses are bent.” Christopher was crying. “I thought you were dead or something. That glove’s no good, it’s too small for anybody. You should have caught that. But sorry, Dad. ”
“I’m okay, Chris. I saw some stars there!”
I pull my hand from the glove. It’s red.
