Bay Crossings Journal

The Boy, His Dad

If You Daydream Him, He Will Come

By Bill Coolidge

A seagull meanders, about tree level around the outskirts of the grassy playfield. Blown off course by the northerly wind coming out of the estuary or just hanging around the green dumpster behind the fenced batters’ cage?

My attention, though, is on the white spot rising up above the last green of tree leaves, lost in the maze of twilight blues and blacks crisscrossed by incoming pale-pallored clouds.

"Hey, little man, you’re getting it, you’re getting it!" He’s clapping his hands, the ‘little man’ a waif of a boy doesn’t bow nor smile. All he does is adjust the bill cap; it keeps falling down over his ears, blocking his eyes so that he can’t see these high fly balls dropping in out of twilighted heaven.

The father still has on his workchain necklace on, a picture I.D. waffling along his chest when he runs and throws. A black pager on one side of his belt with a ring of keys on the other completes the ‘busy dad’ wardrobe.

The boy runs left then right trying to get under the lofty ball, his black glove held out, reaching beyond the nonchalent drift of breeze.

"Thump." The most perfect sound for a young boy sailing back and forth over a cover of green, father watching, ball arching, glove desiring. "Thump."

"You did it, Mark, you know how to do it. It’s getting late, let’s practice some grounders." The man covers the yards with an easy athletic gait. The boy is still looking at his glove, that patch of white backdropped into black. What is he thinking, I wonder as I watch him, sitting on my bike leaning against a light pole. Time to quit, go home, have some cookies, tell mom?

"Don’t be afraid of putting the glove in front of your face, put it right down on the ground, lean into it!"

For a moment my heart hurts. I gulp a little, surprised by the twitching pain. Father-son. My dad aged too quickly and I grew up too fast. In his annual vacation to Florida, I remember playing catch, going for a ‘record.’ A record of how many times we could catch the ball with dropping it.

Then he remarried, I inherited stepbrother, my dad’s life speeded up. I learned on my own, no more records to break.

The half moon is angling up and over Chipman Storage; it glides easily through the purplish clouds, spotlighting the little boy, the man and the stranger on the blue bike.

So much I miss of not having a son. I taught my daughter to shoot baskets, swim and sail a boat but they didn’t ever say "Hey, dad, let’s go shoot some baskets!" I guess they knew it was dad’s need not theirs but they never refused when I challenged them to a game of ‘horse.’

"You’re getting tired, huh?" The boy can barely throw the ball back to his dad, and is taking longer and longer to straighten the bright red cap on his resolute face. The boy does not answer.

"You just need to bend over more, put that glove down, you’re afraid that ball is going to jump and hit you in the face."

Mark leans lower, darkened glove touching infield dirt.

That was my fear too. I’ve had a bloody nose and a dislocated finger from that erratic white ball.

The streelights snap on, the yellowish haze covers Littlejohn Park. The father yells out "Good job son, let’s go home." The darkness settles in. The boy retrieves the white ball, puts it is his glove, readjusts his cap, leaves it on.

My bike and I leaning against the pole feel comfortable now. Ever since my dad told me, "You don’t have to come in when the streetlights come on," I have been a creature of the dark. When he said that I was 12; now I am 57 and I still delight in the strange shadow of me and the bike passing under the streetlight, a scurrying figure seeking the safety of a night passage.

I hear the ‘clunk’ of two car doors, a engine hums, tailights, rectangular red, and a slow smooth glide down Pacific Avenue. Boy and man, sitting quietly, unlit vessel moving ahead, filled with memories of sky, ball, and tomorrow.

I pedal slowly along the winding path leading out of the park. This is an empty evening, filled in by only what sinks into me. Tonight my nostrils inhale the salty coastal breeze, a sure sign of a weather shift. Tomorrow, the wind will come out of the east and in late afternoon, shift to the south, paving the way for rain.

The boy held his dad’s hand when they walked toward their car. The patch of green has slid slowly into the evening dark, their muscles unlimbered now tired, the boy had been tenderly fingering the ball, instinctively. The two are building a life around a white ball lobbed up into the boundary of the green and azure sky and then waiting. Both of them, the boy and the man need the resounding ‘yes’ of that worn leather glove now harboring that white spot. Thunk! At home. And I knew that home, once.