The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [14]
My brother began his way down the steps. His footfalls were much heavier than my mother’s. He rounded the corner, nudging her out of the way with his beer belly. Full of attitude, he now stared at the head of the house, laughing to himself like some movie villain at the failed attempts of those who would overthrow him. “What the fuck’s your problem?” he asked.
I’ll answer that one. My dad fell from the roof of our house while he was laying shingles. He fell headfirst, dropping twenty-odd feet before crashing into the rough ground below. He shattered his nose and blew out disks in his neck and back.
I can remember it all, like a memory recalled at the site of a scar. I was the only one home at the time. I heard my father shout, tumble, and hit. I ran from the house to see what had happened and found my father motionless, a pool of blood forming around his face. I asked him if he was okay, even though I knew he wasn’t, but what else is there for a thirteen-year-old son to ask?
He told me, in gurgles and gasps that he couldn’t feel his body, that he couldn’t move. He told me to walk away, to leave him because he was dying, and he didn’t want me to have to see it. I ran into the house and punched 911.
He wouldn’t walk again for two years. After all the rehab, when he could finally stand on his feet without assistance, he was a different man. A shell of one, not the father we had grown to love.
Outsiders would tell me I should be thankful he could walk, what a blessing it was, and all that jazz. I didn’t feel that way about it. Maybe I should’ve, but it wasn’t like the feel-good stories used to sell bracelets with trendy slogans. My dad could walk, but he did so like Frankenstein. He couldn’t feel his hands or his feet. His bowels didn’t wait for his consent to go. His vision suffered and his flexibility disappeared. He couldn’t tell whether he cut his legs or whether he was bleeding. He slept with constant discomfort and medicated himself heavily. When the pills stopped working on their own, he began mixing them with alcohol. The mighty perfectionist was unequipped to deal with his new imperfections. He was disgusted with everything, including himself.
For a time, things plodded along. It seemed as if, despite all of my father’s issues, the family would survive. Things were hard, but we were getting the hang of it. Then dad lost his job—the salary, the benefits, the sense of purpose were all gone. His hands, cumbersome and mangled, could not work the computer keys like they once did. When the company he worked for restructured itself, my dad was restructured by a fresh college graduate with no experience for half the salary.
The termination snuffed out the last remaining pieces my father had to build with. He could not work and so he felt useless. Having already reconciled the demise of his sports hobbies, no longer a softball or basketball player, he was at least a valued member of his work team. Now he was nothing. Coming from the generation that did not require degrees to get a job, any hope my handicapped, undereducated father had of competing in the present market was gone. He had lost his employer and the rest of his identity.
My mother’s job supported us while my father looked for work. Then she too was fired. Suddenly, we had nothing but a few waning months of unemployment. My dad had to take manual-labor jobs and simply could not keep up with the work pace. He was let go from all of them.
My brother turned to the bottle to help him cope. He fell into alcoholism about as hard as my father fell from the rooftop. He was a mean drunk, violent and irrational. He’d toss my crippled father aside like a rag doll. He’d smack my mother, choke her, and knock her down. He’d flat out beat the shit out of me. He put my head through picture frames, through coffee tables, and into hospital beds. He hated me because I was the family golden boy, sheltered by the success sports had brought me. I was the enemy—a relationship I’d become accustomed