“China’s been dumping steel,” dad says. He’s been laid off from the mill and must dive sixty miles one way to his new job. Some days he doesn’t come home because the driving makes him fall asleep. Days when he does make it home it’s late and I’m in bed and he leaves early and I’m still in bed. Mom and dad fight when he’s home on the weekends and not stretched out on the couch snoring.
“Go play with your son,” mom says.
“Christ! Leave me alone,” dad snaps.
Mom’s been squirreling away her waitress tips ever since dad lost his job. When I ask for five dollars for a pair of track shoes, she says that I have a pair of brand-new tennis shoes so I don’t need no track shoes. She has a couple of Mason jars hidden away behind soup cans, boxes of pasta, and oatmeal. The jars are heavy with coins and crushed bills. The paper money is just waiting to be freed from the round jail of a jar and folded properly in my wallet. Mom arranges fish sticks on the baking pan evenly like stripes on a starched flag. Thin layers of government cheese melt over buttered noodles on the stove.
“We got any horseradish?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” mom says. She sounds far away.
“How about ketchup — we got any ketchup?”
“Check in the fridge, on the door.”
“Why do they call it horseradish?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s a track meet on Thursday after school. Starts at five o’clock. I’m only in one event, so you don’t have to come,” I say.
“I’m working.”
After mom has gone to bed, I remove five mangled dollar bills from a jar, pulling each one back and forth over the edge of the linoleum countertop.
Dad takes me to a bar on Saturday. Party lights droop from the stamped tin ceiling. I like the fried food, cigarette smoke, beer smells, and the cool, comforting dimness. Patsy Cline falls to pieces on the jukebox while the bartender lines shot glasses on the polished redwood bar like miniature bollards. The comfort of beer, roiling cooking oil, cigarettes, and Ms. Cline does little to ease my dad. I sprinkle shuffle wax on the shiny deck of the bowling machine. I concentrate — my hand on the cool metal puck, testing the friction before the push and then the folding of the pins and the whir of spinning numbers. I’m careful to stay behind the foul line, even when dad’s not giving me his side-eyed look to make sure I’m still there, playing by the rules.
Dad has no respect for the bowling game. “Childish. Bad action. High-tech,” he complains. His cigarette straddles the metal border of a pinball machine. He has respect for it knowing it could beat him on any day. He picks up his pack of smokes from the glass surface and pulls out a cigarette, careful not to obstruct his vision or interrupt his concentration.
“Can I play?” I ask. He picks up his cigarette, drops it to the floor, and crushes it into the dirty linoleum.
“Your mother told me you took money from a Mason jar,” he says, staring at my score as it clicks frantically under the glass. I was beating him.
“I need track shoes,” I say. My number keeps rising. I focus on the ball. I’m in control. Good action.
“Maybe I should kick your ass,” dad says, taking his eyes off my whirling number, grabbing his
cigarette pack from the glossy surface of the machine. The metal orb rolls between the flippers.
My number stops dead. I release my sweaty hands from the control buttons.
“Your turn,” I say meekly.
“My ball,” he announces loudly. Multiple knocks. The machine convulses into a paroxysm of flashing lights, clanks, and pings. People sitting at the tables look toward us with taxidermic stares. He lights a celebratory smoke and slowly pulls back on the spring launcher. He returns the ball to its resting position.
“My machine, my money,” he smirks. Returning the ball to launch-ready, he releases with a turn of his wrist like a pitcher throwing a slider. The kinetic silver ball courses under the glass cover. He works the hips of the machine. Gently. The balm of hot electronics rises like incense. A last climactic knock — he watches the ball drain between the flippers and releases his hands. He removes a five from his wallet and pulls it back and forth over the cool metal edge of the machine. He gives me the fin and I return to my own machine. When dad’s not looking, I’ll breach the foul line to the dizzying, spinning, evening of a score.
*****
William R. Stoddart is a Pushcart nominated poet and fiction writer who lives in Pennsylvania. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in North Dakota Quarterly, Litro Magazine, Adirondack Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and Ruminate Magazine.
