“I might as well stay sitting,” he said. “We’d need engineers to get me out anyway.”
So they carried their plates to the central table, listening to the warm, pleasant voices of the parent chorus urging them to take more of this, try some of that. “Is that all you’re having?” voices asked. “Try Aunt Judy’s manicotti. Take more of Aunt Frankie’s stuffing.” He filled his plate and followed the line back to his seat, and they all settled in, waiting.
“Let’s have one of the kids say grace,” his uncle said. “Biddy’s an altar boy. Biddy. Give us some grace here.”
Everyone at his table grinned, off the hook. He looked at the adult table in genuine surprise but they all smiled back encouragingly.
“Grace?” he asked.
“An altar boy doesn’t know grace?” someone said.
“He knows it,” his mother said. “Shh.”
There was a silence, forks tinkling.
“Thank you O Lord for these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty to Christ Our Lord Amen.” He realized immediately that he’d botched it, muffed one of the easiest, most mechanical of prayers, but no one noticed; in fact, there was a murmur of appreciation, and the sound of knives and forks digging in.
Dinner for him was a blur, as most of the best holiday dinners were: a taste, a smell, and some cooling water on the back of his throat, appreciated and savored, standing out at each precise instant but fading quickly into the rest as the meal wore on. The adults’ table was noisy and festive while at Biddy’s the food was handled with dispatch. He was one of the first finished, and picked a piece of pumpkin pie and some coffee from the dessert assortment, heading for the den. He slipped into the sofa, setting the pie dish on the table, and sipped the coffee with both hands. He loved coffee and had grown up on it, his earliest breakfast memories being of Sanka and farina. The Abbott and Costello movie was over, and he changed the channel to the game with the remote switch lying on the cushion next to him.
The maroon and white of the halfback lunged forward, the colors bright and bracing on this brand-new set, and moved with the slow, unstoppable smoothness of instant replay. He drifted from the reach of arms and helmets of white with scarlet trim and tumbled headlong into the end zone, skidding on a shoulder. The replay began again. He broke his eyes away and took a bite of pie.
His father’s hand landed on his head. “What’s the score in here? Who’s playing?”
The score flashed on the screen. “Oklahoma’s kicking ass,” Dom said behind him. “Don’t get too comfortable, by the way. We should leave for the game pretty soon.” Nebraska fumbled the kickoff, Oklahoma recovering.
His father turned from the room. “Hard to beat those Sooners,” he said. “C’mon, Biddy. Get your coat.”
“How you gonna beat these guys?” Dom called after him. “They send those big spades atcha in waves.”
They got their coats and collected Mickey and Ginnie. Ginnie told Biddy’s mother that she thought it was silly, too, but it was the last one she was going to, and the team was undefeated. They got to the game a few minutes into the first quarter.
Milford punished Stratford, up and down the field. Dom suffered visibly, then audibly. Ginnie stood up finally and said she wasn’t going to listen to it anymore. It was ridiculous to aggravate yourself over something you couldn’t do anything about. Biddy’s father agreed to give her a ride back to Michael’s.
In the third quarter the score was 35–7 Milford, and Louis swept around a block and caught the ball carrier’s helmet flush in the face, shattering his face mask. Dom and Biddy stood up, trying to get a better look. “Oh, Jesus,” Dom said, as though he had no more energy for this. Louis was sitting with his head down, trainers and teammates around him, and when one of them moved, Biddy could see jagged pieces of face mask. Louis was making circular motions with his head, bits of blood and teeth beading out along a line of spittle.
“Oh, Jesus,” Dom repeated, turning away.
They stayed a few minutes longer but Dom insisted they go back; they didn’t all have to wait to check on Louis, and there was no sense staying for the end of the game.
Back at his uncle’s, they announced what had happened and quieted the big table to a hush. Ginnie wailed, “Oh, God, I knew it.” Biddy left Mickey to field questions and returned to the TV, shaken.
During The March of the Wooden Soldiers Dom came back, and moved through the dining room faster than the family’s questions seemed to allow. He came into the den and fell heavily into the chair beside Biddy.
Michael followed, asking if he was sure he couldn’t get him anything. Dom was sure. Michael hesitated, and left.
“How’s Louis?” Biddy said.
“Fine. Toothless Joe.”
A headache commercial came on. It was an animation of a head with electric bolts throbbing through it. They watched in silence.
“Is that what you got your thing for?” Biddy asked quietly. “The things they did with your head?”
Dom gazed at the screen. “What?” He rubbed his eyes. “The encephalogram?” He seemed exhausted, sad. “No, that was for epilepsy. That was a test for epilepsy.”
“Why’d they test you for that?”
“I don’t know. Why do they test you for anything? They were short of cash. I was thrashing around in my sleep, Ginnie couldn’t wake me up. I had something in the Navy and they thought there might have been brain damage.”
“Brain damage?” Biddy’s eyes widened.
He changed the channel. “They don’t know. What difference does it make anyhow?”
“Don’t talk like that,” Biddy said, more moved than he wanted to be. “Do you still take pills for it or anything?”
“I’m at that stage now where it doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s almost the end of the line.”
“No, it isn’t.” He detested and feared adults when they spoke like this.
“It isn’t?” He snorted. “Everything’s coming down around my ears. The job, the wife, now this. You know what you do in my position? Take a guess. What do you do when it’s fourth and forty-one? Punt.” He sat back and ran his palm across the back of his neck. “And sure as shit if I did it’d be blocked.”
That night although they got back late he went right out with Teddy’s rifle, allowing only the barest minimum of elapsed time for his parents to fall asleep before creeping down the stairs and out the front door. He carried the ladder silently around to the back of the garage himself, teetering under its awkward weight, and set it against the side of the building, where it promptly sideslipped and slid off the roof onto the patio with a terrifying crash. He ducked behind the garage, throwing the rifle a few yards away in a hedge, and waited. The garage light went on. He crouched, wondering what to do, what to say. The light went out. Finally he eased out of his crouch and retrieved the rifle from the hedge. He brought the ladder back around and, after a second thought, left it on the floor of the garage to account for the crash, then hurried down the driveway and into the house.
The door swung away from him and his father grabbed his arm in the dark. “What the hell are you doing out there?” he whispered. The lights came on. His mother and father flanked him. His mother’s eyes widened at the gun. “What are you doing with this?” she said, voice rising. He didn’t answer and she shook him, his neck snapping back. He started to cry and they shook him harder, demanding answers, and finally led him up to his room. They stalked back and forth past his bed and he insisted the gun was Teddy’s and he wasn’t shooting at anyone. His mother finally threw up her hands and left, taking much of the noise downstairs with her. He lay quiet, his neck hurting.