I dare you to watch this and not cry.
It’s about dogs; you know I can’t.
It's happy, though.
I don’t know.
They find forever homes.
Forever is a long time and fleeting.
I recall a place, a truth so vivid I still smell the disinfectant and urine. My nostrils have never recovered. Freshly baked bread cannot ascend beyond the rot. This tale is nostalgic, magical, and bittersweet, as sumptuous and decadent as ice cream scooped for a plump boy in a woodsy Brattleboro candy shop. His name is Erasmus, and he’s about ten, dressed in horizontal purple and green stripes (why do that to him?) and denim shorts with fringe. He points and grins. He desires two scoops—rocky road, chocolate mocha, and hot fudge, with whipped cream and gritty rainbow sprinkles. Don’t forget the bleeding cherry. The combination gives me the jitters, and my nerves sizzle. I drive through escaping streets, and the words of my delirious hostage, my Uncle Raz, pop off, a shimmering sparkler spitting fading fire on his final Fourth of July. He angles his rippling face nearly half-mast out the open window, as a dog might. He howls, then coughs so hard the wheel all but jerks from my hands, then he howls again.
Ten and two, boy, steady on! Faster! I’ve never gripped anything firmer in my life than that steering wheel, and I thump the gas. We left his slippers behind, and his ass hung out the back of his billowing gown as we made our getaway. May his road be straight and smooth for a few hours more. That is my wish.
Only one scoop, honey, his Mom gently reminds him. Uncle Raz’s father sits in the car. He's trying to get the Red Sox on the radio and finally dials them in. Summer is winding down; a faltering starting pitcher, three hundred innings in. It’s way past the dog days, but the obstinate humidity clings, and everyone’s shirt sticks to their spine. Inside the car, chain-smoke from twenty Chesterfield’s hangs, a misty, moist, and acrid curveball, a swan song for Summer—and with one great swing, it's gone. And so are the Bosox. Fuck, fuck, fucking Luis Tiant. And the damn the Bambino. Fuck him, too. We’re cursed. The car horn blares irately, rat-a-tat-tat, a sixty-caliber machine gun glinting in the low and dense sun. My Uncle Raz and his Mom obediently scurry to the idling Olds, ice cream dripping from his chin. He licks his sticky fingers. She keeps her hands, sheathed in white gloves, folded in her lap. The radio plays dead the rest of the way home.
Who is Luis Tiant? I don’t get it.
How do I explain El Tiante’s wind-up to someone who never marinated in baseball's geometry and slow-moving poetry—who grew up in Mexico watching dusty kids kick dustier soccer balls into tattered nets? I drift off and daydream about acres of lush green grass, cut to a crew-cut and gleaming white bases, and reply (perhaps too irritably): Never turn your back to home plate. That’s who Luis fucking Tiant is, and that's the moral of this story.
Sixty-feet-six inches is a short-lived lifetime when life relentlessly swings a 37-ounce piece of white pine at your best stuff. Toe the rubber all you want, wave off the catcher, tug your jersey, and straighten your cap; it doesn’t matter because you’re fucked—that screaming line drive beats your glove hand every time. The bat boy will gather your teeth while you enjoy the ride to the hospital.
The last home my Uncle knew was his forever home. Slack-shouldered orderlies mop the floors with piercing bleach, and they still cannot scrub the stench of looming death out of the linoleum. The scorching odor drips from the fluorescent lights, and the air flickers as the shine is rubbed from the roaming, suffocating eyes. The hallway is soaked in finality, and it eats them up, the rolling caravan of crippled beetles, the half-men who use their only good foot to propel themselves, a wheelchair their carriage in this heartbreaking fairy tale. There must have been a flash sale on the lousiest hue of beige paint imaginable, I mutter to myself as I approach my Uncle’s room. Pausing at the door, I hear a plea, a flatline response, and a dead-end conversation.
I want to go home.
This is home now.
I want to go home.
This is home now.
I want to go home.
This is home now.
Sonofabitch.
My Uncle is in no shape to receive company. I enter his room and can't take my eyes off the bedpan. It's glorious outside, and the dusty blinds are clammed up. His TV is on the fritz and a tray of half-eaten food, also colorless, gathers flies. He smiles when he sees me.
Hi, boy. They’re out of ice today, again. I’m sorry I can’t offer you much. Pull up a chair, so I can see you better. I was just thinking about ice cream and baseball. Funny that. My mind wanders a bit now, you know. His voice is weak, but he's in there, the same sturdy man that bought drinks at the Pine Grove Tavern after the work whistle ebbed. He is the same man who marched with the American Legion down Main Street every Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day. I was a tubby kid, but the Marines took care of that, and I hold his hand and recall flinching during the twenty-one-gun salute so many summers ago. Ooh rah.
Ooh rah, indeed, Uncle Raz.
Sir, are you staying or going? I stand with my foot in the automatic sliding door. I can see my car in the parking lot. The door opens, closes, opens, and closes. This is forever, I think. It rattles in my head. I turn and face the squatting receptionist. Both.
I spirited Uncle Raz out the back door of that death house—no one will miss him, invisible as he has become under their watchful eyes. And we find a quiet spot and eat ice cream—right out of the tub. We sit on the greenest grass under the bluest skies.
Did I ever tell you about Luis Tiant? We used to call him El Tiante. He was Cuban and smoked these huge cigars. Had this weird wind-up. My Dad hated him. I never told you about Tiant?
No, Uncle Raz, I don’t think so. He has. Many times.
Tell me now. We have all the time in the world.