War and Watermelon

I sat around for the rest of the weekend and listened to the radio. Tony stopped by on Sunday, but I didn’t leave the house. No motivation.

I just went through the motions at practice today, but nobody noticed. The coaches spent most of the time installing new plays—an end around reverse, a screen pass. I sat and watched. Maybe I should quit before the games start.

If there’s any good news, it’s that the Mets have won nine out of ten. But there isn’t any good news as far as I’m concerned. Not after that fumble on Saturday.

I woke up at three in the morning that night, sweating after dreaming that I was carrying a watermelon across the Sea of Tranquility, running as fast as I could as the rain poured down and lightning struck. I dropped the melon and kicked it as I tried to pick it up, and it rolled down a grassy hill faster than I could ever run in my life. When I turned back I was naked and sixty thousand people in football uniforms were calling me Sue and yelling at me to get off the football field. Forever.

Then the people in football uniforms turned into Vietcong, and I watched helplessly as Ryan got gunned down, right in front of the stage and Arlo Guthrie.

Here’s my new top five songs:

• “Get Together” (The Youngbloods)

• “Jean” (Oliver)

• “This Girl Is a Woman Now” (Gary Puckett & The Union Gap)

• “Sweet Caroline” (Neil Diamond)

• “Tracy” (I don’t know who sings it; it’s new.)

The bottom three:

• “Little Woman” (Bobby Sherman)

• “Sugar, Sugar” (The Archies)

• “The Train” (1910 Fruitgum Company)

I hear Ryan coming home from Shop-Rite. My parents went to bed an hour ago, so there shouldn’t be any arguing tonight. I pull on some shorts and walk downstairs.

“What’s happening, brother?” he says. He’s got the refrigerator open and is fishing around for something to eat. He takes out a plate of roast beef from Sunday covered in foil, sniffs it, and puts it back. He opens the freezer and pulls out a Fudgsicle. “Want one?”

He sits on the couch in the family room, and I take the love seat. We leave the light on in the kitchen but leave the family room dark.

He sighs loudly, then takes a bite out of the fudge bar. “Tonight was a drag,” he says. “And why am I eating ice cream? I spent the past eight hours going in and out of a walk-in freezer. I practically have frostbite.”

My fudge bar starts to drip, so I put about half of it in my mouth and run to get a napkin. I bring him one, too.

I’ve got that new song going through my head, and I’ve only heard it twice. Tracy . . . da da da da. Hmm. It’s catchy.

We’re quiet for several minutes. I can’t remember any more words, but the few that I do keep running over and over in my mind.

Ryan is a great dancer, or at least an energetic one. A few years ago he stayed home from school one day because he was sick or something. And when I got home at lunchtime, he was dancing in the family room to an Elvis record, jumping up and down and swinging his arms and his head.

The house behind our yard has a sloping driveway, and you can see straight across to it from the big picture windows in our family room. So I looked over there, and about eight kids—Jerry Ashenberg, Ramon Hernandez, at least two of the Foleys—were in the driveway laughing and pointing, probably more amazed than anything. Ryan waved and kept dancing. He didn’t care.

I hear some thunder. That’s the pattern lately: hot all day, threats of rain late at night. Ryan wraps his ice-cream stick in the napkin and lies back, hanging his feet over the end of the couch.

I don’t know how much to ask him. He’s always been the one I go to with problems, way more than I’d go to Mom or Dad. I know he’s troubled, but how much could I help him?

“I mean, I want to go to college,” he says, “but eventually. Not because somebody almost literally has a gun to my head. If they’d end the frickin’ war, this wouldn’t be an issue. You know?”

“I mean, that’s some hell of a choice—go study economics or basket-weaving for four years, or get your head blown off in Southeast Asia. Nice priorities.”

“It’s not even like we have a right to be there,” he says. “Frickin’ Nixon. Frickin’ war mongrel.”

That’s the last thing we say for a while. I stare at the ceiling for five minutes. There’s more thunder and I can see a few streaks of lightning off in the distance. I shut my eyes.

I should go upstairs. Turn on the radio and see if they’ll play that “Tracy” song again so I can get some of the lyrics down. Four words is all I’ve got.

“See, you have to think for yourself,” Ryan says. “This ‘my country, right or wrong’ crap doesn’t make us better; it makes us stupid.”

It sounds like he’s talking out loud to himself, but that isn’t like him. I guess he’s talking to both of us, testing out his theories. “Don’t follow the flock if they’re leading you over a cliff,” he says.

“I hear you.” I have no idea what it’d be like to face the end of what I know. To get shipped halfway across the world and put myself in the direct path of somebody’s gun—a lot of people’s guns and bombs and grenades.

Ryan nods off on the couch, and I just watch him snore. He’s fidgety in his sleep, and I don’t remember him ever being like that. We always used to sleep like babies here, safe in this house and in this town. I never even thought about being in danger before. I doubt he did either, at least not before this year. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a month.

I won’t quit football. How could I wimp out of something like that when I compare it to what Ryan’s facing?

And that dance, too. I’m going. I’ve been thinking about Patty, even though I try not to. Not about making out with her or showing off by walking along the Boulevard with her; just about that hint of a smile she shows me sometimes. Just that possibility that she likes me. I think she’s just shy.

I could see it happening. We’re at the dance and she tells me she’s had a crush on me all summer. That she’s so excited to finally be alone with me.

Urgent that I make something happen. Not with her, specifically, or on the football field or whatever. Just something. Something big.

Because you never know when it’ll be too late. When you might eat your last hot dog, or get sent to Vietnam, or wake up and find out you’re dead.