Pain Management

eyebrows, he went on, “That was before your time, of course. But you could look it up. Hell, I played against Vince Lombardi; that was the caliber of the opposition back then.”

“The game’s changed since—”

“Changed? It’s not the same game, son. We didn’t play with all those pads. And the helmets we had, they wouldn’t turn a good slap. You played both ways then, offense and defense. None of this ‘special teams’ crap, either.”

“And no steroids,” Ann put in.

“That’s right, gal,” he said, smiling approvingly. “Annie knows more about the game than ninety-nine percent of the wannabe faggots who lose the rent money every week.”

“People bet their emotions,” I told him, on more familiar ground now.

“They do; that’s a fact,” the old man said. “Especially with pro ball. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. What’s the point betting on men who don’t give a damn themselves?”

“You mean the big salaries?”

“I mean the guaranteed salaries. When I played pro, it was a pretty harsh deal. Fifty bucks if you won. And five if you lost.”

“Was that a lot of—?”

“In 1936? That was still the shadow of the Depression. Fifty bucks, that was more than most men could hope to make in a month, and you could earn it in a couple of hard hours.”

“Who’d you play for?”

“Ah, teams you wouldn’t recognize. Not the big leagues. My dad did that,” he said proudly. “He played for the Canton Bulldogs, before the NFL. With me, it was all semi-pro. I was just a kid then. I did time with the City Island Skippers. . . . You know where City Island is?”

“Sure. In The Bronx.”

“Ah! You from the City?”

“Born and raised.”

“Good! Best place in the world . . . if you’re young and strong.”

“Doesn’t hurt to be rich and white, either.”

“That doesn’t hurt anywhere, son. I played with the Paterson Panthers, too. Same time as I was playing college ball. Way it worked, you played college on Saturdays, pro on Sundays.”

“Did the coaches know about it?”

His laugh was deep and harsh. “Know about it? Who the hell do you think took us to the games on Sunday? And got paid to do it?”

“I thought they were insane-strict with amateurs back then.”

“Yeah, if your name was Jim Thorpe, the racist hypocrites. The same ones who wouldn’t let Marty Glickman run in the Olympics, mark my words. Nah, they all knew. And they all looked the other way.”

“Did you play pro ball after college?”

“Never finished college,” he said, pride and sadness mixed in his voice. “Once that piece of shit Hitler made his move, well, I was bound and determined to make mine.”

“Pop was a war hero,” Ann said, standing next to him, hand on his soldier, as if daring me to dispute it.

“Shut up, gal,” he said, grinning. “I wasn’t a hero, son. Got a few medals, but they gave those out like cigarettes to bar girls, if you were in on any of the big ones. I started at Normandy and made it all the way up with my unit—what was left of it by then. But I’ll tell you this: wasn’t for guys like me, guys your age, you’d be in a slave-labor camp or gassed by now. You’re a Gypsy, right?”

“Right,” I said. No point in telling this fiercely proud old man that I didn’t have a clue as to what I was. And even less pride in it.

He had small eyes, light blue, set deep into a broad face. I watched his eyes watching me. “You were a soldier yourself, weren’t you?” he asked.

“Not me.”

“You’ve got the look. Maybe you were one of those mercenaries . . . ?”

“I was in Africa. During a war. But I wasn’t serving—”

“I don’t hold with that,” he said, plenty of power still in his barrel chest. “When I went in, I could speak a little high-school French. So they put me in charge of a Senegalese gun crew. Bravest fighting men I ever saw in my life. Didn’t have much use for the damn mortars, I’ll tell you that. Couldn’t wait to get nose-to-nose with the krauts. One volley, and they pulled those big damn knives and charged. I don’t hold with a white man killing people who aren’t bothering him. Far as I’m concerned, Custer got what he fucking deserved.”

“Pop . . .” Ann said, putting a hand on his arm.

“Ah, she’s always worried about my blood pressure, aren’t you, gal?”

“I just don’t want you to get all excited over nothing. B.B. wasn’t a mercenary, that’s all he was trying to tell you.”

“B.B.?” he asked me.

“That’s what it says on the birth certificate,” I told him, truthfully.

The old man sat in silence for a minute. Then he turned to Ann and looked a silent question at her, his glance including me in a way I didn’t understand.

“We’re going to do it, Pop,” she told him, her eyes shining.

The old man took a deep breath. “I watched her go,” he said, his once-concrete body shuddering at the memory. “That fucking Fentanyl patch, that was supposed to take all her pain. Well, it didn’t. And my wife, she was the strongest woman—the strongest person—I ever knew. She wasn’t afraid of a thing on this earth. All she ever cared about, right down to the end, was what was going to happen to me after she was gone. She was . . . she was screaming, and they wouldn’t give her any more medication, the slimy little . . . I got my hands on one of them once. Shook him like a goddamned rag doll until his eyeballs clicked. So they gave me a shot. Told me I was lucky they didn’t put me in jail. Watching Sherry like she was, I thought my heart was going to snap right in my chest. And then Annie came. With the right stuff. And when my Sherry went out, she went with a smile on her face. You understand what I’m telling you, son?”

“Yes.”

“I hope you do. I hope you’re not fooled by this damn cane I have to use to get around with now. Whatever my little Annie wants, she’s got, long as I’m alive. And when I’m gone, she gets—”

“Shut up, Pop,” Ann said, punching him on the arm hard enough to make a lesser man wince.

The old man just chuckled. “You sure I can’t come along?”

“No, Pop. But you’re in the plan, I promise.”

“Honey, think about it, all right? I can drive. I can pull a trigger. Maybe not like I could, but good enough. What difference would jail make to me now? Be about the same as here, way I see it. They’d have a TV there, I could watch the games. You’d still come and visit. Food’s food. And ever since my Sherry left, I don’t care nothing about . . .”

“Jail’s not like that,” I told him. “Not anymore.” Gently, so he’d know I wasn’t being disrespectful.

He gave me a long, hard look. Nodded. “I see Sherry every night, before I go to bed,” the old man said softly. “She’s smiling. At peace. I know she’s waiting for me.”

Ann was silent for the first half-hour of the drive back. “You never asked me,” she said, suddenly. “About Pop.”

“What’s to ask?”

“If he’s my real father, or . . .”

“He’s your real father,” I told her. “Biology’s got nothing to do with things like that.”

“You have . . . ?”

“Family, too? Yeah. Back home.”

“You miss them?”

“You going to miss him when he’s gone?”

The mobile home hadn’t been mobile for decades. It lurched on its cracked concrete slab as if held in place by the endless guy-wires running from it to the ground. Maybe it had been painted green, once. Now it