Free Onward Toward What We're Going Toward by Ryan Bartelmay Page B

attention as his mind drifted to an image of Lijy sitting in front of a mirror brushing her hair. Lomax started to cry, and Diane yelled from the kitchen to see
if everything was all right. Chic didn’t hear her because he was thinking about Lijy and didn’t hear his son pretty much wailing bloody murder. Finally, Diane stormed into the living room and yelled, “Chic Waldbeeser!” She put the dish towel she was holding over her shoulder and scooped up Lomax and nuzzled him close to her chest and whispered baby talk into his ear. Chic felt so guilty that it was hard for him to breathe. He told Diane that he didn’t know how to get Lomax to stop crying, didn’t know the tricks she knew, and asked her to help him become a better father. Diane eyed him suspiciously, and Chic knew she wasn’t buying it, so he told her that some of the guys at the cannery had talked about how unfair it was that women automatically knew how to take care of babies and men had to be taught. Diane cracked the slightest smile and told Chic to sit down on the sofa. She gently handed him Lomax and showed him how to cradle the baby close to his chest. As Chic held his son, Lomax looked up at him, and his wide eyes were so vulnerable that Chic could feel his heart melting. At that moment, he made a silent vow to put Lijy on a shelf in the back of his mind and never, ever, ever, ever think of her again.
    However, one Sunday afternoon while Diane and Lomax were at church with Diane’s parents, Chic found himself in his car across the street from his brother’s house. He had his binoculars trained on the living room window, and through the part in the drapes, he could see Lijy sitting on the sofa, sipping a mug of tea and probably listening to that Duke Ellington song. The binoculars magnified her so that it looked like she was right there, right outside the window of his car, close enough that he could reach out and touch the smoothness of her cheek, the softness of her black hair. He kept the binoculars focused on the window while he undid his fly and worked his penis out. He was concentrating so hard on what he was doing that he didn’t hear the police car pull up behind him, didn’t hear the sheriff, Larry Hewitt, get out of the police car and walk up to the driver’s side door.
Lucky for Chic, Sheriff Hewitt saw only the binoculars, which Chic dropped to the floor of the car when the sheriff screamed, “Waldbeeser!”
    Chic reached down and grabbed the binoculars, setting them on his lap to cover his open fly.
    â€œIsn’t that your brother’s house?” Sheriff Hewitt asked.
    â€œMy brother asked me to . . . ah . . . keep an eye on his house. He’s out of town.”
    â€œUh-huh.” Sheriff Hewitt stared at Chic, a hard glare, piercing. He was holding his nightstick in front of him like he was about ready to whack something. “Are you sure you weren’t peeping in the window at your brother’s wife? The foreign woman.”
    â€œWhat? No. I wasn’t . . . not at all.”
    Sheriff Hewitt nodded. “I’ll let you go about your business this time. But don’t think I’m not going to remember this, Waldbeeser.”
    In his rearview mirror, Chic watched Sheriff Hewitt walk back to his police car. He quickly zipped his fly. As Sheriff Hewitt slowly drove by, he pointed to his eyes with his index and middle fingers to show Chic that he’d be watching him. Then he took a left at the corner and was gone.
    Chic was shaking. Before he started the car, he suddenly remembered a time when he was seven. He and Buddy were upstairs playing sock ball, a game played with a wadded-up pair of socks. The point of the game was to hit the other person with the wadded up pair of socks. The wrinkle was the person without the sock ball was allowed to hide anywhere in the house, and the person with the sock ball had to count to ten before starting his search. On this