Free Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas Page A

run.

4
    My father had always been a lousy listener; then he started going deaf—just after his first heart attack. It had been mild enough that he’d been able to call a cab to take him to the emergency room. And during his convalescence he’d been torn between dismissing the gravity of his condition and milking it for every drop of sympathy he could get.
    He’s always been an odd man. He’s never seemed to possess any discernible rage, only a kind of jazzy melancholy—lighter than the blues. Not daunting or dark: good lounge conversation—his troubles, his travels. And he was good in a lounge conversation—even toned, soft yet resonant, aloof, but not cold—with lots of high-end diction and low-end beer. I’ve always thought of him as Bing Crosby’s public persona on half a Percodan—
boo-biddy-doo
—breezing through life. Or Nat King Cole, just a little bit high. And it was because he was so smooth that almost everyone forgave him almost everything: the failed business ventures, the lost jobs, his potbelly and skinny legs, his balding and his absence.
He was gone.
It seemed ridiculous for anyone, his family, my mother, me, to attempt to retrieve him for punishment or salvation.
    I don’t believe he ever considered himself gone. I shouldn’t be too hard on him. I try never to be. He was lying in bed in the ICU of the Boston VA.
    â€œHow are you doing?”
    â€œYou know, your grandfather had his first heart attack at forty-one. That’s a lot younger than me.”
    â€œYeah. How are you doing?”
    â€œHe lived another thirty years. You never met him.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œHe was the first pharmacist of his kind to practice in the city. Kenmore Drug. You know, he came up from the Carolinas with nothing. I don’t think he was even a teen.”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œThey let him practice in the basement. He swept up upstairs.”
    My father had torn up his knee as a high school halfback. He used to say that it cost him his free ride to Harvard but kept him out of Korea. When I was small, we’d play on the sidewalk in front of the old house. He’d call a play, break the huddle with a soft clap, and limp up to the ball, surveying the imagined defense. He’d hike it to himself and hand it off to me. After my run he’d watch me, a bit dreamily, jog back to him.
“You really can hit the hole,”
he’d say, taking the big ball back.
    He must have sensed me regarding his scar, ashes, and bumpy, hairless follicles because he pulled at the hem of his johnny. It wasn’t long enough to cover, so I looked away.
    â€œI’d go meet him at the store. The girl at the counter would give me a hard candy then send me down. He’d be gathering the filled prescriptions to bring upstairs. Your grandfather was very exacting.”
    He scratched his stubble. His face, pockmarked from ingrown hairs, rasped like a zydeco washboard.
    â€œHe hit me once.”
    He sucked on his loose teeth.
    â€œWe were just sitting down to dinner. I couldn’t have been much older than eight.”
    He extended his right index finger into the air above his chest and pushed at something he saw.
    â€œThe doorbell rang. My father got up to answer it. From where I sat I could see that a policeman was at the door. My father called for me. There was another man on the porch, too. The man looked at me, turned to the policeman, and shook his head. My father told me to go sit down. I did. When he finished, he came in, sat, and said grace. I was just about to pick up my fork when all of a sudden I was on thefloor. My cheek was numb. He was staring at me—cold.
“Get up,”
he said, really quiet. I got back in my chair. We ate dinner like nothing happened.
    He inhaled thinly.
    â€œI haven’t had a cigarette in three days.”
    â€œThat’s good. You shouldn’t