The Rear View Mirror As his decrepit 1979 Chevrolet truck creaked toward the 56th street bridge intersection, Davey Braughton frantically pressed on the gas petal, oblivious to his car's inability to go beyond a snail's pace. Submerged in the thick fog of carbon emissions, alcohol, baking soda and butane that engrossed his car, he went across three lanes, almost caused two accidents and nearly drove off the bridge onto I-5 if it wasn't for a sturdy steel frame. His mind had long ago made the Faustian bargain that so many addicts take, in which one trades their own agony, sanity and well being for a faint memory of a glorious high that they had some many years ago. But most important to Davey his beloved chemicals, of which he had been abusing for more that two and a half decades, gave him a peculiar form of personal blindness. Under their twin spells he was still the captain of the Lincoln High School football team, with blond hair still curly and vibrant; not dark, matted and bug infested, with hardened particles of vomit which reached to it's tips. With booze the football uniform he wore nearly everyday was still in it's glorious gleaming black color with gold stripes, without the faded grayish brown tint and nearly toxic funk smell that repulsed anyone within five feet of him. Cocaine gave him his dashing teenage face again, without the blood red bags over his eyes or his green rotting teeth. And somehow both booze and coke, with the help of years of personal self trickery, convinced Davey that he was going to the store and get booze to " paaarty! " just like he did when he was an eighteen year old boy. Driving to the east end Safeway, he missed the parking entrance, went over the pavement sidewalk, ran right over a neatly trimmed underbrush and stopped right next to a pole, knocking off the rear view mirror of a Hyundai Sedan in the process. He fell out of his truck and stumbled toward the front of the store, pretending to do old plays and running patterns, actualizing the times when he fell to the ground in a drunken stupor as tackles on the football field, in which he would gallantly raise himself and play another down in the never ending football game in his head. When he went into the store, the smell that emanated from his body made anyone who came close to it become nauseous. As he was talking to himself, rummaging through the booze line and grumbling about the lack of his beloved Mad Dog, a hand touched his shoulder. " You better go on home, Davey." It was Sherman Green, His former favorite offensive lineman in which he would gain most of his then state record 1,903 yards, running their vaunted student body right. Pragmatic about his chances in football, he took up an apprenticeship under his father, the store's old butcher, and in the span of 27 years since his graduation rose to the position of supervisor for all the Safeway meat departments in Tacoma. He had watched his former teammates struggle from both close and afar, trying to help him several times in the 80's before realizing the futility of his actions. " Go on home Davey, I mean it." " Motherf*cker, I need my beer!!" he responded, pointing his index finger at him. " It's Friday night and you know I gotta have my beer on Friday nights ". " I mean it man, another time, you don't wanna be here tonight." he responded as he trying to escort him out of the door. "F*ck you man, you wanna fight." " No man!" " I said you wanna fight!" " No!" " I'm gonna kick your big a$$." " Lucy's here man! Lucy's here!" he said as he grabbed Davey by the arms and shook him. He didn't need to, for the memory of her name stopped him cold. Lucy Evans was once the lead cheerleader of Lincoln High school and his date for senior prom 1977. By then he was the biggest football star in the city, and was already committed to the University of Washington for the fall season. They had basically lived together over the year they had gone out, since his parents, who had spent their existences in a drunken stupor, made his house torturous and unlivable. Deep down inside he loved Lucy very much but by prom night he had visions of stardom and the excesses with it dancing in his head. That night, he had sweet talked her into sex by offering eternal love, stability, fidelity and other promises that young boys give to young girls in order to get a taste of that 5 word eternal synonym for god. Before dawn of the next day, he had taken his belongings and drove the the UW campus, convinced of his superstardom and that Lucy was a roadblock to it. The year that followed was quite telling for him. Drunk out of his gourd and fresh off of snorting cocaine for the first time, he had fell down the steps of a coed dormitory in the University of Washington and ended up with torn ligaments in both of his legs, ending his football career three weeks before the first game of the season. Brutally underdeveloped for school and without the only asset he had, he ended up dropping out three months later. Back in town, he had spent his days in the basement of his alcoholic parents, breaking into the Lincoln high school gym at night to relive his foot ball glory. The night that he saw Lucy again, he was imagining the turkey day game that he had against Stadium High in where he ran for 271 yards in the rain and sleet. He was crossing the 40 to make the same juke move he had made to a defensive back while running for an 80 yard gain, when he spotted a silhouette of a woman wearing a hoodie and carrying something in her arms. The white stadium lights, so bright in that glorious turkey game, were shut off and the only light you could see came from a brownish street lamp that flickered on and off. He walked toward her with his shoulders out and his head held high. With football in hand, he curled the front of his lip and snarled " What do you want, woman." As soon as he got close he saw what she was carrying was a small child, " The baby's your's Davey" she said. " How do you know?" " You were my first." " I don't believe you." He said as he waved his arms when she tried to show him. But just as he was about to go into a paranoid rant about her chastity, he saw the child's face and how the off colored street light and the rain reflected his nose, eyes, mouth and itsy bitsy cheekbones. He dropped the football and went to hold the child. She was so small, so beautiful, and there was no doubt in his mind that the child was his. Then and there he to make a decision. Maybe I can get a job, he thought. Work hard, provide for my family, make an honest woman out of her and give her and and the child the kind of life I never had. But then he remembered all of his failures: the pain of his parents boozing, the pain of blowing his knees out, the pain of not knowing nothing from nothing, the pain that he just might be nothing but a lousy monster who was destined to be the town drunk just like his daddy and his daddy before. Pain in his heart, pain in his knees, pain in his chest, pain for love, pain for acceptance, pain for a drink across the field. He gave the baby back and started to run away. And he did. Past the goal line to the 20 where he strained his body and mind to go to the same alcoholic gridiron dreamland he had magically inhabited only a few moments before. He could make it, yeah! Beat the odds, heal his legs, come back to the UW, win two football championships, be an all pro and retire a millionaire where he could have of the booze that he wanted. He didn't need to be tied down by some chick, no! Soon he'd be swimming in beautiful broads. Blondes, brunettes and redheads, not some single mother wearing a hoody holding some kid in the rain. to the thirty ...to the 40.... Those knees that had been busted in that dorm room started to cause him excruciating pain as he pressed harder and harder to go forward. Tears welled up in his eyes has he willed his legs to go as fast as they once did, but now couldn't. to the 50... to the 40... the invincible classic student body right in which he had galloped for so many yards with breakneck speed, be it on the field or in his head, was now reduced to a hobble. Here, as the rain transformed into sleet then into hail, he realized that he wasn't a football star anymore. No, he was nothing but a 19 year old kid with no job skills, running in the middle of a darkened field, wearing a jersey that needed to be washed, wreaking of body funk and Jim beam. to the 30...to the 20... In the midst of the hail storm, he turned back. " Lucy .....Lucy!!!!!! LUCY!!!" he screamed amid the noise of minute little white pebbles crashing toward the ground. He told himself that as soon as the storm stopped he would run towards her and beg her back, get a job with Sherman, save enough for a house and envision a happily ever after. But as the storm subsided and the pebbles quickly faded into the ground, he saw that she was gone. To the 10 ...to the 5... He went to get the 12 pack he had next to the goalpost. He passed out around beer number nine, about 3 minutes before the old street light flickered away for the evening. Touchdown. Wavering, stammering and beset by memories, he denied what Sherman said and walked away, muttering barely audible cusswords as he stockpiled liquor in his shopping cart. By the time he made his way to the express lane, he had succeeded in convincing himself that it was all a lie and that he was going to have another wonderful booze and drug filled Friday night. He almost got away with it too, if it wasn't for a child screaming about 6 people behind him in the checkout line. He ignored him the first time, muttered something under his breath the second and turned to make a disgusting comment when she saw Lucy teaching a 20 something woman how to hold her baby in order to keep her from crying. The young woman had his nose, his eyes, his mouth and his cheekbones. The oh so tiny size of the child indicated that she and the mother had only been away from the hospital for a few days. A young man wearing a dress shirt and a cardigan looked over their shoulder with a puzzled expression, as if he was anxious to help in some way and didn't know how. As the mother was giving instruction, the couple looked at her with puppy dog eyes. From their dress one could tell that they were decently well off young professionals, but their looks begat an youthful innocence, a cute and appealing naivete. Pretty soon, a crowd gravitated toward them, and the basic veritous human emotions that they gave off turned a bunch of strangers who were in separate checkout lines into a community of shared experiences. Mothers came to chitchat, give encouragement, compare notes and reminisce about the times that they were young, naive and looked toward their mothers with puppy dog eyes as they gave them advice on how to raise their children. Fathers came to pat the nervous young man in the back and assure him that life with child was going to be nothing short of a picaresque adventure in which the best thing he could do to help was to pay the bills and learn the fine art of the term " Yes Dear". It was all so beautiful, organic and peaceful. And it had nothing to with him whatsoever. No, not even that! It happened in SPITE of him! All of this beauty happened in contrast with and as a intentional response to his ugliness. He got frantic for a moment. He could change, he thought. Oh lord, he could change. He could dig past his debauchery, his own self deception, past his soul that was drowned in alcohol and caked with linings of cocaine. Yes, that's it! On his knees, he would go to them and beg with all the force he had in his soul. Yes! Yes! He'd do anything, scream, yell, even sell his soul to the devil himself, if only to get absolution from them. But as he was going to turn and say something, he looked at the mirror right next to the cashier and viewed himself exactly for who he was. For the first time in a long time he saw that he didn't have curly blond hair, a glorious football uniform and his eighteen year old face. He wasn't a football star but a lush and a junkie waiting for his turn to die. He saw this and thought " No no no no NO!". He had made his bed, he had to lie in it. He had squashed every single solitary chance he ever had and now he was 46 going on 86. He wasn't a vulnerable kid from the Sticks anymore, but a full grown miserable failure. Hot flashes emanated from his body, which was a sign of it telling him that it needed more booze, but to him it felt like the fires of hell. I'm a walking dead man, he thought, and he could see the nightmarish finality of death, where he had to answer for all the choices that he had made. And the only thing that separated him from that was time. Time occupied his mind. Time he blew, time for misery, time for suffering, time for punishment, time...time...time ...time...time. "That will be 89.95 sir" said the cashier.
Copyright © 2003 Brotherman |