Like Grownups Do (5 page)

As the last of the crowd made their way to their vehicles, Jack stepped beside Babe and put an arm around his shoulder.

“We don’t have to say anything right now. Let’s just breathe for a minute,” Jack said.

They stood that way for about a minute in front of the headstone that waited to be put in place by the cemetery staff.

“Babe, I couldn’t be prouder or more pleased that my little girl brought you into our family. I love you, son.” Jack said.

“I love you too, Jack. You’re the best.”

“Are you going to need a ride?” Jack asked.

“No, thank you. I’m riding with Dad. That’s his motor home parked by the next pavilion.”

“I just saw him a few minutes ago. That has to be the biggest motor home I’ve ever seen.”

“No, no. The giant one belongs to his brother, Zach. He came in yesterday from Kansas City. Dad’s is half that size. He’s probably getting the grand tour of Zach’s bus and leaving a trail of drool through it.”

“Are you going to keep the house?” asked Jack.

“I’ve thought about it. I don’t know if I can give it up. When I think about her, it’s in that house— or out in the yard in that goofy hat; digging in the…”

Babe had no end for this sentence.

“I understand, son. I just want you to know that you always have a place to stay for as long as you like, no matter what you decide to do. That’s all. There’s no hurry.”

“Thanks, Jack. She only asked me for one thing.”

“What was that?”

“She asked me to stay with you. But she didn’t really need to ask,” Babe said.

“I’m very glad to hear that,” Jack said.

“I’m not sure when I’ll be going into the office. We’ll talk about all that soon enough. Goodbye, son.”

“Bye, Jack.”

The drizzle of a dark New England afternoon had settled into a mist. Babe stood alone with his hands shoved into his pockets as he watched the people leave. The door to his Uncle Zach’s motor home stood open. Robbie was visiting with his older brother until Babe was ready to leave.

The slow swish of wet leaves was overpowered by a rustling in a clump of bushes. Three dogs burst through and ran straight toward Babe. He jumped and started backpedaling but the dogs were as frightened as he was. They turned and ran the opposite direction.

Jesus,
Babe thought
. They have to be wild as hell.
This cemetery is at least three miles from any homes.

They were an unlikely group. The two big dogs were all black with thick, bristled hair. The small dog looked like a yellow Labrador puppy, though he was so filthy and matted that it was hard to tell. His over-sized ears and feet looked even more out of proportion because of his malnourished state. His ribs were visible and his belly was distended.

Babe whistled twice, which was an unconscious decision. The two big dogs never broke stride in their retreat. The puppy stopped. He turned and ran a few steps after the big dogs and then stopped again. He stood, wagging his tail. Babe whistled again. The puppy crept a few paces toward him.

“You may as well come over here, pup. I have enough food to fix that empty belly many times over, and it doesn’t look like your buddies have waited for you,” Babe said.

The puppy continued to creep toward Babe, his hunger overriding his fear. Babe had heard plenty of stories about Labrador retriever owners. They bought the dogs because they were adorable puppies, good with kids, and about the friendliest of breeds. The down-side was the behavior that most people refused to tolerate for long. Lab puppies tend to tear shit up.

When the pup got within a few feet of him, Babe turned and walked slowly toward where the motor homes were parked. He stopped and told the puppy to “sit”. The puppy sat.

“Huh,” Babe said.

Babe arrived at the door of his uncle’s motor home. He looked back and saw that the puppy was still seated. The puppy panted easily and turned his head side to side as if he had placed his order at a sidewalk cafe and was now engaged in people watching. Babe turned around and knocked twice on the open door. He stuck his head inside.

“Hey, Dad?”

Robbie walked to the door.

“Are you all right, son? Are you ready to go?”

“I’m okay, dad. Say, listen, do you mind if I take a few more minutes?” Babe asked.

“You take all the time you want, Joshua. Zach and I can visit for days if we need to,” Robbie said.

“Great. Hey, is your motor home unlocked? I want to get some food out of there,” Babe asked.

“Yeah, it’s unlocked. But we have some things heated up right here,” Robbie said.

“I want to get some meat for my little buddy over there.”

Babe turned to point in the direction of the puppy.

Robbie leaned out the door, squinting.

“Where did he come from? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“He must have been dumped here. He’s just a puppy,” Babe said.

“Are you going to keep him?”

“I…I was just— I don’t—”

Babe heaved a sigh.

That’s thinking ahead, huh? You could have left a big ole plate of food here, and the three of them would have eaten like kings tonight. But now that you have the little guy trusting you, you’re going to….what? LEAVE HIM—to starve? To DIE?

Wow. I have become a dog owner
.
A decision made by…..the dog?
Babe thought
.

I have a Master’s degree in psychology that says that I am trained to assist my fellow man in matters of the mind. What would ‘fellow man’ say if he could see the gears grinding inside of my head right now? Is that ironic? I’m not sure. I can never remember the definition of irony
.

“I guess I’ll have to take him home. I don’t know what else to do.” Babe said. “I’ll empty one of those big plastic containers for him to ride in. He’s absolutely filthy and I’m sure that he smells like the inside of a camel.

“Why don’t we have Zach load as much of that food as he can carry? We’ll never make a dent in all of that and he has those two steam shovels at home to feed.”

”Sure,” Robbie said.

Babe arrived at the door of his father’s motor home and met Zach walking from the opposite direction.

“Hey, Uncle Zach. You’re not looking for Dad are you?”

“No, no, no. I’m just coming back from, uh, well, are you familiar with the ten commandments of RVs?’

Babe laughed.

“Oh yeah, Dad taught me. Rule Number One: No Number Two in the RV.”

Zach joined Babe in the laugh and then the big man clapped a huge hand on Babe’s shoulder.

“God, I’m so sorry, Josh. That girl of yours was such a sweetheart. You remember at the reunion a few years ago when my two knuckleheads wouldn’t leave her alone until she agreed to pitch to them? They couldn’t stand hearing about ‘the girl pitcher’. Man, am I glad I got that on the camcorder. You remember? She struck them both out three times in front of God and
EVERYBODY.
They got redder and redder like they were about to
EXPLODE.
Then she chased them both down and kissed them until they couldn’t stop laughing. That was the
funniest
thing I’ve ever seen. Hell, I’ve played that tape so many times that I backed it up on a CD and I keep a half-dozen copies in my safe. Yes, sir. Those boys are getting so much attention from recruiters right now that if they even
look
like they’re getting the big head, I go get a CD and wave it at them.”

“The recruiters are for football, right?” Babe asked. “Dad showed me some of the newspapers. Little Phillip and Little Brandon—setting the world on fire. Sophomore and junior now, right?“

“That’s right. They both play offense and defense but they’re getting most of the attention for playing offensive line. The other teams quit even trying to put their best players up against them because they just end up on their butts. The quarterback of this team, who incidentally has not come close to being sacked for two full seasons, is about to smash every state record there is for a quarterback, and the recruiters are
drooling
. And my boys protect his blind side. Get this, Josh.”

Zach made an exaggerated show of looking left and right.

“That monstrosity I’m driving? Guess whose father owns that dealership?”

Babe laughed.

“You’re kidding, Uncle Zach.”

“Now, I bought it, fair and square and legal—cross my heart and all that. I’m just saying there was nothing competitive about the price. So are you and Robbie ready to leave?”

“Not quite yet. I was about to get some meat for my new little buddy.”

“Well would you look at that,” Zach said. “Just a pup. Somebody dumped him out here?”

“Looks that way,” Babe said.

“He was running away and for some reason I whistled at him. Now I’m stuck with him.”

“I don’t believe in coincidence, Josh; might be a good thing for you, right now.”

“Maybe. Say Uncle Zach, why don’t you take some of this food with you? It would be a shame for it to go to waste. Dad and I won’t be able to eat all of this.”

“Now that I can help you with.”

Babe filled a paper plate with chicken and ham. The puppy ate like, well, like a starved puppy. He stopped eating with a few pieces of meat left on the plate and waddled to the edge of the bushes. He stared in the direction that the two big dogs had run away as if to let them know that he was saving them a portion. He gave up within a few seconds.

Babe got down on one knee and tried to coax the puppy to come to him. The puppy took a couple of steps toward him and stopped.

“I guess I have to give you a name, don’t I, Joe?”

Babe had kept his emotions in check all day. He had known for years that Jill was dying. And though his heart was broken because she was finally gone, he felt the need to hold it together; for Jack—because Jack had lost twice.

But Babe had just given away the name of his unborn son—the son that he would not have. He choked back a sob now but would not allow himself another. He had to be strong.

But he also had lost. Twice.

Heaven Can Wait was the 1978 film starring Warren Beatty as Joe Pendleton, a backup quarterback with the Los Angeles Rams. Joe finds himself at an afterlife way station when he is plucked prematurely from the scene of an accident— his death appearing inevitable to the angel in charge. However, heaven’s records show that Joe would have escaped the accident and lived another fifty years. What followed was the quest to return Joe to another body, since his body had been cremated by the time the mistake was discovered.

Babe had watched the movie over a dozen times and had every scene and almost every word of dialog memorized.

The movie was also Jack’s favorite. It was the movie that Jack and Jill watched together several times—the movie that provided a continual running joke between the three of them. It was the movie that provided Babe with the name that he reserved for his first born son.

The puppy looked at Babe and cocked his head to the side.

“Are you ready to go home, Joe Pendleton?”

The puppy sprang at Babe and knocked him from his one knee stance firmly onto his butt cheeks in a puddle of mud.

Babe sucked air and winced at the cold water, but amid the enormous tongue lapping at his face and the touch of the warm body that he needed more than he had known, he smiled.

The pup finished his licking and pressed the top of his head into Babe’s neck. He turned himself to sit in Babe’s lap like a toddler. They looked ahead, almost at eye level with the headstone.

“She would have loved you, Joe. And you would have loved her, too. Everybody did. I guess heaven couldn’t wait.”

Babe held the pup’s front paws in his hands. He used his right hand to make the puppy wave.

“Goodbye, honey. Save us a place.”

He looked down.

“Mister Pendleton, Sir, the two of us could use a bath.”

Six

B
abe spoke with his neighbors about having his father’s RV parked in his driveway over the weekend. No one voiced a complaint. Of course, they all knew the situation and most had known the “friendly, pale, skinny girl in the big sun hat that didn’t look well”. They were good neighbors and were not about to buy themselves an express ticket to hell by complaining.

Much of the neighborhood spent an unusual amount of time outside over the weekend—keeping an eye on the motor home as if they had never seen one before. Robbie would be moving to a nearby campground by sunrise on Monday. Babe knew that the ladies that headed up their Homeowners Association would be on the prowl Monday morning, and they had a reputation for being ruthless—like a ‘nuns with rulers in both hands’ kind of ruthless.

It was rare for Robbie to stay overnight anywhere other than his motor home. The motor home was, in fact, the only home that he owned. Not that he was in financial need of any kind. On the contrary, after suffering for a few years with a pinched nerve in his lower back obtained in an accident in a patrol car, he had a bed installed in the motor home at a cost of over ten thousand dollars. It was more fully adjustable than any bed on the market, and as Babe loved to say, “That mattress is filled with the pubic hair of angels”. He laid on it one time for twenty seconds and jumped off, saying that he was in danger of losing the ability to sleep on a bed made for mere mortals.