When Dad Came Back (3 page)

They rode down the elevator in silence. When the doors opened with a sigh, Gabe was surprised to see a crowd trying to enter. None of the people pushing their way into the elevator seemed happy. One of them had bruises around her eyes—from lack of sleep, he hoped, and not from being slapped around.

His mother drove off in their secondhand Toyota, and Gabe, with time to kick around and a dollar bill his mother had pressed into his hand for a soda, started in the direction of the library. He became immediately uneasy when he saw three homeys eyeing him like vultures. He recognized one of them—Frankie Torres. He used to hang with Frankie at Romain Playground when they were little. They used to play with squirt guns, shooting each other at close range and screaming with joy because the guns were filled with Kool-Aid. Gabe supposed Frankie would be packing something more deadly than a squirt gun now.

Instinct told Gabe to retreat. He turned on the squeaky heels of his athletic shoes and headed back to City Hall. There, in the shadows of two beefy cops posted at the door, he wasted a few minutes of life by standing still, time enough for Frankie and crew to move on.

Then Gabe came out of hiding and hurried off to the library. It was nine fifty, and the glass doors wouldn't open until ten. The morning was cloudless, the flags already hoisted but barely rippling from the slight breeze. Along with others—all homeless people, it seemed—Gabe lurked in the shade of the building. It was not yet midday, and already Gabe was flapping the front of his T-shirt as he struggled to cool himself off. He considered splurging on a soda, but common sense told him to delay the purchase until it was at least noon. He could always drink water from the library fountain.

Then he heard, “Son! Gabe!”

Approaching over the lawn, which was wet from an earlier dousing by the sprinklers, was his dad. He held a hand up to his forehead to shade his eyes. “I'm not your son,” Gabe muttered, backpedaling with short steps. He realized that he wasn't making sense—the man with wet shoes
was
his dad. What was wrong with his dad calling him
son?

His dad closed the distance between them. He was now leaving a trail of wet shoe prints on the cement in front of the library.

“Gabe, please don't be like that.”

“Like what?” Gabe snapped. “Like I don't see you for four years and then you show up as a bum?”

When his dad lowered his face, a tear, an errant drop of water from the sprinkler, or a bead of sweat—Gabe wasn't sure which—splashed onto the pavement. The wet speck spread to the size of a dime and almost immediately began to evaporate in the sun. Gabe regretted his outburst.

“I'm sick,” his dad claimed, with a faint, pitiful whine in his voice. “It's my stomach.” His dad gritted his teeth, deepened his grimace, and pressed a hand against his stomach.

Out of the corner of his eye, Gabe saw a security guard behind the glass doors flip the closed sign to open. He heard the jingle of keys and the lock open with a
clunk-clunk.
The homeless crowd, gray as a pool of pigeons, began to gather at the door. They were hurrying to get on the Internet or locate the choice seats in the magazine alcove. They were thirsty and ready for the drinking fountain.

“You're lying,” Gabe braved, when he returned his attention to his dad. “You just need a bath. That's your problem.”

Gabe's dad said, “See what I have raised—a mean child.”

“You didn't raise anyone!” Gabe snapped. Surprised by his own anger, he spouted, “You don't know me. I bet you don't even know my birthday.”

“Gabe, please.”

“When is it?” Gabe challenged.

“Gabe, come on, give me a chance,” he pleaded.

“You don't even know when your son was born. And you call yourself a father.”

“I know, I know,” he agreed, his hands clasped together, as if in prayer. The long sleeves of his shirt fell back to reveal thin forearms.

They stood in silence, face to face, in the shade of the library. Against his will, Gabe felt himself starting to soften. He wondered where his dad bedded down at night. Was it the Rescue Mission? In the courthouse park, or in an alley in Chinatown? Or maybe he squeezed himself between low-life transients near the freeway, where encampments lined a frontage road?

“I quit drinking, Gabe. I've changed.”

Gabe folded his arms across his chest—he didn't want to hear any of it.

His dad again clasped his hands. “Gabe, I made mistakes.” He was in Alcoholics Anonymous, he said, AA. It wasn't a glamorous group. Some of the men were like him, homeless, and there were women, too. But they were all trying to stay sober.

“Where are you staying?” Gabe asked. Like the polar caps, the ice in his heart had begun to melt. His dad was pathetically dirty—grime filled the lines on his neck. And his shoes? They didn't even match. He could see that his dad needed help. Would it cause too much trouble if he brought him home and let him take a shower? He could fix a sandwich for him and pour him a glass of ice tea.

“Places,” his dad answered, in a near whisper. “They're not pretty.” His praying hands had fallen to his side, where his shirt cuffs hid them—the shirt had belonged to a bigger man.

His dad's cheeks were sunken, his eyes weepy, his skin yellowish, and his hands trembling like leaves. He waved a hand, turned, and began to walk away. Gabe heard him mutter, “Where I'm staying, no one should stay.”

Gabe was uncertain whether his dad was truthful. Was he really sick, deathly sick? Was it cancer, leukemia, or possibly AIDS? The ice around his heart continued to melt with a steady drip. His dad was destitute, with all his worldly possessions in that suitcase he dragged along like a shadow.

Gabe thought of calling him, of saying, “Dad, don't go.” But words failed him.

His dad walked away, shoulders slouched, and Gabe entered the library. He felt jittery. He got a drink of water at the fountain, and found a free computer monitor in the reference room. He looked up “cancer” on the Internet. He read the definition, which didn't say whether you lived or died from it. He looked up AIDS and TB—the photos were frightening.

Remorseful, Gabe left the library, determined to find him. He waited in the shade of the library until his eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight. When he could see again, three men were ambling toward the library, with bundles on their backs. Their faces were gray or yellow or an unnatural orange, and their hands permanently grimy. When one opened his mouth to speak to another, he revealed a toothless cavern. Their collars were starched with filth.

Gabe stepped away from the door to give room to these men who had no beds on which to toss their worn-out bones.

Before Gabe tried to locate his dad, he wanted to tell his mother about their most recent encounter. But she was at work. To kill time until his mother got home, Gabe headed to Romain Playground, using a detour that took him through a dilapidated area where guard dogs flossed their sharp teeth on chain-link fences.

Ever since he was a little kid with scabs on his elbows and knees, Romain Playground had been his second home. There, he climbed the rope of experience. He had had his first fight there, his first kiss on the cheek when he was in second grade, his first injury requiring stitches when he fell off the slide, and his first experience getting robbed. When he was a skinny eight-year-old, two older kids pushed him against the chain-link fence and plunged their hands into his pockets. They pulled out his stash of Tootsie Rolls. They chewed that muddy candy as they pushed him around. Finally, they walked away in search of other little kids to pounce on.

At the playground, he watched the little kids in the pool playing tag. Their screams were pitched higher than an ambulance racing down the street at full throttle.

The action in the pool brought back memories for Gabe. He would have joined the game, except he didn't have any swim trunks. Instead, he played checkers with a little girl genius because no one could beat her—not even adults. With a lollipop in the corner of her mouth, she beat Gabe not once but three times, and made him laugh when she repeated for the last time, “I win again.”

Gabe suddenly felt out of place. Not until late in the afternoon would kids his own age show up at Romain Playground, and then they would sit on top of the picnic tables and talk stuff. His presence among the little kids made him feel as if he was babysitting. In fact, the rec leader, Jamal Reynolds, asked him to hand out four-square balls, jacks, jump ropes, chess and checkers boards, and pitifully dented Ping-pong balls, plus give Band-Aids to any of the little kids who tripped while running or scraped their knees after parachuting from the swings. There was always a daredevil getting hurt.

“I got to see about the diamond,” Jamal said, fitting a baseball cap at an angle on his head. “Back in a sec.”

The rec room was in a small cinder-block building. Metal mesh on the two windows protected the room against break-ins. Gabe stood guard for nearly an hour, then gave up his position when Jamal returned from clamping down the baseball bases, rechalking the lines, picking up litter, and hosing down the field.

“How's things, homeboy?” Jamal asked. He plunged his hand into an ice chest and pulled out two sodas. He handed one to Gabe—an Orange Crush.

Gabe drank long and hard. He let out a burp into his arm. He debated whether to burden Jamal with the cargo of hurt in his heart. Jamal already listened to the worries of some thirty kids that showed up daily, and maybe he had his own personal problems. So Gabe just said, “OK, I guess.” He crushed his empty soda can and tossed it into the recycling bin in the corner.

Jamal was a starting running back for City College. He had gone to Roosevelt High, where he had set records for rushing touchdowns and was elected vice president of his class.

“Don't sound OK to me,” Jamal said.

At that, Gabe asked, “You got a father?”

The smile on Jamal's face flattened. “Somewhere in this world. My mom and me, we don't talk about the man.” He grabbed a pump, which resembled a small rifle. When he began to pump up a four-square ball, the muscles on his forearms rippled. “Why you ask?”

“I saw mine today,” Gabe disclosed. “I saw him yesterday, too.”

Jamal punched the ball and sent it rolling to the corner of the rec room, where it settled among three worn basketballs. “Let me guess,” Jamal said. “He wasn't around before that, huh?”

Gabe nodded.

“Man, they never around—that's the way it is.” Jamal bent down for another ball to inflate. “Half these kids out there ain't got daddies. You don't, I don't, the little checkers genius girl, she don't.” He bounced the ball, bounced it so hard that it nearly touched the ceiling. “When he split?” Jamal asked.

“When I was nine.” He replayed the scene of his dad backing out of the driveway, none too slowly. He could still see the right back tire running over the flowerbed on the side of the driveway, smashing a row of pretty-faced petunias.

“That's 'bout right,” Jamal said. “That's when they leave. Mine left, came back, but Mama changed the locks and brought in bulldogs to keep him away.”

Gabe wasn't certain if Jamal meant Bulldog gang members, or real dogs with appetites for legs and arms. But either type would keep a deadbeat father from ringing the doorbell.

He set out from the playground with another soda, a gift from Jamal. The holder of high school football records also held the key that opened the soda machine. Gabe drank the root beer, the foam tickling his nose. It was sweet, icy cold, and just what he needed.

Gabe paused to watch two boys—ten-year-olds, he guessed—shaking down a little kid for money. Gabe almost yelled, “Hey, leave him alone, you fools,” but he wisely held his tongue. The little kid, starched with fear as he stood against the fence, was learning a playground lesson: don't carry money in your pocket. Plus, Gabe figured they weren't hurting him, and the kid could always get another quarter, dime, or whatever was in his pocket. But where else would he learn something about life?

Gabe bought a cheeseburger at McDonald's and briefly had the insane idea to cross the street to kick around Dickey's Playground. But that wasn't
his
playground—he belonged to Romain and Holmes Playgrounds of southeast Fresno. Gabe knew where he could and could not go. No telling if a wannabe gangster might snarl, “What you doing here, fool?”

Gabe drifted to the Fulton Mall, where he killed time at the edge of a dry fountain brimming with litter. Since it was an outdoor mall, there were few shoppers. Allergic to heat, they wisely took their business to the air-conditioned comfort of malls in north Fresno. Why sweat until you had to pay the bills?

“Hey,” a voice called, in a near whisper.

Cautiously, Gabe got to his feet. How many times had the word
hey
gotten him in trouble? There had been the
hey
when an Asian brother tried to sell him a stolen iPod and the
hey
when a man needed him to hold a ladder while he climbed up to the roof of a building. How could he have known that the man was a thief out to extract tubing made of copper, a valuable metal?

Still, Gabe responded when he sized up the
vato loco
—a
veterano
of the street, a guy about forty years old—swaggering toward him in baggy pants. A large
L
on a gold chain sparkled on his chest. His neck looked tortured by a tattoo of Jesus on the cross.

“Hey,” Gabe offered in return. He hitched up his pants. There was no telling if he would have to use his running skills. Something didn't seem right. The
vato
was cradling a puppy with floppy ears in his arms. Gabe did his best to appear calm, though inside his thirteen-year-old soul, he was trembling. What did this guy want?

“You wanna buy a dog?” the
vato
asked with a smile. His wrist was tattooed with the name
Gloria.
Gabe supposed that Gloria was his girlfriend, or possibly his ex-girlfriend, or maybe his wife or … someone else's wife! The dude was wearing cologne, but Gabe realized that beneath the scent, he stank of bad deeds.