By Alan Bahr
A weed-covered field was all that passed for a community park, with shops on either side that begged for a coat of paint and paying customers. We were visiting my father’s hometown accompanied by my Uncle Doug, who was regaling me with tales of his youthful indiscretions. The stories were hilarious and told with the shit-you-say flair of a prison confession. They little resembled my father’s sober recollections, which made me wonder why Dad couldn’t be more like his older brother.
Doug nodded toward the park and said it had once been a ballfield. He chuckled and pointed to where the backstop had stood.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“How I blew up second base.”
I laughed, recognizing a prelude to another good story. “How’d you do that?” I asked.
“Got my hands on a stick of dynamite and a long fuse. Lit it and ran like hell. Hid over there.” Doug turned and gestured toward a building across Main Street.
I tracked his gaze and imagined him at my age, a teenaged boy cowering behind a shop wall, hands over ears, waiting. “What happened?” I asked.
“Made a big hole.” Doug let out a loud guffaw.
“I remember that.”
My dad whispered the confirmation in a way that told me what would follow: another dousing of cold water onto our day’s entertainment. Earlier that morning, he’d exchanged words with Doug that were as close to an argument as I’d ever heard pass between them. He told my uncle to be careful of what he said around me, which prompted a terse reply. It’s a free country, little brother. All my dad could do then was sigh in a powerless way and speak what had sounded like gibberish to me at the time. You think freedom is doing whatever the hell you want. Which is why apprehension follows you everywhere.
My father stared at the site of the old ballfield, then at the sad storefronts on either side of it. “Blew out nearly every window,” he said.
My smile disappeared. “You were there, too?” I asked.
Dad shook his head. “I knew better than to follow your uncle out at night. It took a month to replace the panes and clean up the mess. That’s what I recall.”
Doug looked down and kicked at the dirt.
“And there was that other thing, too,” my father said. “Remember, Doug?”
My gaze went from father to uncle, then back again. “What?” I asked.
“Tell him,” Dad said. “Go ahead. It’s a free country.”
Doug put his hands in his pockets and jutted his chin toward the second-floor apartment over a hardware store. “Old man Jacobs died that night,” he said. “Fellow didn’t make it out of bed. Not my fault. Heart attack, they say.”
We eyed the building, not saying a word, when the double doors opened and a chime sounded. We watched as an elderly couple stepped outside and walked away.
Alan is a recovering investment banker and former commercial fisherman. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Midwest Prairie Review, Circle Magazine, Banyan Review, Contra Costa Times, and others. He lives in the San Bernardino National Forest with his wife.