Chapter Five

Don't worry, Dad. I'm still calling the plays. I'll make you proud of me. Mom, too. I'll play college football. I'll make something of myself. That's a promise.

Chapter Five

I missed Friday night's football game. It was the night of Dad's visitation at the funeral home. I wanted to play, but I wanted to be with Dad. And with Mom. The coaches told me my place was with my folks, not on the football field. But I knew that.

So as Dad's casket lay bathed in a soft light at the funeral home, as mourners filed by, women kissing me on the cheek, men shaking my hand as I tried to make small talk, the Falcons won without me, 35-0.

As I'd promised Dad, we'd kicked ass. I wished I could've been there to play. Wished Dad could've been there to watch. Mom, too. Anywhere but the three of us at Runge's Funeral Home.

         

Saturday morning, the morning of Dad's funeral, dawned with a bright sun rising in a cold, blue October sky.

Dressed in all black—dress, shoes, nylons, hat, and veil—Mom slipped her arm through mine, and we marched slowly up the aisle to our pew in the front of St. Alphonsus Church.

"Are you all right?" she whispered. "You feel shaky."

"I'm fine," I said, but my body felt drained, my legs weighted with lead.

From the choir loft, organ music filled the small church with somber tones. Business associates of Dad's sat scattered everywhere, pale light filtering through stained-glass windows and bouncing off many bald heads. Dressed in tailored suits, wives sat or knelt by their executive husbands. Dad had no other friends but business people. And Travis.

I spotted Christie Ridgeway, my ex-girlfriend, and Ozzie Harrington, my best friend, sitting together in back. Lots of other guys from the football team were also there. Coach Flynn, too.

I went through the service in a daze, my eyes fixed on Dad's coffin, draped with a huge American flag, covered with a spray of red and white mums. I tuned out Father Wilkes when he stood at the head of the coffin, microphone in hand, swishing its cord, starting his eulogy: "Pete Panther...devoted family man...beloved father...cherished husband..." Listening was too painful, but a warm feeling spread through me when I thought of Dad showing me how to place a football on a kicking T, how to choke up on a baseball bat, how to shift a manual transmission.

Dad had been an Army veteran, a college football player, and a high-powered executive for John Deere, a leading farm implement manufacturer in the country. He'd built a million dollar home for the three of us to live in, but none of that made any difference. Cancer killed him anyway.

After the service, Mom clung to my arm again as we stepped carefully down the church steps. Despite the chill in the air, I felt as if I were sweating.

"I'm so sorry it had to end like this," Mom said. "Your dad told me once the worst part was his having to watch us watch him suffer."

Tears rushed to my eyes.

"This way please." A somber-looking funeral attendant touched our arms, directing us to a limo.

Another attendant held the door open for us. "A lovely service," he said.

When the limo door closed, Mom took my hand and squeezed it. Somehow I survived the painfully slow ride through town, over the Government Bridge and across the Mississippi River to the National Military Cemetery at the Rock Island Arsenal, where Dad had requested burial.

When we got there, as I stepped out of the limo, the sunlight nearly blinded me. Mom clutched my arm again. Now she felt shaky. "You okay?" I asked.

"Yes." I could hardly hear her.

Thousands of white marble tombstones—no bigger than desktops, all the same size, sitting on edge in short green grass—stretched out around us in precise rows under the blue sky.

Under the shade of a metal pavilion, the priest droned the 22nd Psalm over Dad's casket: "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want... Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil... I shall dwell in the house of the Lord."

A military honor guard—a soldier, a sailor, and a marine—fired rifles into the air. I jumped with each shot, though I knew the shots were coming. After setting their rifles upright on the ground so they formed a tripod, the military men folded the flag from Dad's casket and gave it to Mom.

I was the last to leave the casket.

I stood over it, head bowed, hands laced over my chest, feeling a dull heaviness everywhere inside me.

I felt sad that Dad should have to die without my telling him I might be a father. It was as if I'd lied to him. But had death made him omniscient? Was he looking down at me this very moment, knowing the truth about me? Did he know if I was the father of Jodi's baby or not? Tell me, Dad. Did I make Jodi pregnant?

As I trudged back to the limo parked under the shade of an oak, feeling pissed at the world, I picked up a stone and hurled it at a sycamore tree trunk. The stone thunked! off the bark and fell to the ground.

I bit my bottom lip.

Don't worry, Dad. I'm still calling the plays. I'll make you proud of me. Mom, too. I'll play college football. I'll make something of myself. That's a promise. I'm not the father of Jodi's baby. The real father is...is...is Luke! That's his name: Luke! He's the father. A redheaded guy. He called Jodi 'girlfriend.' She kissed him in the woods.

When I climbed into the back seat of the limo, sat beside Mom and closed the door, she was tangling her fingers around and around, aching for a cigarette. I grabbed her hands to calm them; they were cold. "Don't worry, Mom. Everything's going to be all right. We don't have a thing to worry about."

Coming Friday—Chapter Six:  A war. Michael vs. Jodi