#scenebreak
The next thing I remember? The hospital, someone cutting my clothes off so they could examine me. Lots of lights and noise. Everything in between, every moment of the actual beating plunged into a deep dark hole, never to return.
Dad was there, holding my hand. I kept begging him not to go away and he assured me that he wasn’t going anywhere. I asked about Tango a million times, but Dad knew concussions well enough to know repetition was normal.
“She’s fine, Ethan,” he told me. “Bumps and bruises, but she’s fine.”
“They didn’t. . .?”
“No, son, she’s fine.”
I asked it a million times, and never once could I finish that sentence.
Dad told me the rest of the story.
After Tango smashed the rear window of the camper top, they just held her against the pickup and made her watch my beat down. Thank God they were from the school of thought that guys didn’t hit girls. Seriously, thank God. To her credit, two of them ended up needing treatment.
The theater managers came out and broke it up, eventually.
As I lay in the hospital crushing Dad’s hand, everything hurt. Even my balls were bruised. That was my least favorite part of the exam. Dr. Cherkasky was just doing his job, I guess, but he could’ve gone a little easier on the ol’ family jewels.
Dad wore his coach face throughout. He’d held the hands of much older, tougher guys who’d been scrambled in the ring. He knew I needed him to be Strong Dad. While he must have been thinking murderous thoughts, he wouldn’t show any of that until I lay safe at home in my own bed.
Not one broken bone. Lots of cuts and abrasions. Some bruised ribs. Concussion. A total of about a hundred stitches. While Dr. Cherkasky wrapped my chest to protect my ribs, Dad asked me if he could leave for a minute to tell everyone I was going to be all right.
“Everyone?”
“Katy and the dancers are out there. Auntie Mac, of course.”
Not Corey. I didn’t know what to make of that.
After Dad left, the doctor helped me into a gown, but I had to leave it down around my waist while I sat on the table and he wrapped me up. Ow.
Voices in the hallway outside the room drew my attention. Dad was using his pissed-off voice and it wasn’t the Pissed-Off Coach voice. It was his Pissed-Off Dad voice.
The door flew open and banged loudly against the wall. Dad marched into the room hauling Officer Friendly by the arm. He dragged the poor cop to my side and pointed at me with his free hand. I had never—ever—seen that much anger on my dad’s face. On a guy that big, it scared even me. “Is this what you call ‘youthful high spirits,’ Warren?” He shook the skinny cop. “Is it?”
“I think you need to calm down, Mr. Fox,” Officer Friendly said, obviously intimidated and trying to pretend he maintained some sort of control. “I know you’re upset about your boy, but throwing accusations against this town’s star football players isn’t going to help anyone, is it?”
“Accusations?” Dad roared. “There are multiple witnesses. My son’s blood is all over that pickup.”
A suit at the door videotaped the scene with his cell. Tall and broad. Hispanic. About Dad’s age. Expensive suit. Not sure who he was, but Officer Friendly didn’t notice him.
“That may be true, Mr. Fox, but—” The cop refused to look at me. “But homecoming’s a month away and that would put most of the starting lineup behind bars.”
Dad shook him again. “Look at my boy and tell me those animals don’t belong there.” He hauled Officer Friendly closer. “A homecoming game is more important than punishing the violent criminals who did this?”
Warren made a mistake. He threatened my father. “A man with your record doesn’t want to get violent, does he, Mr. Fox?”
Dad released his arm and grew very still. When he spoke again, his voice dropped so low it was nearly a whisper. “A man with my record?” Since he was a professional boxer and coach, he controlled his emotions pretty well in volatile situations. “What record would that be, Warren?”
Officer Friendly shrank a bit.
Dad spoke again in that scary quiet voice. “The record of a man who was accused of wrongdoing but was cleared by the court? Would you mean my one speeding ticket from five years ago?” His very lack of movement was somehow threatening. “Surely you don’t mean the death that was declared an accident. If you took the time to look beyond the accusation and followed any of the actual court proceedings, you’d know I was found innocent. If you actually looked at the verdict of both the criminal and civil courts you’d know I was cleared of any wrongdoing.”
He jabbed a finger at me again.
Officer Friendly jumped.
“Unlike the cold, calculated and brutal assault perpetrated against my son. The boys who did this are animals, Warren. Animals.” He touched my hair. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to beat someone to a bloody pulp without actually breaking a single bone?” He drilled Officer Friendly with his eyes. “It’s really fucking hard, and it’s only done because breaking bones can accidentally kill if the victim bleeds out and that’s probably something the local law enforcement won’t look past during game season.”
Dad’s breath escaped in soft huffs. “I accidently killed a man, Warren, but these sons of bitches carefully calculated how to beat the shit out of Ethan without killing him. . . not because they give a damn about human life, but because they want to play their motherfucking homecoming game next month.” He sucked a deep breath. “You tell me who belongs behind bars.”
Did he really believe what he’d said? Did he? I wouldn’t let that cop see me cry, but the effort to keep from sobbing hurt so much I could barely breathe.
Dad kissed my forehead. “You get the part about not filing charges because of the football game, Mike?”
Officer Friendly jumped and spun around.
The suit named Mike waggled his cell in the air and slid it into a pocket. “Got it and it’s already on my cloud, so it doesn’t matter if he takes the cell.” His smile was malevolent and fun. “You want I should upload it to YouTube right away?”
Dad took a deep breath. “Nah. As long as Warren does his job to the best of his ability, we won’t need to report him to the state and have him prosecuted as an accessory after the fact.” He loomed over the cop. “You don’t go through what I went through, Officer Warren, without learning a hell of a lot about the way the law works in this state.”
Dad looked into my face for the first time really, and he must’ve seen that I was about to completely lose it. His expression softened. “Get lost, Warren. Go do your job.” He touched Dr. Cherkasky’s shoulder. “Can I have a few minutes alone with my son?”
“Of course.” He patted my knee. “I’m done here. I’ll let the discharge nurse know you’re set.” He left.
Dad turned to the mysterious stranger in a much better suit than his. “Thanks, Mike. I owe ya.”
Mike smiled. “You already owed me. Now you owe me two.”
Dad inclined his head with a strange smile, like he knew this guy somehow. Maybe he was one of his Austin lawyers?
Mike looked me over. “Give ‘em hell, kid.” He left.
Dad wrapped his arms around me as gently as he could, and the sobs took control. I wept into his chest and couldn’t stop for God knows how long.
“I’m sorry, Ethan,” Dad sputtered. “I’m sorry I brought you to this town. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.” Tears ran down his face, too, but he held it together for me as best he could.
I pulled away and hit him in the chest. “Shut the fuck up, Dad. That’s not. . . that’s not why I’m crying.” I grabbed his suit with both fists and smeared blood on it. “What you said to the cop. You meant it?”
“What?”
“About the accident,” I sobbed. “About how it wasn’t your fault and you don’t belong in jail? Do you really believe that now? That it wasn’t your fault?”
r /> He got it, and it hit him square in the heart. His eyes watered up and he almost lost it. Almost. He swallowed. Twice. Then he could talk. “What they did to you, Ethan. When I saw you. . .” He wiped his face. “What I did? It doesn’t even compare.”
“I just wanted my dad back. And if this is what it took. . .”
He pulled me close, making shushing noises like he did when I was little and scared of the dark or a thunder storm. “I’m back, Ethan. I promise I’m back.”
I wept some more. We both did.
That thing we didn’t talk about?
Maybe we could finally talk about it.
I wiped an arm across my face, which hurt. “Ow.”
He handed me something to blow my nose, which hurt, too. “Ow.” Somehow, it seemed funny and I chuckled, which hurt. “Ow.” Which made me chuckle some more. “Ow. . . ow. . . ow.”
“Goofball.” He ruffled my hair. “Some of your friends are still out there. They want to see you before they’ll leave.”
I shook my head. “Holy shit, Dad, not like this.”
He wiped off his own wet face. “I’ll be right back.”
A few minutes later, he sat on a stool in front of me. He dropped a sack on the table and opened a small zippered bag. “K-pop brought you some clothes.”
“K-pop?” Really? After I was such an asshole? I dumped the sack: sweat pants and a Naruto t-shirt that obviously belonged to him because they were way too big for me. The socks and underwear had tags on them so I’d know they were new. The socks had the Trigun logo and the underwear was briefs with a smiling Captain America on the crotch and the words “Cap Dat Ass” on the reverse. “Ow.” I laughed some more. “Ow.” I did not deserve a friend like him.
Wait a minute. Dad was taking make-up out of the zippered bag. “First the Visine for your eyes.” I let him tilt my head back and drop the drops into my eyes. “Look at me.”
I did.
“Better.”
I couldn’t speak. My dad, the bruiser, knew how to apply make-up. Apparently, my astonishment was evident.
“There’s a nurse close enough to your skin tone,” he told me while he applied base. “There are two kinds of fighters,” he added, “the kind who want their faces to look worse for the cameras and the kind who want to look better. Both kinds need a little help.” He worked in silence a few seconds, turning my chin this way and that. “You’d be amazed what I’ve learned over the years as a boxing coach.”
I chuckled. “Ow.” He was so peacefully attentive while he worked. It was something I’d never seen on him before.
He noticed my stare. “What?”
“Do you realize this is the single-most gayest thing you have ever done?”
He smiled. “I assure you, son, I have done any number of things that are wa-a-a-y gayer than this, but I’m going to assume you don’t want to hear the details about those.”
I laughed. “Ow.” I chuckled. “Ow. Quit it. Ow.”
He tapped my nose with a make-up sponge. “The hardest part about make-up on guys is no one should be able to tell you’re wearing it.”
I noticed his suit, I mean, really noticed what it meant. “I suppose I kinda blew that interview for you, huh?”
“Interview?”
“The guy with the camera,” I said. “Mike? You’re wearing the dragon jousting suit. Second shift interview? Security or something?”
He blushed. My dad. . . blushed. “That wasn’t an interview, Ethan.”
“Oh, my God. . . it was a date?”
He grinned.
“You found someone to date out here the first week?”
His face burned red as hell. What happened to my cell? “I knew Mike in high school. We were best friends. . . and things got awkward.” He shook his head. “Times were different then, this was B-WAG.” Before Will and Grace, an old TV show and kind of a benchmark for gay acceptance. “I bumped into him at the Starbucks yesterday. He asked me out.”
“Ah crap, that’s worse! I ruined your first date!”
He winked and ruffled my hair. “I have an excuse to call him again, now he has that video for us.” He sighed. “Besides, the most fun Mike and I had as kids was doing stupid shit to see how far we could push it without getting into trouble. This was probably a total thrill for him, sticking it to the man.”
I said it before I even knew I was speaking: “Well, unless you go find him, he’s sticking it to the wrong man, hai?”
An awkward silence descended.
Then we both fell out.
He had to help me dress. It reminded me of being a little kid. Every move hurt, so he even had to put my socks on for me. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m pretty fucked up.”
He scoffed. “Are you kidding? This is every dad’s dream. Reliving all those corny baby moments when my son is seventeen?”
When I was dressed, he helped me into a wheel chair, because that cliché is true: they really make you leave in one. He crouched down in front of me with his hands on my knees, smiling more sincerely than I’d seen in too long. I really meant what I’d told him earlier: if getting this beat down meant getting my dad back? Utterly worth it.
“So can we agree that you say hi to your friends and then I kick them out and take you home?”
“Sure.”
He smiled and kissed my forehead.
Fuck off. It’s sweet.