At first my father went to the basement to smoke his cigar because it bothered my mother; she wheezed and coughed, and her eyes watered. Now, my father goes there as much to fulfill a condition of his life as he does to assume his place-much like Rico, our family pet, who searches out the dirt pile under the porch.
The basement is an old-style basement, cavernous, with fieldstone walls and pipes and wires at head level. In one corner, under a free-hanging light bulb, there is an old kitchen chair and near it a rusting standing ashtray recovered from the town dump. In the shadows are an old workbench and remnants of athletic equipment: a cracked basketball rim, broken bats, and the like.
When I was young I used to spend a lot of time with my father down there, sitting on the steps, listening to his stories of school and of the war, repairing sports equipment, chewing the fat. Now, I`m older, don`t visit much, and his interests and mine have not converged. What my father`s presently into is the dog track, which has become as exciting and mysterious to him as is channeling to a New Ager. When I visit, when I go to the basement, the best that can be said for me is that I endure.
When I was younger, about 13 or 14, things were different for us. We were fishing a lot in those days, driving down-county to the Alford, to the Green, to the Konkapot; or, when the rains came heavily, to New York State over Old Hancock Road into Canaan where the Kinderhook starts to get deep and delivers big, wily browns.
”Psst, let`s go.” Before sun-up he would open my bedroom door, speak sibilantly from the hall.
I would dress and move to the kitchen where he would already have coffee ready and be loading up slices of Polish rye with heavy swirls of butter and peanut butter. He would cradle the loaf against his chest and saw off half-inch-thick slices, catching all the crumbs in his shirt. Then, because he was a bit of an impulsive man, he would rise up halfway through my breakfast to pack our fishing gear and to hurry me along.
When he moved out of the kitchen, I would reach over for the bread and cut a ragged slice. My slice always looked like it came from a different loaf than his, so I would grab up the crust and crumbs, drop them into my coffee, and swallow quickly. Then, feigning the disposition of one who has addressed himself to the singularity of hurrying, I would run out to the car. There, he would be waiting, the fishing gear in the back seat, half his cigar in one of his shirt pockets. In the car there was an aroma which seemed to me somehow connected with age, somehow with responsibility.
My father goes over to his workbench and returns with a cigar box filled with old racing programs. On the covers of the programs are pictured sleek, muscular greyhounds. He says he finds the greyhounds more interesting than the horses, because with the greyhounds the betting is quicker, more exciting. When I have gone to the track, my interest in the animals is just that, an interest in their beauty and grace, disconnected from their purpose as animals to be bet on.
About the dogs he is like a child, enthusiastic, importunate. He glances over at me, tries to capture my interest. ”See these River dogs,” he says. ”Ahum.”
”Red River. River Dream. Up De River. Arthur Panesco owns them all;
he lets his daughter name them. They always do best in the long races, in those races over five-sixteenths of a mile.”
”Then all you have to do is to wait for them to run the long races.”
As though he has not heard me, he says, ”Look at this. Seventh race Tuesday. Tenth race Wednesday. Last race Friday.”
He points to the programs, making check marks with a small, dull pencil, the lead of which has been exposed by the kitchen bread knife. ”Well, what do you see?” he asks.
The programs roll past in a blur.
”River dogs!” he answers himself. ”That`s right, River dogs, one after another.” He turns pages, taps his pencil. ”Panesco, Panesco, Panesco. He owns them all.”
”Did you bet them?”
”There they are, one after another in the long races. There`s a first, a second with good time, two shows after they`ve been bumped. He trains them to run long. Roan River. River King. Down De River.” He cannot find any more River dogs so he begins to make check marks on programs previously checked. ”Red River, River Dream . . . .”
I shout out, ”DID YOU BET THEM?” I am trying to prevent tedious repetitions.
He stops, slaps a program against his wrist, looks at me closely. His speech is deliberate, marked with disappointment. ”It seems to me that the older you get, the more of a wise ass you become.”
”Well, I just asked a question, that`s all.”
”Is that all it was, just a question?”
”Of course, you always go about interpreting things so negatively.”
”So what I say is negative?”
”No, not what you say. It`s the way you interpret what I say.”
”So, go ahead, you interpret for me. If I`m so negative, you interpret for me.”
In the dark shadows behind him, among the baseball bats, I see the delicate tip of an old bamboo rod; it sticks up thinly, just a wisp of wood, fragile.
Our last fishing trip together was to the Kinderhook, on a rainy day-on the third in succession in a rainy week-and the river was very high.
”Listen to me now,” he advised. ”I`m going to show you a little trick that will keep you out of trouble. Forget that you`ve got boots on over the knee. Imagine that they stop right there.” He pointed to my kneecap. ”If you go deeper than that, the water runs right in and you get wet. You got it?”
”Yes,” I said, ”I got it.”
”And then, every now and then, get up on the bank. Pick out a rock or stump, something big and solid, and watch it. That way you`ll see just how fast the water`s rising.”
”Okay, I got it,” I said again.
Before I got my boots on and locked up my side of the car, my father was already 50 yards downstream catching fish. He turned to show me a nice brown, proudly holding it up by the gill covers, dropping it into his creel. I started slowly, got snagged up after just a few casts, was forced to lose fishing time in replacing a hook. Soon, my father turned again, held up another brown, fat and long.
I re-baited and edged along the shallow water, but because I fished the same riffs and ripples my father had just fished, I caught nothing. Against his advice, I crept in deeper, over my knees, but before he turned the first bend in the river, he checked on me, saw me in the deep water. He glared at me, shouted, pointed to his knees. I waved, moved back to the bank. At this he looked satisfied, went back to his fishing, rounded the bend.
When I knew he lost sight of me, I hurried out of the water, scrambled up over the bank and into a cornfield which ran parallel to the river. In a lane between the cornstalks I moved quickly downstream, coming to where I could see the tip of his pole but not him, and then, furtively, farther downstream until a bend in the river cut the cornfield. I dropped down the bank, picked my water, flipped casts, and caught browns-deep, orange-spotted browns with hooked jaws.
An hour passed, maybe two, and I had passed the lower bridge, the South Canaan Bridge. If my father had fish, then I had more; I was, in fact, catching so many fish with such regularity that I was releasing the smallest. My sport had evolved from one of intense competition with my father to one of individual mastery and giddy frivolity. At one point, though, in leaning against a tree, I had broken off a dead branch; it hit the water, did not just flow, but rather catapulted downstream.
The river was rising, the little feeder streams had let go, and the river was too high, too dangerous to continue fishing. Over the river an ominous mist rose. In the cornfields small lakes formed.
I broke my pole down and headed upstream. I felt wet and heavy and moved slowly through the corn. As I trudged along I could hear, from time to time, a great rumble like a train approaching; it was the river tearing down its own river bank, carrying it away with the flow.
When I finally got up on a knoll, I could see the bridge, my father`s car, and my father. He was moving from one side of the bridge to the other, shaking his head. I waved and shouted, pulled up a cornstalk and tried to wave it like a semaphore before it bent and cracked of its own weight. But my father was not looking into the corn; he was looking down at the flood water as it passed beneath the bridge. He slapped the bridge rail and moved to the car. I could hear the horn sound, and through the rain I thought I saw him drop his head, punch the steering wheel.
When I got to the bridge, my father was gone, so I trudged along the road to the North Bridge. It took me about an hour to get there, and though the car was parked near the bridge, it was locked and, except for my father`s fishing gear, empty.
I shouted out, ”Dad! Hey, dad! I`m at the car! I`m all right, hey!”
But my voice was weak and tired, and the loudness of the swollen, rumbling river drowned out the sound. Exhausted, I dropped down against the car and closed my eyes. I visualized my father running wildly along the banks of the river, searching for me in channels where the flood waters had washed away the banks or among log jams where debris collected and turned violently in the current-in those places where a body, twisted, gnarled, sodden, in a grotesque position, might be deposited in a tangle by the flood water.
I heard footsteps and opened my eyes. My father stood above me as tall and as stern as an elm along the river. His face was red, windswept, tearful; his hair, usually curly, was thinly knotted, fell to the sides of his head.
”Get up and get in the car,” he said. Each word was measured, willful, like a finger poking me in the chest.
”Dad, really . . . .”
”Get up and get in the car,” he said again. We drove home slowly, painfully. Once I tried to talk, to explain. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. ”Not a word,” he said. ”Not one word.”
When we got home, he snatched my creel, walked to the garage for a shovel. Then he went to the garden where he dug a hole, slid in the fish, buried them. We had not fished together, his actions said; we had not done anything together. We had each gone out into the wetness, independently, purposelessly, returned home alone.
Then we had no more fishing even though my mother asked about it; then, after a while, in my presence at least, she asked no more.
A metal eye on the bamboo tip picks up a little beam of light; the beam floats along the walls, moves to a spot near my father`s chair.
”Look, you want to know the truth? I guess I can`t really get into the dogs.”
My father looks at me, his eyes narrowed, his aspect defensive.
”I mean, at any rate . . . I can`t get into them as intensely as you get into them. But I am interested in knowing if you bet them. That interests me, what (italic)you (end italic) did.”
He places the programs into the cigar box and sets the box on the floor. He pulls half a cigar out of his shirt pocket, lights it. He is most dramatic in his silence. His cigar lights up red and hot. The smoke fills the space between us.
”The River dogs!” he asks abstractly, ”I`ve bet them, sure I have.”
”And you won, I take it!”
”Not always,” he says. ”Sometimes they run a short race. Sometimes they haven`t matured to racing yet. Sometimes they`re in heat. Sometimes I like to see them run without a bet. Sometimes . . . .” He pauses and sees that of our conversations over time, of the most recent vapid talks and emotional diatribes, it is in this conversation about River dogs that he has transcended the usual banality in his communications with me. And I, in turn, have dropped my shield of filial impudence.
With the eyes of a father whose sight is failing, he selects out those parts of my countenance which deliver my thoughts and feelings. He sees that at this moment I am listening, intently, seriously. I am his youthful reflection in the river, and his face turns young.
”Sometimes . . . .” He stops.
His ashtray, his chair are symbols of the common man thinking commonly. He rises above these things and looks closely at me. He says kindly,
”Sometimes . . . maybe we could go fishing together again.”
He duffs his cigar. A kind, embarrassed smile lights his face.
”How about some Polish rye?” I ask. And he nods, and I nod, and the two of us emerge from the basement.
The stairs lead up to the kitchen where a warm pot of coffee is brewing. My mother sits at the kitchen table; Rico, our pet, lies near the radiator. My mother smiles, and I smile as I cradle the bread against my chest and saw off half-inch-thick slices, catching all the crumbs in my shirt.
