Lou Gehrig's Disease

The moon and stars, unaware of the hills and grass, glisten in the dew drops that fight the darkness in the woods that surround the property. A place no one can penetrate, and from the window, where the moonlight shines off the shards of her mother’s heart, stuck in the grout between the kitchen tiles, the night is seen through a child’s eyes—a wound opening, and becoming, just like the dew.

Her feeling of inadequacy grows, and her desire to be complete is the only thing that keeps her silhouette: an empty sea of nothingness in the well of her well-being, from falling like the petals beneath the window, outside amongst the hard bark and long limbs of the spruce trees.

She can hear her ancestors argue on the tip of her tongue, and it is enough to drive her crazy, but the love she has for her mother is plain to see, and there is nothing inside or outside she would trade it for. She is frozen in time.

He sits with death along the Yula River, untouched by war on the side of the mountain where snow falls. You can see everyone's breath, but only because they've worked so hard. When he was a boy, baseball was the most important thing in his life, and his favorite player, Lou Gehrig, the luckiest man on earth, had just died. His aim became sharper and pity harder to find amongst the collected dog tags of his friends. Though he'll never be a Yankee, he shares a cigarette with Andrew Cunningham, and all anyone can think about is being a child. It has no advantages, but they are winning, and when their bodies are transported back over the dark ocean, it is their families, standing beside flag-covered coffins, who hear that Ted Williams has enlisted after the greatest season of his career.

She asks her mom why Ted Williams would do that, and is slapped for it. Her brother is dead, and it is as if he had been her whole life.

She looks out her mother's window and has a desire to remove her white night gown and run up the hill, toward the moon, naked, but she can barely look at Drew in school.

The curtains of her bed are tied around each corner post. An old, wooden bed that her Grandmother slept in as a child. They've been in this house for 150 years, or so they say after a few drinks, and it is like I can hear them now, "Jesse, what you looking at?" as I pull my floral bed sheets to my nose.

Nighttime has never been a great time for me. I spend far too much time here, and long for the morning when and where I can chase monarchs and open a honeysuckle with my b, Ben.

Ben is an old spirit enjoying a young man's body. It always feels like he got another turn at things. My brother was dead, and they were friends. I believe it had a significant impact on him, as it did on my mother and me. Perhaps that was why he was the only person she liked.

Some say we look like sisters, and it always flatters her and gives her a platform and space to say, "Tease it to Jesus." She cut hair until she lost her mind, but for a while, she teased hair and sometimes cut it. I don't know if she sleeps, and she never bothers me when I go down to the kitchen and look at the moon. Sometimes Ben stops by, and she says nothing about that either. She doesn't talk, except when she sees Ben and calls him babe. He calls her "babe" as well, but only because my brother's name was Ben, and I think it's hard for her to say anything else. His Yankees posters still hang in his room, and she keeps the rubber band around his mitt. I touched it once, and that was the last and second time my mother ever slapped me. I just don't understand her.

I walked back into the kitchen, and in the middle of the moon was a silhouette I thought might have been Ben, but it did not come for me. It stood there. My second thought came right around the time my heart began to race, and I thought it might have been the ghost of Lou Gehrig, my brother's favorite ballplayer. No one moved for a long time, and because the light was cast on me, I wondered if this shadow could see who I was. I hoped so, and don't know why I got upset when some clouds rolled in and started raining. The silhouette remained in the moon until it was gone, and it was only during the flashes of thunder and the crack of lightning that I could see who it was. I was very shocked but not at all scared, though he appeared every twenty feet, wearing the same thing he had on when I last saw him. He and his familiar clothing brought comfort in the storm, and though I was barefoot and wearing a white nightgown and nothing else, I ran into the rain and screamed, "Daddy!" hugging a man who died before I turned six. He hugged me back and smiled. He was just like the pictures and the way I felt when I looked at him. He said, "Mom ain't doing too good, hm?"

I said she hadn't been well, and he looked me in the eyes as if he envied my youth, and the time we will miss. He was older than he had ever been in life and told me he was here to talk to me. I asked about what, and he kept his eyes open—Brown and glistening, just like the hard bark of the spruce trees.

"Tell your ma that Ben is playing catch with Lou Gerhig, and one day she'll be able to watch."

I wasn't sure what he meant, but he touched my face, and I could feel a heart beating in the rain. He wore a hat, and his eyes were dry.

"I gotta go."

"You're my father, right?"

"Tonight, and every moment before then."

"Where are you going?"

"Back."

Don't you want to see her?"

"It'd break my heart."

The rain followed and disappeared. We never saw him again.