Antennae

By Charles Holdefer

On the front porch, a green davenport stood next to an old washing machine with a radio in it. After Sunday dinner Uncle Pearly liked to come out and sit on the davenport, remove the radio, and plug it in. He twiddled the radio’s big dial, which picked up ballgames in St. Louis.

“Why do you keep the radio in the washing machine?” Tim had asked.

“Sometimes when it rains it blows up against the house.” Uncle Pearly leaned back and put his feet up on a fruit crate. “You gotta think ahead in life.”

This was the third Sunday in a row that Tim and his mother had visited the farm. Church and a chicken dinner, and he wondered what it all meant. Before, they’d stayed in town and he’d played baseball with Daddy. They had their own version of the game. Daddy lay in bed, and Tim bounced a rubber ball against the side of the house. He fielded grounders or caught a carom in the air. In the beginning his mother had told him not to create a disturbance but Daddy protested that he liked the sound of Tim playing. So then his mother encouraged him. The game had imaginary adversaries and followed rules of his own invention, rules that emerged from his head like a new tune that he mapped out by whistling. Once he’d spied Daddy in the window, watching. It was as if the bed wouldn’t hold Daddy.

Now, on Sundays at the farm, his mother and Aunt Wanda encouraged him to play with his cousin Dean. But what to do? Dean was a two-and-a-half-year-old toddler and he hadn’t mastered his toilet training. Last week, when Tim handed him a ball, Dean bugged out his eyes and took a prodigious dump in his pants. 

“Oh, don’t worry!” said Aunt Wanda, rushing over. “That happens sometimes.”

She tried to play it down, but, later in the day, when Tim attempted to sing a song for his cousin, Dean bugged out his eyes and did it again. Since then, Tim had kept a careful distance, not wanting to set him off. 

***

Where was heaven? Tim pondered this question at the dinner table. It wasn’t a place in outer space, not exactly. Because if you had a map of the universe you could point to planets and constellations but heaven was elsewhere, not on the map. A mystery of creation.

“I could sure use more,” said Uncle Pearly, sucking on a bone.

Aunt Wanda passed him the gravy boat. Uncle Pearly doused his potatoes. He had pink cheeks and a bald head like a speckled egg. Everyone was sweating. A hot and humid day and there was nothing you could do about it.

“Gaaah,” said cousin Dean. 

After dessert, his mother cleared away the dishes while Aunt Wanda carried Dean off to his nap. Uncle Pearly lingered at the table, meditatively dipping ginger snaps into his coffee, and Tim went out to the front screen door and slowly, silently pulled it open, stepping onto the porch. The door was on a tight spring. On the davenport, cats had gathered. They came from the barn to sprawl and snooze when people were away; it was a popular place for them to congregate. The yard was still and empty. Tim whispered, “Let there be cats.”

He opened his fingers and released the door. It slammed violently.

An explosion of cats! The sound startled them and instantly they shot out in all directions, zipping down the steps or scooting off the side or leaping straight over the rail into the bushes. Tim found this reaction very satisfying.

He went over and sat on the davenport. The thing was, what next? That was always the question.

Of course later when they saw their chance the cats would slink back and reclaim their spots. That was how they lived their lives. But what about me? Tim thought. Where’s my spot?

He looked out to the gravel road and the lumpy clouds on the horizon. These Sundays lasted an eternity. He got up and ran down the steps.

***

Behind the house an old Rambler station wagon was parked beneath a mulberry tree. Without tires, it perched on cinder blocks and looked as if it had been left behind by a high tide. Uncle Pearly was stripping parts and selling them for profit.

On previous Sundays Tim had slipped into the front seat and got behind the steering wheel and pretended to drive away from this place. But today was too hot to sit in the car. Instead he crawled up the rear bumper and onto the roof of the Rambler, where he had an easy reach of mulberries.

The fruit was delicious, better than dessert. Tim picked the berries quickly, his fingers and mouth staining blue as if bruised as he wondered if people had any idea what he was thinking. He recognized that they were trying to be nice to him. Tim could hear it in their speech and see it in the way they acted around him. Things were different now. But heaven was far away.

He jumped down from the roof and took a roll on the grass and then he got up, rubbing his wrist, and proceeded around the side of the house. A grasshopper popped up, dissolved into light and disappeared. Where did it go?

Sometimes he felt that he could see things that weren’t there. Or he could hear things in other spaces, like when Daddy had pressed his teeth together and turned his face to the wall. Daddy was usually quiet but at times like these he was even quieter—the sort of quiet Tim could hear.

Suddenly, a voice startled him.

“How many times have I told you not to slam the door!”

His mother spoke through the kitchen screen window, where she stood at the sink.

“Sorry,” he called, and kept walking.

***

“Over here, buddy. Got something to tell you.”

Uncle Pearly stood on the porch, setting up his radio. Tim went as far as the bottom step. “Never run through a screen door,” his uncle said. “You might strain yourself.” 

A gnat buzzed by Tim’s ear. He slapped it.

His uncle adjusted the dial, searching for a clear signal. “Awful lot of static in the air today.” 

He tilted his head, listening. 

“A ground ball to second…Javier scoops it up. One out.” 

Uncle Pearly smiled and went to the davenport.

“Shoo!”

A scraggly cat hopped down.

But the static returned, so Uncle Pearly got up and went back to the radio. When he touched the dial, the sound became clear again. He frowned, removing his hand. More static. “Come up here, will ya?” Tim climbed the steps and joined his uncle. “Just put your hand on top. Right there.” Tim obeyed. “Strike two!” Uncle Pearly smiled and returned to the davenport.

Touching the warm radio, hearing the crowd roar, Tim saw a distant city and a tall stadium that buzzed like a giant beehive. Inside, tens of thousands of people looked down as a mighty contest played out on the diamond. Above, the sky was an open vault.

“Try lifting your other arm,” Uncle Pearly suggested.

Tim obeyed.

“A line drive straight up the middle! Here comes the runner. And the throw—”

It was an exciting game. St. Louis scored two runs and took the lead. 

“Move your arm this way. Right—that’s better.”

Tim rested between innings, during the commercial breaks. Uncle Pearly scratched his knees and analyzed the action. “It all depends on whether they’ll need to make a pitching change.”

“How long is this game gonna last?”

“Can’t say. We don’t get to make the rules.”

Tim alternated arms, which made the task easier. He recalled a Saturday movie matinee he’d attended with his parents about a year ago, a feature called The Frozen Boy. It was the story of a prehistoric youth in a leopardskin toga who was found trapped in a block of ice, with a club in his hand, who was put on exhibition by a scientist. People came from far away to marvel at The Frozen Boy, till one day there was a refrigeration problem, the ice melted and the youth ran wild in a screaming crowd, though eventually he was captured, calmed, learned to talk, and by the end of the film he’d cut his hair and put on a suit and married the scientist’s daughter. 

Tim’s father was fine then. They’d sucked on hot cinnamon rock candies and enjoyed the show together. He could still remember the taste on his tongue. But time had kept moving, it wasn’t frozen, and then came the day when his mother had sent him outside to play ball against the wall. It was sunny and the birds were chorusing. A car pulled up to the house and the doctor jumped out with his bag and ran up the sidewalk. Tim tried to play, but he stopped often to look up at the window. No one was there.

Then came his mother’s voice, thinner than he’d ever heard it:

“You can come in now.”

He would never forget that voice. Never. Because he knew. He didn’t have to go inside.

He knew. He dropped to his knees and the ball rolled away.

***

“And the great thing about the farm is you’re free,” Uncle Pearly was saying, “no neighbors breathing down your neck, it’s all yours—” He passed his hand through the air in a gesture that encompassed the front yard, the ditch and weeds, the oceans of pasture beyond the porch. “You do what you want!”

The seventh inning had just finished, Tim relaxed, and while the radio crackled his uncle held forth. The air was muggier now.

“Now we used to have the Cole family living down the road. About two miles south? They were a bad bunch. Used to be, the Cole boys would attend ballgames in town in order to spy on who was present, and if they saw a neighbor, they’d slip away in the middle innings and go and steal their chickens.”

Uncle Pearly leaned sideways on the davenport, squinched his eyes and farted. “Catch it and paint it yellow,” he said. He waited for Tim to react, but when Tim said nothing, he continued:

“Fortunately the Cole boys moved out and now a dumb Dutchman lives there but he don’t mean no harm. You get a bit older, buddy, I’ll let you use my Remington twenty-two. A fellow can do a lot with a squirrel gun.”

Tim sensed that his uncle was trying to be friendly in a different manner than he would’ve done at the dinner table with his mother and Aunt Wanda. He was sharing something confidential and manly. Tim couldn’t tell what it meant, but he didn’t think he liked it.

“And Dean?” said Uncle Pearly. “Oh, he’s a pistol! You’ll get to like him like a brother.”

Tim studied his uncle’s face, replaying his words in his head and suddenly, he saw something far beyond. Oh, it couldn’t be! But he remembered other hints and inflections, and the cold hard fact that his mother had brought over her sewing machine last Sunday and she hadn’t taken it back. It was now set up in the front room of the farmhouse. He’d assumed that she was lending it to Aunt Wanda. And today she’d brought a bunch of canning jars.

Was it true? 

He asked, “We’re not gonna come live here, are we?”

Uncle Pearly was slow to answer. “You’ll have to talk to your Mom about that.”

Something moved in Tim’s gut. He ran down the porch steps and Uncle Pearly called after him, “Come back! Game’s not over yet!”

Where? Where?

***

The Dutchman down the road, if he went all that way, couldn’t help him. If he ran in the other direction, it was six miles to reach town. That was too far. Tim didn’t want to be visible from the porch so he circled round the house, along the fence line and a stand of horseweed where white feathers from Aunt Wanda’s plucked chickens were strewn on the ground. She threw the guts over the fence and the cats fought like fiends over them.

He felt trapped. He darted back to the Rambler station wagon, pulled open the door and jumped in. He slammed the door shut.

Curling his fingers into fists, he struck the dashboard. “Hell!” That was a bad word and he wasn’t supposed to say it but he repeated, “Hell hell hell” He rocked in the seat. The atmosphere was stifling and smelled of mildew and he tried to roll down his window, but it was stuck.

Where? Where?

Beyond the dirty windshield, weeds in the pasture begin to sway. Dead leaves flew by. Tim’s shirt was soaked with sweat. The car was an airless box. No, he wasn’t going anywhere! With a grunt he threw open the door and stepped out into a hot wind.

He climbed up the rear bumper and onto the roof of the Rambler where he unstuck his wet shirt and bared his stomach to the air. The sky was acting like it was going to rain but it offered no relief. The clouds were green. Swirling.

He gazed up into the mulberry tree and could see himself climbing higher and higher, the only way out of this place. At the top he would flap his arms and fly away.

“Tim! Tim!”

His mother was calling but he ignored her. He grabbed onto a branch and swung himself up. He felt a few drops of rain, but only a few. There was a strong gust and dry twigs and berries trembled. A broken spider web waved ragged filaments. Another gust, like a breath of exhalation, and suddenly the tree trunk groaned, a cry of life, straining, twisting against the years of rings inside.

“Tim! Tim!”

There was distress in her voice and he felt afraid, not for himself but for her. Oh, she’d already had too much trouble. He dropped from the branch and jumped down from the station wagon, landing neatly. He hastened around the house.

They were all on the porch, waiting as if on a ship deck. His mother, her hair blowing across her face. Aunt Wanda with Dean on her hip. Uncle Pearly, his pants flapping in the wind. Tim ran up the steps to join them. “Here I am!” She grasped his shoulders and Tim put his arms around her waist. Seconds later, he heard a banging.

Releasing his mother, he turned to see hail. Round, the color of spit, it bounced off the house, hit the grass and rolled. The ice seemed alive, speckling the green. A cat streaked across the yard, followed by another cat, zagging in a different direction. Tim felt as if the heavens had split open. Cousin Dean began to wail.  

“Let’s get inside!” shouted Aunt Wanda.

Uncle Pearly grappled with his cord and disconnected the radio, and Tim’s mother pulled him toward the screen door. Tim took a step backward but then broke free when he saw a man walking in the front yard, ice falling all around him.

Could they see him?

Could they see Daddy?

Look! Look at him curl his lips. He showed his teeth, and his chest all of a sudden pushed out, like his own self was more than he could contain. Daddy moved slowly but calmly around the corner of the house, on his way to get behind the wheel of the Rambler. 

“Come on,” his mother called. She held open the screen door. Wanda and Dean hurried past her, Uncle Pearly secured the radio in the washing machine and followed them, and then Tim put down his head and joined them inside.

Charles Holdefer is an American writer based in Brussels. His latest book is Agitprop For Bedtime (stories, 2020). His novel Don’t Look at Me will be published in 2022. “Antennae” is from a collection-in-progress of baseball-related stories. Visit Charles at http://www.charlesholdefer.com.

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