fence, watching Eddie play. If Eddie smacked the ball to the outfield, his
father nodded, and when he did, Eddie leaped around the bases. Other
times, when Eddie came home from an alley fight, his father would
notice his scraped knuckles or split lip. He would ask, "What happened
to the other guy?" and Eddie would say he got him good. This, too, met
with his father's approval. When Eddie attacked the kids who were
bothering his brother—"the hoodlums," his mother called them—Joe
was ashamed and hid in his room, but Eddie's father said, "Never mind
him. You're the strong one. Be your brother's keeper. Don't let nobody
touch him."
When Eddie started junior high, he mimicked his father's summer
schedule, rising before the sun, working at the park until nightfall. At
first, he ran the simpler rides, maneuvering the brake levers, bringing
train cars to a gentle stop. In later years, he worked in the repair shop.
Eddie's father would test him with maintenance problems. He'd hand
him a broken steering wheel and say, "Fix it." He'd point out a tangled
chain and say, "Fix it." He'd carry over a rusty fender and some
sandpaper and say, "Fix it." And every time, upon completion of the
task, Eddie would walk the item back to his father and say, "It's fixed."
At night they would gather at the dinner table, his mother plump and
sweating, cooking by the stove, his brother, Joe, talking away, his hair
and skin smelling from seawater. Joe had become a good swimmer, and
his summer work was at the Ruby Pier pool. Joe talked about all the
people he saw there, their swimsuits, their money. Eddie's father was
not impressed. Once Eddie overheard him talking to his mother about
Joe. "That one," he said, "ain't tough enough for anything but water."
Still, Eddie envied the way his brother looked in the evenings, so
tanned and clean. Eddie's fingernails, like his father's, were stained with
grease, and at the dinner table Eddie would flick them with his
thumbnail, trying to get the dirt out. He caught his father watching him
once and the old man grinned.
"Shows you did a hard day's work," he said, and he held up his own
dirty fingernails, before wrapping them around a glass of beer.
By this point—already a strapping teenager—Eddie only nodded back.
Unbeknownst to him, he had begun the ritual of semaphore with his
father, forsaking words or physical affection. It was all to be done
internally. "You were just supposed to know it, that's all. Denial of
affection. The damage done.