get stuffed guy

Just before school starts, Guy’s mom looks up from her book after dinner and tugs at his shaggy hair.

“We’ll get your haircut tomorrow.”

“Can I get it how I want?”

Dad’s still out with Mace.

She swallows a little wine and looks back down at her book. “Sure, baby.”

He pumps his fist and darts in to kiss her cheek, dumping his dishes in the sink. Star Trek’s on in just a minute. “Thanks, Mom!”

He brings Pete Rose’s baseball card with him to the barbershop the next morning. When he shows it to the barber, his mother looks over his shoulder, That’s really what you want? but she’s got a smile with it too, so he nods excitedly and starts telling them both about why Pete Rose is his favorite player, except maybe for Brooks Robinson, but even Pete Rose thinks Brooks Robinson is in a higher league than anyone else ever, and Pete Rose can play just about any position and he’s so good that he was intentionally walked in game three of the World Series in 1975, bases loaded, you know, that’s how much of a threat Pete Rose was, they couldn’t take a chance. What a great team that was, Joe Morgan and Johnny Bench, but Pete Rose, boy, he always plays to win. He once said he’d walk through hell in a gasoline suit just to play baseball, and the barber laughs even as his mom tells him not to say “hell.”

When they get home, his dad looks right at him for the first time all summer.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Mom turns around from the kitchen sink. “He likes his hair that way, Rolly.”

“It’s stupid. It looks like we can’t afford to get him a decent clip.”

Guy pipes up. “It’s like Pete Rose wears it, Dad. It’s cool.”

“Oh, it’s cool, is it?” Dad grabs a beer from the fridge and heads to his recliner by the tv. “You don’t see your brother goin’ around in a faggy haircut just to be cool. You know where your brother is now?”

Guy waits for the answer.

“He’s out drillin’ his footwork so he can play a real man’s sport.”

His mom turns back to the sink. “He likes baseball, Rolly.”

“You’re turnin’ him into a sissy.” 

Guy stays near his mom when Rolly leaves. She sighs, looking him over with her hands in the soapy water. “Maybe it’s best if we change it, baby.”

He clenches his teeth at the unfairness of it all. He knows to a certainty that Mace cuts his hair like Joe Montana, and it’s definitely “just to be cool.” 

“I don’t care what he thinks.”

She nods as if she already knew what he’d say. “Just try not to set him off again, okay?”

He goes upstairs in his room to flip through Winning Baseball. He hears Mace slam through the front door just before dinnertime. When he comes upstairs to change, Mace pokes his head into Guy’s room and snorts, pushing his dumb, sweaty feathered bangs back. Girls had been coming around a lot more recently; Mace seemed to have skipped the awkwardness of puberty and went straight to Chick Magnet. 

“That’s pretty bad, Guy.”

“Shut up.”

“You’re gonna get the shit beat out of you at school.”

“Pete Rose doesn’t get beat up.”

“I hate to break it to you, but you’re not Pete Rose.”

“You used to like baseball too, you know. I’m not stupid, I found your old baseball cards.”

Mace’s face pinches up. “It’s just a little kid’s game.”

“No it’s not.”

“Whatever,” Mace hesitates in the doorway. “Look, I know you don’t care what people think, little brother. But, believe me, life’s gonna be a lot easier if you start.”

Guy shakes his head, biting down on his cheek. “So what, be more like you? Dad’s little soldier?”

Mace stares past Guy to the 8x10 glossy of the ‘66 Orioles hanging over his bed Mom had found at a garage sale. 

“It might help.”

“I hate him.”

Mace doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look at him. “You’re too young to understand anything.”

“I understand he’s a drunk and he’s an asshole.”

That gets Mace’s full attention. “Shut up.”

“No,” and for some reason Guy wants to cry, but he pushes it all down just a little bit longer.

“You don’t remember how he was,” Mace pinches his nose. “Life’s not a baseball game, Guy. It’s more complicated. People get…they get hurt, or sad. They get fired. Forgotten about. You just…you don’t get it.”

“He hits Mom.”

That gets Mace to flinch, which feels kind of good.

“He doesn’t mean to.”

Guy feels a hot flush all over, and suddenly his chest is tight, his throat is tight, and his face is wet, his eyes blurry. “I hate this family.”

Mace stares at his feet. “I know.”

Mace tells him he’d better clean up for dinner, and he does. They’re quiet at the table until Dad makes another jab at Guy’s hair. Mace cuts in and asks Dad about how great Joe and the 49ers were looking this year, and how they’d go all the way, no question. How it was a shame that the Colts look like crap, that’s what they get for moving away, and would they ever get football back in Baltimore? Surely, surely they would, no doubt about it. It just makes Rolly mad that the whole goddamn city had to suffer just because a couple greedy Jews got bored and decided to swap a few franchises around. Goddamn Irsay and his goddamn LA Rams, goddamn shame to see the Colts in Indianapolis of all places, who the hell thought that up?! Mace just nods his head along, shooting Guy little glances, making sure his little brother’s not about to screw up dinnertime again, upset Almighty Dad by speaking or tipping over a glass of  milk or something.

The first day of school a sixth grader tells Guy he looks like a retard. 

“Takes one to know one, chucklehead.”

“Watch your mouth, Opie--”

Guy charges him, puts his head into the kid’s gut real hard, but the kid’s a lot bigger and after a few seconds Guy’s wrestled to the ground, his arms pinned, the jackass sitting on his chest until Guy can hardly breathe. 

Three weeks later nothing is better, and Mace keeps telling him it’s only going to get worse in middle school and Don’t get a reputation as a weirdo now, stupid. So Guy asks his mother to take him back to the barber, and she doesn’t even put up a fuss like he expects: it must be that bad. 

When the barber asks him what he wants he just shrugs and swallows and tells him he doesn't really care all that much. His mother says she’s always liked it short because he’s got “such a nice bone structure,” whatever that means. The barber gives him a flattop, short and clean all around.

It doesn’t take too long. “See, now that’s a haircut. I could set my watch to that haircut.” 

His mother laughs, such a rare sound, and the barber keeps rolling, “We got a young Johnny Unitas right here. You play football, kid?”

Mom pets him on the head, and he feels about five years old. “He likes baseball.”

“Mickey Mantle, then. Ol’ Mick always kept a clean look too. Real timeless.”

Guy hates the Yankees.