Football by Donald Ranard
*****“So, I’m sitting there, wondering how long it’s gonna be and what’ll it be like,” Carl says. “Will there be a gasp or a death rattle, or is that just an old wives’ tale?” He finishes his beer and cracks open another one. He and Darren are sitting on the couch in front of a big-screen TV, with the picture on and the sound off. “All of a sudden he raises his hand, like he’s holding a glass, and goes, ‘Get me another drink, will you, son.’ I’m like, what? The man’s been out of it, hasn’t said a word for eight hours, and now he wants a drink? I think—I actually think this—Isn’t this just like him, he never does what he’s supposed to do—he’s supposed to be dying and he wants a damn drink. And what’s with son—he never called me that before. It was always boy or on the rare occasion he was feeling affectionate, kid. But never son. It was weird as hell.” He shakes his head at the memory of it. “I half expected him to sit up in bed and ask if there’s a game on. That was my job, you know, when we watched football together—I freshened his drinks.”
*****“I remember,” says Darren. “I’d come over to your house, and you’d be downstairs in the den, watching football with him. Your dad sure loved his football. When I picture him, it’s in his Barcalounger, watching a game.”
*****“That was the one thing we had,” Carl says. “Football. We didn’t have anything else, but we had that. I wasn’t a big football star in high school like he was. But I knew the stats. I could tell you the yard per carry for just about every running back in the NFL. No one was better at the stats.”
*****“So, what happened—at the hospital, I mean, after he asked for a drink?”
*****“I asked the nurse and she said it was the morphine—he was having a morphine dream. It’s a thing. You go off into la-la land. And I’m like, that would explain son. Because it’s only in la-la land that I’d be his son.” He pauses, debating whether to continue. “Once, when he was on one of his binges, he told me he never wanted kids. What father tells his son that?”
*****That could’ve been the booze talking. People say all kinds of crazy shit when they’re drunk.”
*****“In vino veritas.”
*****“In what?”
*****“In vino veritas. In wine, there is truth.”
*****“How about in morphine veritas?”
*****“What do you mean?”
*****“I mean, if there’s truth in wine, why not in morphine? Maybe in his last moments on earth your father was doing what he loved most—watching football. With his son.”
*****The thought takes Carl by surprise. “I never looked at it that way,” he says quietly.
*****Beth, Carl’s daughter, enters the room with a plate of chicken wings. She sets the plate down on the coffee table.
*****“Thanks, sweetie,” her father says.
*****“Why’s the sound off?” Beth says.
*****“It’s half-time,” Darren says.
*****“Oh.” She looks at the two men, sensing something. “So, what’ve you two been talking about?”
*****Darren reaches for a wing; Carl cracks open another beer. “Football,” Carl says.
Donald A. Ranard’s short stories and essays have appeared in Free Flash Fiction, The Atlantic, New World Writing Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Vestal Review, The Best Travel Writing, and many other publications. In 2022, his prose poem “5/25/22” was longlisted by Wigleaf as one of the year’s Top 50 Very Short Fictions and his play, ELBOW. APPLE. CARPET. SADDLE. BUBBLE., won second place in a national playwriting contest. Before settling in Arlington, Virginia, he lived and worked in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
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This short story is so effective—tells so much in so few words: the past relationships between Carl and his father, his relationship with his friend and with his daughter. Watching football—the halftime show with the sound off—as a metaphor for all these relationships. I loved this piece!