Striking out

Christian Century, June 5, 2002 by David S. Cunningham

Vera goes on, and on, even after Sister Harg interrupts with "Amen!" and "Thank you, Vera!" Kincaid's first reaction is one of compassion: "If she was my sister I would take off my coat, and I'd wrap her up and hold her, and I would beg her never, ever to do this naked, passionate, impossible thing again." Her parents say only that "it's the cross that she bears"; but Kincaid's brothers think it's cruel to put a child on a cross.

Sitting with his father in the pickup, Kincaid relates the story of Vera to his father, hoping that he'll recognize the beauty of her willingness to push onward through her horrible disfiguration and do what she feels called to do, despite it all. He wants his father to listen, to see the connection. But he doesn't; perhaps he can't. "I don't know what all goes on at your church," he says. "That's your mother's department." But Kincaid has worked himself up into a frenzy in telling the story of Vera, so that he almost feels as she feels--namely, that he just has to say what has to be said:

   I want to control myself, I want to calm down, but I also want to slug Papa
   so hard I knock the smoke right out of his head. Because it's a lie. It's a
   bald-faced, idiotic lie for him to sit there with his wrecked thumb and
   dead eyes telling me that Vera and her lip and his own sons and crosses are
   all "Mama's department." ... "Get those muddy boots down off that glove
   box!" he snaps. And out it comes. "Then you quit smoking?" I shout. "And
   quit lying! And quit sitting there like a goddamned corpse out of some
   damned--" I see the fury come into his eyes, but I don't see the fist that
   smashes the left side of my face.

Kincaid's father is normally a pretty peaceful man; this violent action stuns his son and turns the father into a regretful, apologizing, sobbing wreck. His descent to the dead is utterly complete: he has attacked his own flesh and blood. At this point, there is nowhere for him to go but up.

He begs his son: "Tell me please, right now if you possibly can, what it is you want from me. Tell me what you and your brothers think I should be doing different, and if it's in my power, if it's possible at all, I swear I'll try to do it." Kincaid responds that he wants his father to be like Vera: to live on, despite what life has dealt her. "All I want is for you to fight, Papa. To fight to stay alive inside! No matter what."

AND SO HE DOES. He goes to the high school track and runs 16 quarter-mile laps ("as fast as he could run, walk, or stagger them"). He then comes home, takes his cigarettes down from the top of the refrigerator, and instead of lighting one, "grabbed the carton in a stranglehold, hissed `You did this to me!,' ripped open every pack, shredded and pulped every last cigarette, then swept up the whole mess and flushed it down the toilet. From that day forward he ran four miles every day after work, and didn't smoke another cigarette." Papa then built an odd shaped shed in the backyard and hung a mattress on the side of the garage wall, so that he could throw pitches year-round. His four sons, all of whom are baseball fans (and some of whom are rising high school stars), watch from a hedge, dreaming of a comeback.