Straight Man

upon him evidence of life’s fundamental unfairness, of which I continue to be living proof. It was Rourke who inspired my
Railton Mirror
nom de plume. Lucky Hank, he calls me.
    I am not myself a religious man, but I can play that role, and I often have through the years with my disgruntled neighbor. I refer to the blacktop that separates our two developments as the Red Sea. It’s Egypt he’s living in, I tell him, and ask him what sort of infestation he expects this spring, what further sign of God’s displeasure will manifest itself, how many more signs he needs in order to become a believer. I tell him he worries me, living so close. So far, God has respected the macadam road that separates us, but the Old Testament is replete withstories of the sinner’s neighbors getting zapped right along with the sinner. I tell him the way I figure it, if I’d sold him the lot he wanted, I’d be zapped already.
    I finish up my stretching exercises as quickly as I can. I only do them as a concession to last summer’s pulled hamstring, done right at the base of our hill. It pinged like a banjo string, leaving me hobbled for a good part of the summer, requiring me to play first base in our summer softball league, and keeping me out of the NBA (the Noontime Basketball Association for faculty) all first semester. I can still feel the injury, a vague leg ghost. I pamper it in the knowledge that virtue is every now and then rewarded and because I’m determined to reclaim left field this summer, though I fear my injury may have cost me the position for good. Unfortunately, I have proven an excellent first baseman. I’m a tall, rangy target for the other side of the infield to throw at, and I have long arms that aid in the stretch. Phil Watson, who doubles as my doctor and the captain of our team, proclaimed after a single inning that first base was my natural position.
    “My natural physical position, you mean,” I clarified.
    He frowned at this distinction.
    “My spiritual position is the outfield,” I explained. True, I might be a good target for shortstops to throw at, but I’m most myself ranging in the outfield after fly balls. I no longer have great speed, but I still possess a long, graceful stride. I feel like an outfielder. “Left field is my Zen position,” I continued. “You can damage an outfielder by making him play first. No man should be forced to play out of spiritual position.”
    “What’s a spiritual position?” my wife’s voice condescends out of thin air. I look up and spot her in the window of her study, from which vantage point she’s apparently been studying me.
    Have I spoken aloud? When I don’t immediately answer her question, she says, “Tell me you aren’t going running in the dark.”
    “All the best relationships are based on honesty,” I reply. “I cannot in perfect honesty tell you that I’m not going running. I can promise that I won’t run very fast, if that’s of interest.”
    “You’ve still got your cold.”
    “I’m all better,” I assure her.
    “Hank,” she says. “You’ve been eating antihistamines all week.”
    “Allergies,” I explain. “Everything’s blooming.” I look around for an example of something in bloom.
    Lily just shakes her head. Hasn’t enough happened to me already today, is her point. My nose is mutilated. Isn’t that sufficient? My going running along our dark county highway right now strikes her as perverse, an invitation to further injury. She believes there is a logic to this line of thinking—that my nose makes me especially vulnerable to a traffic accident tonight. I half-expect her to remind me that I’ve been stalked by mishap all year. Most recently, a couple weeks ago, I climbed a stepladder, lost track of where I was in relation to the garage’s cross beams, and rammed my head into a solid oak rafter. Lily found me fifteen minutes later sitting on the concrete floor, dazed, a thin line of blood squiggling from the part in my hair all the way down to the crewneck of my sweatshirt. I can tell by the look on her face that Lily’s thinking about bringing this up now, but she doesn’t. One of the nice things about our marriage, at least to my way of thinking, is that my wife and I no longer have to argue everything through. We each know what the other will say, and so the saying becomes an unnecessary formality. No doubt some marriage counselor would explain to us that our problem is a failure to communicate, but to my