We didn’t own a vehicle designed for road trips because we hardly took any, and Dad’s car wasn’t designed to handle off-road travel because he never strayed from highways or city streets, but Mom had insisted we do this. The Dodge Aspen expressed its anger for the deviation from the norm by kicking up so much dirt into the air that it enshrouded us in a brown fog.
“I hope someone can see the trailhead.” Dad alternated looking at Mom in the passenger’s seat and whatever was before him.
“You need to slow down,” Mom said.
I was seated behind Mom, trying to help Dad by looking for the trailhead, though I was unsure what that would look like. I’d never gone hiking before, but Mom said there was more to life than baseball. Maybe, I thought, but nothing else was as good.
“Stop hitting me!” my brother, two years and a day my junior, screamed unnecessarily loud, as he always did whenever I touched him.
I saw Dad looking at me in the rearview mirror. “Why are you hitting him?”
“He cut the cheese.”
Mom looked over her left shoulder. “Not in the car, Sean.”
“I couldn’t help it.”
Mom sighed and allowed her head to rest against the side window. She popped up a couple of minutes later. “There it is.” She tapped Dad’s arm rapidly and pointed off to the right.
Dad parked near the place Mom said the trail started. I wasn’t so sure since there weren’t any other cars nearby. After we’d all exited, Dad walked a circle around our ride. “Good thing about having a maroon car. Dirt doesn’t show too much.”
It showed enough that had I not been such a rules follower I might have written something on the rear window. Go blue? We’re at the top?
Dad opened the trunk and removed two backpacks. “You want to carry the food or the water?” He was looking at me but speaking loudly to Mom.
Mom was already standing away from us, looking up at the mountain. “The water.”
“That’s heavier.”
“It’s more important.”
Mom returned to the car and removed the sandals she had been wearing and put on hiking boots and socks. Like the males, she wore shorts and a t-shirt, but we all wore sneakers. Dad’s and mine were white canvas.
Sean’s was black suede. He pointed to Mom’s boots. “Why are you wearing those?”
“Because I don’t want to be the one who twists an ankle and makes the others carry her down the mountain.”
“C’mon, Gup.” I grabbed my brother’s brown shirt and tugged. He stumbled but was soon running behind me.
The first part of the trail was mainly dirt with only a slight incline.
“Don’t get too far ahead.” I heard Dad’s voice, seemingly far in the distance while I continued my sprint.
I wasn’t moving nearly as fast when I walked back down the trail and met my parents a little while later.
Dad looked past me. “Where’s your brother?”
“He fell. Can I have some water, Mom?”
“Fell?”
“He’s all right. Just got a scrape.”
Dad dropped his backpack and jogged ahead, leaving me with Mom.
“It’s a little slippery up there.”
Mom bent down and untied my sneakers, then pulled the laces tighter. “That’s because this rock is made from lava.”
“Lava? Where’s the volcano?”
Mom got behind me and turned my head slightly to the left. “There.”
“It doesn’t look like one.”
“It did millions of years ago.”
I tried doing some math inside my head. I was nine, Sean seven, Dad 35, Mom 33. As a family, we weren’t even a hundred. One million was 10,000 hundreds. That was a lot harder to fathom than ERAs and batting averages like 1.12 and .406.
Dad held Sean’s hand as they approached us. The blood on my brother’s knee and the tears on his face had both already dried. There wasn’t anything unusual about the injury, except maybe where it had taken place—on a mountain instead of a ballfield or suburban street. Sean and I played sports hard every single day, and every single day one, if not both of us, suffered an injury of some sort. We were two exceedingly skinny kids with cuts and bruises all over our bodies.
“Did we pack any Band Aids?” Dad asked.
“I did.” Mom retrieved one from a compartment in her backpack and handed it to her husband, who immediately ripped the package open. “You should wash his knee first.”
Dad grabbed the jug of water out of my hand. He poured some into his hand and threw it at the scraped knee. Mom turned her back.
“Now we’re all going to stay together the rest of the day.” Dad looked to see if there was any objection.
I sidled up to Sean and bumped my shoulder into his. “It’s your fault.”
We scaled the mountain in a single file with me in front of my brother, Mom next, and Dad in the rear. We did so in relative silence save for Dad occasionally shouting for me to slow down or offering a warning of some upcoming obstacle or hazard. After we had climbed for an hour or so, we reached a plateau and Dad ordered me to stop.
“Everybody should have a drink,” Mom said.
Dad removed his baseball hat depicting a ballplayer holding a bat while sitting atop a donkey. He wiped a considerable amount of sweat from his forehead. “We can eat our lunch here. There’s plenty of room to spread out.”
I saw the path ahead looked rather steep but looked forward to the challenge. “Aren’t we going to the top?”
Dad looked at Mom and then at me. “That might be too adventurous for today. This is our first time hiking. Let’s eat and then decide.”
I didn’t see the point of hiking if you didn’t go to the top. What were you accomplishing? I looked to Mom since this had been her idea, but she seemed more concerned with getting everyone to sit in a circle while she handed each person their sandwich. Sean had bologna with mustard on plain white bread. I had roast beef on rye. Dad had ham and cheese on a kaiser roll. Mom had turkey and lettuce with mayo on toast.
As usual, Dad and I ate more quickly than the others. When I had finished, I got to my feet and feigned throwing pitches to imaginary batters. I started from the windup and then moved to the stretch. “Messersmith checks the runner at first and delivers.”
“Was that a strike?” Dad asked.
“Of course.”
Sean handed his half-eaten sandwich to Mom and got in the lefty batter’s box. “McCovey coming to the plate.”
I feigned throwing the first pitch towards Sean’s head. “Messersmith brushes McCovey back.”
Dad got behind my brother to umpire. “Those guys still your favorite players?”
I grabbed the invisible resin bag from the back of the mound. “Of course. I’m a pitcher, right? Might as well be the best.”
“Tom Seaver might have something to say about that.”
“He’s not a Dodger, Dad.”
Sean grabbed actual dirt and covered his hands and imaginary bat with it. “Who was your favorite player?”
“Duke Snider,” I said on Dad’s behalf.
“What team did he play for?” Sean asked.
“The Dodgers. When they were in Brooklyn. Dad grew up in New York, remember?”
“Yeah, in the Queens Riviera,” Mom said.
Sean dropped his bat and placed his hands on his hips. “How come we ended up out here?”
“A scout found me and told me to go West to play ball after high school. I never made it to the show because I hurt my arm.” Dad turned his gaze from Sean to me. “That’s why you shouldn’t focus solely on pitching. Anyway, I met your Mom and became her favorite player.”
I quick-pitched Sean, and Dad showed both of his index fingers to indicate the count was 1-and-1. I stepped off the rubber. “Is that true, Mom?”
“About your father’s injury being the reason he didn’t make the majors? I don’t think so.”
“Is Dad your favorite athlete?” Sean asked.
“No.”
Sean looked as surprised as I was. “Who is?”
“Secretariat.”
Sean and I both stared at our mother, not understanding. She was like that sometimes. Strange. Different from the rest of us. Dad was my role model. He didn’t make the Major Leagues, but he came close. He got paid money to play baseball. I couldn’t imagine a better life, except making it to the Big Leagues. I was sure I could with Dad teaching me everything he knew and practicing with me as much as I wanted.
Dad was confident too. He said he got where he did on his own. His father had been a good athlete, but as a first-generation boy in America, he played the same sport that his father did in the old country. Football. What we called soccer. Grandpa knew nothing about baseball, but Dad wanted to be seen as American so that meant taking up the national pastime. Now he was helping me.
Dad was always teaching me tricks of the trade, whether we were on a field, in the backyard, or watching games together. There’s a fast runner on first, he’d say, mimicking a pitcher on the rubber looking over his shoulder towards first base, and you think he’s going to steal, you don’t have to throw over ten times. Sometimes you can just step off. But even better, just hold the ball longer than normal. His legs will become jittery, and he’ll start shifting his weight towards second and you can pick him off, or he’ll grow weary and head back towards first and you can throw the next pitch.
Dad picked up Sean’s imaginary bat and handed it to him. He adjusted my brother’s stance, pulling his legs a little further apart and dropping the angle he held the make-believe piece of wood. “Your Mom’s just fooling around. Actually, Sean might be better as a pitcher because he’s a lefty.”
A large grin overtook my brother’s face. “Is it really good to be a lefty?”
“In baseball, yeah.”
“It’s better than it used to be. They tied your grandmother’s hand behind her back to prevent her from using it to write.” Mom stood and pinned her left hand to her spine to demonstrate.
I threw another pitch while my brother wasn’t looking at me and watched Dad throw out his hand to the side to signal a called strike two. “Why would they do that?”
“Because people held stupid ideas and liked to think different was bad. Still do.”
“I’m going to play in the NBA,” Sean said.
Dad got out of his umpire crouch. “You are, huh?”
“I’ll be the next Tiny Archibald.”
“You got to be tall to play in the NBA.”
“Dad, his name is Tiny.”
“He’s still six feet tall and that’s what constitutes being ‘tiny’ in pro basketball.”
Dad was just shy of six feet himself, but he married a much smaller woman. Mom barely stood 5’2” even with her boots on. As one of the taller boys in my class, I figured I’d grow at least as tall as Dad. Sean was on the shorter side; hence, his nickname.
“What if your plans don’t work out?” Mom asked. “They didn’t for your father, so he became a Phy Ed teacher.”
I fired a fastball past my brother and jogged off the field without even waiting for the third strike to be called. I picked up an imaginary bat of my own and took a few practice swings. “Like Dad said, I’ll try to make it as a hitter too. I like Ron Cey.”
“That rookie? Who knows how good he’ll be. You’d be better off modeling your game after a shortstop or center fielder.” Dad began throwing pitches to me. “Down and away. Take those with less than two strikes. Foul ‘em away if you got two.”
Sean ran and retrieved the remains of his sandwich from Mom. He took a bite and spoke with his mouthful. “Why’d you become a Phys Ed teacher?”
“I bet it was to keep playing sports,” I said.
Dad stepped off the rubber. “It was the only thing I could do besides play ball.”
Sean turned to Mom. “Why did you become a science teacher?”
“It’s the only thing they would let me be.”
For the second time, Sean and I stared at our mother with utter confusion. Who were these people supposedly telling Mom what she had to be? It would have been easy enough to ask the logical follow-up questions, but I didn’t have much interest in my mother’s life at the time. She was just Mom. Dad had been the one who taught me baseball, and baseball was what I wanted to spend my life doing. Everything else was a distraction.
Dad clapped his hands loudly. “So should we go back now?”
“Let’s keep going higher,” I said.
Sean threw himself into his mother’s arms. “I’m tired.”
Mom looked past us and up the trail. “I don’t think we have a choice.”
We followed her gaze. A collection of big horn sheep appeared close to the trail up ahead. Four grazed on each side of the trail while one stood between them and was not eating.
“Can we go see them?” I asked.
Dad scratched the back of his head. “It might be dangerous.”
“They’re just sheep.”
“You ever see how hard they ram their heads together? They could break your leg.”
Mom handed Sean to our father and took my hand. “I’ll take him. I want to get a closer look anyway.”
“Not too close,” Dad said loudly as we left him and Sean.
Mom stomped her feet and turned. “They’re not what you should worry about.”
We proceeded towards the sheep until a few of them lifted their heads. Mom then crouched down to my level. “This is as close as we go.”
“Do you think any of them will butt heads?” I asked.
“No, I have the feeling the one not eating has already demonstrated his dominance.”
“Do you know much about these animals?”
“No, but I like watching them and trying to learn from them.”
“Me too.” The sheep soon resumed their grazing and ignored the interlopers. I watched them for some time and tried to figure something out on my own. When I couldn’t, I turned to Mom. “How do you know the one in the middle is a male?”
“The dominant ones always are.”
I tugged at my blue shirt with the number 47 on the back because sweat had dried and pressed it tight into my chest. “You know what I’d really like to do if I can’t play baseball?”
“No, what?”
“Study penguins like this.”
Mom tussled my blonde hair. “So that’s why you like Ron Cey. Because he’s The Penguin.”
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“One day you’ll find out girls know more than you think they do.”
Unhappy with the mysterious statement, I was ready to shut us down again, but this time Mom restored our conversation.
“So what do you know about penguins?”
“They all live in the Southern Hemisphere.”
“That’s right. What else?”
“There’s a lot of types. Twenty maybe.”
“Do you have a favorite?”
“Adelies.”
Mom rolled onto her side and propped her head with her hand. She seemed to have lost interest in the sheep. I was her focus now. “Why’s that?”
“They have the most fun. They slide on their bellies on the ice.”
“What else do you know about them?”
“They live in Antarctica. At the edge, near the ocean.”
“Are there other penguins in Antarctica?”
I began speaking faster. “Yeah, there are King penguins and Emperor penguins there too. They’re both bigger than Adelies. Emperors live closest to the South Pole.”
“Do you know what Adelies eat?”
“Yeah, krill.”
“What’s krill?”
“It’s some kind of small fish. Whales eat tons of them. Adelies probably eat them one at a time.”
“Do they have predators?”
“Yeah, these birds called skua go after their eggs, but the penguins chase them away. And leopard seals try to kill them when they’re in the water. But Adelies swim really fast and usually can get away.”
I think I could have stayed there for hours talking about penguins with my Mom. Maybe it wasn’t the first time I had a real conversation with her, but it was the first of many going forward that I remember. We’d later talk about girls I liked, insecurities I developed, and the unexpected challenges life throws your way. The kind of stuff you couldn’t express in a single sentence the way I usually could when talking to my Dad.
Dad approached us with Sean at his side. “Shouldn’t we be heading back?” His presence changed things. With him there, it was like we had to return to our normal roles. I got to my feet and grabbed my brother’s hand and began running down the mountain, pulling Sean with me.
“Be careful, Gup,” Dad shouted.
“Alfred Thomas Fish!”
I’d already taken flight but heard Mom’s voice crackle with annoyance. I’d never heard her use Dad’s full name the way she did with me or Sean whenever she was mad at us. But I knew she didn’t like it when I called my brother “Gup,” which was short for Guppy. Dad was prohibited from using the nickname altogether and usually only did when he and I were alone. Dad hated his own name. He tolerated Al, but he preferred people to call him Shark as his teammates had done during his playing days. A few of my friends at the time called me Trout. Who knew one day there’d be a famous Major Leaguer with that name, but it wouldn’t be me?
Sean saw it before I did, long after I’d released him. He yelled for me to stop. I thought he just couldn’t keep up, so I continued to descend the mountain quickly, staring at my feet rather than looking ahead. I don’t know why I eventually looked up, but when I did, I saw a bear on all fours in the middle of the trail, its head and nose pointed upwards.
I skidded to a stop and looked back at my brother. He waved his hands indicating I should come back to him, but I thought if I ran, the bear might as well. After a moment or two frozen in place, I began to backpedal. Slowly. For the first time that day, I fell after my sneakers slipped against the soil and loose rocks, and both my knees and palms hit the ground.
“Go get Dad,” I yelled.
Once to my feet, I turned sideways hoping that would allow me to see better where I was headed. I noticed Sean’s number 44 retreating into the distance. I wished I could do the same but was afraid even though the bear did not appear interested in me. I tried to pick up the pace of my side-shuffle, but my legs had begun to twitch, my knees to knobble.
I had started to cry by the time I heard Dad call my name. I saw him shortly thereafter. In one motion, he reached me and lifted me off my feet and into his chest, which he swung away from the bear.
I was fully sobbing by the time Mom and Sean joined us. She had all our supplies thrown over her shoulder and was holding my brother’s hand.
“What’s it been doing since you saw it?” Dad asked.
Sean pointed at the bear. “It was sniffing.”
Dad returned me to the ground. “Has it moved?”
Sean went in front of me. “Not since I saw it.”
Dad looked back up the mountain and across our surroundings. “I wonder if there’s another way down.”
I tried to be of help and looked about, but I couldn’t see any other way. While Dad spun himself in circles a few times at ever increasing speed, Mom shook herself free from the backpacks. The bear looked in our direction following the sound of the items hitting the dirt.
“For God’s sake, it’s just a black bear.” Mom moved towards the animal waving her arms high above her head. She then roared at it with a sound I had never heard her utter before.
The bear stood on its hind legs to get taller and see better.
Mom stopped and called for the rest of us to join her. “It’ll make us look bigger and more threatening if we stand close together and all make noise at the same time.”
I looked at Dad for direction. He appeared dubious of his wife’s plan, but Sean left us and joined our mother. When he reached her, she picked him up and lifted him above her shoulder. I hadn’t expected her to be strong enough to do that. Both screamed at the bear, and it quickly fled to the right and disappeared first into some brush and then behind some large rocks.
We all stared in that direction for a few minutes, until Dad gathered all of our belongings. “Come on.”
Mom had a curious smile on her face when we reached her. Dad moved past her and Sean and continued down the mountain at a fast clip. I took the second position.
No one said anything, or, if they did, I was too preoccupied with my thoughts to notice. I couldn’t believe that I’d seen two family members as I never had before.
Of course, change does not happen overnight. Dreams rarely die a sudden death, and bad habits are not easily overcome. Progress and growth come with maturity, if at all. Moments in time often mean more upon reflection, but I’m confident that our encounter with the bear and Mom and Sean’s actions that day at least ended a nine-year old’s myopia.
Dad’s change appeared more sudden. I wasn’t sure why, but he appeared angry as he loaded the car and banged the trunk shut and ordered my brother and me inside.
Mom took her time getting in. She waited until we had left the trail area and were back on the highway before she turned in her seat and looked me in the eye. “You will need courage if you’re going to do what you want to do. People will tell you, you’re crazy. You won’t make much money. You’ll have to go far from home. If you focus on Adelies, you will experience an environment far colder than anything you’ve ever known.”
I looked at my brother wondering if he was enjoying his heroic moment, the elevation in his standing within the family. He smiled at me, showing his chipped two front teeth, the product of one of his earlier accidents, one that truly was not my fault. I was initially angry but soon realized it was not a gloating smile nor a mocking one. Rather, it appeared to be a knowing smile, as if he already understood what Mom was saying and could see where my life was headed long before I could.
Mom reached over her seat and gently touched my arm. “Being brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. Being courageous just means doing what is hard, not what is easy.”
Dad held the steering wheel with both hands. He stared straight ahead. Maybe he too recognized he’d been shown his place.
Years later I learned Mom hated her name, our family name, but she said at the time she didn’t think she had any choice. The best she could do was keep an initial, so she became June R. Fish, the daughter of Gus and Peggy Rivers. Humble in victory like her younger son, Mom reached over and touched Dad as she had done to me. “Take us home, Shark. The Dodgers play tonight.”
