LEONAIU) KIUEGEL
71
gallic (!f tOllch ji)otball ,,,ith a ,erollp (!f his friclliIs. I II'ateh their obligatiolls III!foln,
Jilll'n ,,,i,h <III CII,lY as sharp as thc prcss (!f" this NO'Jclllber coin. Abc is thirtcclI, I alii
SI'I)ClltCCII, alln the latc Octobcr air is crisp ,,,ith tllc alltiripatioll (!f '/lilltcr. My broth–
I'r alln the tll'O other boys 011 his sine clap thcir hOllns ill that illlitatioll ellthllsiaslII
so
COli
11
II 011 II
l
itll anolcscl'lIts. III ranCllcc, I hcar thcir ,miees nrolle ill IIl1isOIl. Chilnish
rhythlll (!f"Olle ,\1ississippi, fil'O 1\/ississil'pi. "Thc shapl' (!fgric'll11lcc 011 a (O/r/ 4tcr-
110011. ,\/y brothcr SpillS, rullS ill thl' nircctioll
of
thc lIIallllOle wl)cr to Illy
I~ft.
I SCI'
thl' t(eht spiral wt the air as
Abc~\
bony sails h(e/l, IWllns straillillg ollt'I'arn, IIl1til his
fillgcrs close 011 thc.f<)otliallalln hc CO IIICS cYilshill,e n01l11l to creosote, 'I'illcillg as he hits
thc .erolllln. Bllt hc holns thc ball. A 11101111'111 1ha1 Ical)cs IIII' pleascn-IJllt bllmillg
,,,ith CII")'.
Years later, when Abc is a graduate student at Duke, his wrist aches and
he has it x-rayed, on ly to discover that he had broken it when he dove
through the air and ca ught th;lt football. A minor blip in a man's life, a
twinge of occasional pain that will signal a change in the weather. At a
writer's conference in Arkansas in the spring of 1996, I meet an artist who
used to play touch football with my brother at the University of Memphis,
where they both taught. American rituals. The Art Department against the
History Department in touch foothall. He spe<lks admiringly of Abe's pass–
catching ability, and when I mention this to my brother in a real te lephone
conversation, I hear him laugh happily. In the lives of American sons, the
dues of adolescence pay for the passage through. It is not something an
immigrant father cou ld lInderstand. It is not like wandering the steppes of
Russia. My Elther was ;l lmost the exact age his son, my brother, was when
he crashed against asp halt and broke his wrist. My brother knows that a
wrist that aches when it rains is a small price to pay for a moment that com–
mands a man's memory of his body. The ache wi ll always be as rich in
memory as it is dull as pain.
It's easy enough to ridicule sllch coming-of-age rites. Stale ideas and
dead attitudes, our masculine imperatives have led to the rhetorical nonsense
of the men's movement. Yet it is diffic ult to survive without certain stale
ideas and dead attitudes, particularly in an age in which gender conscious–
ness has risen to a veritable flood. Like hawks surveying possibility, the sexes
eye each other. Consciousness of ge nder has much
to
say about men and
women, but very littl e to say about w hat manhood is. Even as a word,
Illall–
hoon
leaves
LIS
in a sweat-constructed or deconstructed, a lingu istic
irritation that scratches at the mind like a bad case of psoriasis. In a parody
of the past, l3ly's Iron John tells his ghost stories around the camp fires of
feverish adolescent imaginations. And that, we are told, is what manhood is.
And yet, American sons shou ld not be shamed out of manhood. If
there is too much nostalgia about the thing, that doesn't make it less nec-
