The Third Personality: A Novel (29)

MUNCIE, Indiana - Hamilton Boggs said as little as possible to Harley Boggs regarding his father's diminished rebounding abilities. So when an aging and frail-looking Harley, who only had just turned 61, bounced the basketball back to Ham Senior at the empty playground court's foul line, Ham casually accepted it and prepared for his next free throw in their game of tips. He'd intentionally missed his last shot.

"Sixteen-five," Hamilton recited.

"I know the score," Harley said. "Just shoot."

Ham's free throw attempt again missed, and his father made no effort to leap and re-shoot the easy rebound. Hamilton himself retrieved the ball this time.

"What else is going on here, Dad," he asked somberly.

"I miss your mother," Harley replied.

"I know how that is - don't I," Ham said with a wince. "But there's more here you're not telling me."

"The deluded preacher-man speaks," Harley grunted.

"Stop it, Dad."

"I'll stop it - when my 41-year-old son shoots the ball."

Looking away, Hamilton then dribbled the ball at the line.

He put up another unenthusiastic jumper that circled the rim and sailed, and again Harley didn't budge as the ball bounced behind him and bounded off in decreasing arcs.

Their game of tips was no longer a game of tips.

For the next several minutes, then, neither of the wifeless Boggs men spoke to one another. In fact, they barely moved.


* * * * *

"Your behavior's giving me the creeps," his son said flatly, again breaking a long silence, only this time at the dining room table in Harley's small one-bedroom apartment on the southern outskirts of Muncie.

Hamilton then shifted in his chair, sighed - and waited for his father, sipping on a cup of decaf, to respond. Enough with the small talk, Ham then decided. So far his trip to see his dad had been a huge waste of time. "So talk, already," he ordered.

Harley looked up at him. "This has nothing to do with you," he said curtly.

"Hell it doesn't," Hamilton laughed darkly.

"It doesn't," Harley said. "But it's why your mother left."

"Mom left you because she said you were drinking," Ham said.