Sitting amongst the discarded sunflower seeds and unsorted scraps of paper inside his truck, we waited for Charles to arrive at the storage locker in order to claim his belongings. A bit about Charles first, and a bit is all you will get as I know very little about the boy myself. Charles was the second hockey player my parents would house during the playoff season and ultimately the second player they would attempt to parent to their liking. The first was Juri a 19 year from Finland. Juri left on his own accord, uncomfortable living there for reasons I can only imagine as I never met the man so won’t speak for him. Regardless his departure was the ultimate betrayal for my parents whom in the end saw him as disloyal and only using them to end up abandoning them. I giggled when mom first told me about his departure and I uttered “Did you think you were going to keep him?! He isn’t a puppy he already had a home”. As expected my inability to see the drama of Juri’s ‘betrayal’ the same way they did was not appreciated and my puppy comment prevented any further dialogue about the lad from Finland ever again.
Then there was Charles. From what I know Charles was not in the need of parental guidance or faux family bond, simply needed a bed and a place to eat; the standard agreement between host family and player. Charles was one of those few that recognize their youth whilst they are in it and play during the period most conducive for it. In other words, he was a young man doing young man things. The lucky bastard. My parents on the other hand saw his age appropriate social development as derailment form the path of the “straight and narrow”. As we sat in the cab I had to listen to my father rage about this boy of 18 years old as if he was darkness personified. “That fuckin ungrateful bastard is late, I said 5:30, he should fucking be here. Brad that fuck is such a waste that one, what a fucking waste” dad barked in the cab. I sat there as Charles pulled up behind us. Completely baffled how this boy made my dad so angry, I attempted to ask him how all this rage was possible but it was too late as he left the cab and proceeded towards Charles car where he allowed the same venomous verbiage he shared with me to be pointed at the source. I could only hear Charles’s voice from afar but did manage to make out him saying “How do you think you can talk to a person like this?!”
We drove into the storage locker compound and opened the locker for Charles and his friend to remove his belonging. When Charles emerged from his car he stood tall and dressed in a playful outfit complete with skater shoes and hat as was his friend; two fun loving boys. This was not a bad person. Like a hungry old eagle my father watched with a predatorial eye awaiting a false move on Charles’s part to allow him to spew venom from his lips once again.
Watching this scene played out almost objectively from the cab of the truck I wondered had the rage become a drug to this man? As he paced back and forth the anxiety-ridden steps of a drug addict anxious for his next fid, I realized he needed to yell to feel sane. I have been on the receiving end of dad’s aggression, though not as extreme as Juri or Charles, I think he knows I don’t have the balls for it, but I know what its like to see the dog bark loudly and for no reason and struggle to calm him down.
The locker was closed and we drove back for dinner. The following morning he drops me off at the airport and the perpetual pouty tears appear as they always do when he drops me off, always suggesting he has more to say but no words to say it. These eyes, like his bark have confused me for years. This time I wondered if the plaintiff look was actually a cry for help? Earlier in the trip I stopped him mid rant and asked sarcastically but with sobriety nonetheless “What’s it like being this angry.” He stopped dead in his tracks.
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