“…down by the banks of the river Charles.”
Off-duty Officer Gillis wandered down Charles Street toward Storrow Drive and the river. The sky was pewter pink with flecks of gray clouds strafing its line. It would open in easy glimpses as his sight passed one building to the next. He had a habit of looking up into the spaces between brownstones; between anything more than a few stories high. It was difficult this evening, around 8 o'clock during daylight savings time, for him to remember he wasn't donning his policing duds.
His sister, scant younger by less than a year, would be named Junie Moon, after a movie by Otto Preminger. A sequence of the film, at the Blue Hill Cemetery, was shot in his family's native Braintree.
Carl Reginald Gillis was born inside Mass General Hospital on April 8, 1969. The Red Sox played their opening day game in Baltimore, going into extras that 8th, with Tony Conigliaro rounding to score what would be the game's winning run during the first half of the 13th inning. Baby Carl, however, was pulled into a smoke filled delivery room during the top of the 10th. As his father stared at a sight unpiqued in the male mind until it is seen and etched eternally in the confines of his manhood, he heard, of all things, the crack of a bat. He was convinced it was the trick of his own making, that sound, until he heard Ken Coleman's "There it goes!" with Ned Martin and Jonny Pesky in doubled muffled "No's" barely audible in the background. The husband was starring at stirrups, at the sight unseen, at the changing world, at the lime green sheets soaked dark, at the doctor's head turned toward the radio as he held the boy in hand. The boy who was slipping. Thomas Bradley Gillis leapt like Orr would in a month and a year. His white collared short sleeve shirt chest caught a slip-slide of new purple and red as his progress squeaked to a halt two feet from the doctor's shoes. Thom's black-rimmed glasses skidded across the floor ahead of him and under the baby, whose blobular form fell with a smack into his hands. His arms were stretched such he could feel their lateral muscles tearing. He smiled. He coughed out a laugh in harmony with the doctor's clearing throat. "Excuse me," was all the white-coat could at first say.
"That's a slippery one. Good thing. Your slide startled me or I would've nabbed the boy. Naturally. It's a boy. Congratulations Thom. And to you Sue!" he yelled over the sheet as if she were a room away. She was further.
"Hand me my glasses will you Doc," Thomas replied from the floor, his muscles in a shake.
The doctor reached for the child and was met with a thunder that brought Susan back into the room.
"My glasses!" And the doctor stopped his motion cold.
"Nurse," said the doctor, "Fetch Mr. Gillis's glasses and hand them to me please."
Gillis knew what was coming, and with his hands in such a way was realizingly helpless. The doctor, spectacles in grip, positioned them neatly toward the father's face. His hands, the doctor's, were sloppy with birth and stained a steady stogie-yellow. He slid his fingers along the side shields and temples of the frame before fitting them on to the man below. Thomas felt the slick and quick drying goo seep into his cheek and sideburns as he grimaced with a sickening feel he'd never thought to imagine. The doctor, in a final flourish, pressed his palms to the lenses in a gesture to be sure they held on his patient's head. Thomas blinked through Christian eyes and saw through a stranger's palm muck his first born, his son. Ken Coleman waxed poetic of the triumphant return of Tony C, his 2-run blast having tied it in the 10th.
"Maybe Anthony," Thomas said as he heard the radio and stared at his still-attached infant.
"No goddamn it," rang out Susan from the unseen height of the bed. "It'll be bad luck.".
He looked up and around, finding the nurse frozen in state with umbilical scissors and clamp. "Carl. Reginald. Gillis," he said.
"Karl with a 'K,'"her hands grubbing themselves unmercifully.
"A 'C.' If you please."
"Spell Regina…"
"R-E-G-I-N-A-L-D. Thank you." He nodded as best he could.
In high-school, Carl would switch, of his own volition, his moniker to Reggie. His mother loved it, at home calling him Reginald. His white chums scoffed and took him to blows over it. His Afro school mates held an apprehensive respect for what they thought could be a well-intention offer of equality that had never needed to be earned. They would shortly become members of the blowback, and Reggie Gillis would begin a new and unbooked schooling.
He was headed on foot to Mass General tonight, his off-duty night, August 31, 1997 until something by the water caught his ears. He flew through the unseasonable cool toward the sound and the next elucidation.
~ addendum to "Twenty Buses Down."
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