The Breezes by Joseph O'Neill Page A

slumbering there, in the comfort of his car, that he had found a secure respite from the day’s brutalities. He looked so vincible, with his cornered shrunken body and his powerless hands. When we get home I’ll run him a hot bath and make him some soup, I decided. Yes, and maybe I’ll fix him one of those salami and gherkin sandwiches that he likes. Then, with beers at hand and the Sunday newspapers scattered about and Trusty nuzzling at our feet, we’ll settle back and watch the United game on TV. That should see him right, I thought.
    About five minutes later, Pa woke up.
    â€˜Can you hear that, Johnny?’
    I said, ‘Pa, take it from me, there’s nothing wrong with the car, all right? Now go back to sleep.’
    â€˜No,’ he said, ‘not the car. Listen to that.’
    Then I heard it, too: the sound of the crowd at Redrock Park, its cries and handclaps amplified by the acoustical stadium and carried by the wind over rooftops to Pa and me, sitting in a car almost a mile away. I lowered the window a touch. We love United , they were singing, We love United, we do, oh, United, we love you. And then, euphorically, Here we go, here we go, here we go …
    â€˜Just listen to that,’ Pa said. ‘What an atmosphere. And there’s still half an hour to go before the kick-off. Look at those crowds,’ he said, pointing to groups of fans walking quickly across the road. Studying his watch, he said, ‘We’ll be home in five or ten minutes. For a quick wash and a bite before it starts.’ For a moment we continued to look at his timepiece with the built-in referee’s stopwatch, figuring out his schedule, and then with a vigorous rubbing of hands he exclaimed, ‘Johnny, I can feel it in my bones, we’re going to win today, we’re going to win!’ He looked at me with a grin, and when I caught his eye we both burst out laughing. ‘That’s right!’ Pa said, joyously assuming a hillbilly American accent, ‘we’re going to whup their asses, boy!’
    I drove on through the familiar bends of the road home, amazed at how swiftly my father had recovered from the morning’s degradations. Just twenty minutes ago he had been spat in the face and insulted, and less than an hour before that he had been sexually assaulted by a terrier and publicly reviled. Yet here he was again, restored to enthusiasm. Was there no limit to his resilience?
    It could only be that this ability to recuperate and rally was a product of Pa’s faithfulness. Pa is the most faithful person I know. There is no thing or person which he does not believe in. God and the life hereafter, the future well-being of his children, the success of his football team, the loyalty of his dog, the reliability of Whelan, the potential of Steve, the value of employment, the upturn in the housing market: come what may, Pa has been absolutely trusting and hopeful in respect of all of these glassy entities. No matter how often and violently they shatter on the floor and how irreparable their fragmentation, by a mystery of fidelity the smithereens are always reconstituted in Pa’s mind. But where does this credulous optimism come from? Is it a necessary biological witlessness, a natural reality-blocker secreted by some gland in the brain? Or does it arrive from some occult, immaterial source?
    I enjoyed my father’s crazy hopefulness while it lasted, because it would, of course, be followed by a crazy nervousfearfulness that his hopes would be dashed, and I knew that before long the confidence would drain from him and he would be transformed into a wreck barely able to remain in the same room as the televised football match, that he would stand rooted at the doorway to the kitchen, a man appalled and mesmerized by a scene of horror, half watching the action through the fingers clasping his white face as the opposition advanced on the United goal like zombies from a