It probably would have been best to warn Dirk ahead of time. I could feel the silence in the new Ford Explorer, manufactured by the sound-proof windows, just taunting and gnawing at my Uncle Casey. I knew it would not be long. The silence beckoned.

“So guess who I ran into the other day?” my Uncle asked, glancing at our reactions in the rearview mirror.

I held onto the silence. Perhaps the question would die in the air. But Dirk, oblivious as he was, did not let it happen. “Who?” he asked.

“Michael Douglas.” My uncle seemed to emphasize every syllable in the two words.

“Really?” Dirk cocked his head to the side.

“Yeah, Gecko himself.”

“Gecko?” Dirk shot me a glance, probably curious as to why I was not taking part in the conversation.

“Wall Street, Oliver Stone? Don’t you kids know any good movies anymore?” He laughed.

“Where did you see him?” Dirk continued, “here in Anaheim?”

“Oh no, nothing like that. Roger here told you I was from Arizona, right?”

“Yeah,” I said hurriedly. I could see it beginning; my uncle was starting to weave his web. The trouble was, I was always in more danger of getting caught in the web than him. I took a deep breath, hoping the conversation would end with that.

“Watch this,” my uncle said. I seized the handle of the door – something to hold onto! I knew what was about to come. With a ridiculous grin on his face, my uncle Casey jerked the wheel to the right and swerved across three lanes, cutting in front of two cars along the way

“You hear that?” he said. We did not hear anything. “No honking!” He laughed. “It’s because of the Arizona license plates. People know you’re from out of town. I swear, I have never been honked at once when driving around California in these plates.”
I cringed. To hear “I swear” and “never” was painful – these made the statements too easy to disprove.

“Wow, it’s like you have free reign over the freeway!” Dirk said. I sighed. I could see him starting to warm up to my uncle, and this was the last thing we needed. “So tell me about running into Michael Douglas.”

From the backseat I could still see Uncle Casey’s frown. Or perhaps I did not see it, only knew it was there. It was always there when someone asked him to elaborate, the one subconscious response he could never perfect in his lies, though he covered it nicely with a smile soon after. Only the people that knew him well could spot the original reaction.

“Well, as you might know, we have this thing called a desert in Arizona. I like to go ATVing on some of the more advanced trails, and once as I was curving around one of the turns, I nearly smacked into this guy.”

“Michael Douglas?”

“Bingo . He had run out of gas. Believe it or not, he’s a complete amateur So I had to help him get back to his car…I would have been pissed normally but it was Michael Douglas. We got to talking along the way, he said he’d give me a small part in his next movie if I want it.”

I coughed My face started to feel warm. I waited in fear of the moment when Dirk would suddenly get that look of knowledge on his face, when his skepticism at last took full hold and he understood the condition of my uncle. Those glances of pity always killed me, though they somehow managed to escape my uncle.

But for now Dirk continued to stare at the driver, completely under his spell. “That’s awesome!” he said. “So you going to do it?”

“Nah, that ain’t my thing.”

“Oh, come on, you should totally do it!”

Uncle Casey just laughed. There was a touch of anxiety in the chuckle, but Dirk did not notice; only those of us that were especially sensitive could tell.

The car was silent for a few more moments.

“How long ago did this happen?” Dirk asked.

“Oh, I can’t remember. Within this last year I think.”

“Man, I didn’t even know Michael Douglas rode on four-wheelers.”

“That’s just it,” my uncle said softly, then suddenly grew bolder. “You won’t find it in any magazines or anything. He keeps it totally secret. Even his wife doesn’t know, or so he told me.”

 

The stadium came into view just as we were about to exit the freeway. “Ah, Roger, you remember those games me and you used to go to, back when I stilled lived here? You could hardly catch a baseball then!” He smiled, but there was a hint of sadness in his tone.

“Yeah,” I said. How could I forget? Uncle Casey introduced me to the game, telling me stories about the times he played with the Yankees and Angels, stories I was too young to doubt, as we gulped down our ketchup-laden hot dogs. He would always buy me two, and during those years I always counted him as my favorite uncle.

I sighed, not wishing to elaborate, and reached into my pocket for Dirk’s ticket.

“Where are you sitting?” Dirk asked my uncle.

“I don’t have a ticket yet.”

My face burned again. When Uncle Casey had offered to give Dirk and I a ride, I had assumed that he had already bought a ticket.

Dirk scratched his head. “Man, it’s sold out! What are you going to do?”

“I’ll just buy from a scalper.”

“That’s going to cost you an arm and a leg!”

“I bet you it won’t,” my uncle responded, after a slight delay. His mind had cooked up something. “I always buy my tickets right after the game begins…get them at half price, since the scalpers are looking to unload.”

“Really?” Dirk was a sports fan, like myself, and so my uncle’s explanation had piqued his interest. “Isn’t that risky, though, since you have to hope you find tickets?”

Our car turned into the stadium parking lot. A wooden barrier obstructed our path, prepared only to move after the parking attendant had received our money. Dirk and I reached for our wallets.

“Don’t worry about it,” Uncle Casey said, handing the woman a twenty-dollar bill, and receiving surprisingly little in return.

“Let me help you pay for it,” I said.

“I told you not to worry about it,” Casey grinned. “I’m already saving plenty of money by buying from scalpers.”

“So, isn’t it risky?” Dirk repeated the question of before.

Uncle Casey’s frown appeared once again . This time I was sure to catch it. But within moments there was his smile, and a confident shake of the head. “Not at all risky. It’s just that everybody thinks so. I’ll tell you, in all my life I’ve never paid full price for a game, and I’ve never failed to get a ticket.”

There were the words, two “never”s haunting the same sentence this time. I turned to Dirk, saw him digest this information without doubt, and then witnessed a childlike smile appear on his face.

“That’s awesome,” he said.

I released a sigh, and immediately felt ashamed; why should I be so happy, when I allowed my best friend to be deceived? But I also knew the answer. Anything to avoid the discovery of my uncle’s lies. A part of me would always view him through the eyes of the child from years before, and that part desperately wanted to uphold his image.

We eventually parked the Ford Explorer and stepped out onto the pavement. In the distance, we could hear the cheers from the home crowd as their team was introduced.

Dirk and I began our trek towards the stadium. It was only after we had taken several steps that we noticed my uncle’s absence . He was still standing next to the car.

“You going to come with us?” Dirk asked.

“No, I’ve still got to get my ticket.”

“We’ll come with you,” Dirk said, “I want to see you work your magic in person.”

This time the frown lingered a little longer on my uncle’s face. “No, I wouldn’t want to hold you guys up.”

“Come on,” I told Dirk.

“Geeez Roger, your Uncle gave us a ride here. The least we could do is wait while he buys his ticket.”

“Really, I’ll be all right,” Uncle Casey said. A bit of sweat started to form on his forehead, and I knew it was not from the heat. “The scalpers don’t want to give better prices when there are multiple people around.”

I shook my head. “If, for some reason, you aren’t able to get a ticket to this game, we can always just take a cab back.” I made sure to look my uncle in the eye. “You don’t have to wait for us.”

“Oh please, I’ve gotten tickets to World Series games for half-price. This should be nothing.”

I was relieved that Dirk did not ask him which World Series games.

“Well, anyway,” I said, “sometimes it can be hard to find people after the game. If you can’t find us, just take off, and we’ll find some other way home.” I knew the lengths that Uncle Casey would go to in order to uphold his lie; he would wait four hours in the parking lot for the game to finish, if necessary.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, chuckling. “We’ll be able to find each other.”

Dirk and I nodded, then turned back towards the stadium. I will never know why I said this next thing, whether it was out of stupidity or frustration, but for whatever reason I whirled around once more.

“If you get in the stadium and want to find us, we’ll be in section 134, row H, seats 29 and 30.”

My uncle pretended to make a mental note of these numbers. “I’ll try,” he said, “but I don’t like to miss much of the game wandering around.”

As we turned once again, I spotted a note of pain in my uncle’s eye, an accusation of betrayal. I took a step, then one more. Each time I hoped to bring my foot down before Dirk started speaking, as they all did, about how cool my uncle was. Alas, it started on step number seven.

I knew what awaited us after the game. My Uncle Casey would be there by his car, a little too sunburned, trying to hide his irritation behind the outward smile. He would comment on the game, give some explanation for not meeting us in there, and tell how he left at just the right time to reach his car early. Then again, perhaps he would find a ticket – my father always warned me that not everything Uncle Casey said was a lie. He did not need to lie about his success, as he could design operating systems with the best of them; but for some reason he would never consider this enough. He needed for everyone in the world to love and admire him, even at the expense of those closest to him.

“Why doesn’t he visit you guys more often?” Dirk asked.

“Because nobody in our family can stand him.” Indeed, one of my other uncles – Casey’s own brother – would not talk to him, and my father had very little sympathy for the man. Somehow, between my love for baseball and the hotdogs of my youth, I seemed to be the last one in my family to remain loyal to my uncle.

Dirk looked at me, obviously puzzled. “But he is such a nice guy…you said he offered to give us a ride without you even asking!”

I nodded. It occurred to me that I could betray my uncle in full, to tell about his lies to the one person who respected him at the moment. But when it comes down to it, there is no easy way to denounce someone like that, someone who is so eager to please that the truth never stops them.

“I know,” I said, lifting my head towards the stadium. I wished that once, just once, my uncle would accept his defeat and drive away.

I turned around to take once last glance before entering the stadium. I spotted it, still parked, that new, red Ford Explorer, likely hiding my uncle on the other side. “I know,” I said once more, and handed the usher my ticket.