We’re #1!
A short story about exceptionalism and the parlance of our times
This story originally appeared in Driftwood Press, Volume 1, Issue 2.
Before that day, Lauren thought Greg was a good husband, an upstanding citizen, and the perfect Little League father. He hadn’t missed a game all season, and he was sure to arrive with a cooler of sports drinks to combat energy lulls. He worked his jaw steadily through all the chants and singsongs, and he booed and hissed when needed, admonishing the anonymous umpires and their flagrant calls. Greg could be a little overzealous at times, but children appreciated grand gestures–sometimes they were the only kind of gesture a child could understand — so Lauren didn’t think twice when Greg returned from the concession stand wearing an oversized foam hand with the words “We’re #1” printed in white ink on both purple sides. “It was a bargain,” he said, thrusting the mitt in the air. “Only five dollars.”
Lauren bit into the hot dog Greg handed her.
“We’re #1,” he said comically.
“Right,” Lauren replied, laughing.
The crack of a bat grabbed Greg’s attention, and he leapt to his feet and cheered their first single of the day as though it were a home run. “Woohoo!” he screamed. “We’re number one!” He proceeded to do a little jig, shaking his hips while rhythmically jabbing the finger in the sky. The dance made Greg look somewhat clownish, but Lauren didn’t say anything because she was having a good time, and so was he, and for now that’s all that mattered.
Had he been content to waggle the finger with a little more restraint Lauren wouldn’t have minded so much. But Greg’s faith in the power of the hand was as loud and steadfast as it was annoying, and after a few more innings his antics started earning him looks from the opposing team. Not that seemed noticed. He jabbed his hand toward the heavens each time one of The Lights swung the bat and he shot to his feet whenever his sons Timmy or Graham — ages nine and ten, respectively — shagged a fly ball. No throw, bunt, or pitch went unlauded. He looked for any reason to spear the hand in the air and claim unassailable victory for their son’s team even though The Lights were down by eleven runs.
Eleven was probably the number of times Lauren would have to wash their uniforms to get the stains out.
Eventually, she told Greg to tone it down. He replied something about supporting the team no matter what. “No matter what,” he repeated severely. When the National Lights’ pitcher intentionally hit an opposing batter with a fastball, the East Side bleacher erupted in a communal boo. In response to their outrage, Greg’s voice rang like an out-of-tune trombone:
“Take that,” he jeered, pointing the purple hand at the child limping to first base. “Because we’re number one!”
No longer wanting the stigma of being “the wife of that idiot with the foam hand,” Lauren slowly inched away from her husband. And then — after Greg roared a few more times — she scooted down the bleachers even more.
She struck up a conversation with Bradley, father of Rosie, who was the only girl on the team. Rosie always played right field and Lauren couldn’t help watch and think that even though the girl hadn’t touched the ball all season, even though she was standing alone in a sea of green, she was still a major part of the team.
Bradley asked if Lauren was still going to teach history when the under-construction high school opened next fall. Lauren said she didn’t know; after erecting the new school, which cost the city tens of millions of dollars, the district might not have anything left for part-time history teachers. “They’re already cutting down on the arts,” she said. “So who knows what’s next?”
“It’d be a shame if they had to sacrifice anybody, part-time or not,” Bradley said. Silently, Lauren agreed. No one she’d talked to thought tearing down the old school was a good idea; regardless, the district was moving ahead. The old high school would be demolished and a new one would be built in its place. When they tore down the vetoed structure there would be a fantastic explosion. It was almost as though it was the way things had to be.
After the shame of defeat Timmy and Graham’s muddied faces were streaked with tears. They’d played hard, Lauren reminded them, but it didn’t matter. Someone had to lose. That’s the dirty trick of playing to win.
“Next season,” Lauren said optimistically, “Next season.”
It wasn’t until after Greg had driven through several red lights that Lauren noticed the large, spongy article still covering his left hand. Before she could say anything Greg screamed, “We’re number one!” He tooted the horn at a rusted out import that had stalled at the intersection.
In the back seat, the boys looked up from their pouts.
“Just go around him,” Lauren said when Greg blasted the horn again.
He jerked the wheel with his free hand and passed the enfeebled vehicle. The purple finger weaved and bobbed. When Lauren leaned to adjust the AC, the finger brushed against her upper lip. Violently, she pushed it away.
“We’re number one!” Greg yelled again, running a stoplight.
“Honey — ”
“We’re number one!” he shouted as they passed a Masonic lodge.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked quietly, hoping the boys wouldn’t hear. Greg didn’t respond. “Also, I don’t think it’s safe to be driving with that thing on.”
When they reached the gate to their community, Greg rolled down the window and punched the security code into the entry box with the hand. “We’re…number…one,” he said. The iron gate yawned. My sentiments exactly, Lauren thought, admiring the luck of the opening gate, it’s carelessness, its obligation to nothing and no one, not even the heavy burden of itself.
Greg plopped himself on the sofa and flipped on the TV. He was still wearing the hand.
Lauren wanted to get Greg alone, so she shooed the boys away. “Hit the showers,” she coached. “Anything good on TV?” she asked when the boys had gone, not expecting much of a response from her husband but acting as though she did. She took a seat next to Greg as he aimed the remote control at the 54-inch flat screen and fired off shots, making the Pew! Pew! noises of cowboys and Indians. After a few more clicks he settled on ESPN.
“More games, huh? Gotta’ get your fix, I guess.”
Sports all looked the same to Lauren: hordes of little beasts darting back and forth, huddling and hurtling, rushing through diamonds and circles and squares. And for what? A trophy? Some meaningless glory? Sports were all Greek to her: the players choreographed to carry out schemes that defied comprehension, or at least defied her desire to comprehend them. She wondered if the participants in the game even knew what they were fighting for, or if they were just following orders. She had tried to understand the different sports Greg watched and how the positions differed, but for what it was worth an outfielder was a pitcher was a catcher. A linebacker was a goalie was a shooter.
During the game she tried several times to snatch the foam hand, but Greg was quicker and seemed to know just when she was going to lunge. He had only to flick his wrist in the opposite direction, swooshing the finger smoothly out of reach. After a number of defeats Lauren gave up and went to the kitchen to make the boys a snack. Timmy and Graham returned with wet hair and faint traces of grubbiness that wouldn’t go away.
“Sandwiches?” Graham groaned as she was cutting the crusts.
“You can make something else if you like,” she said more harshly than she intended, sliding the plates across the breakfast bar.
When Greg belted his incantation again, Timmy looked at his father, then to Lauren. “Is something wrong with dad?” he whispered.
“No,” she said, sounding upbeat. “Nothing at all.”
The boys looked at each other.
“He’s turned into a basketface, hasn’t he?” Graham asked, mouth full of sandwich.
“It’s basketcase,” Lauren said. “And no, he hasn’t. He’s just playing a game with himself.”
“It doesn’t sound like a game,” Timmy snorted.
“It is though,” she said, putting things back in the fridge. “It’s just like baseball, but with different rules.”
“Will he win?” Graham asked.
“We’ll have to wait and see.”
Later that afternoon she called her mother, but instead of talking to a person she got the machine. It annoyed her when her parents didn’t answer. They rarely left the house so there was no reason for them not to pick up except that they’d developed a disdain of the world, and sometimes this included the people in it. Whenever Lauren suggested they go on a trip her mother dismissed the idea as though she’d suggested they change religions. “Traveling is too dangerous,” she’d say.
“It’s not healthy to keep yourselves cooped up all the time.”
“Who’s cooped?” her mother said. “I just opened a window. And besides, your father saw the world during the war. I can show you the postcards.”
“It’s not the same when you’re a soldier,” Lauren had said, though she remembered a strange thing her father once told her — that his days as a soldier in World War II were some of the best he’d ever had.
Hanging up without leaving a message, Lauren decided now was as good a time as any to replant the bulbs the neighborhood kids had yanked from her garden. Changing clothes, she heard Greg turn off the TV and make his way to the backyard. The familiar rattling of setting up the grill soon followed. Through the thin walls of their suburban home she could hear Greg muttering “We’re number one!” to himself, in a low, breathy mantra.
Outside, she feared the neighbors might hear Greg, and when a louder “We’re number one!” erupted from the backyard, she grimaced. A moment later Lee, who lived next door, leaned over the hedge and asked if everything was all right. Lauren told Lee to mind his own business.
She wasn’t often rude to the neighbors, and she genuinely liked Lee. At a block party a few years back she’d briefly flirted with the idea of having an affair with him, just to see what it would be like. Ultimately, though, she’d decided against it. An affair seemed dilettantish and European. Somehow, it seemed un-American.
“Listen,” he said. “I don’t really know what’s going on with Greg but if he doesn’t reboot soon I could give you the number of someone reliable.”
“A shrink?” Lauren scoffed.
“I know, I know,” he said. “There’s still a lot of stigma about psychiatry and what not, but really, why should there be? We’re all of us nuts, some people just don’t know how to enjoy it.”
After finishing in the garden Lauren watched Greg and the boys through the pulled curtains of the living room window. Undeterred by their losses, Timmy and Graham were playing catch in the backyard while Greg stood over the grill, flipping sizzling rounds of beef, a spatula in one hand and that damned, wobbly, foam abomination in the other. Monkey tails of smoke swept toward his eyes, though Greg didn’t seem to notice. Instead of flinching or waving the smoke away he wore a look of imperturbable concentration. When he yelled “We’re number one!” to no one in particular Lauren jumped and let go of the curtains. She pulled them back to steal another look and saw that Greg’s attention had returned to the grill as though nothing had happened. He pressed the burgers with the flat of a spatula. The boys continued tossing the ball.
After setting the table for dinner she took another look through the window, expecting to find things as before. Instead Greg was sitting with the boys in the grass. Given how oddly he’d been behaving, Lauren expected to see looks of panic or fear on her son’s faces, but this wasn’t the case. The boys seemed completely enamored by what their father, who was still wearing the hand, had to say.
She slid open the patio door and pointed her ear, but Greg was speaking too quietly to be heard. She called the boys several times before they looked up from their discourse. When they did she told them to come inside and get ready for dinner.
Timmy and Graham looked to father for approval. He nodded, dismissing them. They rose lethargically and slothed inside. Greg didn’t move except to look to the sky, admiring something, but for her life Lauren couldn’t figure out what he was looking at. The sky was so clear there couldn’t be anything of interest up there. Could there? She didn’t know, and as she slid the patio door shut she told herself she didn’t care.
Apparently her “no hats at the dinner table” policy did not apply to other game-day paraphernalia. As Lauren doctored her burger, placing a pickle in the middle of the patty, Greg’s cheer arrested her, stopping her fingers as they laid down a tart little mine of vinegar and dill.
“We’re number one!”
She couldn’t take it anymore. The joke had gone on long enough, and she was going to put an end to it here and now.
“Goddamit, Greg!”
“We’re number one!”
“Stop, won’t you? Just stop saying that! And take off that damn hand!”
But he didn’t stop and he didn’t take off. He leapt to his feet and thrust the hand to the sky like a warrior showing gratitude for his good fortune. “We’re number one!” he howled.
The boys, who’d first been entertained and then concerned by their father’s behavior, suddenly joined in.
“We’re number one!” Graham babooned, blasting a torrent of catsup on top of his cheeseburger.
“We’re number one!” Timmy shouted, a knife in one hand and a fork in the other.
“Boys!” she warned. Darkened by their involvement in their father’s chant, the boys looked grubbier than ever.
Lauren pleaded with them to stop, but her frustration only seemed to encourage them to shout louder. They smiled cruelly at her as the words slipped from their mouths, laughing as though it was all fun and games.
“We’re number one!” they cried. “We’re number one!”
The foam finger swished about the room like a misguided rocket. In imitation, the boys pointed their fingers to the ceiling, moving their arms to an imaginary rhythm, pointing up, up, and away.
“We’re number one! We’re number one!”
Then they were out the door. Lauren followed and watched as they frolicked on the front lawn. Their movements were jerky and violent. Their arms in the air, their legs lifted high, their screwy mouths crescented broad and unflinching.
“Stop it!” she screamed. She first tried to tackle Timmy, and then Graham, but before she could reach them they were in the street, each of their heels touching down on the manhole covers that kept out of view the nastiness of their lives.
Greg and her sons skipped down the asphalt, calling out as loudly as they could.
“Get back inside!” Lauren hissed at them.
Hearing the ruckus, neighbors started appearing at their windows and doors, and they started opening them. More and more people took notice of the chanting, and as they did Lauren became increasingly concerned that her neighbors would think her entire brood had cracked up and that her running about was part of the boasting and bragging when really she wanted nothing more than for the entire thing to end, for everyone to just shut up and go back inside and eat dinner in silence. Was that too much to ask? To just eat and go to sleep and be thankful they were safe?
But when she looked deep into the eyes of her neighbors another fear seized her. The look on the faces of the men and women standing in their doorways — the Robinsons, and the Longs, and the Sanchezes — people she thought of as kind and decent — wore a blank countenance similar to that of her husband’s as he’d stood over the grill. Lauren began to worry that any second now her neighbors would edge away from their doorways and join her husband and kids. That they too would play the game.
Eric Howerton is a writer and occasional screamer in metal bands. He’s based in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
