“You sign here and here.”

The page was jumping. His father was smiling. Trying to be calm. Trying to be businesslike. Detached. Peter pressed his index finger down on the corner of the page to steady it. His father let it drop. Peter scanned the figures. Twenty-five hundred dollars. Seven point five percent. Ten years to repay.

The banker clicked his pen and placed it beside Peter’s left hand. “You understand that you will be solely liable for repayment.”

“I’m going to pay it,” his father interrupted. “He doesn’t have to worry.”

“I’m sure,” the banker said. “But legally, the loan is in Peter Jackson’s name. So Peter Jackson is liable for repayment.”

“Legal fiction,” his father whispered. The banker raised an eyebrow.

“I understand,” Peter said. The college financial aid office had estimated his Parental Contribution at two thousand dollars, not twenty-five hundred.

“It’s just,” Peter hesitated. “The amount.”

“That’s the right amount,” his father interrupted.

“I’m sorry,” the banker said, “but that’s the maximum you can take out under this loan.”

Peter looked to his father, whose high-arching eyebrows seemed at once to play dumb and to play upon the sentiment of the season. “Okay then.” Peter signed the loan statement. Then he endorsed the check for twenty-five hundred dollars which his father took to the teller window.

They left the bank with their hands thrust deep into their pockets and their shoulders hunched towards their ears, their necks bristling against the cold. It was over at least, Peter thought, and it had gone well. He had been careful not to smile, because doing the business cheerfully could be interpreted as haughty, feeling his manhood. He had tried not to frown, which would imply he did not trust his father to repay the loan, trusting the truth. And he had tried not to be too neutral, lest his father think Peter did not sympathize with his troubles.

“Responsibilities,” his father muttered. “Never knew I’d have such responsibilities.”   He struck a match twice before it caught, and cupped two hands over the orange flame. He raised it to the cigarette between his teeth. Smoke billowed, obscuring the old man’s face. Rocking in place from foot to freezing foot, Peter envied his father the warmth filling his lungs, but recoiled from the poison. The old man shook his tangled chain of keys until he found the car key. He looked across the roof of the car to Peter. “Don’t worry, I’m putting it out.”

“It’s okay.”

His father’s face darkened. He took two quick drags on the cigarette, then pitched it into a bank of snow. There was silence in the car until his father muttered, “We’ll get by. Always seem to. Lord loves the common man, that’s why He made so many.”   There was bitterness in the old man’s voice. Peter had managed to offend him. “It’s okay.” That was stupid. Being lenient about him smoking after handing over all that money. That was patronizing. It was emasculating. Peter stared out the side window, as the car, leaving the parking lot, glided over a pond of gray slush and out into traffic.   The plows had been through, clearing the major thoroughfares and burying parked cars in mounds of white flotsam. Pedestrians walked gingerly through ankle-deep snow.

“Winter wonderland.” Peter mused.

“Old neighborhood’s not so bad today, huh?” his father brightened. “Currier and Ives. Norman Rockwell. Something for Christmas, huh?”

“I need to go shopping,” Peter said.

“Sure. Sure,” his father nodded. “You wanna shop the Square or Four-Forty?”

“Not the Square.”

“No. The Square. That element. It’s all that element they cater to.”

“Drop me out Four-Forty?’

“Drop you?” his father laughed. “How’d you get home?”

Peter shrugged. “Caroline must want the car.”

“Caroline!” his father scoffed. “What that girl wants! What that girl doesn’t want!” His father leaned toward Peter as he made a familiar left turn. “Don’t worry, Sonny, we’ll get you where you’re going and the car back.”

The tavern known as the White Spot was ironically dark as pitch. Peter followed his father to a pair of stools at the far end. Peter was surprised it was so crowded at a quarter to noon. The patrons, hunched and bloated, more circus bears than men, middle-aged and more, worn without being wizened, hid from the day and its inexorable consequences.

“Pit stop,” his father whispered aside. “Won’t take long.”

Peter surveyed the landscape of adult manhood. Bourbon with a beer back there. Bottle of beer, a pint, maybe a rum and coke. Everywhere blue-gray smoke billowing.

“You want something?” his father asked. “You’re back in Jersey, you know, you can have a beer. 7-Up?”

Peter shook his head. This place will never get me, he thought.

“Prefessuh,” a voice coughed. A fat hand struck his father’s shoulder. “Oh, and this the college boy?”

“Come home,” his father smiled, grabbing Peter’s knee.

Another stifled cough and the circus bear was hovering over him. Peter twisted slightly on his stool.

“Chess genius, as I recall. Beating all them Jesuits when you was only, what, ten?”

“Twelve.”

“Bobby Fisher, they called you.”

“Well,” Peter shrugged. “None of them were Boris Spassky.”

The bear laughed, then scratched at the bar with his paw. “Some spectacle. All them priests standing round that picnic table, shaking their heads, like they don’t know what to do with you! And now college.”

“Yeah, we’re putting him through,” his father sighed. He rubbed both hands on his belly, as if savoring a fine meal. “We’re putting him through.”

The bear stretched out his arms and bowed low over the bar, bringing his formidable weight onto his elbows. He turned to Peter’s father. “That’s a struggle, sure.”

“Sure.”

The bear inched closer to Peter’s father. Gone was the staggering clumsiness. The huge, round head no longer drooped, blurry eyes sharpened to a predatory leer. He whispered. “We’re all sympathetic to struggles.”

“I know.”

“Dino is sympathetic to struggles. But when you come in, you sit down, you have a beer, and you don’t even say hello.”

“I didn’t see him.”

“Prefessuh…”

“I said I didn’t see him goddamnit.”

The bear rotated his chin over his right shoulder, then pointed with rolled eyes to a table in the corner. Peter’s father wagged his head.

“You see him now?”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

“Tell him Dallas goes all the way.”

The bear shook his head.

Peter’s father gripped the big man’s forearm. “He owes me that much.”

“Owes you?”

“In three weeks, it’ll be Dallas and Pittsburgh, am I right? And that game comes down to quarterbacks. To smarts. I’ll take Roger the Dodger. Bradshaw ain’t no Staubach.”

“I’m with you, perfessuh.”   The bear jerked his head towards the corner table. Peter’s father rose from his bar stool and walked, hands deep in pockets, into the shadows. A big paw turned Peter’s shoulder back toward the bar.

“Who do you like, kid?” the big man asked.

Peter needed to stand. Needed to feel the blood in his legs. Needed to know he could run, even in this thick gray air. “Missed most of the football season,” he said.

“Well, I hope you learned something!” he laughed.

“Yeah,” Peter groaned. “Nobody beats Pittsburgh.”