By Hook or by Crook

‘By Hook or by Crook’

by

A. J. Kirby

‘By hook or by crook, I’ll be first in this book,’ Dad scrawled in that doctor’s handwriting of his that I’d come to know, but not necessarily love. He crammed the writing into the top left hand corner of the inside front cover, above the printer’s details. I hated it; even then, I knew it was a trite, condescending little rhyme which was unbecoming of a man in his position.

He wrote it as a joke, of course. He chuckled in that gruff, moustache-sucking way of his as he did it; he had a look about him which plainly said that he’d been planning it all along. And then he scribbled his signature underneath, and that was worse; just a vague rendering of his initials, swallowed up by some unnecessary loop-de-looping of the pen. I hated it so much that I would not even allow it to be called an autograph; it was a signature.

“You’re not famous enough to have an autograph,” I sneered, as I flounced out of the front room, leaving him still clutching the book, still drowning in the wrapping paper which had been discarded from my mountain of presents. I watched through the crack in the door as he sighed and took another swallow of beer. He was probably drunk, I thought, and that was why he was being so uncharacteristically foolish – boisterous even.

Amongst the murderous robots, the fighting dinosaurs, the bike and the football kit, you would have expected something as old-fashioned as an autograph book to have been completely ignored. But there was something about that book; for one, it looked like the big red book from This is Your Life, but it was more than that. Compared to the reverse side of the thin, pock-mark edged computer paper on which I usually stored my ideas, the book was like a glorious, rich new world. It must have been like discovering papyrus after years of graffitiing on walls. It was an elaborately bound book, with heavy pages which I later found to be called bond paper. All of those clean, white, virgin pages! With no bold type shining through from the other side! It was like paper heaven.

Excited by my initial response to the book, Dad had started to tell me that it was just like the book which he would loyally bring to the Test Matches of his youth at fabled places like Old Trafford and Headingley.

“Ah, I wished I’d kept that book in a safe place,” he said, with a faraway look in his eyes. “All of those names, all of those memories. It’d be like smelling the warm beer and the cut grass of my youth…”

I didn’t really know what he was talking about then, and blamed it on the beer, but I know now. I know how much it meant to him now.

“Would you let me sign it?” he asked, hopefully. “My dad signed mine when he gave it to me…”

And then he went and spoiled it all with his stupid little rhyme. At first, I stubbornly refused to even look at the book again, but something about that lavish red cover drew me back in after a while. And I swear that Dad kept laying it around so that I’d almost trip over it in the bathroom, or mistake it for a box of chocolates in the cupboard. There was something about that book. Finally, I forgave him for his terrible mistake and I started to collect signatures. And oh could I collect! Like the football stickers and the Star Wars figures, the signatures became something that I just had to have more of. I would traipse around neighbours, teachers, even the dentist - in fact, all of the adults I knew in my young life - and I’d collect their writings. Of course, I wouldn’t allow any of my friends sign it – not after the mess they’d made of my plaster-cast after I’d broken my arm.

Eventually, the pages show me that I moved on from the Minor League and I was soon batting above my weight in the Majors. Baseball was my sport, not cricket; we were in America now after all. My book was filled with the scrawls of the almost impossibly famous New York Yankees players… And of course the Kit Men, the Assistant Managers, the journalists who were also waiting for the players to emerge from the changing rooms and enter that rugby scrum of a car park at the old training ground. I wasn’t discerning any more; I’d take anyone… as long as they were connected with Baseball.

Each day, as training ended, I’d be just one amongst a baying mob of children, all looking to fill their own books. The place had a heavy smell of deep-heat ligament oil and I’m sure it made us all light-headed. Half of us didn’t even recognise the players we were that excited, and hence we’d just take anyone’s signature. Oh, the players found it a drag all right. You could see that tightness around their jaws which showed their annoyance. But they bore it with good grace; it was par for the course. It was only midday after all, and the rest of the day was theirs to drink away, to plant firmly in the bottom left hand pocket of the pool table, or to simply sleep.Now I work fifteen hour shifts down at the law firm and I have seen enough bond paper to last me two lifetimes. I would swap my right arm to be in a position to just stand around, shooting the breeze, signing some kid’s autograph book. To me, signatures are now pledges, guarantees, warranties, proof. They are ties, authentication; people sign their lives away when they scrawl on my papers. I watch them as they chew the end of the pen, blow out their cheeks and try not to cry as they identify themselves as the people who have lost everything.

These days nobody has autograph books any more. The kids outside the brand spanking new suburban training complex – more like a military facility - of the Yankees have to wait by the side of the road, outside the reinforced perimeter gates. They bring with them the Baseball caps, shirts, photographs and programmes which they then put up for sale on e-bay. The personal message is now frowned upon by the discerning autograph hunter. It has become a professional get-rich quick scheme, rather than an amateur, fun pursuit; you get more money for the blank, universal message than the personal.

Can you imagine if you were trying to sell a shirt with the legend – ‘Hey Dickie, Keep up the arm-work, Cheers, blah, blah, blah’ emblazoned across it? How many Dickies’ do you know? Exactly. And so, the kids find that it’s worth risking having your arm chopped off by a rhinoceros-sized Hummer if you can get the star-pitcher’s signature on a ball – it can fetch hundreds of dollars on the open market, but they also beg and plead that it’s a secret present and they don’t want the name on it… or they call it luck… anything. You’d be lucky if you found a Dickie in America that would also be interested in buying your ball.

Dad called me Dickie after the cricket umpire Dickie Bird. Even then, it was rather an old-fashioned name, and I begged to be known as Richard. But Dad told me that I’d grow into the name; Dickie Twist; it made me sound as though I was one of Oliver’s younger brothers in the Dickens Novel – I was a nineteenth century nearly-man, not a twentieth century star, which is what I so wanted to be. I used to practice my signature. Elaborate loops and curls, loping t’s and daringly dashing d’s. Unfortunately, I could never reproduce any of the signatures, and neither could I do them quickly. It wasn’t a star’s signature. Star’s signatures were unthinking crosses, absent-minded dashes across the page and onto the next one… I wasn’t a star.

I used to get teased about my name, but father told me that it was just jealousy. It was because I had a name that was destined to be famous, he’d say. He said that he could see the name up in lights – for what, I never really knew. I suppose that’s why he bought me the autograph book, though, to make me see that I could belong in such exalted company. Maybe he wanted to help me on the way.

I suppose I am a star now, in terms of the law, in terms of sheer client hours I accrue every damn year. But I don’t think you’ll ever see a lawyers name up in lights, do you? When Dad died, it literally knocked all of the stuffing out of me. Suddenly, that great Rock of Gibraltar that had loomed over my every move wasn’t there any more. I remembered, too late, that I also loved the man.

I loved him for the stupid phrases he’d repeat as he knocked about the house on a Saturday morning before baseball practice. I loved him for the way that he cried like a baby at movies which I thought were pretty stupid. I loved him for how he’d looked after me when Mom went back to England. And I loved him for the promise of a better life for me; a promise that was always on his lips.

Hell, I didn’t even have any photographs of him in the apartment, so I had to go to the Storage Depot to have a look at some of my old things to try and find him. Why had I completely wiped him out of my life? I’d always thought that it was because of him; because of the way that he was; later, he’d drunk more and more. Now I realise that he missed Mom, that was all, and our Cold War was entirely my fault.

I dug out the old autograph book and blew off the dust. For some reason, I opened the book the wrong way up, but maybe it was Dad’s hand, prompting me again, for do you know what I found?

‘By hook or by crook, I’ll be last in this book.’

He’d crammed the message right into the corner of the very bottom of the page, in tiny writing. It would be impossible to crow-bar another message in underneath. Dad was right – he was last in the book. It was the most important message.