ELEVEN
Like lifting a frog, the legs dangling limp, the blunt, smooth skull upright and alert, unseen heart pulsing, then letting it gently down again, folding, liquid, to its element, it was all one gesture. The woman had been unconcerned about it, matter of fact. She had come around to the passenger side of the station wagon with a determined, graceful stride, opening the back door first to pull out the chair, extending then locking the accordian supports of the seat, adjusting the footrests, wheeling it into position just beyond the swing of the passenger door. The boy waited as if in a trance. She gripped him in a bearhug at his waist and then, inconceivably, pulled him up into the air, swinging him over toward the wheelchair. For an instant he hung there, expressionless and calm as a statue, the pressure of her grip bunching the jacket about his chest, the legs dangling gently, nobly, until her momentum shifted and she was able to let him down, arranging his arms along the armrests, lifting each heavy leg in turn until the feet were parallel and composed, each on the flat of its own footrest.
Only then did she allow herself a deep breath, a moment to compose herself and rest, before closing the car door and wheeling him up the incline toward the cream colored building. Never once did the boy change his expression or give any indication of curiosity about what she was doing just beyond his sight. Even as she wheeled him away, he seemed placid and self-possessed and as graceful and weightless as he had been for that brief moment careening in air.
Flynn sat in the car until they entered the building, the silver spokes of the wheelchair flickering then disappearing into the tinted glass of the entryway. He would have to go this same way, and he wanted, if at all possible, to keep from seeing them within the building. He wanted to know that they were safely on their way before him, for he knew they had more business here than he did, and knew also that some kindnesses deserved to be unwitnessed, remaining in a soundless and empty orbit of their own.
Emma would have told him this was nonsense. She might even have pointed out the obvious: this was no special occurance, no laden moment arranged by fate for the benefit of Flynn. These people lived their lives this way. Day after day, this mother -- surely she was the boy's mother-- moved him through space with the same determination, and, most likely, with not just a little boredom and weariness.
"Life takes these shapes, Flynn," she might have said.
But at the last moment he had made her stay behind.
He had driven up to the hospital with her silent beside him, silent even at his indecision. He swung back out of the lot almost immediately, taking the turn toward the bridge and exiting at the ballfields, bringing the car to a stop in the middle of the empty gravel lot.
There was no one on the fields, twelve noon of a brilliant sunlit day and the diamonds were empty.
"Why?" he said.
"It's a hard thing," she said, "I couldn't face it myself."
She had said it too easily, with a woeful little shrug, a yawn,to let him know she understood.
"So...are you supposed to be a test for me?" he snapped, "Is that how you think I should see it? Even Emma finds this hard, so I shouldn't feel bad myself..."
"I'm sorry," she said, "I know I put it badly."
He knew the remark had hurt her, he knew she meant what she said, but there was something in the prissiness of her apology, the schoolgirl diction, the social worker's care, that made him want to press his advantage.
Just the fact that he had an advantage at all made him want to press it.
"You're goddamn right, you put it badly," he said.
The phrase sounded idiotic to him, leaden and muffled within the car. It was a foolish thing to say, part of a script, husband's talk. He laughed.
"I'm sorry," he said, "I wasn't even talking about that at all. I meant the ballfields. I was wondering why they were empty."
She was crying softly. She cared about him.
"I don't know why I'd want to punish you," he said, "after... after..."
After what? It was all the same thing now, just talk. It was what he dreaded about the afternoon ahead, it was what it always all came down to, empty talk, a car all alone in an empty lot.
For more than a year now, from the one cold afternoon in April in Exhibition Stadium, when somewhere along in the twenty-third or so pitch in the damp and ugly bullpen, something happened, a hitch or tear or a calcification -- something like that-- along the margin of the muscle, and he had pitched through it, thrown another ten or twelve more before he told them to tell Roy he couldn't go that afternoon; it had been all talk. Talking to the writers in the clubhouse, talking to Roy, talking to the trainer, the doctors, the specialists, the therapist, even the hypnotist; talking lines from imaginary scripts. And even a real script or two, for a restaurant in Buffalo that wanted him to attest to the goodness of their steaks and their whorehouse decor, for a Toronto haberdasher that wanted him to praise their imported fabrics and old world tailors.
And it took fifteen lousy takes to do the haberdasher spot, each time lifting the arm up to show the richness of the wool, pecking at the seams to display the wondrous alterations, each take the arm screaming in pain. And yet he had smiled through them, smiling even as the shoulder began to stiffen from holding the dead weight of the arm.
Finally, in August, on the way to an eight and six season, and, even so, nearly leading the staff, talking to the sportswriters again, he found himself saying it, then repeating it to the skipper, to the front office.
Retiring.
Done, boys.
Hangin' em up.
The boy swinging through air, his body dead weight and yet so unbound it seemed buoyant, weightless.
At the end of September it was on the newswires, and in the "Sporting News," and in the magazines, and it was done. Even then there was talk left to be done, a life sentence of talk, together with a nagging, mistaken feeling that it was just something that could be shaken out, like a cinder in a shoe, a hardened ball of lint in the bottom of a pocket.
"I was so sure," he said, "So sure that it would just roll out of there, like some hard little thing, and the arm would be back, you know? Free and supple, and smooth as silk..."
He had been daydreaming on her again, and he was sorry and afraid he would make her think that he would not be able to handle the day ahead and what had to be done.
The sun had reflected from the white gravel of the lot at the little league field in a single, blinding sheet. It was cool and silent within the air-conditioned cockpit of the car, dim but for the sheer light through the untinted portion of the windshield. It was as if they had descended there, floated downward without effort or mark, like some flying saucer, like the boy dangling, held in the air in his mother's careful arms.
But Emma had spoken then.
"I know," she said softly, almost bitterly, "Believe me, Jack, that is one thing I really do know. I know exactly how you could feel that, even long after it is possible at all."
And Flynn remembered the bare, frail chest, the smooth sheen of skin pulled tight over her birdlike breastbone, the twin slashes of lavender scars where they had mined something from her, something more than muscle and tissue or the small, stoney tumor. Driving away, he had given the engine too much gas pedal, spinning foolishly in the empty lot, leaving a roostertail of smokey dust, a contrail behind them, as they skidded out of the lot, turning, not toward the hospital again, but to the bridge, to Canada.
He could see the small cloud of dust behind him from the bridge, dissipating in the clear sky, sailing off.
She wanted to know why. They were waiting in the modest line of cars at customs, and she asked him why.
"I have to do this alone," he said, "she would be frightened seeing someone she doesn't know."
"She won't know anything, Flynn. She's no one now, she's no more than a breathing body without a mind. Like a frog with its head cut off, you have to understand that."
Emma put it brutally, but he knew it was only because she cared for him, she wanted to make sure he understood.
"I know." he said, "I do know. Really, it is something I have to do this way."
"Then take me home, take me back to Molly..."
The customs agent was a young, Irish-looking woman in a green skirt and a crisp white blouse and wide, sensible shoes. She was waving them foreward into the booth, but Flynn would not move until he knew that Emma understood. He knew the customs agent could not see them through the tinted glass. She was warm from the sun, and mildly exasperated, and her pale skin was flushed, and she waved at them, waved them foreward, then wiped at the perspiration on her forehead.
"Please," he said, "Please wait for me on the other side. Have lunch or something and wait for me. I want to know that I can go away when it is done," he said, "I want to know that you are over here, waiting for me. I want to know I can run."
Emma nodded and Flynn pulled into the booth. The woman agent had been prepared to scold them, he knew, you could see the impatience in her eyes. But she had not been able to see them through the windows, and when she saw Emma there, and the man crying, she had asked them the questions and waved them off.
Some intimacies deserved to be unwitnessed. Emma had waited outside the tea room in Johnstown, watching until he drove off back toward the bridge. At the care facility, Flynn had not been able to see whether the mother and the boy were gone before he entered the building; had not been able to see the cool and burnished tiles of the corridor leading to the reception desk. It was unlike other hospitals he had been in, and he had been in many.
For a long time, for too long, life for him had been what you could see. Or could not. Pitch em where they aint, take away the good eye. Year after year there was little more than that. That and the numbers: balls, strikes, wins, losses, strikeouts, shutouts,innings pitched, pitches per inning, complete games, earned runs, numbers on numbers, a whole trail of them behind you like the icy tail of a comet.
And behind the comet, out at the edge of a shrinking universe, was the shadow, the ever increasing awareness that the body eventually betrays you and all you are left with is talk. For a time however, for a number of years, it was possible to stay out in front of the shadow, to stay in the sun. In the sun, you blinked away the shadow, you blinked away the talk. It was like Satchel Paige said, "Don't look back, something may be gaining on you."
Atrophy of the flexor, rotator cuff, the count, the talk: something always was gaining on you. Weariness, batters, or memory, like blips on the horizon of a videogame screen, it always came. Satchel, for one, had stayed ahead of it, like a great heron flying out ahead of the shadow on slow wings.
As a kid, Flynn had seen him, without really knowing what it was he saw. They had gone down to Syracuse to see an International League game, Satchel throwing smoke with an easy kick, a slow unfolding arm. It had seemed so easy, without any of the dazzle he had expected from all his father said on the drive down, without the quality of awe that fed the talk around them in the stands. Just a skinny, sad-eyed man throwing smoke and strolling to the dugout.
But he was young then, Flynn was, and as the years went by he began to understand how hard it was to be easy, how hard it was to stay ahead. Even so, the sad-eyed man kept the same place in his memory. A June afternoon and the sun-baked circle of the mound, the sea of jade grass, pitcher in grey and batter in white. It was that simple when all was done and said. You pitched to stay ahead, you stayed ahead as long as you pitched. It was a simple game, and it ended.
Pitching was often no more than a matter of what a batter could or could not see. The flickering white, or--depending how you pitched it-- the blurry red, dot of the slider gives a fraction of a second, a number, to pick the rotation up before it's gone. In that instant a lapsed reflex is a betrayal, and the batter lunges at where the ball was, swinging through an empty orbit with a sad grace. It was something to see.
With the good hitters, however, with the best of them, the most you could ever see was little more than a vestige of animal decision, a momentary twitch in the upper body and a switch of the hips signalling either a failure of will, or, more likely, a pure and savage discipline. They were nothing but will, waiting on you, looking for something else and willing to wait you out until you gave them their pitch. The best gave you nothing but eyes, no check swing, no measuring stride, not even a blink at the call of the pitch.
You could see them wait you out, every pitch was a number, a flick of the catcher's fingers then the number of the count. Your numbers against theirs. With the best, you'd see them run through it as they stepped from the box and positioned themselves before stepping back in; with the best, if you'd faced them a hundred times before, they would be remembering a hundred pitches corresponding to the one you were about to throw now. Meanwhile you'd be running through the numbers on your own.
Last time threw him on the fists, last month threw him three-quarter speed, yesterday he hit so-and-so's slider, last year he hit everything with two strikes. You'd feel your own twitching start up, fight to keep it from showing.
The idea was to keep from letting the body betray you, keep breathing, keep loose, find the groove; keep from opening up throwing the curve; keep square, drive through; keep changing the pace, keep him thinking, keep an edge; keep it up and in then down and away, keep it down again and keep him honest; keep letting them know what belongs to you.
Gibson would say that, you could hear him curse them from the mound in that strangely high, shrieky voice.
"That belongs to me, dammit! That's my part of the plate!"
They might have thought he was nuts, but he made them believe.
Seaver claimed he could move it to all four corners of the strike zone, each pitch starting in the same space at the middle of the plate. Most times Flynn settled for two rather than four places, with maybe an occasional riser, lifting up and away. Four speeds in the good years, three still at the end. A garbage curve and a sweet one, three moves to first, two ways of pitching from the stretch, and one sweet groove for everything else, so much a part of him he could do it now if the arm would move through.
Numbers.
It was Wolfman told him what batters see. Some say you ain't a good pitcher unless you had a great batter tell you what he can see in you.
"The curveball, man, he's smiling the moment he leave your hand, jus' laying over there on he's side and smiling. But the fastball is angry lookin' up and down...she jus' spin straight-op, man, you know? And she always buzzin' there like some wasp. Real nasty lookin' for all you see of her..."
"The slider?"
"Ho, man! The slider! Ha..."
Wolfman treated the slider as a great joke, a fluke of nature, an occasion for showing teeth and laughing, for shuffling in the dirt in a gleeful little dance.
"Yes, man, the slider..." He exhaled a long breath of admiration for its voodoo self, "Now the slider sometimes she give you this fat white face, you know? Sometimes you can slap him up!"
Whap! He clapped his hands then grinned.
"But sometimes that same white one, she jus' zip off there when you think she hangin'..." He laughed and scuffed the dirt again in a little hop. "But the red one, man, she always, al-waays, zippin! You see that red dot, man, with two strikes and you jus' try to fight him off... yeah, man, you jus' try to fight him off..."
They were young then, both of them, and Wolfman still talked a kind of island talk, but they were old men -- at least within the game as it was played now that Sachel's gone-- when they ended it at two strikes. It ended between them in the sun-baked circle and by then Wolfman talked like an angry lord, and Flynn was already nearing the end of his reign as one of the crown princes.
They had come to find themselves in the wrong league and on opposite sides, with the numbers against them and under a bad sign. It was how history happened, how friendships ended.
Flynn could still see it like it just happened, still see the pitch and see him take it, see him running for the mound with the bat in his hand, still hear the Wolfman lecture him as they wrestled.
"You won't have me like this, Flynn! Goddammit, you won't have me owing you! Do you understand me, you honkie son of a bitch! I won't be owing you!"
He had still shouted it as they dragged him off, arms pinned back behind him like manacles, the bat still in his grip.
"You won't have me owing you, Flynn! You won't have me owing you!"
People misunderstood. Some thought he said "oh and two," and some "owning you." It was a great mystery for everyone but Flynn and the Wolfman, but they both knew what they had seen; they knew both the numbers and the talk, but they had been friends for a long time and, even when it ended, they neither of them would tell all the world. Or so Flynn thought; Wolfman had never really said.
But Flynn had seen the anger in the eyes, the burning, as they hauled Wolfman off. Flynn had seen it through the blur of his own eyes, the bleary red dot of the blood. He had felt the syruppy warmth flowing from his forehead after the initial blow, was aware of the blood as they wrestled together, remembered some spattering in the tangle of bodies. The blood seemed another taunt, like the words about owing. Only later had there been the pain, the searing bone-pain of the fracture, the blue vision of the, for a time, constant headaches. Only later had he seen the now-famous photograph.
In it Wolfman's eyes were white circles of rage, the pupils lost to the contrast of the film, the sun, his dark black skin. The shutter had clicked at the instant of what showed on the videotape as the second of two blows to the skull, before Ashby pulled him off, before the last glancing blow to the arm with which Flynn fended Wolfman off. The photo seemed truer than the tape because the events on the tape took place in greater warmth, and with more color and swiftness than Flynn's memory held them. On the tape it was a petty event, a sort of circus, while the film disclosed the elemental slowness, the dignity, and the sadness of it all.
The photo was like a wall painting, a tableau. It slowed the moment to the time in which it really had seemed to occur, and it gave to the scene the importance which such brutal intimacy required. There were the two men, black and white, one in white and one in grey. The great black club was lifted over the bloody skull, Flynn looked placid and helpless. But he was not moving away, even in the photo you could see he was coming toward the Wolfman, he was trying to talk.
The newspapers and the television all wanted it to be Marichal and Rosboro all over again. There was always what you saw, baseball was full of these instances of repetition, the numbers, the words that recalled other words. But this was complicated by the color of the men, and by the fact that it had happened in Canada. There was a young attorney, a Solicitor General or something, and he pressed charges. They were making a point, he said, it was the same point they were making in prosecuting hockey incidents, he said.
"A free society cannot tolerate barbaric practices in the name of sport," he said. He had misunderstood. They all did, but it was the end of something. Wolfman was put on waivers, no one claimed him. The trial was forgotten.
People misunderstood. Oh-and-two was commonly thought a pitcher's pitch; it wasn't, not always, not even usually with the good ones. Just like three and two is supposed to be a batter's pitch. Not always, not even usually, not when you have two or four pitches, two or four slices of space, which belong to you.
There is always only what you see, and what the talk says. People misunderstand how it is when you know the numbers, when you live them through for ten, twelve, sixteen years. When you know the man there, what he's likely looking for, what he's been chasing, what he's been hitting. There's a world in numbers. Each set of numbers has a different face. One-and-oh, for instance, can be behind or ahead, up or down, depending on what you got going, what you let him see, what you're setting up. Oh-and-one, on the other hand, can be hell when you know what he almost got, when you know how much it cost you, when you know how little you have left, when you see him waiting for another and know you've eventually got to throw it because it's all you have.
One and one is almost always yours. Two and one almost always his. One and two widens the window of the world, gives you three more pitches at least, sometimes more. If you think you can stand to give him a chance to fight off the cut fastball on the fists, or if you have the rising heat sailing away and you know he can chase and touch it but he'll never catch up to it, never straighten it out, for a time the world is yours.
One and two you can throw him rainbows, hang a half-hearted curveball that gets the elbows twisted. You can smile at his contortions, whisper and tell yourself that the world is a wide and wise place. You can take so much time that you begin to get the infield, and sometimes even your catcher, sure your gonna lose him if you toy with him, then come in and hear them laughing when it's over, hear them say you had them going for awhile.
As long as you get out of it, that is. As long as it all don't go wrong, and the world shift faces on you, the looping fly sail out, the ground ball skip off your glove and catch the shortstop going the wrong way.
Even the behind counts leave you room sometimes, even three-and-oh can give you an edge.
"I'm afraid not," the young doctor said.
He blinked against the light. They were standing in the room where the burnished tile corridors led. Flynn had not seen the woman and the boy in the wheelchair. He had not seen anyone or anything he knew until they came to this room and saw Esther.
But it was not Esther he saw there, it was his father all over again. The tubes into each nostril, the IV slung from the shiny stand, the Foley bag on the bedrails below. Even the bank of green screens, the monitor with the craggy heights and valleys of the heartbeat, the numbers of her respiration, the blip-blip-blip of another, flatter set of waves along the horizon of another screen.
The doctor pointed at the flat wave as it crawled across the screen. It was called a crawl, Flynn knew, he had worked in television. The doctor blinked against the light. Esther had their father's face now, she was old in her illness and balding through patches of her great, once-swollen skull. She had turned into an old man, and the young doctor was saying it wasn't possible that she could live.
"...massive paramedial infarction," he said, "Considering the history...despite the CSF shunt...prognosis of further myocardial infarction or outright cardiac failure.."
Flynn watched the lines crawl the screens. Esther, I am here; I too not clear-headed.
"To put it in plain language..."
"I understand the complicated language," Flynn said, then -- more gently, "Thank you, you've explained it very well. I have a friend who has explained these things to me...I've been in many hospitals...I..."
"I'm not much of a baseball fan, myself," the doctor said, "but I understand you were among the best..."
"Thank you," Flynn said. For a time they watched the monitors shift through their cycle. It was like the fishfinders, Flynn thought, these machines hunt what moves through the depths. They illuminate and print it here, but you still have to draw them up through the water, you still have to land the fish.
"Couldn't we keep feeding it quarters?"
"How's that?" the doctor asked.
"Give it another play," Flynn said, "You know, Space Invaders...?"
The doctor wasn't sure if he should laugh, neither was Flynn.
The young doctor fiddled with a dial on the monitor, adjusting the contrast, the waves suddenly more intense. These boys learned serious, Flynn knew. He knew what was coming.
"You may not be able to stop the quarters from coming, Mr. Flynn," the doctor said, "I am of the impression that we are discussing this aspect of the custodial relationship provided by this state."
This one was a healthy boy, a control pitcher, Flynn thought. They are all joggers these days, beansprout and avocado eaters, low cal and high fibre, never tainted by tobacco. The doctor was signalling him with this talk; they would have to play it his way, some fancy dancing with the ethics involved.
"The state has a sacred obligation to maintain life," the doctor continued, bearing down now, "As I do...," he said, catching Flynn's eye, "Our mutual burden is mitigated by the health care review process, wherein professional committees weigh the patient's rights against the medical realities and the institutional capabilities."
"How many quarters, right?"
"As you will," the doctor said. For a moment he became human again, dropping the careful tone, "Usually it works pretty well, Mr. Flynn. An attending physician has a good deal of latitude, but..." He was ready to pitch again, feeling his way. "But" he said, "when a public figure is involved, such as yourself, there is inevitably a more careful scrutiny."
They might decide to keep her alive forever. You want to know what I'll do, Flynn thought. Everyone does. The doctor stared through him; this boy had staying power, Flynn thought, he was a real careful worker.
"With the level of nursing care and life support services we have available-- even here-- we can maintain life for an indefinite period," he said, "A rather long, indefinite period, but..." he paused because she moved, he and Flynn both stared into her lifeless, open eyes.
When she moved like that, her heavy arm flailing lightly, as if pushing up through water, as if, like another woman her age, she were parting the gauze of a kitchen curtain, staring out at a morning where children played and the earth crawled on toward lonely death; you doubted all talk, all the earnest and burdened percentages which the young doctor could quote. She seemed alive. The eyes were alive and unmoving. Perhaps she wants to die, Flynn thought, perhaps she has turned the singleness of her gentle mind to this charade.
"Why?" he asked the doctor.
"Akinetic mutism, I know it's disturbing, coma vigil they call it. I can close them if you like...the eyes..."
I wouldn't like that, Flynn thought. Life is what you can see. The clear eyes of fish turning cloudy on the cleaning table. But further strokes will come, the doctor said, or cardiac failures, one after another like... Like thunder off the river, Flynn thought, as Emma shuddered in her sleep. They were all inside and safe from the storm, a whole mad crew of them. Willard and Bertie, Emma and Molly, and Flynn with his waking dreams, light flashing from the windows with each crack of the storm.
"Sometimes they even display a sleepwalking cycle," the young doctor had said, "Though not your sister, not in the shape she's in..."
Wide-eyed and breathing, eyes like bottomless springs, not as Emma had described at all, not headless, not no one.
"Let me see if I have this right," Flynn had said, "You think the state will keep pumping quarters into the machine because of who I am. If it came to that, or if it fell the other way, I could probably sue for custody and the whole thing would drag on as long as the machines worked..."
The doctor had dug into the batters box and wasn't giving any ground, not even a nod. Flynn continued through the options, it was an old habit with him.
"Meanwhile she could die on her own, but, if I believe you..." The doctor looked up. Caught him, Flynn thought. "You say she cannot live," he said. The doctor nodded, Esther's eyes watched him.
"That's my medical judgement," the doctor said.
"And if I asked you to turn the machines off?"
"That would be my medical judgement also."
"But you'd do it?"
"I can't say that to you, Mr. Flynn. The case is scheduled for review soon. I cannot say that."
But you would, Flynn thought, as the thunder rumbled.
Flynn didn't know what to do, so he tried Wolfman's number again.
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