FOURTEEN
For the old woman was to sleep, Restless he went to see who was at the door, and there's this big buck, a mulatto looking nigger in a dark green, fancy silk suit with a satchel at his feet. Restless tole him they don't need nothing through the door, and turned tail on him there and went back into the parlour where she's napping on the Lay-Z-Boy, her plump and pretty legs up in the air, hands tucked up under her big pillowy boobs holding the switcher thing for the teevee. Then the bell rings again but he ignores it and sets down to watch the soundless screen, which is just as well since the game of the week is on and in late innings and he don't need no wop and polack to tell him what's goin' on in no baseball game.
His eyes stray to her again and you can see she is dreaming on account of the eyeballs working away behind the window shades of the lids, and her breath catches some, then revs up real good and there's a little bubble of spittle starting to form at her lips, the bubble honey golden from the way the light strikes it.
The bell rings again, except this time it's the back door, and she stirs a little in her sleep, the bubble collapsing as she works her lips. She's near to deaf, which you can tell from how she cranks up the sound on the teevee when she's got it up.
Another ring and Restless knows he's got to do something about the goddamn uppity jig or else the old woman will be awake and probably invite him in to have tea or some damn thing, maybe give him a chance to convert them all to Gee-ho-vah's witnesses or sell them Fuller Brushes or tie them up in the telephone cords while he loots the house.
So he goes to the back door but the jig ain't there but no sooner does he set himself down again than the front bell rings.
He wishes he had a pistol, put a fright into the big buck.
"Yessir," he says, careful to swallow the urge to call him boy, because they get real riled about that anymore, "What can we do for you, champ?"
"Mr. Flynn?" asks the buck in a how-do-ye-do voice, and Willard knows for certain this one's a Gee-ho-vah or some damn missionary Baptist on account of his eddicated tone and gentleman ways.
And so he answers, "Yes, what's it to you?" to take some of the heat off the old woman.
"May I come in, sir?" asks the buck, pointing to the screen door as if Willard ain't knowed it was latched.
"No," says Restless.
"Is Alberta -- Mrs. Flynn-- at home? I believe Jack told her to expect me..."
Kee-rye-st! Wouldn't you just know it was Flynn sent him here. Probably going to turn the place into some damn commune.
Willard fingers the latch, making up his mind. The buck could'a just knowed it was Flynn's aunt's place.
"Winston Hunt," says Mr. Greenjeans out on the porch, "Wolfman Hunt?"
Oh horseshit! thinks Willard, and he pops the latch and shuffles back to the parlour, waving the buck in behind him. Might as well face it, Flynn's gonna fill up the house with every damn fool crackpot and pisspot kid he ever run into until it'll be no damn different than livin' at the Care Facility excepting there won't be a chance to step out and see a ball game or have a room properly disinfected.
Hunt come down the hallway on quiet feet, nosing into the room right the moment Willard set down. Restless he let him have a shot right away, straight between the eyes.
"What you couldn't handle no fastball up your kitchen, boy? Had to bust him with a bat? In my day a ballplayer stood in there, and if he had to fight for himself, he used his dukes!"
I'll be damned if he didn't laugh aloud, real nice and easy, and stretch out his big pink palm and manicured nails for a handshake.
Nossir, Willard shook it off, stuffed his own palms under his arms, folded up in the chair. They'd track you down like death, if you didn't watch 'em, passing on the diseases with their baby pink hands.
Still, he didn't back off, this one.
"I don't recall you bein' there," the black man said, "With Mrs. Flynn at her sister's funeral..." He made a gesture toward Bertie; the old bag would sleep through anything but Wheel of Fortune.
Bertie had no sister; he was talking about Flynn's mother. He and Flynn was still roomies then, big compadres.
"Answer my question, Hunt!"
"Shut you face, old man!"
Restless burst into a cackle. The buck had heart anyway.
Wolfman smiled with them ivory teeth they all have.
Bertie moaned in her sleep, and got to breathin' to beat sixty again. They watched her. She moaned again and uncrossed her ankles, crossed them back the other way, and her breathing eased. The game of the week had a close-up of that weirdo with the orange hair leading cheers in the stands, the kind of dandelion puff of hair all them blacks used to wear for awhile, but this orange and on a white boy.
"Should we step into another room and let her sleep," Wolfman said in a low tone.
"Step where you like," Willard said, "Ain't no one can stop you anymore, can they?"
"No," said Wolfman, "Not anymore." And the way he looked at Restless he just had to follow after him, it was like he knew it all.
They went out on the screenporch, out on the shaded side of the house overlooking the rosebushes and the plastic birdbath where a sparrow was just splashing off, and cocked his head, hearing them, and flew away.
Fine, thought Restless, ain't no better place for a showdown, what with the cleansing breezes through the screens and the lawn furniture with the webs where no germs can settle.
Wolfman carefully removed and folded his green silk suit jacket --the inner lining blue as lapis lazuli -- before stretching out on the one lounge chair.
"Who are you, my man?" he asked gently, then laughed in a loud and musical voice. "Who was that masked man?" he said, and whooped laughing at his own damn joke.
"Name's Willard Walker -- Restless Walker to some, Mr. Walker to you-- managed the Washington Senators in 1943, 4, and 5, and damn near won a pennant. Got fifteen votes in the Vet'rans Committee of the Hall of Fame last time out -- which is a damn sight closer than you ever gonna get, buck-- and got a lifetime winning percentage of seven hundred pitching in the Nationals and the Federals back before the Great War when the mustard gas got me and I had to hang 'em up and start wearing this thing on my puss. I'm Mrs. Flynn's fiancee and that damn fool Jack's financial advisor and the man responsible for him making it to the bigs in the first place. I got a forty-five caliber in my room upstairs and a half a hundred thousand clams in the bank, and I don't need no lip from you, or no leave to speak. You take all that in, or you want me to repeat it slow so's you can understand it?"
Wolfman folded his arms slowly up behind him, resting his neck against the huge hands.
"You ain't that old, asshole. You ain't old enough to have pitched in no Federal League. What's a matter, really, you got asthma? Or rose fever or sumthin'?"
"Something like that."
"Where's Flynn?"
"Out fishin' with his girlfriend. You plan to answer my question?"
The big buck was enjoying him, he let out a slow smile, and stared right at him.
"You plan to listen if I do?"
Willard nodded helplessly. This feller had a way of commanding a person.
"You know baseball, Restless? I mean, really? More than you' sad-sap story about pitching in some Federal League?"
Willard wouldn't answer him nothing. The big buck was just toying with him now, so he just looked out at the rosebuds and the shadows of the leaves across the lawn, waiting him out.
"Walter O. Dropo," says the Wolfman.
"What about him?"
"That name mean anything to you, old man?"
"Hell yes!" Restless said, "You gonna chaw or spit?"
Wolfman he just lay back there smiling, his eyes glinting, his long legs stretched out on the lounger, a toothpick between his teeth. The bottoms of his eyetalian shoes splayed out like peacock fans, the leather on them hardly worn. They was gold on his fingers and at his wrist. Restless he felt the urge for a chaw coming on --whether it was on account of the saying he'd tossed at the buck, or seeing as they was setting out to talk the game, he couldn't say-- but it was a powerful urge, all the more so because the old woman she wouldn't let none of that in the house. He would even of asked Wolfman for some chaw if he hadn't of begun talking just then, still laying back there dreaming and twiddling that damn toothpick between his plum colored lips.
"Nineteen and fifty two, old man, middle of July, Mr. Walter O. Dropo was playing first base for the Dee-troit Tigers, having just come over a month or so before from Boston. In the course of two days, a single game and a double-header, Mr. Dropo managed to accomplish something quite against the odds in that, for twelve consecutive appearances at the plate, he managed to hit safely twelve times. This feat established, or some would say matched, an American League record which had stood for some fourteen years. I, for one, consider it distinctly a record, since Mr. Dropo hadn't the advantage of an intervening walk within his streak, something his predecessor, one Michael "Pinky" Higgins -- himself later a manager of the selfsame Boston Red Sox-- had enjoyed twice..."
"You don't have to explain the damn game to me!" Willard complained, "I knowed what you meant when you said twelve plate appearances." He softened his tone then, his tastebuds now aching for a chaw. "Fact is I knowed Pinky Higgins and Moose Dropo both. The Moose I managed in the Mountain League, and Pinky I knowed for he played against the Senators when they was mine..."
Wolfman viewed him coolly, with an expanding grin and calm, clear eyes. Restless was getting restless without a chaw, and he wanted to swap stories. The sparrow was back at the birdbath, dousing his brown-black crown in the green water. The day was still heating up even as the afternoon began its slow collapse, but there was an occasional fresh breeze from the northwest, and a promise of cooling in the gathering shadows. It was silent here, some edge of the world. The only sounds were from the birds, and distant traffic, and the old woman snoring delicately within the house.
"I think you are a liar, Mr. Walker, but an interesting one. You know something about baseball, don't you?"
"Thing or two," Restless allowed, "Say," he prompted, "You wouldn't happen to have a chaw, would you?"
"'Fraid not...Snuff?"
"Any port in a storm," Restless said.
He reached carefully to extricate the snuff from the gold lozenge which the black man proffered, avoiding contact with the germ-laden metal of the snuff box, and yet grasping a healthy pinch. He flicked the paper dust mask upward, tucked the snuff to the right of his left lower molar, and replaced the mask, the whole loading process accomplished in a bird swift flash.
Dadgum minty shit burned the lip! Let the juices flow and the sweet, weedy flavor of tobacco met his tongue. He then wanted to spit.
The black gentleman continued his highfalutin story.
"Nonetheless," he said, "Nonetheless, it is important to contextualize this, to understand for instance that Mr. Dropo's accomplishment not only surpassed that of Mr. Higgins in the manner which I've suggested, but, what's more, also surpassed by two hits the existing record, held by eight men in the other league, only two of whom had done so without a walk, only one of those in this century."
The Wolfman was fairly working up to something, but Restless had to spit. He flipped the mask up and back in an instant, squit-squitting a fine spray on the old woman's jade plant sitting on a wicker plant stand to his right.
The tobacco stains dotted the dusty thick leaves. The snuff didn't behave like no chaw, it kept washing up and over and getting swallowed.
"You followin' me, old man?"
Willard grunted. He was drowning in the damn gritty juice, and the mint had the effect of some foul weed, clogging his sinuses, making the whole process of breathing a pretty shaky proposition overall.
"Well then..." The black man brought his hands out before him and placed them longwise against his face, the tips of the long, slender index fingers resting at the bridge of his not terribly predominate and relatively fine-boned nose. The hand was fragile for a hitter's, the fingers delicate and long, and, with the fingertips pressed against each other, and the large hands flexed, the fingers made a little bell-shaped cage with accordian struts, the soft, pale palms blinking through the open spaces.
"Well..."
Willard spit and left the mask up on his nose.
"...we come to the subject at hand, the 1977 season. I was goin' pretty good, y'know, old man, flirting with .280 and looking to pulling it up to .290 or so, which was damn fair for me coming over, like your boy Jackie, into the other league. If you know half you seem to think you know, you can see how it was different for me. Jack, he had the advantage, you dig? A leg up being as the hitters they don' know what a pitcher's got when he comes over free agent, but a hitter, y'know, has to adjust to it. I mean wasn't no big surprise for Jack to go twenty that year, throwing like he was; but for me to be up there with the oldtime American leaguers, now that was something..."
Willard was just a-chewing the damn little wad of snuff now, it was like having a tea bag bust in your mouth; and Wolfman he seen that, and he bends way forward, sliding his legs down over either side of the lounge, folding up his little bird cage, and he puts the snuff out for Willard to take another hit, but just then remembers something, and reaches back to the green silk jacket, the dark cloth the color of the dark leaves on the weedy looking hibiscus the old lady kept in the parlour, and he fishes in the pocket of the lining, the lapis-blue cloth rustling, and comes up with a cigar in a tube, that he breaks loose and offers to Willard, saying, "Hey mon, you wanna give this a chew, mon?"
And Restless he takes it from the long fingers, careful not to touch, and he opens the thing, a damn Havana for christ's sake, like the old days of the International League, when them Havana spics played and you could get them things by the box for a buck a throw, and Luke Easter he used to show up at the hotel in Syracuse and sit in the lobby smoking 'em.
Now Luke Easter, he was a damn good boy, and a hitter to beat all. Thirty some years old by the time he went up and he still could hit! Damn...!
Damn there were good days then!
"And I come up against him in July, on a day as pretty as this, him and me on the top of our forms, you dig, and after all that messin' around they be doing with me, all that jive-shit Desig-nated Hitter do, and wanderin' from pasture to pasture in the outfield while the man try to decide whether he gonna play me regular, whether he gonna let me hit, you dig! Finally! Finally, I was getting regular swings and really beginning to read them cats, and suddenly like some damn miracle, like being born in the waters, I'm at the top of my game and ready for fame, thirty three years old and pushing .285, on a tear and loaded for bear....And we come into Toronto, which is as bag-ass a city as you ever gonna see, old man, and I gone four for four comin' in, and I scratch out three more while we losin' the opener against them, but I got Flynn coming up against me , you dig, and I ain't ever really hit against him nohow, which isn't surprising seeing as how I went and tole him everything he ever knew about how hitters think years back, back when we both be boys and I was an island dude and still thinking he was some charm for me, you dig? Thinking he be gris-gris fo' me..."
There was a film of silvery sweat along the black man's brow, the delicate hands flew before him like blackbirds pecking at each other in the air. The cigar was a rich chaw, but juicier'n hell, and Willard he slipped the jade plant from out of its outer bucket and used that to spit into.
"First time up he make a mistake, you know, trying for to set me up with a wasted curve but let it hang out there a little closer than he wanted to on the first pitch, and by then I gone seven straight and I know I'm close to something but don't know about no Pinky or Moose, I just know I want to keep it goin', you know, maybe end my life like Joe DiMaggio sellin' coffee and lovin' honey's, and so I swing real fine with it, just goin' with the pitch and driving it through, and bam! she's down the goddamn gap for a double. And he leaves me still standing there when the innings over, and he turns and just sort of nods at me, real mean and sappy like he always is, before he trots in.
"Still it's eight straight, and I be damned if I don't luck out and out-guess him next time up, catch the ass end of one of his fine, motherfucking sliders when he's got me oh-and-two and all twisted in my head...Hit one of them damn red dot specials and pull the sucker clean for a single and a ribbie to break his shutout, and make it nine for me. And I hit him again when we're all hitting him in the seventh, and he's watching the damn floodgate open, my man, the Watergate, you dig, and still they keep him in there cause they ain't got much else since Vuckovich went in relief the day before and they ain't seen that much from Clancy yet... And then he finds it somewhere like he always do, you know, and we get set down with the bases full and only up by two. And he keep finding it through the eighth, and suddenly it be like he's starting over again with all his shit together, and they get one for him in the home half, and we's up there looking at him strong again in the last inning and with only a damn run in our pockets. And I be on a tear, gone ten straight, and some asshole motherjumper's got to tell me all about Walter O. Dropo then, sitting in the dugout and watching the illustrious Mr. John Flynn in the midst of one of his fabled resurrections...and the two of us only claimjumpers, really, come over to the Americans on account of the money, and finding ourselves on different sides, engaged in a battle for nothing more than the first seat on the plane home in September, that and pride, old man, who can hit who, who can git who...
"And some sucker's got to tell me about old Walt Dropo, you dig. There be them kind of cats all around, try to spoil it for you, you dig, try to break your juju...Bastards hated me! Tha's why they put me out so fast, weren't nothing about Jack or no bat alongside the head...nothin' about no Lord High Justice gonna show me how they do up in Toronto..."
Mr. Winston Hunt reclined again, having come to the center of the story. He stretched himself out and recalled, you understand, recalled and recollected, hands behind his head, great white eyes wide and looking out beyond the garden, beyond the birdbath, to the very edge of the green that makes all the world a baseball pasture, an Alpine meadow,the source of rivers, the low pressure center of god's green earth and silver water.
And Mr. Willard Walker sat intent and chewing, poised to catch the black and careful creature in the web of whatever lies he might dare, poised to snatch him if he faltered, to stun him and weave around him, bind him there until Jack returned.
"And it come down to oh-and-two, just like that. And he knew out there, he could hear them yelling from the bench, he knew I was on the edge of something and that he could spoil it. He knew he could! He carved me up with two straight pitches, two flashing silver knives I couldn't touch. Suddenly, man, I was so goddamn weary, you know, I been such a long time coming and I knew it was done, you know, I knew he had me. I was weary inside and kind of sad, and trying to get myself back on key, you dig, trying to find the line. I was psyching myself and getting madder than hell, not at him and not even at me, mad at Time itself, you dig, mad 'cause of all the people getting older and how the afternoon was slipping into shadow. And the shadow was out there on the edge of the horizon, Restless, like some black dot of a ship out at the edge of where you can see on a lake. And I was mad at the changes, boy, mad at the changes... So I stepped out and I thought myself what he would do, you know, I analyzed the whole damn show while I fiddled with a shoestring...
"Then I straightened back up, you know, and pumped myself up. Pumped up my arms and took a few slow rips at the approaching shadows. Oh-and-two he'd throw me high and inside, throw that rising fastball that ain't got no more rise on it than if it got caught in a gust of wind, but which rises in an instant, like a hawk climbing up a little updraft; he'd throw it so it started off just high but on the edge, you dig, close enough you had to look it through or commit before it lifted that last little gust. But..."
"But you been hittin' 'em high," Willard said, and spit, "you been hitting 'em high and so you knowed he won't throw you that."
"Yessir, tha's right, I hope to die if that ain't it," Wolfman said quietly.
The two of them studied the advancing shadows on the lawn. It was suddenly getting cool on the porch, a smell of the river coming in, and moistness in the air. Almost too chilly to keep sitting, but the story had to be told.
"I figured he would know I knowed he was going to give me the high inside pitch. I figured he knew I would anticipate it, if only because I had no other realistic choice. I figured he'd come after me, sure enough. I knew he wouldn't really waste one now, not unless it was something close enough, as close as the high inside. And so I figured he'd come down the pipe at me, you know, that he'd trust to my expectations, and trust to how I'd never be looking for it right down the center, not when I was going for a record, not when he knew he had me thinking. I thought he'd throw straight at me, so I decided to look for it high and inside afterall. I figured I could catch up to him and protect the plate if he came down the pipe, but I'd be damned if he'd suckered me high and inside. So I sets myself up a little back in the box... you know, old man, jes enough to be able to get the hands extended but not so much I can't foul off no outside pitch...
"I picked up the spin the moment he released. It was coming high and tight and sweet as shit. It was a goddamn gopher ball, coming high and tight and fat as an old hot air balloon. And I felt it click -- I knew I could wail that sucker from here to kingdom come, catch it on the updraft at pull it while she was still rising -- and I wasn't about to have Mr. Jack Flynn sucker me with no owe-you-one, wasn't going to have him sully my record now, and so I headed for the mound before it even went past my head. Headed out there with my blood rising and the shadow in my eyes... Next thing I remember they pulled me away, dragged me off yelling down the dirty wooden stairs into the piss-smelling clubhouse. It was over then."
"You thought he give you one?"
"Thas'a fact, Restless! That's a genuine fact..."
Restless, he worked the chaw over so's it was set right in his cheek, tucked it there and considered. If what the buck say be true, there's a justice in it, you know. Somethin that never come out at the time, but that explain Flynn's danged fancy quiet about the episode. I mean, you think a man givin' you something for nothing, and spoiling your record for all time in your heart, that could anger you up. Could explain.
"So why's it they shoot you, Wolfman? Explain that!"
Restless moved the chaw back out of the pocket with his tongue, chewing it over good while he watched to see if the buck was telling the truth afterall. It's one thing to rush the mound when you think you been had, but another when a lady's husband shoot you at a motel.
Wolfman didn't blink. He stared the old man down with them angry eyes and Willard he felt the weariness coming upon him then, sure as night.
"You don' know nothin, old man," Wolfman said, "You like all them dudes, you think you know but you don't know nothing... All that sappy talk of forty-five's in you room, and all that shit, and you don't know..."
It was hurtin him, Restless knew, he saw it in his eyes. Hurting him but the weariness was coming...
"Black folk know," Wolfman said, "Motherfucking guns are real, Jack, for black folk... Eight, ten years ago, old man, it was a strange time, a very strange time. Dude could walk out of a lounge and a lady comes up to him, rap a bit, maybe she know him, you dig, maybe she seen his face in the papers, seen him around. You be talkin, real quiet like in a dim parking lot, just runnin a little number, you dig, and smiling some and feeling good after a couple of rums, and someone show up in the light, you know, the lady scream something about no, baby, you got it wrong, you got it wrong, honey, he just come out of the bar and we said hello... You see the blood's angry eyes, you see that he all coked up or some damn thing, and the gun just glitter there in the damn sad parking lot light... Feel the bone crack, old man, feel that lead slam into you leg like some damn freight train... Hear everybody screaming and crying -- o baby, o baby, no!-- and you know, old man, you know... You read about you'self in the papers and you know it don't matter what you say 'cause people be knowing better than you, no matter what you say, it happen that way."
Wolfman, he watched the old man nodding, watch his jaw work and see him nod, and nod again, the damn fool paper mask setting up there on top his nose like a white hump on the forehead, the rheumy eyes gathering in the shadows, weakening, beginning to fall shut in a sad-ass tremor, real gentle like, like most old men do, how they be like babies sometimes, falling off. And then, when he seen him off, you know, see the old man settle into it, the muscles on his scrawny arm trembling just a little from the cooling air -- the faded, bad ass tattoo, this here "Live Free or Die," looking like the pale blue stamps on a side of beef-- or no, not no side of beef, but some scrawny, butchered goat, some mutton; when he seen him go, Wolfman he knew he take him a nap too soon, waiting on Mr. Jack Flynn out on the river, waiting on what come next, whatever he bring him here for along the river of air.
For a time he studied the lines of the yard, playing an old game in his head as he settled into sleep. If you took the shadowy area around the birdbath as home, then the right foul line would run down toward the roses and the garage. It was a short porch out there in right field, maybe three hundred, three twenty five down the line, but scooping out real quick toward right center, a long alley out past the lilacs, all of deep center still bathed in light, like a pool of gold, bright and silent and a sky high enough to hang a ball up forever, get it lost there in the glare, maybe even catch on a breeze and carry out on over the next yard, the town, the river itself. Canada even...an international blast if it carried right, if that old black ash got enough of the moisture in it, if it sweaty enough to make it a hammer, pound that sucker like a thumbtack into the sky.
But left field, man, that was another story. Leftfield, she just stretched on forever into the light. Out there it ain't no pool of gold, out there it's bright, Jack, you dig? I means bright! Bright as electric light, forty miles away from night, out of sight, right and tight...
Ain't nobody could pull one out there today, my man. Nossir! Left field stretch til the end of time, left field got men on horseback patrolling there, jet planes, you dig, I mean room to spare, my man, time to set you'self up a picnic lunch and still be able to mosey over under a long fly ball. Left feel here's a ocean, you dig? Don' take no jujuman to know they be no pullin' the ball out of here there.
Issa way wif ev'ry park, you know, they's always somewhere's too far to fly, Jack. No matter how tough you be, my man, they's always some part o' the park gonna gather you in. You fly sometime, you see what I mean, my man! You see them parks from the air! They be goin' on forever, they do. Always got a deep side sliding off into the horizon. Don't do to be figurin' on beating them odds, my man, it's a space time continuum, you understand, an arena of instantaneity and infinity.
And the shadows be comin' there soon, Jack, the ocean turning dark, the sun setting there. Ain't no one beats them odds. It over then. That the game, my man, it over when it over and that's God's truth, no lie.
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