I ordered a plain vanilla when the carhop woman showed up. I always got plain vanilla. My father ordered weird things, like strawberry with a glob of peanut butter whisked through it, but I think he just did this in order to shock people. “He doesn’t put his hand in any of those spinning frames,” I said. “Anybody that crazy doesn’t care about coaching baseball.”
My father turned the radio dial to some man singing opera. “Anybody that crazy doesn’t want to hang out around kids who can’t hit a baseball. Ask him. Or ask those other two coaches helping out. You make a buck-sixty an hour after a number of years and feel your lungs turning inside out, you’ll about do anything to move away. If you’re smart. D. R. Pope’s a smart man, son. His daddy was a smart man. Why you think he’s named D. R.? It’s so when he got a checking account it looked like ‘Dr. Pope.’ People treat him with respect when he writes out a check. Dr. Pope. You can’t be a surgeon with all those missing fingers, of course. But you can be a dermatologist. Or an English professor.”
My father went on to list a number of doctors, from allergists to zoologists. He didn’t say, “Gynecologist.” The carhop returned with our extra-large milkshakes and said, “I ain’t never heard no one order a strawberry peanut butter milkshake. What’s it taste like?”
My father pulled out his straw, turned it toward the woman, and said, “Stick this in your mouth and give me your opinion.” I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on over on that side of the Buick. I sucked.
“Hey, did you ever work over at Forty-Five Cotton?” my father asked the carhop. She wore a paper hat.
“Both my parents do. I made a pact with myself, though. I said I wanted to get out of high school and do better for myself. My momma and daddy never got a tip on their jobs.”
My father nodded. He said, “What’s your name?”
“Emmie Gunnells.” She pointed at a nametag half hidden beneath her collar.
“Emmie Gunnells, I want you to help my boy and me with a little argument we’re having. Did your folks ever have any tough times financially? I’m talking, like, back when gasoline prices went up to thirty-five cents a gallon?”
Emmie leaned down and looked at me closer. She said, “Y’all ain’t union organizers are you? We’ve already had the union organizers over to the house.”
I shook my head. My face felt like an hourglass, that’s how thick the vanilla milkshake was. My father said, “Hell no, we ain’t no organizers. I’m only trying to prove a point with Mendal here.”
“I don’t know,” Emmie Gunnells said.
My father said, “How many fingers has your father lost at this point in time?”
Emmie Gunnells slapped her hip with the tray she was holding. “Law!” she said. “How’d you know?” She stooped back down to look at me. “Y’all are from the fair, I bet. Y’all are those people who can guess ages and weights and family trees.”
My father said, “How many?”
Emmie Gunnells said, “He’s got six left. It’s enough for him to drive his Cadillac.”
SEEING AS THERE was little else to do in Forty-Five, everyone came out to the games. If a mastermind thief ever traveled through, he could’ve broken into about every house in the entire town on early-dusk nights. And he might’ve gotten gold watches and pearl earrings from those doffers and weavers who’d jammed their hands into machines. Here’s what I heard from behind the plate every game: “Y’all are an embarrassment to Forty-Five;” “Hey, Bennie Frewer, see if you can get knocked in the head with the ball so no one will touch it and you can run around the diamond;” “Nice reflexes, boy. Remind me not to let you in on my driver’s ed class in six years;” “You boys must all think you’re famous, standing there like statues;” “I thought y’all’ses were the Flattops, not the Heart Stops.”
I couldn’t not listen to what went on. I mean, I was prepared to hear, “Ball!” four times in a row from the umpire, or, “Hotdamn, I hope NASA ain’t sent up a mission—that ball might hit one them astronauts up there,” when Yancey Allison offered up a slow melon with no movement on it.
But I never was prepared to hear Compton Lane’s father say something like, “This is going to be a long game. Do y’all have anything back there that’s got arsenic in it?” from the concession stand. Midway through the season I heard my own father’s voice. He tried to whisper, but I could tell that he had sat down next to Emmie Gunnells. “I thought me up another concoction,” he said. “Banana and liver pudding. You know what liver pudding does for a man, don’t you? And, hey, I thought of another concoction. You and me.”
The concession stand was owned and operated by Danny Clement’s father, and for some reason it occurred to me that he must’ve been in cahoots with D. R. Pope. Games lasted sometimes five hours, and probably each sad, sunburned, tired spectator averaged a Coke an hour, a couple hot dogs, maybe some potato chips. These were brown-bagging days, too, so every player’s father might’ve put away two Cokes an hour to go with his Old Crow or Rebel Yell or Southern Comfort. Forgetful mothers loaded up on zinc oxide. Bored little kids inevitably started a game of tag or hide-and-go-seek or kick-the-can in the gravel parking lot, fell down, and required Band-Aids sold by Mr. Clement.
During one particular game against Calhoun Falls—a town that later got mostly submerged by shallow and algae-ridden Strom Thurmond Lake—the Calhoun Falls team batted around three times in one inning. I heard the parents of our shortstop, Bev Lagroon, get in such a fight that they vowed to end the marriage. Then they went off to the concession stand separately—she ordered chili tater tots, a Dr Pepper, and some Juicy Fruit gum; he, two Cokes to go with his Jim Beam, a corn dog, and pork rinds—before finally settling back down just before a six-foot-two-inch fourth grader from Calhoun Falls hit a ball that went through the 45 DRUGS sign in left field right where it read COSMETICS! The umpire said to me, “We better call the fire department and make sure that ball’s not smoldering back there on Leonard Self’s dry land.”
Mr. Lagroon said to his wife, “I didn’t mean nothing by all that. Let’s you and me go down to Myrtle Beach and renew our vows.”
I called time out and walked to the pitcher’s mound. The bases were empty and there were no outs. I called the infield in and kept my back to D. R. Pope. Bev Lagroon came in pounding his fist to his glove. I said, “Okay. We’re getting smeared. But not all’s bad. Bev’s parents are going to Myrtle Beach next week for some kind of second honeymoon. I’ll steal some of my father’s beer, and, Yancey, you steal some of your father’s peach-bounce moonshine, and we’ll all meet at Bev’s. That okay with you, Bev?”
He faced the stands. “Shirley Ebo’s waving at us up there.”
Comp said, “Hey. When this games over, let’s all beat these boys up. Let’s get in a big fight and kick them in the nuts instead of shaking hands.”
I turned around and looked at their bench. I said, “No. No way. The only thing we got going for us is knowing that the best thing those boys got going for them is moving to Forty-Five, getting jobs at the mill, and losing their fingers on purpose. Let’s just let them beat us silly.”
It’s what I said. My father had given me a pep talk of his own before this particular game. He said that the funny thing about Emmie Gunnells thinking he was a union organizer was that he really was one, in his own way. My father had said, “Down here, if they was called rebel organizers we’d have a lot better chance. All them mill workers would have the same chance in life as D. R. Pope’s lucky marriage into a crab joint-owning family. But let us learn to live the way we live, and do the best that we can. Let us be strong and proud and forward-looking.”
I said, “Amen.”
He whapped me a little too hard upside the head. “Amen? What the hell are you talking about, boy? I thought I taught you better than that.” Luckily I was wearing my catcher’s mask already.
I said, “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”
My father opened the car door for me. I threw my duffel bag on the backsea
t. He said, “You’re not sorry. Your team is sorry, but you’re not sorry, son. You’re the best goddamn thing that’s ever happened to Forty-Five. What you need to do is get out of here and tell everyone about it.”
I said, “I’m not doing so great in English.”
He said something about how stand-up comedians don’t need to write things for print. He said that archaeologists and anthropologists didn’t either, what with the advent of the television documentary.
THE SEASON DRAGGED on, and I continued listening to all the conversations that went on behind the backstop. I caught wind of people making plans, breaking promises, speculating who’d be the first dead Forty-Fiver sent back from Vietnam. People made bets as to who would be the first player on my team to foul a ball off, actually get a hit, or knock himself out plowing into one of the outfield signs. They made bets as to what time the seventh-inning stretch would take place, when the game would end, and who would be the first batter to throw his bat toward the opposing team’s bench. Coach D. R. Pope smiled throughout our long, long losing season. He clapped his hands to make puttering muffler sounds. Grover Henderson, the local dermatologist, salivated in the bleachers, for he knew that skin cancer was growing on the nine of us in the field and the couple hundred local spectators.
“We gone be leaving Forty-Five within the next year for Myrtle Beach,” I heard D. R. Pope’s wife say one extended first inning. Mrs. Pope sat with Danny Clement’s mother. “I know I give him a little bit of Hades, but he’d do about anything for me. He’s promising another three thousand dollars before September. Then we ready. I’m thinking I might could get a job down at that hammock factory, what with my skill before a loom. D. R.’s got a fancy job lined up, due to my family connections.”
This was the first inning of the last game against the team from Graywood. Yancey Allison threw a knuckleball that came closer to our third baseman than it did the plate. I tried to point my ears in another direction. I tried to listen to Shirley Ebo and her daddy talking about how they might invest in some horses, seeing as horsehide got so worn out at our Little League games, et cetera. But I couldn’t get it out of my mind, my coach sticking his hand in a spinning frame just so he could wear a shiny suit at the entrance of a place that probably prided itself on its homemade cocktail sauce. I heard Mrs. Pope say, “If I don’t get a job at the hammock place, then I might see if D. R. can bring some oyster shells home. I had a dream one time about putting those little plastic wiggle-eyes on shells and selling them as ashtrays.”
“Time out, please,” I said to the umpire.
I walked to the mound and motioned for the infield. Yancey said, “That last pitch slipped from my hand.” He showed me his index finger. “I broke off half the nail trying to pry off some old nasty bathroom tile my daddy said had hidden treasure behind. It didn’t.”
I said, “Coach D. R.’s planning on cutting more fingers off.”
One of the assistant coaches yelled out, “Watch the runner at first,” even though there was no one on base, seeing as their lead-off batter was still standing there with a 3-0 count.
“There’s got to be a better way to spend the summer,” I said. My father had started me reading Kierkegaard.
I looked out at Bennie Frewer in right field and it came to me as if God had tapped me on the forehead to think harder. Without even looking back to our coach, I yelled out so that the opposing team on its bench could hear—and everyone on our team and the people in the stands—“Bennie’s got head lice real bad! Let’s have him pitch!” I motioned for Bennie to come in. He pointed at his own chest just like in a sitcom, like in a cartoon, and I sent Yancey out to right field. “Head Lice is going to pitch!” I yelled. “Come on down here, Head Lice.”
Bennie could throw in a straight line, I knew that much. He didn’t have much range or velocity, but that didn’t matter. Coach D. R. came out to the mound at the same time as the umpire to get things going. The umpire said, “Y’all know that these games already last longer than a Pentecostal Sunday. Come on. I got things to do tonight. I promised my wife we’d play Yahtzee later.”
D. R. Pope said, “Yancey’s our pitcher, Mendal. You kind of stepping on my authority.” He held his deformed hand out like a manta ray.
I might’ve been four foot six back then, but I said, “We’d kind of like to make a showing, once.”
My father yelled from the stands, “I told you reading that Danish fellow would get you thinking right!”
The coach went back to the bench. I sent the infield back out to their positions. Yancey started crying until I said that I had a feeling that the Graywood team’s left-handers might start hitting the ball toward right field, and only Yancey could run a ball down and catch it. I said to Bennie Frewer—a boy who looked as if he’d been whipped every day since he’d starred in an educational television-produced documentary about the myths and realities of head lice—“You can lob up pitches softball-style for all I care. Just leave it to me. I’ll talk to the batters.”
Like I said, Graywood’s lead-off batter had a 3-0 count. I crouched back behind the plate and said, “This old boy Bennie Frewer’s got lice so bad I’m afraid if he scratches his scalp and touches the ball, it might look like sparks coming off our way.”
Bennie threw his first pitch overhand, but it came up in a loop the likes of a top-heavy bottle rocket. The umpire hesitated before saying, “Strike one?” The batter practically ran back toward the on-deck circle.
Danny Clement’s father understood what was going on. He yelled from his concession stand, “Somebody get me another pot to boil dogs in, boys!”
The Graywood players jumped back from each pitch as if it was soaked in toxic waste. They regularly struck out watching, as if they played for Forty-Five. And our players—me included—did about the same at bat, seeing as we couldn’t hit a pitch whatsoever. This continued. Somewhere between the twelfth and thirteenth inning Coach D. R. Pope came up to me in the dugout, gripped my neck like a C-clamp, and said, “You a different kind of boy living down here. How come you didn’t figure this out about game number two?” I shrugged. “This game might last ten days. They’s got to be some kind of record for the longest Little League game ever in the history of boyhood.”
“Maybe you won’t have to cut off the rest of your fingers and go down there to the beach,” I said. “Maybe you can get on television.”
The umpire yelled out, “Play ball!” again, the score tied nothing to nothing. Bennie Frewer, our hero, came to the plate. Evidently Graywood’s team had a boy with something like my ability to figure out ways to win. Their pitcher hit Bennie right in the head with a fastball that must’ve clocked in at seventy miles an hour. Bennie went down. The Graywood catcher ran away from the batter’s box.
IT DIDN’T TAKE a second for me to figure out what to do next, I swear. I’m not sure if it was reading Kierkegaard, or if my father was beaming ESP into my brain from his vantage point behind the backstop. I said to the coach, “If we use a pinch runner for Bennie, he can’t go back in. Let’s just set him down on first. The next two batters are going to strike out anyway.”
Coach D. R. Pope gave me a thumbs-up. He gave me a pinkie-up, too, of course. Glenn Flack and little Johnny Scott came up next, and stood there to watch their three balls zip straight over the plate. Bennie sat on first base with his head turned backwards, probably trying to regain his senses. Coach Pope said, “What’re we going to do now, smarty-pants?”
Smarty-pants! I envisioned him working at Sandy Claude’s and saying, “Where do you want to sit, smarty-pants?” or, “Would you like a menu or the buffet, smarty-pants?” I was that way—looking into the future—even back then. I said, “I’ll pitch. Bennie Frewer will play second base, but really let him just stand there by me on the mound. Go get…I don’t know,” I looked down the bench for who might be able to play catcher. I looked up to the stands at Shirley Ebo, who shook her head no. I said, “It doesn’t matter. You pick someone.”
Coach Po
pe gave a death-ray point toward Blink Harvel—a little fat kid with the IQ of a doorknob—and said, “You catching, boy.” Harvel spent most games finding a way to sneak off the bench to scour beneath the bleachers and retrieve the outside paper wrappers of Doublemint, Juicy Fruit, and Fruit Stripe gum he used to make chains and necklaces.
Blink Harvel said, “Okay, Coach,” and dropped his paper chain. He would’ve said the same thing if the coach asked him to pull off his pants and run down the third-base line.
When we got to the field I motioned for Blink to approach me at the mound. I said, “This won’t be hard. I’m going to throw the ball to you just like playing catch. You don’t worry any.”
Blink said, “How’m I supposed to know if it’s a ball or a strike? I’ve never called balls and strikes.” Blink went on to get a doctorate in administrative studies, and got a job with the Department of Education as a grief-therapy expert. He got interviewed on the local news whenever a tornado hit some trailer park where children lived, or a fourth grader shot another fourth grader, or when Clemson lost a football game and no little redneck kid felt like living anymore.
I explained to him that it was the umpire’s job. I said, “Just catch the ball and throw it back to me. That’s it.”
Blink Harvel nodded his head around, wearing my catcher’s mask.
I jerked my head to Bennie Frewer, who lolled around near second base. He wandered my way and said, for no apparent reason, “This itches, y’all.”
I said, “Uh-huh.” Oh, he’d have trouble in his later years—maybe rob a couple of banks or whatever—and try to say to both judge and jury that his damaged frontal lobe had caused it all. I said, “Take off your hat and just stand beside me. Right here.”
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