The Brothers K

by David James Duncan

  I asked what honors those were. He pointed at the garden hoe and rake leaning against the toolshed. “How about weeding me out a batter’s box?”

  I set to work like a pirate who’s just found the X on the map. Meanwhile Papa went back in the garage, and returned with a used twin mattress. When he’d spotted this pee-stained relic at a Goodwill drop-box a few weeks back, he’d cried, “Perfect!” and tied it to the roof of the car—causing my brothers and me to wonder yet again about his mental health. But when he got it home he’d calmly covered it with two sheets of black plastic and a third layer of rainproof Army surplus canvas, and now its purpose was obvious: padding and soundproofing for his garage-wall backstop. Nailing two stout metal bookshelf brackets to the wall, he hung the mattress from them by its handles.

  He disappeared into the garage again, and this time was gone long enough for me to de-sod the “batter’s box,” pick out every last rock and weed, and work the dirt smooth as the top of a fresh pumpkin pie by dragging the back of the rake over it again and again. While I worked the day turned dusky without my noticing. But what I did notice, under the spotlights, was the odd, half-canceled dual shadows that I was casting. They looked uncannily familiar. I straightened up, tried to place them, couldn’t, and had just started raking again when it hit me: they were almost exactly the sorts of shadows that ballplayers cast at a night ballgame. Like a painter trying to get perspective, I backed away from my efforts then, and was delighted to see that, at least in this light, my hokey handmade batter’s box had truly begun to resemble a few square feet of bona fide bush league ball diamond. And if a homemade batter’s box can get this real this fast, I thought, there’s no reason why Papa can’t make it out of this yard, out of the mill, clear on out of this town and back into pro ball …

  At which point I heard the school bus bringing my brothers home, my brain kicked in, our yard turned back into a yard, and I mumbled aloud, “Naw. No way. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “What’s ridiculous?” Papa asked—and I jumped. I hadn’t heard him slip up behind me.

  “Nothing!” I snapped. “Nothing’s ridiculous!” But he looked a little hurt, so I added, “You weren’t supposed to hear is all. I was thinking out loud.”

  “About what?”

  I shrugged. “You and baseball.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Well. Me and baseball. That is ridiculous.”

  We both began to laugh then, and for a moment that yak butter belief in a comeback filled me a second time. But right at the height of it Papa stopped laughing, looked around the yard, waved a careless hand at everything we’d done, and said, “You know, Kade. This whole thing, this shed business, it really is ridiculous.” Then he smiled—and sadly, almost shyly added, “But Vera says her stupid prayers no matter what. Right?”

  This remark washed over me in slow, silent waves: the shredding of the cigarettes, the tortured four-mile runs, the scavenged lumber and laborious building project—it was some kind of elaborate apology, some sort of self-imposed penance for having hit me. It was a gesture, a wonderful gesture. But a gesture nonetheless. “Look, Kade,” he said, reaching down and squeezing my sagging shoulders. “My situation, baseball-wise, is hopeless.”

  My throat began to close. I looked away to hide the welling in my eyes.

  “The thing is,” he said, “I don’t want you getting worked up over nothing when I start spending time out here. I built this shed because throwing baseballs keeps my head on straight. I did not build it to inaugurate some sort of fairytale comeback. Do you understand that?”

  I stared at the little piece of diamond we’d just made.

  “No matter how well I may eventually seem to be throwing, and no matter what your all-knowing brother Everett may say, all I’m ever gonna do out here is toss the pitcher’s equivalent of harelip prayers. Okay?”

  My tongue felt thick and dry now—not a hint of yak butter anywhere.

  “Don’t think of it as baseball, Kade. Call it my hobby, or some weird kind of worship maybe. Call it psalmball, or shedball, or thumbball if you like. But remember it’s not baseball. It’s not a comeback. You’ve got to promise me that.”

  A lump of sandstone lay in my throat. I couldn’t speak. But he waited. He waited till our eyes met, then bent my will like an arm wrestler bends a wrist: I had to nod to keep from breaking. “Okay,” he said, handing me his hammer. “Let’s pound in that plate.”

  We did so. But I took no pleasure in it now. And when Papa stepped back and sighed, “That’s it, such as it is …” he just looked like a worn-out millworker.

  Mama banged on the kitchen window, signaling that dinner was ready. Papa waved and nodded. But he didn’t move. Tired as he was, he too seemed reluctant to leave the summery air and ballpark lighting. We walked up to the shed to turn off the lights in there, but I stepped onto the mound first, toed the rubber, and looked down the pipe at the batter’s box. It seemed a long way off. If it were me throwing I wasn’t sure I’d even hit the mattress. Papa eyed me, shook his head, and said, “Go stand in the box down there and make like a batter. I’ll show you a stance.”

  I ran down to the wall, picked up the garden hoe, gripped it like a bat, and stepped into the box. But when I looked back at Papa, I was shocked: the distance between us had somehow shrunk to almost nothing. And with those naked bulbs blazing behind him he was unrecognizable—an ominous, mountainous shape blocking out the light. I took my best batter’s stance and gripped the hoe hard, but my father’s body was so unfamiliar, so confident and so large that I felt ludicrous. I watched him work his neck and shoulders loose, his left arm dangling all the while, limp as a hangman’s noose. I watched him peer at a catcher hidden in the wall at my back, shake off a sign, nod grimly at a second. I watched his lungs and hangman’s arm suddenly fill with air and energy, watched him swirl into a slow, full windup. But when he suddenly, violently hurled his right leg and left arm and whole shadowy being toward me, I shut my eyes, fell back out of the box, and landed flat on my backside—though I knew, or thought I knew, that his hand held no ball.

  Papa snorted. He thought my fall was an act. I dusted my rear, forced a grin, and tried to pretend the same. “Shedball,” he said again, shutting off the lights. “Just harelip prayers, Kade. Don’t forget.”

  I didn’t. But I didn’t forget, either, that some prayers just maybe, just might, receive answers.

  Irwin’s HISTORY OF MY DAD continued

  Chapter 7. The Goon Squad

  What the U.S. Army figured, Hugh reports himself figuring at the time, was that a Pro Ballplayer was worth more against Koreans as morale boosters than as a common foot soldier. This became extra true after hardly any Big League ballplayers got drafted in the Korean War due to how the owners of Big League Ballclubs were a bunch of regular Einsteins when it came to finding loopholes to keep their star players out of the military with. So the few stars the Army nabbed, they decided to show off, Hugh says. And the best way to do this, they figured, was to make a Morale Boosting Club out of them.

  Sounds fun, doesn’t it, cheering up all the scared young recruits by playing exhibition ball for them instead of marching off to War with them? But think again sucker! Because the Team Of Stars was only one team, and to really boost morale they needed somebody to play against. And even though he’d been 14 and 2 for Triple A Skenechtudy and was on his way Upstairs, Hugh Chance was just Mister No-Face No-Name as far as your typical Army fan or officer was concerned. Such was how one of America’s finest young prospects came down with a splat on Baseball’s saddest excuse of a ballclub ever!

  Known amongst themselves as The Goon Squad, they were mostly a bunch of scruddy Big League bench-warmers, bush leaguers, and as many as possible Oriental fellas to remind the cheering U.S. troops of the Korean enemy as the Star Squad knocked the snot out of them every night at Fort This or Fort That. What about OUR morale? the Goon Squad sometimes wondered. But to the Army’s way of thinking, morale boosting was pretty much a Punch and Judy type sh
ow intended to teach our lads in uniform to go reef on Communists the same rough way the Stars always reefed on the Goons.

  It made for one weird brand of baseball, Hugh reports in retrospect. Especially since the Stars had a lieutenant who just happened to be an ex-Double A manager managing them, while meanwhile the Goons were skippered by this deadbeat sergeant who spent most of every game on a walkytalky taking orders from the lieutenant on exactly how that game should be thrown. That’s right folks! THROWN! The games were totally rigged is what I’m getting at! As long as they stank it up the Stars lieutenant let the Goons pretty much swing away so that things would seem lifelike to the dumber fools amongst the spectators. But if the Goons got the least little rally going, the lieutenant would kill it in a variety of several different ways.

  One of his favorites was wiping Goon runners off the basepaths by ordering the sergeant to order his Goons to steal on the next pitch, then signalling his own catcher and pitcher to pitch a pitch-out. In this way the Star catcher would nail the runner by several miles, after which the fans heckled and jeckled the poor Goon all the way back to the bench about how slow he was. Another neat trick of the lieutenant’s was how Goon pitchers were allowed to throw hard enough so that things didn’t look like sheer BP out there, but weren’t allowed to throw full speed fastballs, change-ups, or anything inside enough to be considered a brush-off, nor fast curves nor knucklers nor knock-downs nor any other major offensive type tool of the Hurling Trade. One last trick: gopherballs. These were phoned in by the lieutenant like pizzas over the walkytalky, which the Goon sergeant (waiter) relayed to his Goon pitchers (cooks) by picking his nose with his little finger, meaning that Hugh or whoever had to ooze over a nice no-hop fastball (pepperoni pizza) for the Star batter (pizza-eater) to clomp halfway to Hong Kong.

  The results of these tricks? Every last game the Goon pitchers got royally destroyed.

  One night at Fort Sill in the heat of battle though, Hugh got carried away and ignored several flagrant nose picks with the bases loaded, fanning two famous sluggers in a row to retire the side. So when he got back to the bench, there stood the lieutenant on the walkytalky, reading him off about how missed signals in Army Morale Booster Ball were Treachery and War Crimes and Court Martial Material. Ordering the big southpaw onto K.P. for about the two hundredth time, the lieutenant told Hugh if he repeated the mistake he would find himself in a snowy trench on the Mongol Border so fast his head would melt. And the worst part was how “Yes SIR! Very sorry SIR!” poor Hugh had to grovel inspite of being so sick of tossing gopherballs that snowy Mongol trenches sounded somewhat lovely and peaceful. What with the Big Leagues awaiting him however, and what with Laura, Marion, Everett and Peter all depending on Hugh for love, rent, groceries and such, he decided he’d better mind his pees and cues.

  A portion of my dad’s history lives on to this day when my family, while watching ballgames, calls a hung curve or fat fastball a North Korean or No-K for short, meaning the opposite of a K, which is a strike-out in baseball lingo. Anyhow, it was while serving up No-Ks on a diamond the Navy made on Guam by dumping oil on a beach then running over it in a steamroller that Hugh got the letter from his lovely wife telling how the Good Lord had sent along something drastic to cheer their lives up with, namely a drastic sized baby of 12 POUNDS 10 OUNCES, born Christmas Eve no less, who the doctor reported laughed merrily when he spanked it after it was born, though Laura was of course too punchy due to childbirth, drugs and such to verify the jolly sound. This laughing infant was the biggest baby ever born alive to the hospital there at Pullman, and continues to be the largest best-looking kid here at John McLoughlin High School of downtown Camas Washington to this day. He was also the third Chance’s son to be born in three years, as I’m sure you’ve noticed Mr. Hergert, since you’ve gotten old and gray teaching all three of us. I’m sure I don’t need to add that the young monster of which we’re speaking here was none other but IRWIN DAVID CHANCE MYSELF, as Laura and Hugh named me in their next letter to each other, after two very old and dear friends of theirs whom I can’t go into at this time due to being too hungry to go on writing for now. (I should take a second to add however that I’m only kidding about you being old or gray!)

  Kincaid:

  Camas/Spring/1963

  Papa took his new pitching sessions surprisingly seriously. He wouldn’t let us come out to watch him, wouldn’t let us use his shed when he wasn’t in it, wouldn’t even let the twins have tea parties in it when he was at work. He said everyone on earth needed a little place to call their own, “and that smelly shed out there is mine.”

  Of course his forbidding us to watch him throw had the same effect on Everett and me that Mama’s forbidding of “heathen reading material” had once had on Peter: no sooner did he lay down the law than we began figuring out ways to break it. You could get a crummy side view of his pitches from Irwin’s and my room upstairs, but if Papa saw our faces in the window he’d say, “Nothing to do?” then give us some tedious housework or chore. So Everett and I scouted around, and eventually discovered, in a laurel hedge between our backyard and the laundromat next door, a niche that was maybe thirty feet behind the shed, and a little to one side. It wasn’t exactly a box seat. All we could see of Papa’s motion was the grotesque double shadow it cast on the lawn in front of the mound. But we could hear the grunts of effort he put into each pitch; we could watch the baseballs streak out into the light; and we could see the fleeting dents they made in the strike zone he’d painted on the canvas, and call them balls or strikes.

  Papa wasn’t kidding about “harelip prayers,” though. His resurrected pitches were fast, even to Everett’s educated eye, but shockingly wild. We soon grew accustomed to the resounding thwham! of balls denting the bare garage siding, followed by a whump! inside the shed (Papa’s fist slamming the wall), a hissed Chee-rist! or Sheee-it!, and a palpably disgusted silence. Every time he fell into one of these funks I expected to see him stalk out of the shed and into the house to announce that he’d sworn off his new hobby forever. But instead, sooner or later, out would come another scorcher, which usually also missed the mattress and blasted the bare wall so hard I half expected the ball to stick.

  It was hard, at first, not to burst out laughing at these great thwammings and whumpings of balls and fists. But after a few nights something changed inside us, and the same sounds nearly tempted us to cry. What bothered Everett were the fist-slammings and other shows of temper. Papa had always been the calmest man on the field, Everett said. As a young fastballer he’d needed the calm because his tremendous speed was so hard to control, and as an older, cannier junk pitcher he’d needed it still more, because when junk pitchers give way to adrenaline surges they lose the cockeyed perspective that gives the juju to their junk. But there in his shed, Everett said, Papa was throwing more than just adrenaline: he was throwing his frustration, his anger, his dissolved hopes, his fear, his fatigue; he was taking everything inside him and just slinging it, helter-skelter, out into the night. “It’s not even pitching,” Everett soon concluded. “Whatever it is, it’s not pitching.”

  I agreed, but was not so troubled, because Papa had warned me that this would be the case. What moved and disturbed me about his pitches was that they really did resemble Vera’s praying. He and Everett didn’t have to listen to her every Sabbath, so they couldn’t know, but his shedball throws had the same “no matter what” earnestness, the same abject helplessness, and they aroused in me the same weird blend of embarrassment and admiration as I listened to the preposterous results. His left thumb, like her lip, had the same bad-dream quality, too, in that the harder they tried, the more laughable their efforts grew. Yet with identical, terrible stubbornness, Vera kept praying and Papa kept throwing. And the more he missed the mattress, the louder he blasted the bare wall, the fiercer and deeper my love for him grew.

  Irwin’s HISTORY OF MY DAD concluded

  Chapter 8. Escape From The Goons!

  February 25 1951 was a
day even those of my family members not yet born fondly remember. It started out in the evening with another dumb morale booster game in front of a huge crowd of green recruits at an Airbase in Hawaii with one of those crazy Hawaaian names Hugh calls Fort Oopawanapoonawahinipopo for laughs. In the third inning though, our hero smashed a tremendous home run with two aboard, giving the Goons a temporary 3 to 2 lead over the Stars, in addition to which the Stars’s 2 runs were purely due to several No-Ks the fat-assed lieutenant had ordered poor Hugh to throw. So the real score was Goons 3, Stars Zip, and as Hugh trotted round third he shot the lieutenant a look that said how well the two of them both knew it. And boy did Hugh’s look hit the bull’s eye! By the time he reached the bench, there was the lieutenant on the walkytalky, jabbering about how the Goon Squad was getting uppity and the Stars were getting punchy so today by golly they would play for keeps! No fake errors! No gopherballs! No pitch-out-doomed Goon base-stealing nor any other form of Morale Building whatsoever! “JUST KNOCKDOWN DRAG OUT HARDBALL!” the lieutenant yelled, “WITH TRIPLE K.P. DUTY FOR THE LOSERS, AND MAY THE BEST TEAM WIN!”

  In defence of what happened next Hugh said the Stars could of beat the Goons four fair games out of five normally, and that it was only due to months of half-speed fastballs and fake-hung curves that they’d forgot what real hurling looked like. But I must also point out that once Private Hugh Chance started throwing his genuine scorchers they couldn’t see the old horsehide at all! After a couple innings Hugh started feeling so sorry for the Star hitters that he let them glimpse the ball again. Unfortunately the only balls he let them glimpse were the blazing snapping curveballs which started out at their terrorized faces causing them to dive for cover, then nipped down over the inside corner for the most embarrassing kind of called strikes! And with nothing to lose and their whole self-respects to win back, Hugh and his buddies just cruised! The egg-faced Stars could do nothing right. The jolly Goons could do nothing wrong. The results? One of the hideous disasters of Army Morale-Building History! After eight innings of slaughter with the score standing at 17 to 2, no outs, and the basepaths loaded with laughing Goons, a furious Brigadeer General came storming out of the- stands and ordered the game called to a halt on account of darkness even though it was still totally light!