Long Road to California

by Myanne Shelley

  Chapter 9

  Caleb at the Game

  It’s been a nice enough couple weeks up in the Santa Fe environs, kind of a vacation from the vacation, but I’m actually glad to get back on the road. Back to the journey, to Grannie V’s path, to our search for authenticity and Nina’s documentation of it.

  Not so much authentic up in Taos, in my opinion. Kind of everything I’d imagined and less. Pretty, yes. Stunning scenery in every direction, though I’ll admit to preferring plants over rock formations. Hills covered with wild natives over boutiques selling crystals.

  But we got some chill time, for sure. Took it easy in a campground that was more like a resort (priced like one too, unfortunately). Saw the tourist sites, had some more than decent meals. And stayed a few nights with old college friends of Nina’s, who were laid back and didn’t mind that we spread and cleaned out our gear all over their yard. Got caught up on laundry, stocked up, slept in a comfortable bed. Honestly, I’ve gotten used to the tent; the only time I haven’t slept well was during a couple rainy nights when we bunked in the shell on the truck.

  Insomnia’s not much of a thing for me, though, not the way it is sometimes with Nina. I can put myself into another realm pretty quick just by outlining stuff in my head. Landscape designs, for instance, when I’m starting a job or just have seen a place that needs it. Or play possibilities, mapping out game strategies for my team, be it the local guys or the Giants coming down the wire toward the playoffs.

  This morning, we’re both well rested. The truck filled, oil checked, cooler stocked, and just a short hop to Albuquerque. Grandma Vera had several pictures in her collection from there, where they took a break on their journey. Car trouble, I think, not the hedonistic couple weeks we just spent. But Nina’s hoping to find some of the spots. There are landmarks, it’s an actual city, so we won’t be just pecking around the sides of the road.

  She’s driving. Glancing over, I can see her posture is relaxed, hands loose on the wheel. We’re on an interstate, but there’s little real traffic. Midday, midweek, just people with time on their hands out here, like us. It’s nice to see her not so worried. She can get a little wound up, like did we remember to pack this or that item, do we have sun block, will our sucky insurance cover it if I re-injure myself, and so on.

  In Taos, they’d say she’s becoming one with the journey. She shoots me a quick look. “What time is your game?”

  “Not ‘til three,” I answer, thinking so much for her not worrying. “Plenty of time.”

  “I’d like to look around at one of these reservations,” she says. “Just for my own interest.”

  “Sure.” I don’t share her fascination in native culture so much, but I do find the southwestern tribes’ architecture interesting. The cultivation techniques. The map shows us coming up on tribal land, but I doubt we’ll see much of historical interest. The landscape’s got that arid, rocky look off the side of the highway. Hues of tan, orange, brown, like a distant Georgia O’Keeffe painting.

  I’m looking forward to some green, as in a green field for baseball. In Albuquerque, the Isotopes, the local farm team of the Dodgers, are playing the D-back’s team, the Reno Aces. We can catch the last pair of games of their series, and I guess I can embarrass us routing for the away team. Like any good Giants fan, of course, I can’t stand the Dodgers. Supposedly the new stadium here, that they share with the University of New Mexico’s Lobos, is pretty awesome. Plus, AAA tickets come cheap and plentiful, unlike those for our boys in orange.

  Nina flips the turn signal, and its slow clacking accompanies her leisurely slide toward a distant exit. A faded, aging sign points us toward the San Felipe Reservation. Pueblo ahead.

  “If this is all roadside stands with beads and feather cap schlock, let’s give it a pass,” I suggest.

  “Let’s give it a chance,” Nina says. The truck bounces over the pocked road, which is paved, but barely. Then after a few minutes, “Can you imagine the whole trip on this kind of road? God, the older people must have been aching.”

  “Not to mention one of the cars being open to the road. Breathing in all the dirt. The heat.” We’ve talked about this several times already. But it does pretty much blow my mind that Grandma Vera’s entire family with all their possessions made the trip in those conditions. No wonder she’s tough as old shoes despite her petite demeanor.

  Nina finds a place to pull over, parking near a ramshackle collection of out buildings and junked old cars. We get out, stretch our legs. A bit too early for lunch, although that’s immediately where my mind goes. Good thing; there’s a little stand selling stuff that looks near inedible.

  We get a couple looks from people, a couple friendly nods. We’re approximately as exotic on an Indian reservation as we were in rural Texas, when you think about it. There’s a not very native looking shack serving as a tiny museum, and a little trail stretching up and over a small hill. Without discussion, we start to climb it. Nina draws out her smaller camera and holds it like a talisman, practically sniffing around for a good shot.

  I don’t see much to photograph, really. There are distant mountains, but the hills right here are flat, stunted, pale. The sky looks barely blue, and cloudless, and even I can tell the light is too bright overhead. She kneels down for a moment, studying a spindly little succulent of some sort, poking its way up between the smooth rocks beside our trail.

  One shot, sure to be deleted. If something really captures her imagination, she’ll take a dozen, minimum. Lucia will back me up on that, even if Nina denies it.

  “Of course the cars were a lot slower,” she comments, back on the subject of what an arduous trip the original one must have been. “But they hardly had shocks, did they? They’d feel every bump.”

  “Let’s look for a museum with old cars. In a ghost town maybe. Be cool to actually take a ride in one.”

  She frowns, understandably skeptical that there are actually Fords and Nashes from the 1930s available for joy rides. “It’s so dry out here. You know, that drought in the 1930s lasted for years.” She scuffs a sneaker along the dried dirt path and an ashy fine puff of dust lifts and settles.

  “They gave the homesteaders bigger plots of land in the plains,” I tell her. I’ve been reading up on the history of the Dust Bowl. “Early in the century. Because they knew it was marginal. But there was a wet period and they thought it would be permanent, that the farming affected the climate. ‘Rain follows the plow’ is what they told people coming from Europe.”

  We’re circling back already. It’s not much of a trail. Nina wants to look at all the little knickknacks they’ve got on display in the museum. I give it a glance then go back out to the truck. Happy to pull out a folding chair, sit in a shady spot, read over some more of the stuff I downloaded.

  Interesting to learn that World War I and even the Russian Revolution were involved, combining to bring up agriculture prices, which in turn drove farmers to increase production. Areas in the plains states devoted to farming were doubling and tripling over 1920s. And the farmers were deep plowing in flat rows, even burning away the deep rooted native grasses that kept the soil in place. Cotton farmers left their fields bare in the winter, and burned stubble to control weeds.

  So when the weather pattern normal to a semiarid region reasserted itself in the form of a drought, there was nothing to hold the soil in place. The dirt dried to dust and the normal winds lifted and swept it away. Dust clouds reached all the way to east coast cities. In the midst of the storms, you couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of you. Day turned to night. It coated everything. People even died from it, they called it dust pneumonia.

  That’s clearly what happened to Grandma Vera’s little sister. I can remember from being a kid, hearing her and Grandpa Walt, whose parents had died fairly young, talk so matter of factly about these deaths. I remember kind of looking around at my cousins, wondering i
f one of us would tragically die, like her beloved little Nellie. Because of the way they talked, as if that sort of thing was normal, acceptable – and I guess to them, it was.

  When Lucia was little, when she’d get a virus and her fever would spike, I had a small sense of that anxiety, I suppose. She always bounced back, but still, I can recall, almost taste it, the gut wrenching fear that comes with trying to help your sick child. And those poor folks, dozens, hundreds of families, they just had to accept that fate, the death of a child. Or parents passing at age 50. It’s not something I particularly like to think about, but it’s hard to deny. There are spirits like that trailing near every extended family in central California that was once called “Okie.” Different story but same result, I suppose, for the families of hardscrabble immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

  Nina returns empty handed except for her ever present camera, and I’m glad for the interruption. I don’t want to dwell on the sadness, any more than my grandparents did. We climb back into the truck, and return along that rough bumpy road.

  Although according to what Grandma Vera’s recently been telling Nina, it’s just dumb luck that Grandpa Walt even became my grandfather. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I’m not entirely sure Grannie V is thinking too clearly these days. I mean how good is her memory anymore? She can’t tell us the names of any of the aides except for her favored Maya. She’ll forget who’s visited her, or think it’s been weeks since she’s seen someone when it’s actually been days. And now suddenly there’s this other dude, who conveniently disappeared and who showed up in just one picture of her extensive collection?

  Nina thinks it’s a fine romantic story though. She wants to track down the guy’s brother, the one who technically could still be alive, when we get back to California. Although he’d be almost as old as Grandma, which is to say no spring chicken himself. Oh, and last name of Smith. That’ll be a cinch to find.

  We drive along for awhile, before pulling off at a monument of some sort to fix a picnic lunch from our fresh supplies. Nina checks her notes while I finish eating and then clean up. She says we should get a campsite at the riverside park which is right nearby, and then go straight to the UNM campus, where we can pick up game tickets and hunt down the first of her landmarks.

  My mind is wandering a bit as we do one, then the other. I drive, she navigates, chooses the campsite, then chatters about the changes in scenery as she guides us to a parking area near the campus. We’re back on track – the campus sits right at old Route 66. We pack as though for a days long journey, she with her tripod and better camera, me with seat cushions, water bottles, snacks for the game. Bummed, but resigned to it, I snap on my leg brace, assuming we’ll be on our feet for awhile.

  The sky that was pale north of here seems brighter blue, and the air fresher. All the grass and trees, I’m thinking. The campus is lush compared to where we’ve been. Laid out nicely, lots students striding around as though in a campus brochure, clean cut and respectful. What I imagine – hope – it’s like for Lucia at Davis.

  Nina’s already found a campus map and located the ticket office, while I’m still checking out the landscaping. It’s really nice, there’s a subtle curving of the lawn near the pathways that keeps kids from cutting across. Good mix of native plants and showier stuff. Many blooms, and I’d bet they’re timed to be coming up one after another.

  She wants us to head for Schole Hall, where Vera and company posed for pictures. “This was where Vera was up on top of an archway or something. And where they had all the kids in order of height. I wonder if we could ask some students to pose?” She’s a woman on a mission now.

  Wandering, we find the area, and she checks out every angle. Then she gets the tripod set up to her liking. Her inner reporter returns, that fast snappy attitude that I enjoyed from the start, and she flags down a pair of coeds to see if they’ll pose for her.

  Then she wants a group, with different heights, and I’m assigned a spot at the end, filling in for Vera’s oldest and tallest brother. She’ll be in Vera’s spot. The girls, who are game and apparently not in any hurry to get to class, text a couple friends, and we flag down a random guy to stand between me and Nina. She trots to the camera to start the timer and hurries back, all of us grinning at the blinking red light.

  I can’t imagine doing something like this with passing strangers when I was in college, but I suppose these kids take each other’s pictures all the time. I’m like the only one around who’s fine with an older phone, who doesn’t need to record and post my every movement. The girls laugh and flirt with the guys as they wander off, waving off Nina’s thanks with an all purpose “no problem.”

  We spot the entranceway to the hall, the stone work where Vera perched for that one shot. Tall trees beside it, that were tiny trees back in the original shot. Nina will let me click the button, but she still needs to set up the shot.

  “I should have brought a skirt,” she exclaims. “Vera’s picture was borderline racy, you remember? You can see how she would have caught that guy’s eye.” She steps back from her tripod, at last satisfied.

  “You look fine. Almost as youthful.” Well that’s an exaggeration, but she does get a young energy about her when she’s transfixed with her work like this.

  Nina scoffs at that. “I bet she didn’t need a hand up like I do. Can you?”

  I help boost her onto the thick ledge, thinking it’s a good thing I don’t have to climb up there too with my bum knee. There’s a big gnarled tree rising above us, partly shading the lawn and entrance to the hall. Nina leans back into a swath of sunlight and hooks hands around one knee, as Vera had done. She looks fetching enough that way; sorry, but I can’t really think of my grandma in those terms.

  We spend awhile longer poking round the campus. Nina looking for her shots, me looking around at the layout but basically getting bored. It reminds me of my long days at home, unemployed – thinking I should work on something but not quite able to get a start. About the time my knee starts screaming at me, it’s time for the game.

  Now I’m psyched. The stadium is cool – well scaled, feels intimate but also big league. Just walking in tells a story of good times already had, wins, narrow losses, the camaraderie of fans of all ages. Good number of fans are on hand as we climb up to our seats, more making their leisurely ascent as the rowdy announcer calls out what will be the first of probably many whimsical contests. I just breathe it in. It’s hard to explain – there’s something about even arriving at a game that does it for me, relaxes and rejuvenates me like nothing else.

  Nina’s still distracted, poking around in our bag, getting comfortable on her cushion, looking around for interesting people to shoot. I just tune it all out. I’m focused on the players as they take the field. The optimism that ignites every one of them here at the start. For me, a game is like a little life cycle: born anew, hopeful, fresh, then growing strong, usually a plateau in its middle. Then it stays as is and fades away, or suddenly shifts, fortunes won or lost. Sometimes every play builds on the prior play, anticipation builds, streaks are born. Or one lucky hit or muffed play can change everyone’s luck. One late at bat can bring a dozen possibilities, from strike three and inning over to a grand slam. One guy can be the hero, or lose it spectacularly. At the start, you just don’t know.

  The anthem, caps off, rough looking players lined up below mouthing the words. We’re close enough to hear the umpire yell, “Play ball!” I scan the big screen for players names that I recognize. A lot of these are young guys, just brought up to triple A. Big dudes with baby faces, putting on attitude but probably scared and excited inside, gulping air before they’re up to bat, afraid of choking.

  Playing in college, I was like that. I had a whole routine to go through, to drown out the specter of the crowd and focus on the game. Otherwise it was overwhelming, all the noise and eyes on me. Even now, just watching, I
vicariously feel a bit of the thrill as the first batter faces down his first pitch. Hell, I get pretty pumped even for our softball games; I’m known for taking a wild hack at the first pitch I see.

  A couple times my dad showed up to watch me play, back in college I mean. Talk about pressure. Baseball was something, one of few things, I shared with my dad. Something easy and neutral we could talk about, something where I felt like even if he hadn’t cared much to stick around and see me grow up, a thing he respected about me. Nina has theories about this, that it’s daddy issues to explain why I am quote obsessed with the game. I don’t think it’s anything that complicated, though. Baseball is like life for me; of course I’m interested in life.

  Nina, over the years, has at least come to appreciate the game. She knows the rules, although it’s kind of out of sight out of mind for her as far as being able to recall key plays or players of games we’ve seen. I may not remember all the second cousins’ birthdays, but I can certainly tell you who made the winning run in every critical game I’ve seen. She suggests that this is irrelevant information, about as much as I’d say so about all the cousins. I glance over at her. She’s not paying much attention yet, still frowning over her camera and looking around for good camera angles. I wish she could just ease into the game, let it wash over her. Regularly she’ll spend more of an experience trying to photograph it than actually being part of it.

  The Aces go down in order. May be a quick game, which I suppose will be a good thing for my knee, which has swelled a bit and still aches from the climb up here. I attempt to work it loose, trying to avoid kicking the guy in front of me.

  Below, I can see into the visitor’s dugout. The coach, fast talking, assuring the players they have time, friendly slaps as they take the field. I watch the assistant ambling back from first. He’s got a slight limp, just a small hitch in his step that makes him look off balance. Squinting for his name, I recognize it – the dude was a decent triple A player in Fresno a decade or so back. Probably never going to be quite good enough for the big leagues, never going to pull down a huge salary. But then he got injured and couldn’t play at all.

  I watch him down by the dugout. Standing there at the rail, I can see that he’s getting a pot belly, though he can’t be more than 35. Jeez, whatever potential he had, now he looks like he barely exercises. Can’t be earning much as an assistant. I cringe, I can’t help it, comparing myself to him. My original potential as a player all the more worse and now my aching swollen knee. My early potential in design, my later reality.

  And yet, the guy looks like he couldn’t be happier. We both track a well hit ball that sails into left. The fielder flies across and makes a snappy leaping catch. I grin, try to high five Nina. The assistant looks about to pop his front buttons in pride for his guy. Isotopes fans around us, at least those paying attention, groan.

  I have to admit some respect for the coach. I mean he could have just complained, felt sorry for himself and his career ending injury. Slunk away. But he took control of what he still had, made a place for himself doing what he clearly loves. What more can you really ask, right? There’s another fly ball, another quick out.

  And another little ding in my brain, that I should take some notice – I too can still control some pieces of my life. Maybe it takes this much distance to figure that out. But when we get back, yeah, I can still do as much as I can of what I love to do too. I can get back in the saddle, hustle up some jobs. Adjust my aging body to the work. Weekends, play first base instead of outfield, take a pinch runner until I’m better healed. But still play.

  The Aces are back up, and I tune out the rest of my thoughts, tune in, zen like, to the ups and downs of the rest of the game. It ends in a satisfying 2 zip win for the Aces.

  Back at our camp, I can’t believe the day has gone so fast. We keep our dinner simple. A couple post game beers are still cold in the cooler. Friendly neighbors nearby clue us in about sights to see, and the best campgrounds nearby, including some freebies, always good.

  After awhile, Nina gets out her phone to check messages. Shows me a photo Lucia sent her, she and her friend dressed up for their party. I check my phone, and see Luce has left me a voice message. (She knows I’m not a texter.)

  “She wants me to call her,” I tell Nina. “Did she say anything else to you?”

  “Nothing,” Nina says, frowning.

  I click Lucia’s number. Like most kids, she can be counted on to have her phone on her, to take an incoming call regardless of whatever else she has going on. “Hey, Dad,” her voice now greets me. “Took you long enough. I called, like, yesterday.”

  “Everything okay?” I ask her calmly. She has been known to check in with me rather than with Nina over small problems, attempting to save her mother the extra worry. Tends to backfire though, since Nina can pretty much sniff out anything going on with either Lucia or me.

  “I’m fine, don’t worry,” Lucia says, and her chipper, carefree tone backs her up. “But it’s about Grandma Vera. Hang on a sec.” I can hear her background noises diminishing. “I went and saw her, like Mom told me to. But she was kind of riled up. Like she was glad to see me and asked how is school, but basically she was really worried about you guys. And I told her you were fine, that we’d been checking in and everything.”

  “Okay.” I offer a slight shrug to Nina, who’s hovering. I put the phone so we can both hear.

  “Well, she’s worried about this information she told you guys, which it seemed like she didn’t want to tell me. But she said it was weighing on her, that Grandpa Walt had confessed something to her. That he found out and at first didn’t tell her but then he did. And she didn’t tell you and Mom but now she’s worried that you guys should know it: that they mixed up which brother died. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “What?” Nina literally grabs the phone from my hand. “Honey, Vera said it was the brother who died? Reno who lived?”

  I’m still processing what she’s talking about, as Nina quizzes Lucia about Grandma’s exact words. When I get the phone back, Luce is laughing, saying watch out, Mom’s on a tear. She herself has to go, message delivered and now back to her studies, or so I’d like to think. But before she clicks off, she tells me she believes what Grandma said. She’s taken Psychology classes, and she assures me that even if Vera’s short term memory is a bit fuzzy, the long term stuff is probably sharp. I’m not sure I want to admit it, but she makes a good point.

  Nina, as predicted, is brimming with energy. Already on her phone, tracking down Grandma Vera herself, almost beside herself to get the story in its excruciating detail. She’s gesturing, exclaiming, even taking notes.

  I take a few moments to clean up our campsite, tuck away the cooler, toss out our trash and recycling.

  Finally Nina practically dances over, giddy, throwing her arms around me, threatening to tumble us both backwards. Words tumbling over themselves, she informs me of Grandma Vera’s news, the information she withheld but then decided to spill.

  It seems that a hundred years ago (okay, only almost 70), the news of her boyfriend’s death was incorrectly delivered. The two brothers were named Reginald and Raymond Smith, and while Vera knew them as Reno and Smitty, they both got called Smitty at the unsavory cannery where the one met his demise. There was the accident, and word came back that both brothers were hurt but Smitty was going to make it, so everyone thought that meant that her guy, Reg aka Reno, died. But it was the brother, Ray, who was killed. Her fellow had a bad head injury and so was out of commission for long enough that he lost track of all his pals to set the record straight. Then by the time he bumped into someone who knew someone, Vera was married to Walt, had a baby on the way. Walt somehow found out about the mistake later, but then he kept it quiet, presumably worried she would regret their marriage or run off or something. He didn’t tell Vera until some more years had gone by, enough that everybody h
ad moved on, and his guilt about it was weighing on him. And Vera apparently has kept the whole story under wraps until just now?

  I’m shaking my head in a bit of disbelief. “It just seems like a stretch,” I tell her. “Like maybe she needs something interesting to spice up her life there at assisted living. Could she be mixing up a book she read? I mean, why wouldn’t she have said something before? Why not give the guy a call in like 1970?”

  “I asked her about that, didn’t you hear me? She said she did try to find out what happened to him. First, she had to forgive Walt, which she did although it took a long time. Then they found out that he had put down roots in Monterey. Had a family of his own there. And I guess they decided to leave well enough alone.”

  “Well, okay then.” I watch her. Pretty sure this is not the end of it.

  “Caleb, it’s so romantic – first he sees that she’s married and he backs away. Then she does the same thing 20 years later, finds out that he’s married and doesn’t interfere. But who’s to say they weren’t both pining for each other?”

  “And yet she was happily married to my grandfather, and not saying a word about it, for all that time?”

  “Well, yeah, but who knows what’s happened since?” Nina takes a step back, arms crossed, resolute. “I think we owe it to Vera to find out. Honey, it’s part of my story here.”

  I can’t help but smile back. Our story, I think to myself. I might as well get on board. Looks like Grandma Vera’s got a late inning rally working for her.