by Chris Lynch
He upnodded at me. “Ya?” Then he ripped the stickbat out of my hand, and stared back at Napoleon.
“We got something to settle, Jiminy Cricket?” He waved the stick just slightly in Napoleon’s direction.
“He probably can’t even play baseball,” Jum yelled, “that’s why he has to play his retard game.”
Butch laughed and nodded. I waited for Napoleon to say something, but instead a look of disgust came over his face and he started looking around, like he couldn’t remember how he got into this.
Napoleon didn’t much care what they thought. Whether he could play baseball or not. He was above that.
I wasn’t.
“I pick Napoleon,” I said.
Butch paused, grinned. “I’ll take Jum.”
“Manny.”
“Glen.”
“Quin.”
“Arthur.”
“My ball. We’re up first.”
The music was so loud in my head now, I could barely hear my teammates speaking to me.
“You’ll do fine,” I said to Napoleon. “You’re a natural, remember? And you’ve been learning from the best.”
I didn’t notice, and didn’t honestly care very much, what my other teammates had on their minds. The sun was out, I had the fever, I wanted to hit. I wanted us both to hit. Gold Dust moment.
And hit I did. Butchie was leering at me as I leaned in; he leaned back and let it fly. I don’t think anyone was even surprised when I sent the thing back so swiftly and so hard that it caromed back off the highest bit of the school’s four-floor face and came right back over Butchie’s head and landed near home plate. I was already making my unnecessary trip around the bases—slap the fence pole for first, step on the joint between the two big pavement cracks for second, the rusty sewer grate for third—waving to the crowd and working on my spring tan. Good. Life. Good.
I did my bit. Normally after my bit I relax, calm down, lose interest. But my stomach now remained fluttery, my reflexes keen. There was more. I was waiting for it. Everybody was waiting for it.
Manny followed, getting cute by letting one slightly less than perfect pitch after another go past. He was antagonizing Butch, which was not only his right and normally satisfying, it was effective because Butch is easy to disturb. But I had no patience for it. This was not about Manny, and everyone was aware of that. “Hit,” I screamed at him. The next pitch he delivered with a nice liner double, which was his usual. Quin followed by striking out on three pitches, which was his usual.
By the time Napoleon stepped up, with Manny on second, me catching, and Quin in a tag game somewhere, I could see Sister Jacqueline coming out with the gong again. Rats. That meant that Butchie’s team wouldn’t get to hit, which was cool. But it also meant I might not get to bat again, which was very much not. More importantly, Napoleon wouldn’t get to show his stuff.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I said, hurrying everyone.
Napoleon was holding his bat very low, so that he’d almost have to lift it up off the ground to hit the ball. I told him to pick it up, but then it was back down again. Some defensive cricket thing I was still to train out of him, but this was not the time. There was no time.
Butchie leaned back twice as far as normal and let it go.
Napoleon had been so crouched up on the plate, and so kind of sheepish about the whole thing, he almost didn’t manage to fall out of the way in time.
The ball, buzzing at a serious speed, headed in on Napoleon, in farther, screwballing toward his head until it went even farther in, and behind him. Napoleon had to drop himself—and the bat in the bargain—to the ground in a jumble. The bat bounced, clattering tip to tip to tip, making a hollowed wood racket that echoed around the yard.
Napoleon got up slowly. He refused to give Butch the satisfaction of a look.
“Don’t worry,” I said when he looked to me. “That’s just a brushback. It’s his strategy. Look for the good one. He’ll straighten it out.”
Butchie smiled at the suggestion he might throw something hittable. He leaned back again. I took my eye off him for half a second when the sun flashed off the bell that Sister J. was just now raising. It was so unfair.
Plunk. The second I turned back was the very second the pimple ball, coming awfully hard, was smacking Napoleon Charlie Ellis dead in the eye. It made a loud sharp sound, like if you slapped a raw chicken hard with your bare hand.
I jumped up. The bell was ringing clang-a-lang-a-lang, and the crowd was moving away.
“Jeez, sorry, man,” Butchie said, as he strolled toward the line to go back inside.
I looked at Napoleon’s eye. He tried to open it but it wanted to close, and did. Then he tried again, kept it open long enough for me to see it, pink with bloodshot, watery. And angry.
“He did that on purpose,” Napoleon said.
I didn’t answer. With most people I wouldn’t need to.
“He hit me on purpose, Richard,” Napoleon said, louder, covering his eye with his hand.
I found myself looking around, worried who might be listening. I couldn’t believe it but he sounded like he was whining. You don’t do that. You don’t do that.
“No, he didn’t hit you on purpose. He threw at you on purpose though. That’s his job. Your job, Napoleon, is to get out of the way, and then be ready when a good pitch comes along. Then you show him who’s boss. But you didn’t do that.”
It had to be clear. From the sound of my voice, it had to be clear. From Napoleon’s reaction, I gathered that it was.
He forced the eye to stay open as he glared at me. The bell clanged again for us. “So it was my fault, is that what you are saying?”
“Oh, come on. Really, Napoleon, he’s brushed me back a hundred times before.”
“I am not you, am I?” he said, and as he said it he poked me hard in the chest with his finger, as if he was angry with me.
We walked to catch up with the rest of the line as they were filing in.
“Who cares who you are, all right? Pitchers throw at hitters. They don’t just throw at you. Maybe if you’d stop worrying about who’s doing what to you then maybe you’d be able to concentrate on playing, and not embarrass us both.”
That was not how I meant to put it. I do better when I don’t have a speaking part.
“I see,” Napoleon said. He shook his head, then quick-stepped to leave me behind.
“I only meant it’s just a regular part of the game,” I called. He didn’t answer.
I looked up at the blue blue sky. It had been such a perfect day before.
THERE BUT NOT THERE
OVER THE NEXT FEW days, winter returned, school fell into an even deeper than usual winter funk, and nobody seemed to really be talking to each other more than they needed to. It may have been just my impression, my feeling that because I wasn’t right nobody was, but I don’t think so. Because it is clear enough that when you get hit with a weirdly glorious early spring day everybody is talking more and running more and just stupidly happy more than they are normally stupidly happy. So why shouldn’t it be that when that spring gift gets snatched away again, that good feeling goes right on out with it.
Anyway, I felt it. Maybe it was more, though. I suppose it could have been more.
Napoleon and I were okay, but not all the way. We saw each other a little less, which was fine since everybody needs to do that, to get out of each other’s way some of the time. And he saw more of Beverly. Which was fine. It was fine.
Friday morning was the next time anybody tried to get a schoolyard game of stickball going. That somebody wasn’t me, though. I squatted there on the sidelines, on my haunches, against the saggy ten-foot-high chain-link fence that separated St. Colmcille’s from the mainstream of Boston. Sort of like the Vatican was separated from Rome, Sister Jacqueline once told us, there but not there at the same time. The cold had refrozen a lot of the drippy runoff of the snow, but conditions were not all that bad for a game, considering.
Still I squatted, thinking about getting in, thinking about not. Until Napoleon came along. He never rushed himself through lunch, regardless of the weather or the outside activities. Lunch is finished when it is finished, he’d say.
He came right over and squatted next to me, watching along with me as the other guys carried on without us. A ballgame with both of the Gold Dust Twins sitting out. Didn’t make sense to me, but didn’t seem to trouble anybody else much.
“I don’t think we ever finished that discussion,” Napoleon said out of practically nowhere.
“What discussion?”
“From the last time we were out here playing ball.”
“Oh,” I said, recalling what I had been trying hard not to recall. “I know. I don’t want to talk about it, if it’s all the same to you. I don’t like talking about that stuff. I never have.”
“So you admit, anyway, that there is a problem there.”
“You think I could miss it? I just... would rather leave it alone, okay?”
Napoleon got very quickly and very seriously angry with me then. It took me by surprise.
“No. Richard. No, I don’t believe it is all right to ignore it and pretend if we leave it alone it will go away. It won’t, you know. It will only get worse, and you will have yourself very much to blame.”
I felt like one of those prisoners in an old detective movie, being grilled and grilled in a dark dirty sweaty room until he snaps.
“Fine,” I snapped. “I can’t stand to be struck out. By anybody. Not even you. I hate it, and you struck me out about a million times, in front of a million spectators. But I’ll get over it.”
He was struck dumb. He slowly straightened up, stretched, and stood over me. “You know I’m not talking about that, don’t you? You know I’m talking about what happened later.”
I took a long breath. “Well, I don’t know that, exactly... but I suppose I knew it was a possibility.”
“Why do you have to do that?” he asked, taking his seat beside me again. At least we had made that much progress. “Richard, what good does it do you to avoid the bad things?”
“What good does it do you to go looking for them all the time?”
We sat, shut up, watched the game going on without us. We weren’t done, though.
“So you believe that is all it was, just a regular part of the game.”
“I believe that is what it is, a regular part of the game.”
“Tell me then. When you do it, and someone gets hit, do you enjoy that part of it?”
“’Course not.”
“Now. Did Butch enjoy hitting me?”
Why? Why did he have to do this?
“Napoleon,” I said, shaking my head at the ground. I heard a lot of whooping and taunting that meant somebody had just knocked the ball out of sight. I wasn’t interested. Shame, that.
“Napoleon, why do you want to go thinking about what’s in somebody else’s head? I think that’s dangerous, you know, and it doesn’t really get you anyplace. Not anyplace good, that’s for sure.”
He sighed, stood up again. I was hoping he wasn’t going to put on the pressure for me to answer that question. I really didn’t want to think about that question.
“You’re right,” he said, “we don’t need to answer that question.” And he walked away.
I don’t think we were actually saying the same thing.
Friday evening, though, it was me and Napoleon, as planned, busing it out to the Westbrook Theater. We had this scheduled for over a week, as soon as I saw the Westbrook was bringing in Bang the Drum Slowly. It was an old-style big theater, with velvet seats and roof leaks so a lot of the time big sections of seats were roped off due to inclement weather. Most people were heading a couple miles up the parkway to the Showcase since they had four films going at once, and always had the newest releases, but I always preferred the Westbrook even if they brought in movies like Bang the Drum Slowly only after they had been around the block—okay, the world—a couple dozen times already. The concession stand was not exactly separated from the auditorium so much as it was just around a bend from it. That was good, because you could smell the popcorn very well and could still listen to the dialogue when you went to get some.
And Bang the Drum Slowly, with Robert DeNiro, playing in the Westbrook and no place else, was a baseball movie. That was all I needed to know about it.
“That is a very funny theater,” Napoleon said as we exited the wide, well-lit lobby.
“Ya,” I said, offering him a sip of my Coke, “I knew you would love it.”
He took the Coke. Sipped silently, even though it was very near the bottom of the cup and the ice should have been making a big noise. “I did not say I loved it.”
I took the Coke back. “Ya, but I can tell. Want some Junior Mints?”
He took some Junior Mints. Offered me some Good & Plenty. I took one, to be sociable, but Good & Plenty are awful, and I thought everybody knew that. In fact I believed that the boxes in the display case were dummies, empty cartons left there for the old-timey look.
“How can you tell, Richard? What I love and what I do not love?”
As agreed, we were walking along the small piece of sidewalk that connected all the mini-mall stores, past Bea’s Dress Shop and Hallmark Cards, over to Friendly’s for an ice cream.
“I don’t know, I just can, that’s all. Some stuff I just figure a guy’s gotta love. Just makes sense.”
“Mmm,” he said. He pushed the door to Friendly’s open, and let me in first. “So, did I love the film?”
“Oh ya,” I said. “Of course.” I pointed toward the back, to a booth, and he shook his head. We sat at counter stools.
“Well, I did not,” he said. “It was all right, but I thought it was a bit boring at times.”
“Boring? Boring? Are you—” Suddenly it occurred to me that, of course he was. “Ah, you’re just trying to get me going.”
“Get you going where? I did not like the film very much.”
“What are you talking about? There was baseball all over the place.” I was raising my voice just a little bit, and waving my arms around, as if to show Napoleon Charlie Ellis the baseball all over the place.
The waitress came over. “Can you please stop shouting?” she said to Napoleon.
“Excuse me?” Napoleon snapped.
“He wasn’t shouting, it was me,” I said. “And I wasn’t shouting.”
“Yes, you were shouting,” Napoleon said, staring deep into his menu as if he was embarrassed to be seen with me. And, of course, angry. “And I naturally get the blame for it.”
“Banana Boat,” I whispered to the waitress. She nodded.
Napoleon curled his lip. “I will have a bowl of strawberry. With strawberry sauce, please.”
We sat for a couple of minutes then, as the waitress went about her work. We stared at her, then at the flavor roster high above the counter. Then we stared at her some more. Then finally stared at each other, in the yellowy mirror across from us.
“It was a great movie,” I said.
“It was not,” he said, “but there were some fine things in it.”
“Like the baseball,” I said.
I was trying Napoleon’s patience. Maybe not completely by accident. “The baseball in that film,” he said firmly, “did not look very good to me. I think you are a better baseball player than anyone we saw tonight.”
I had only been half-listening to what Napoleon was saying, because I was so stirred up at the fact that he was saying it at all. I pointed a finger at his reflection and opened my mouth to snap, when the words finally caught up with my brain.
“Oh,” I said. “Well. I guess... y’know, for such a disagreeable guy, you sure do know how to disagree in a good way.”
He laughed. Our ice creams arrived. We attempted to be quiet again for a minute while we ate. Napoleon was pretty fair at being quiet for spells. That made one of us.
“So what was good in there, do you think?�
� I asked through a mouthful of banana and marshmallow.
He held up a finger while he quickly swallowed a spoonful of strawberry. I don’t think he was expecting to have to speak again that soon. And if you get one of those big hard frozen berries in there...
“Oh... oh...” Napoleon said, raising his hands to his temples and squinting hard.
“Take a half-spoonful and hold it on the roof of your mouth for five seconds,” I said, giving him the rescue dose out of my dish.
He did, and I could see relief come to his face. Success.
“Good work,” he said. “Thank you.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t know that one, man. I’ve frozen my head a thousand times and it always works. Jeez, there is still so much you haven’t learned.”
He turned to the real me, not the mirror me. “I have a history of taking reasonable bites, and of swallowing my food completely before speaking.”
“Ah,” I said, mouth once more full, “I’ll help you get over that too.”
I guess that was funny, because Napoleon laughed. And he continued looking at me. It was a strange picture now, with me eating, Napoleon staring at the side of my head, while I looked at him looking at me in the mirror. It was a picture I had not had before, watching him watching me. I did not know Napoleon Charlie Ellis as an overly smiley guy, as an easygoing guy, or even, you could say, as a warm guy. But there he was, once removed, almost as if he couldn’t tell I was watching. And so he was different. I could see him, guard down, enjoying himself. Smiling at Richard Riley Moncreif. Being easy with him. Liking him.
I turned quickly to face the real Napoleon, not the mirror one. Just as quickly he turned back toward his dish. Easier that way. For us both.
“Friends,” he said.
I stopped eating, but looked again at him in the mirror.
“In that movie. The friends, that pitcher and catcher. They were great and unusual friends. That was something fine to watch for one and a half hours. That was indeed very fine.”
Somewhere in there, I liked this. Though it was just a movie, after all. And at the same time it made me a little bit squirmy. Though it was just a movie, after all.
