One of the other young men said, “He’s talking to you, man.”
“Look, let’s all just watch the game, okay? Nobody wants any trouble.”
“He doesn’t want any trouble,” said the one with the ponytail.
Warren put his hand on Andre’s shoulder. “It’s all right, son. They’re just having a little fun.”
The young men had turned back to the field and seemed momentarily to have forgotten them. On the field, a new pitcher was warming up. Andre tried to concentrate on the swift brief flight of the ball. But then the man with the ponytail turned and said, “Are you all religious?”
“Come on, Greg,” one of the others said. “Let’s watch the freaking game.”
“I don’t think somebody in a ballpark should be setting limits on other people. What am I, in church?” Greg looked at Andre’s father and smirked. “So you’re religious.”
“Why don’t you sit down,” said Warren. “And watch the game.”
“Hey, you know, maybe I’ll stand here. You want to make me sit down?”
Andre’s father tried to ignore him.
Greg took his seat but kept facing back. “Maybe I’ll just watch you, pal. How would that be?”
There was another big swell of noise and celebration: someone had hit a home run. Now everyone was celebrating, except the three: Andre, his father, and Greg. One of the other young men, who wore an Orioles baseball cap, took it off and waved it, shouting. Andre saw that he was shaved to the skin from his neck to the level of the top of his ears, and that his hair, which looked placed on top of his head, was purple. Bright, cartoonish strands of straight, synthetic-looking purple. He put the cap back on and turned to the one with the ponytail. “A grand slam, Greg. And you missed it.”
Greg tottered, and looked back at the field, then seemed to decide something. He stood and came over the seat and was now in the row with the boy and his father. He was perhaps a head taller than Warren. “You know what you did, man? You made me miss a grand slam. How many grand slams does a person get to see in life?” He looked at Andre. “You ever see one?”
Andre didn’t answer him.
“I’m talking to you, man. What’s the matter with you guys, anyway?”
“Just please, sit back down,” said Warren. “And leave us alone. I’m asking you nicely.”
“Oh, and what happens if asking nicely doesn’t work? Are you threatening me?”
“Come on, Greg,” said the one with the purple hair. “Leave him alone.”
But Greg ignored him. He took hold of Warren’s shirt at the front. “What do you think this is, anyway, pal? You think this is the army or something, is that what you think? And you can order people around?”
“Look,” Warren said. “I just asked you please to watch your language a little.”
“No, man, you went to the usher and tried to have us removed. You didn’t want me to see a grand slam.”
There was another cheer; there had been another hit.
“Damn, you’re making me miss the whole game.”
Andre’s father said nothing.
“The son of a bitch is making me miss the whole game.”
“No, you’re missing the game because you can’t be civilized and let someone else alone,” said Warren. His voice sounded weak, as if it might crack. Andre looked off at the perfect green expanse of the outfield, all the colors and the moving shapes in the sunlight and shade of the distant stands. He felt a pressure on his chest, and tried to take in air. But he couldn’t find speech. He moved in the direction of Greg, head down, and something stopped him. One of the other men had reached over and taken hold of his arm. “Let’s everybody calm down, now.”
“Say you’re sorry, man,” Greg was saying to Warren.
“Greg,” said one of the others. “The guy’s with his son, for Christ’s sake. Give him a break.”
“All he has to do is apologize.”
“Shit,” said the one with the purple hair.
“That’s just what I mean,” Warren said, his voice shaking as he himself was shaken by the one grasping his shirt. “That kind of thing. Won’t anyone else say something about this?”
His appeal to the others in the crowd brought a reaction. Several voices called for them all to sit down, and now another man, more Greg’s size, edged into the row and started toward him. “Sit down,” he said. Then, to Andre’s father: “Both of you.”
“Hey,” said Greg. “Eat me, okay?” But he was turning to step back over to his own chair back, and he sat down. The other man stood for a moment, hands on his hips. Another cheer rose from the crowd, and then they were all watching the game again. Greg yelled more loudly than anyone. The Orioles had scored another run. He screeched and clapped and whistled and looked back at the man standing there, and at Warren and his son, who were also standing now. “Yes!” he yelled. “We’re gonna catch the bastards, you watch!”
“Yeah!” Andre’s father shouted, raising a fist in the air.
There was that sense of false fellow feeling that often follows upon an argument when the argument comes from too much drinking, or from too many substances that alter emotion; the fake good cheer of making up for pathological scenes. The exaggeration of bad dreams, and Andre recognized it quite well, watching Greg offer his hand, and watching his father shake it. They were all friends now. They watched as the Orioles scored two more runs. The game went on in an excess of scoring, through half a dozen pitchers on each side. The Tigers won it twelve to eleven. Greg and the one with purple hair offered to shake again when it was over.
“We’ll get ‘em next time,” Warren said.
“Right,” said Greg. “Sure. Next time.” He leaned over and said something to the purple-haired one, and they both laughed.
“Bye, pal,” Greg said. And they moved off.
In the car on the way home, neither of them spoke for a time. Warren drove. Andre watched him turn the dial of the radio, and then they were simply waiting in the traffic. All along the street on both sides people were strolling along, carrying the same pennants, wearing the caps, and it was a loss and no one seemed much bothered by it.
“Guess it wasn’t much of a game,” Warren said, at last. And his voice broke. Andre kept his gaze on the street outside his window, thinking about everything they had been through in the past year. It wasn’t fair. It filled him with hatred for the world. He looked out at the sunny street with its throngs of people, and felt his own eyes burning.
“Hey,” his father said. “I’m talking to you.”
“It was okay,” the boy got out.
“It was terrible.”
“I liked it, though.”
“You’re glad we went.” There was a sardonic something in his father’s voice, and Andre had grown so used to gauging the notes in everything his parents said.
He nodded, gazing out. Some small kid in a floppy clown baseball cap let go a clutch of balloons that trailed in the light breeze skyward.
“I’m talking to you,” his father said. “For God’s sake.”
“I nodded, Dad. I’m sorry. Yes, I’m glad we went. You let me drive the car.”
Warren glanced over his shoulder at the traffic and then veered suddenly to the side of the road and stopped. He got out of the car, walked around it, opened the passenger door, and stood there. Andre thought he saw tears in his eyes. “Well?”
“I’m fine, Dad. I don’t have to drive.”
“You should drive. You need the experience. Get over. Come on, do as I say.”
The boy eased across the seat and took hold of the steering wheel. His father got in and slammed the door, then sat with his arms folded. “I’ve put my life in your hands,” he said.
“It’s safe,” Andre managed.
He turned the ignition, and looked out at the stream of traffic coming along the road. Someone slowed down, signaling for him to go ahead and pull out. He did so, with a feeling of having to be too careful, having too much to think about. His father sat quietly in the pass
enger seat, and again they were waiting in the traffic.
“Listen,” Warren said. “We don’t have to mention anything about the game to your Mother.”
“No.”
“It’s silly. But she was hoping we’d have a perfect day.”
“It was fine, Dad.”
“It wasn’t fine and she’s the one you have to protect, okay? You can stop worrying about protecting me because I can take care of myself. I’ve taken care of this family and I don’t need anybody’s help. I can take care of myself just fine. The game was not fun. It was an awful, stupid, miserable, long afternoon, and I’m sorry for it. Tell her it was fun. Okay? Tell her it was the best afternoon of our lives.”
The boy nodded, through this speech, and when it was over he was careful not to look in his father’s direction. He was a beginning driver. It was necessary to concentrate on the road ahead; to watch the car ahead of you. You were in motion. Things could happen so fast, and if you took your eyes away even for a second, you might not be able to react in time if something went wrong.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Most of these stories, some in varying degrees of difference in form or shape, have appeared in the following magazines and anthologies:
The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, Playboy, Gentleman’s Quarterly, The Southern Review, Redbook, Doubletake, Wig Wag, Five Points, Glimmer Train Stories, Best American Short Stories, Best of the West, New Stories from the South, 0. Henry Prize Stories, The Granta Book of the American Short Story, The Vintage Book of the American Short Story, and God: Stories.
* * *
About the Author
* * *
RICHARD BAUSCH served in the Air Force (with his twin brother, novelist Robert Bausch) from 1965 to 1969. He and his wife, Karen, were married in 1969 and have lived in Virginia since 1971; they have five children. After stints as a singer-songwriter and a stand-up comic, Bausch attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1974–1975 with Allan Gurganus and Jane Smiley. He has taught creative writing at the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia, Breadloaf, the University of the South, and elsewhere, and he holds the Heritage Chair from the Writing Program at George Mason University. Bausch is the author of Hello to the Cannibals, The Last Good Time, Mr. Field’s Daughter, In the Night Season, Wives & Lovers, and many other books. His stories have appeared in numerous prize-winning anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, O’Henry, and Pushcart, and have won two National Magazine Awards—one for The New Yorker and one for The Atlantic Monthly. He is the coeditor of the prestigious Norton Anthology of Short Fiction and the recipient of numerous prizes, including the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Story Excellence, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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WINNER OF THE 2004 PEN/MALAMUD AWARD FOR SHORT STORY EXCELLENCE
The Stories of Richard Bausch
“Effortlessly engaging…. So alive are these characters … that closing the book feels like pushing the door shut on some clamorous party.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Beautiful…. A delight to read…. A rich portrait of a productive career…. Bausch [has] a great talent—in the very small space of a short story he can illuminate lifetimes with astonishing clarity and poignancy.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Bausch writes about things that matter.”
—Raleigh News & Observer
“Grade: ‘A’…. Read just a few of these staggeringly literate and well-observed short fictions and you’ll soon realize that it’s not only God who dwells in the details.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“The book for which Bausch will be remembered…. A fine, fat collection of forty-two tales … distinguished by characters whose complexity is simply and economically suggested.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Richard Bausch is a master of the short-story form, capturing everyday lives … with a flair and eye that make the mundane exciting and suspenseful.”
—Chicago Tribune
“A memorable collection.”
—Boston Herald
“A master storyteller at his finest.”
—Charlotte Observer
“This collection of tales establishes Bausch as a magical storyteller. He turns ordinary, recognizable characters in tense, trying situations into amusing, compelling stories that are sad and funny simultaneously.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“A literary treasure.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
“Precision of thought, the philosophical framework of a true aesthetic, pervades these stories.”
—Village Voice
“Bausch draws the reader into lives that seem real. His characters look and sound like our coworkers, friends, neighbors—like ourselves.”
—Seattle Times
BOOKS BY RICHARD BAUSCH
Real Presence, 1980
Take Me Back, 1981
The Last Good Time, 1984
Spirits, and Other Stories, 1987
Mr. Field’s Daughter, 1989
The Fireman’s Wife, and Other Stories, 1990
Violence, 1992
Rebel Powers, 1993
Rare & Endangered Species: Stories and a Novella, 1994
Selected Stories of Richard Bausch (The Modern Library), 1996
Good Evening Mr. & Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea, 1996
In the Night Season, 1998
Someone to Watch Over Me: Stories, 1999
Hello to the Cannibals, 2002
Wives & Lovers: Three Short Novels, 2004
Copyright
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2003 by HarperCollins Publishers.
THE STORIES OF RICHARD BAUSCH. Copyright © 2003 by Richard Bausch.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-03638-4
FIRST PERENNIAL EDITION PUBLISHED 2004.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Bausch, Richard.
[Short stories. Selections]
The stories of Richard Bausch / Richard Bausch.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-06-019649-1
1. United Slates—Social life and customs—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.A846A6 2003
813’.54-dc21 2003042318
ISBN 0-06-095622-4 (pbk.)
06 07 08 /RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
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