Gods of Wood and Stone

by Mark Di Ionno

  “Watch him,” Horace told her. “Watch how he becomes mesmerized. Look at how he gets conditioned to play until he loses. Sound familiar?”

  “What? What are you talking about?” Sally said.

  “Gambling! Play until you lose. I’ll bet you anything casino corporations are behind these games. Bally’s started out making pinball machines, did you know that? Same stuff, just shrunk down. Now the government’s in on it. Casinos, lottery. The perfect marriage of diversion and statehouse greed.”

  Sally dared not say it, but she thought a trip to one of the Indian resorts might be fun. Just to do something different. To see the gaudy lights and people. Maybe a show, just for a change. Sally dared not say it, but she thought Horace was turning into a paranoid nut, a crazy conspiracy theorist, headed toward becoming an even crazier survivalist.

  * * *

  MICHAEL, TOO, GOD BLESS HIM, learned to let it roll. He would let his face relax into this impassive mask when Horace started. It was a great weapon, one of stoic control that translated into power. A facial version of the silent treatment. Horace, exasperated, called him “brain-dead” a few times.

  But when he played, well, that’s when all the anger seemed to come out. When other kids hit, their aluminum bats made a sharp ping! When Michael hit, it was a deeper sound, very much like Horace burying the ax head into a piece of seasoned wood. Michael ran hard, slid every chance he could. His throws from the outfield were uncoiled with his whole body, a transfer of his weight that would leave him stumbling forward as the ball sailed as if shot by something mechanical.

  She was proud of him, yes, but a little unnerved by the intensity with which he played, and how much he wanted, make that needed, to win.

  In Legion ball, he broke a boy’s leg sliding into second. The boy stayed down, crying in pain, afraid to move. The field was cleared as the ambulance came and carted him off. Sally watched Michael in the dugout during the long delay, spitting sunflower seeds and joking with his teammates. She was embarrassed by how insensitive and unconcerned he acted. Afterward, as they walked through the parking lot with her carrying his bat bag, she asked him if he felt bad. She was a few feet behind her son, now a head taller. He didn’t look at her when he said, “Part of the game.”

  He’d been such a sweet little boy, and she knew he was spoiled. And she knew she’d done it. But she had to overcompensate for Horace. She remembered how that started, too. The exact moment. Michael was in first grade and he was with her in the grocery store. A liquid baby bath soap with a rubber-headed Winnie-the-Pooh caught his eye and he reached for it. His simple infatuation with the toy was touching and it warmed her heart. But the money . . .

  “Can I get this?” he asked, innocent and hopeful.

  “No, babe, it’s the same stuff in this bottle,” Sally said, holding up the generic brand, “but this is two dollars cheaper. You think that plastic Winnie-the-Pooh head is worth two dollars?”

  Michael put it back.

  “You sound like Daddy,” he said.

  Sally bought it for him.

  Those four words—you sound like Daddy—slapped her. She didn’t want to sound like Daddy. She didn’t want to be like Daddy.

  * * *

  SALLY LOOKED AROUND THE KITCHEN. No dishwasher. A two-slice toaster. No microwave. Her teakettle and the pan Horace used to boil water for his coffee. Her feet felt the cold through the worn linoleum floor. These were just the material things. The other things, the respect mostly, the need for a little kindness, maybe some adoration once in a while . . . well, like the old days. Maybe she would find it all on her own, a new adventure, free of Horace beating her down. She was far from spoiled; she resented Horace for making her feel that way. That’s how he would spin this. She quit on me. She quit. On me. Twenty years, and she just quit.

  She moved through the house, her tea now tepid, the cold from the wood planks now chilling her throughout. She turned on the shower and the mineral-crusted fixtures whined in protest; somewhere behind the Sheetrock, the pipes vibrated. She waited for the water to turn hot, but knew the best she would get was lukewarm. She stood under the water and cried.

  When she was done, she stood in front of her mirror, on this bleak March morning in her ratty robe, steadying herself for the daily transformation from mountain hausfrau to service economy professional woman. Her black flare-legged suit and taupe turtleneck were laid out on the bed over her mother’s “Odd Feller” quilt, and her modest gold necklace and bracelet were in their place in a baked clay log cabin jewelry box Michael made her in school. Many days, dressing to leave the house, dressing to join the real world, not this life Horace had sentenced them to, made her feel, well, alive. But on days like this, when she felt so tired of everything, she found less joy in it. Spring seemed so far away.

  She took off her robe and was naked in the cold room. She looked at herself in the dim mirror over the unrestored antique vanity. Not bad. Good hips and waistline, everything else still north of middle age. She moved in closer to examine herself and saw the timeline in her face. The age wrinkles were coming, the grays were creeping in. Time was moving. And she was stuck, unhappy. She shivered. Nothing was ever going to change—except she would get more lined and more gray and more unhappy—until she changed it.

  She looked out the bedroom window at the barren trees on the property. Barren trees, barren woman, she thought. She felt as cold and empty as the yard.

  All she wanted—all she ever wanted—was a normal life. Now all she wanted was out. She wanted a divorce, she now knew, but felt strangely detached from the decision, like she was somewhere else, floating. She tried to bring herself to feel something. Something besides tired.

  Chapter Eight

  After the Hall vote, Sal booked Grudeck everywhere. Two days of press conferences; first at the commissioner’s office on Park Avenue, with print reporters at Fenway hooked in, then live studio interviews with all the national morning shows in New York, then up to New England. SportsCenter, SportsCenter Classic, the Yankee TV network, Madison Square Garden TV, New England sports TV and radio, WFAN and ESPN radio, for call-in shows where hosts and fans ranted about sports, 24/7.

  Same stuff, same questions, different day, different host names, in New York, Bristol, and Boston. Same glare, same Grudeck, self-conscious about the makeup some sweet thing just put on his face. Sign a few autographs for cameramen, producers, and tech guys on the way in.

  “My kid’s a big fan,” they would say.

  Grudeck bounced from set to set, each time in fresh clown pancake, talking about his career and lunch-pail image.

  “Does anybody in America carry lunch pails anymore?” he wanted to ask. My old man did, he wanted to tell them: punched out fabricated metal on a night shift. Lunch-pail kid? No, more like brown bag, peanut butter and jelly, and the park water fountain. He learned sports on town fields, with his friends. Not like today with sports camps, travel teams, private coaching, strength and conditioning warehouses, parochial school recruiting. Kids coming up today were the best athletes their parents’ money could buy. He didn’t say all that, though. He had an image: Joe Good Guy. In his heart, though, he was Joe Punk Out. Once in a while, he wished he just told the truth.

  While Grudeck talked, the TV stations ran the usual clips; Series home run, fight with Ruiz, still photo of McCombs starched at the plate. Same old, same old. Grudeck, gunning someone out. Grudeck, hand over heart, helmet and mask in hand, during the National Anthem. On radio, they talked about those images, those Joe Grrreww moments. No one asked the big questions, though.

  Is it still fun?

  Why did it all change?

  No one ever asked, “What do you really think?”

  Maybe no one wanted to know.

  What did he really think about the media, these guys up your ass every minute of every day, more interested in your life than you yourself?

  Or what did he really think about fans, clingers-on desperate to belong to your universe. They buy a ticket
, turn on the TV, wear a hat, T-shirt, jacket, and they belong. “Red Sox Nation.” Live for the team, die with the team. Scream into cameras in the ballpark or bars. From the players’ point of view, it was all kinds of stupid. But it paid their enormous salaries. Suckers born every minute. And that was the players’ dirty little secret: fuck the fans. They pay, we play. They watch, we play. And for all that phony emotion, especially the despair and anger, their asses were never on the line. All that hero worship. It’s what led those two teenaged girls to his motel room in Syracuse that night. Because he was a ballplayer, just a minor leaguer then, at that.

  He came off the field and out the gate of MacArthur Stadium in Syracuse, covered in base-path dust, hair matted with sweat, game jersey stripped off to let his drenched baseball undershirt cool. The night before, Grudeck became only the second player to drive a ball over the 434-foot ballpark’s deep center-field fence and he did it twice, so a thicker crowd than usual came out to see the big kid catcher from Pawtucket. He didn’t disappoint; in his first at-bat he rocketed one out and the crowd jumped to their feet and stayed there as Grudeck circled the bases.

  As he stepped from the brilliant white field lights into the dimmer, fluorescent shadows of the parking lot, a crowd waited for him. He dropped his bag and started to sign autographs. A fire in the Chiefs’ old ballpark the season before had left the locker rooms still blackened and without water, so visiting teams had to shower in their motel across the street. His teammates trudged off to their rooms, cleats scraping pavement, leaving Grudeck with a fan gaggle of mostly kids with parents and a few geezers.

  “I seen Richie Zisk do it before you, he was the only one,” an old-timer told him. “Then I seen you do it three times in two games!”

  Grudeck noticed the two girls, at the back of the cluster, making no effort to move forward. The dark-haired girl lit a cigarette and gave the blonde a puff. When she took it back, she blew smoke rings in Grudeck’s direction. They stood there, just out of the swath of light until the last fan was gone, and Grudeck moved toward them, into the shadows.

  “So, what’s going on?” he said.

  The dark-haired girl flicked her thumb at her friend and said, “She wanted to get an autograph for her little brother but was too shy to ask.”

  “You have something to sign?”

  “Uh, no . . . my shirt! You could sign my shirt.”

  “Front or back?” Grudeck asked.

  “Have him sign the front, Rache,” the dark-haired girl said.

  “No, no, no,” Grudeck said. “Turn around and I’ll sign the back.”

  The blonde pirouetted and gathered up her hair off her neck and Grudeck took a Sharpie to the material, feeling the point jump over her thin bra straps.

  “Okay, then,” Grudeck said, and picked up his bag, but lingered enough for the dark-haired girl to ask, “Hey, would you mind buying us some beer? We have money, and a car.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen,” the girls said simultaneously, but Grudeck guessed younger.

  Grudeck didn’t tell them he was only twenty, just two years removed from high school and not legal age either. The bar next to the motel had served him and other players the night before, so he said, “Okay.”

  “What are your names?”

  “Amanda, and this is Rachel,” the dark-haired girl said.

  “Tell you what, Amanda and Rachel,” Grudeck said. “I’ll go to the bar over there, and pick up a couple of sixes and take them back to my room. Meet me there. Room Seventeen, around back.”

  The blonde, Rachel, gave her friend an I-don’t-know look.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll just hang out,” Grudeck said.

  “Yeah, Rache, we’ll just hang out,” Amanda agreed.

  * * *

  THEY WERE WAITING IN A car parked outside his room. Amanda was in the driver’s seat of a beat Datsun, smoking. Grudeck, with three sixes of cold cans in his bag, let them in and went to get ice. When he got back, they were draining their second, sitting at the table by the front window.

  “I’ve got to shower,” he said.

  “Can we watch?” Amanda said.

  “Amanda!” Rachel squealed.

  “Kidding!”

  After the shower, Grudeck stroked himself to his full length, blood-engorged and thick, not fully hard but showy. He wrapped himself in a towel and stepped back into the room.

  “Don’t look,” he said, but the towel came off before either girl could avert her eyes.

  “Whoa!” Amanda said, as Rachel blurted out a laugh.

  “I said, ‘Don’t look’ . . .” Grudeck said with fake embarrassment, and reached for a pair of sweat shorts and a clean Pawsox T-shirt. He faced them as he pulled the shorts on.

  He sat on the bed, and they made small talk. He was from Jersey. They had just graduated high school. Rachel played field hockey. Amanda sucked at softball. Rachel was headed to SUNY Binghamton. Amanda to county. Yes, he’d been to Syracuse before, a few times. Last season, too. No, he wasn’t married.

  “Do you smoke weed?” Amanda asked, fiddling in her purse.

  “No,” Grudeck said. “Bad for the wind. But you go ahead.”

  He got up and blasted the fan, and opened the bathroom window as the girls passed the joint and got more giggly. In the haze of marijuana smoke and litter of empties, Rachel moved to the bed, stretched out, and fell asleep. Grudeck, Gentlemen Joe, covered her with the flowery blue-and-gold bed cover.

  “You’re a nice guy,” Amanda decided.

  “Then do something nice for me,” Grudeck said. It was the first of many times he would say it.

  “Oh, I don’t know . . .” she said, being cute. “We don’t want to wake Rachel up.”

  But when Grudeck stood in front of her and kissed her, she came back at him, pushing as much tongue as she had into his mouth. He pulled away to take himself out of his shorts, and guided her down. She took it without hesitation, unpracticed and sloppy. Grudeck put his hands around her heavily pierced ears, and helped her back and forth. But after a few minutes, he just took over himself and finished.

  “I think we should go,” she said, as he went to wash up.

  “No, just stay. Don’t wake her up. Lie down, too. You shouldn’t drive like this.”

  Amanda got into the bed next to Rachel, with Grudeck next to her. She turned away from him, toward her friend, but he pulled her close and felt her relax in his arms. They dozed off that way.

  * * *

  GRUDECK SAW THE LINES OF daylight around the room-darkening shades when he woke with a full morning hard-on. The girl in his arms was fully clothed, but he reached around and undid her jeans. She was still passed out, drunk and stoned, and didn’t wake until he had eased her pants and underwear down below her hips.

  “Hey!” she said. “Wait.”

  But he put his hand over her mouth and whispered in her ear, “Shh. We don’t want to wake . . .”

  “Rachel,” she reminded him.

  She didn’t struggle but didn’t help, either, as he pulled her pants off. He grabbed her by the hip and flipped her on her back, and looming above her, opened her legs. He looked to her eyes, but they were closed.

  “This okay?” he asked but pushed into her before she could answer. He went in hard, and easily gathered her up in one arm. She felt light and lifeless as he pulled her upper body into him while thrusting below. She let out little noises, even as she stiffened in his arms. He grabbed her tighter, saying, “Shhh, baby, shush, babe. It’s okay,” and suddenly Rachel, startled, faced them.

  “Mandy! What are you doing?”

  Grudeck stopped. Now what?

  “It’s okay,” Amanda said, as she tried to squirm out from under him. Grudeck held tight, and started up again.

  “This is what you came for isn’t it?” he said to Rachel. “Isn’t it?”

  The harshness in his voice scared her, and all she could manage was to shake her head no. As Rachel tried to get out from under the cove
rs, Grudeck reached out and grabbed the back of her neck with his right hand to keep her there.

  “Isn’t this what you came for?” he said again. “To have a little fun with a ballplayer? So let’s have some fun.”

  “You’re an asshole,” Amanda said. “Get off of me.”

  But Grudeck pulled Rachel’s head down, next to Amanda’s on the pillow, and with his left arm he hooked both girls by the neck, pressing their faces together. With his right hand, he groped them both, first over their clothes, then underneath.

  When he roughly unsnapped and unzipped Rachel’s jeans he asked again, “This is what you wanted, right?”

  When he was done, Rachel was whimpering, and Amanda said, “It’s okay, Rache, we were drunk.”

  “She’s right, Rache,” Grudeck said. “It’s okay. You were drunk.”

  He lay on his back and watched them pull themselves together and walk out into the morning light. After they left, he took a hot shower, scrubbing himself with the rough, cheap motel washcloth.

  Chapter Nine

  “It’s good you’re doing these talk shows,” Sal said as he drove from a midtown parking garage after a segment on Good Day New York. “It’ll help you with your speech.”

  The speech. It was never far from Grudeck’s mind. It started with a congratulatory call from a guy named Strothford, who described himself as “the old caretaker of Cooperstown” and talked about the Hall and its mission.

  “Preserving History, Honoring Excellence, Connecting Generations,” Strothford said. “Not only will your plaque be immemorial, but we archive your speech. Perhaps your words will color your life for those to come.”

  He thought of his mother’s question—What are you going to do now?

  Question, or challenge? Yeah, he could go another thirty, what, forty years being Joe Grudeck, but each passing year, being Joe Grudeck would mean less and less. A fading light of a diminishing star. And then, just like that, he would go black—blink!—then into infinite, eternal nothingness.