Gods of Wood and Stone

by Mark Di Ionno

  Horace, though, soldiered on.

  In the blacksmith shop he wanted to make a horseshoe right before their eyes, and let the boys take turns working the bellows, which they did with excited energy. Sally, from the back, pointed to her watch. Horace pulled a piece of grooved shoe iron from the stacks and held it over the glowing coals with a pair of long-handled tongs. When it was red hot, he moved it to the anvil with the tongs, and positioned it over the chipping block. He grabbed the hot set, a hatchet designed to cut the soft metal, and dug the sharp edge into the shoe-iron bar. Then he took a short-handled three-pound sledge, and with one heavy, measured shot, cut the shoe-iron bar in two. Some of the boys were impressed with the guillotine swiftness of the job and the video-game pyrotechnics of flying orange embers as they sailed like shooting stars against the darkness of the shop.

  “Cool,” he heard a couple mutter.

  “That’s how it’s done,” Horace said.

  He took the shoe-length piece back to the hearth, where Michael, now on the bellows, had the coals spitting sparks and fire. With the tongs, Horace got the shoe iron glowing again, and quickly took it back to the anvil. Working with the cross peen hammer, he banged the metal into a curved shape around the anvil horn. It was shoe-shaped, and he should have quit there.

  But instead he laid it down and flattened it out with a wide-base hammer called the flatter, blasted out six nail holes with the sharp drift and nail punches, made the blunt caulks at each end of the shoe and the cat’s ear at the middle of the curve, oblivious to the boys’ growing boredom. He explained that these last elements are what make the shoe fit, much like the shaped backs and toes of their own shoes. He thrust the shoe into a pail of water to cool it down, and handed the finished product to Michael.

  “Here you go, birthday boy,” he said, but saw tears of anger in Michael’s eyes. The “quick visit” had dragged on and on. His dad’s showing off by making the shoe took another painful half hour—adding to the time they wouldn’t get to spend at the Hall of Fame.

  “What’s the matter?” Horace asked Michael.

  “Nothing. I just got some smoke in my eyes,” Michael said as he wiped his eyes, now further humiliated that Horace had brought his tears to the attention of his friends. In that moment, even Horace knew he’d lost his son.

  That night after Michael was put to bed, Sally started with him.

  “Really, how could you?”

  “How could I what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know . . . ,” she said facetiously. “Where should I start? How could you be so goddamned selfish? So goddamned insensitive? So thick-headed? How could you ruin your son’s birthday?”

  “He had a good time, I thought,” Horace said.

  “You think? You know what he told me at the Hall of Fame . . . in the half hour they had there? He said, ‘Mom, I hate Dad. Dad’s a jerk!’ ”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I decided it was best to not say anything. And I didn’t say anything when he threw the horseshoe you made him in the kitchen trash.”

  Later that night, while Sally slept, Horace retrieved it and put it in a drawer beneath his blackened, coal-stained shirts, to give it to Michael at some far-off future point, when the boy grew to understand.

  And now, as the summer before Michael started high school approached, there was desperation to Horace’s plot. He wanted to make things right, the old-fashioned way, with Michael working by his side. For just a few hours a day, for just a few weeks, he wanted Michael to himself.

  But here was Sally, already poisoning, already so sure Michael would hate the idea. Horace understood why a mother would cling to her only child, especially a son, as he rounded into his teenaged years. But preparing him for manhood, that was a father’s job, and goddamnit, Horace was going to assert his right.

  “Give it a chance, Sally,” Horace said. “He’s fourteen, old enough to have a summer job. You were working then, so was I. He’s going to have to learn to work someday, might as well be now.”

  * * *

  A FEW WEEKS LATER, Grundling stopped by the smithy. Horace was out back, sweeping up around the coal tunnel. Through a window he watched Grundling, who thought he was hidden in darkness, try to budge the 250-pound anvil. As Horace watched, he realized he had never seen Grundling in the shop before, nor had he seen him ever do anything physical. At least old Vanderoot would come down now and then and tinker with things, especially when he got close to retiring. Grundling gave up, then realized his hands were smudged, and he looked around for a place to wipe them. He began to move uneasily, as if he didn’t want his clean, pressed khakis to brush up against the workbenches, grimy with coal soot and iron dust.

  Horace came in and tossed him a rag, a silent admission he’d been watching, and Grundling’s face got red.

  “Horace! Good news!” he said, recovering. “The board said we could hire your son.”

  “That is good, John. Great, really. Thank you.”

  “You just have to sign a few insurance waivers, and we’re all set.”

  “Waivers?” Horace asked.

  “Yes . . . nothing too nefarious. If he gets hurt here, he will be covered by our insurance. The board just wants a waiver acknowledging your son is underage, and promising not to sue the museum or the foundation for negligence because we hired him knowing he was underage.”

  Horace took the papers.

  “In my day,” he said, gesturing around the shop, “my word would have been good enough.”

  “Yes, Horace, but when you walk out of this shop and into the twenty-first century, there’s a million lawyers out there looking to sue a fat foundation like the Clark. You understand.”

  “Of course,” said Horace. “Unfortunately, I do.”

  He signed the papers and said again, “Thanks, John, I appreciate you doing this.”

  “Don’t mention it, Horace, it will be good to have your son . . .”

  “Michael.”

  “. . . Michael, right, aboard. There is, however, one little . . . stipulation.”

  “What’s that?” Horace asked.

  “Michael will be working as a general field hand and with you, in here, so in order to make room for him, I’m not going to hire the summer docent for the Cardiff Giant exhibit.”

  Back when Horace started, the Giant was in a circus tent off in a corner of the museum grounds, but had since been moved inside, near the main entrance and the hall of antique pickup trucks. Every few summers, the museum would repitch the tent near the Empire State Carousel, for a country-fair effect. This would be one of those years, Grundling said.

  “We can’t leave the tent unmanned all day,” he said.

  Horace knew what was coming.

  “I saw a paper you wrote on the Giant almost twenty years ago in our archives,” Grundling said. “ ‘American Rubism.’ Very clever. With your knowledge of local history and legend, you would be perfect to give a few presentations a day.”

  “Jesus, John, I’m a craftsman,” Horace said, not able to hide the irritation in his voice. “Can’t you get some college girl to do that?”

  “That’s just it, Horace. I can’t. I gave that position to your son. That leaves us short for the Giant.”

  “And what about my farm-and-baseball idea? I thought Michael and I could work on that. Remember, ‘can of corn,’ ‘broad side of a barn,’ and all that.”

  “Still in the works,” Grundling said. “But, either way, I need you for the Giant.”

  Prick, Horace thought. Always a catch with this guy, he thought.

  “All right. How many times a day?”

  “Three, maybe four. Say, at ten, noon, two, and four.”

  “How long a presentation?”

  “Fifteen minutes, tops, just enough to thoroughly tell the story with some good detail.”

  “Okay,” Horace said, resigned.

  “Good. It’s settled, then.”

  “Yep. I’ll tell Michael the good news,” Horace said, embarr
assed by a transparent, forced upswing in his own voice, a false note of cheeriness he used to convince Grundling—and himself—that it would all work out.

  That night, he went home and told Sally.

  She shook her head.

  “Let’s see what Michael says, Horace. I’m not sure he’s going to want this.”

  “It will be fine.”

  “You win, Horace,” Sally said, flat. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. But it might not be fine, Horace. It might not be fine.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Sylvia Grudeck tried to put off the church board when they floated the idea of Meet Joe Grudeck Night to raise money for the new gym at St. Joe’s. The plan was for a buffet and a silent auction of whatever memorabilia Grudeck would donate. And if he could stay for a couple of hours, well, that would be wonderful.

  She objected by saying he was only there until sixth grade, “and he never really played much basketball,” but some correctly recalled how he tore up the court in CYO before he discovered wrestling, and Sylvia knew. She was there.

  So she reluctantly promised to ask.

  “But don’t feel you have to, if it’s an imposition,” she told her son over the phone.

  “It’s not, Ma,” he said.

  “I know you’re busy, with the Hall of Fame and everything.”

  “I’m not, Ma. Not really. I go to spring training for two weeks, like every year, and I got a few other things after that. I’ll check my calendar with Sal, but I think it’s all right.”

  “If you can’t, it’s no big deal. You know I hate to ask . . . I told them the answer was probably no.”

  “Ma, it’s no big deal. Tell them I’ll do it.”

  The goal was to raise forty grand to make everything new, from floor to scoreboards. Two hundred tickets were sold, at fifty apiece; that was ten grand right there. Memorabilia sales would close the gap. A local Italian joint called Picatelli’s would donate food in exchange for some photo ops with the star. It was a back-door endorsement, Grudeck knew; Picatelli’s would plaster those pictures all over the restaurant, but what the hell.

  Grudeck told his mother to tell the church board to contact Sal, who kept the stock; replica jerseys, signature bats, and boxes of photos: the McCombs knockout, the Series homer, and Grudeck, in a new uniform, waving good-bye to the crowd on his farewell night at Fenway, and others.

  “I’ll send good stuff for the silent auction,” Sal told them. “But I’ll also send cheap stuff, like balls and pictures, so everybody can go home with something.”

  Sal controlled most of Grudeck’s memorabilia business and had rules. “We personalize everything. Makes it less valuable to anyone but the first owner. We don’t want people trading on your good intentions.” And when Sal said “we” he meant “we.” Sal’s Joe Grudeck signature was as good as Grudeck’s himself, and Sal pre-signed everything for shows where he supplied the merchandise. They had a system. On each piece Sal wrote To . . . with a blank, then Best of Luck! . . . and signed Grudeck’s name. At the event, Grudeck just filled in the buyer’s name, to keep things moving. When Sal launched joegrudeck.com, everything sold on the Web was signed by Sal.

  “It’s only forgery without authorization,” Sal once reasoned. “You’re authorizing me to sign, so . . . okay, that’s bullshit, I know . . . but I can’t tell the difference, you can’t tell the difference, so who is it hurting? Besides, it keeps your hand from getting worse. And half the stuff on the market is forged anyway. You know it as well as I do.”

  For the St. Joe’s night, Grudeck told Sal to put up the uniform from his farewell night.

  “That can be the big-ticket item,” he said.

  “You sure?” Sal said. “You could get a lot of money for that thing.”

  “I’m sure. Time to start—what do they call it?—downsizing,” Grudeck said.

  The uniform was mint; worn only for pregame festivities, the big standing O, then taken off before Grudeck fled the ballpark. The equipment manager had the uniform cleaned and packed in an airtight wedding-dress box, then shipped it to Sal, who put it in a temperature- and humidity-controlled storage unit with other stuff from Grudeck’s playing days. The first mitt he wore in the bigs, the last one, too. Bats and balls from home runs 100, 200, and 300, all hit at Fenway. His 1,000th hit, an opposite-field single in Cleveland’s old Municipal Stadium, his 2,500th, a two-out, nobody on, single in the eighth of a lost game in the Bronx. The Yankee fans booed. Sal sent that bat and ball, the Series uniform, and some other stuff to Cooperstown. Grudeck knew the rest would be auctioned off someday, not because he needed the money, but because there would be nobody to give it to.

  The farewell night uniform would be the first, and easiest, to part with. It was like a marine’s dress blues; never worn in battle, so it had little emotional value.

  “You know what?” Grudeck added. “Send them the hundredth and two hundredth home run bats, too . . . and Sallie, one more thing: I don’t want any surprises. Tell them if they’re thinking of naming the gym after me, forget it. It’s a deal breaker.”

  “Oh, you saw that one coming.”

  “Yeah. And I’m serious. Tell them I have a check for twenty grand to go toward the gym, but if they name it after me, I swear I’ll tear the fucking thing up.”

  “So, you’ll be the first guy in history to pay to not have a gym named after you,” Sal said.

  “Whatever,” Grudeck said. “Make sure they know I’m serious. Gym namings are for dead or decrepit guys. I’m neither. Not yet.”

  Grudeck hated it all, especially when Sal talked about his stuff being a “good investment.”

  “Your price went up. The Hall of Fame does that, you know,” he said. “We have to start charging more.”

  “I know, but I don’t want to gouge people.”

  “There you go again, feeling guilty about it,” Sal said. “Don’t you understand? You’re a good investment. Your stuff spiked after the Hall announcement. Just look at eBay. And when you die, God forbid, it’ll go up again, like a maturing bond.”

  “Yeah, hot today, then would cool till I die, then get hot again,” he said. “Then stone cold.”

  Time goes by, he thought, and pretty soon everybody who ever saw you play is dead, too. Then what? How valuable is all this crap then?

  But for now, he was hot. A few weeks after the Hall news, Grudeck went to Boston for an already scheduled cash-and-carry autograph show. He never liked these things but agreed, thinking that if he didn’t get in the Hall, it would make him feel less forgotten. Now that he was voted in, he regretted it; the trip up, the tacky hotel ballroom, the four hours of meeting sweaty-palmed, stuttering fans, all of it. There were five hundred already in line when he entered the room to big applause—“Please welcome Hall of Famer . . .”—surrounded by sports auction house organizers and six security guys playing hard-ass cops. He was cordoned off by Red Sox red and blue velvet ropes, and took a seat at a banquet table next to a pair of attractive young women, who handled merchandise and money.

  It went the way it always went. “I’m your biggest fan . . .” “Hey, Joe, I was there when . . .” A signature. A handshake. A cell phone shot. Hand on shoulder, big smile, digital documentation that they met Joe Grudeck. Within minutes, on Facebook, Twitter, whatever. Here’s me and Joe Grudeck. After twenty seconds, they were moved out by the security guys flexing minimum-wage muscle . . . Let’s go, people, thirty seconds, that’s what you get. Keep moving.

  He was still uncomfortable—after all these years—with people sucking up to him like this, so willing to put themselves below him. Grown men, doing it right in front of their kids. Joe Grudeck idolized his dad above any athlete. Chuck Grudeck was Joey’s hero. What kind of father so easily hands that over to some star jock, someone they don’t even know? Not in Chuck Grudeck’s day. The father came first, and the father was the role model. Not some ballplayer, even Grudeck. It depressed him.

  The organizer, some Southie Irish guido named Lenny
Something-or-other, bugged him all day, coming up several times an hour, talking low in Grudeck’s ear simply to ask if he wanted water or something, acting as if they were co-conspirators. And at the end of the night, they were. There was a bag of cash from Guido Lenny.

  “Here you go, Joey, five thousand, in fifties. That way the IRS doesn’t know you got it or I gave it. Not bad for a half day’s work, no?”

  Grudeck excused himself to scrub his hands. Two of the rent-a-cops then escorted him to his car. He threw his brown bag of money on the passenger seat of his Cadillac, punched the gas, and got on the road. Nothing like a fast drive to blow back the conscience.

  He was in a foul mood, pissed mostly that Guido Lenny had called him “Joey.” Nobody called him Joey now except his mother and Sal, every once in a while, and some of the old folks in Union. “Joey” was off-limits to anyone who only knew Joe Grudeck, the ballplayer.

  Three hours later, he was on Route 78 in Jersey, almost home, pushing the car at a buck-ten, then -fifteen, then -twenty, when he saw blue-and-red flashers pull out from behind an outcrop of Watchung Mountain traprock in the median. He thought for a second about outrunning the cop, but Grudeck pulled over.

  It was a state trooper, not much older than twenty-five, lean and clear blue–eyed and crew-cut, a marine-like recruit. Typical Jersey trooper, all business, all thin blue line.

  “License, registration, and insurance card, sir.”

  “Of course, trooper,” Grudeck said. You never called a Jersey state trooper “officer.” They saw it as a sign of disrespect to their paramilitary fitness, and if you were doing one-twenty, they’d write one-twenty—and reckless driving on top.

  Grudeck handed over his papers and waited for his name to register, for the flashlight-in-the-face beam of recognition, for the “Okay, Mr. Grudeck, I’ll let you slide this time, but you need to take it easy out here,” and maybe even the “Can you do me a favor and sign this . . . ?”

  But not on this night.

  “Mr. Grud-eck, Groo-deck. Am I saying it right?” the trooper asked.

  “Yes, Joe Groo-deck.”