In Open Spaces

by Russell Rowland

  Scanning the crowd, I spotted a bright yellow shirt, like a lemon drop in a bowl of chocolates. Jack was playing horseshoes with Art Walters, Gary Glasser’s son Steve, and a fellow I’d never seen. I headed over, hoping that Rita would also be in the vicinity. Despite all reason, my attraction to Rita had become almost uncontrollable. I could barely speak when she was around, but instead of trying to avoid her, I migrated in her direction at the slightest hint that she was nearby. As I approached the horseshoe pits, I spotted Rita from the corner of my eye.

  “Who’s winning all the money here?” I asked the horseshoe pitchers.

  Jack tipped his hat and tossed a shoe, laying it about two inches from the stake.

  “Does that answer your question?” Art asked, smiling.

  “Hi, Blake.” The singsong greeting tickled my ears from behind, and my head went light. I turned.

  “Oh, hello, Rita.” I crouched down next to her, acting surprised to see her, my face immediately filling with blood.

  “You going to play some baseball today?” she asked.

  “That’s probably the only reason he showed up,” Jack said.

  I swallowed, smiling shyly. Despite the fact that I was completely leery of Jack, we had settled into a fairly peaceable existence. And the main reason was Rita. From the moment she stepped off the train, and she and Jack exchanged vows, Rita had won the hearts of my family. And the effect she had on Jack was fairly dramatic. Jack built a small house for the two of them as soon as weather permitted. And Rita showed a decorative touch, making the tiny cabin a comfortable haven from our house when things got testy. The only drawback was that Rita loved cats, and she brought two of the mousers from the barn into their home, not paying any attention to their genders. Soon the place was overrun with cats.

  Among the members of my family, I was the most skeptical toward my brother, but after a year of Jack working harder than he ever had, and even showing signs of sociable behavior, even I had to admit he’d changed. Still I wasn’t convinced that it would last. For one thing, he had developed an obsession with the get-rich schemes that were often advertised in the Eagle, or in catalogues he’d pick up in town. Jack ordered pamphlets and books by the score, and it seemed that every week he had a new plan.

  First he ordered a case of some kind of medicine—an ointment that smelled of oranges and supposedly provided instant relief for everything from arthritis to yellow fever. We all tried it, of course. I rubbed it on a knee I banged against the corral one morning, and it didn’t do a damn thing. But Jack pressed several people into buying the stuff, and before long he’d ordered two more cases. I don’t know whether he ever sold another bottle, but it wasn’t long before he was on to the next scheme. He bought two cases of yo-yos, apparently overlooking the fact that most people could barely afford food for their kids, much less toys. He became a representative for a wool company, selling clothing and blankets. This was one arrangement that showed promise, but it seemed that even in the cases where he started to show a profit, Jack lost interest before he could benefit, moving on to something new.

  That day, he had what he was sure would be the breakthrough item. He had ordered four boxes—ten in each box—of lightning rods. He was going to set up a table and sell them that afternoon.

  To the rest of the family, Jack’s interest in these schemes was a mild annoyance. It seemed to be wasted money in their eyes. But to me, it represented something more, something fundamentally unchanged about Jack. To me, it meant that at his core, he still didn’t want to be here. That something about life on the ranch would never be comfortable to him. I suspected that his commitment to the ranch was only temporary.

  Jack’s return, and the events that occurred while he was gone, had also left me feeling very differently about being on the ranch, and about devoting my life to it. I had written a tentative letter to Mr. Murphy, the baseball scout, telling him that I was considering taking him up on his offer. He wrote back immediately, saying he would welcome the opportunity to give me a tryout. But I put him off, giving him whatever excuse I could think of. The real reason, of course, was that I couldn’t just up and tell everyone that I was going to St. Louis to try out for the Cardinals. I had to have a reason to go down there. But the primary mental barrier was that I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. I didn’t know if I was any good. I managed to talk my neighbors into letting me pitch in a few of the local games. And I pitched fairly well. But I had a feeling that in order to make an impression on Mr. Murphy, I would have to be much better than anyone out here.

  “I heard they’re going to ask you to pitch today, Blake,” Steve Glasser said.

  “Yeah?” I didn’t do a very good job of hiding my enthusiasm, my voice rising.

  Jack chuckled. “The way Blake’s been pounding down the wall in our barn, they better let him pitch or I’ll have to drive him home right now.”

  I felt myself blush, trying not to look at Rita, as I could feel her eyes on me.

  “You guys finished putting up hay yet?” Steve knocked his horseshoes together, cleaning the dirt off, then threw a nice spinning arch that landed like mud just short of the stake. Steve had one eye that was a little off center, staring absently off to one side. He aimed his good eye toward the stake. “Is that a point?”

  “Don’t think so,” Jack said, bending over the pit.

  “We got most of our hay up, but that’s not saying much,” I said.

  “You’re right about that,” the stranger said.

  “We haven’t met, have we?” I stood and offered my hand. “Blake Arbuckle.”

  “Lawrence Andrews.” Lawrence shook hands as if it was the most important thing he could possibly be doing at that moment, looking me square in the eye. I felt as though we’d just completed an important business transaction. He stepped back and settled his broad, bony hands onto his hips in an effort to look relaxed.

  “So you two are brothers, are you?”

  Jack and I nodded, not looking at each other.

  I asked Lawrence Andrews the most common question heard around our county with so many newcomers around. “Where you from?”

  “Nebraska, but we live just the other side of Belle now, near the river.”

  “Quite a trip from here,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I left yesterday afternoon and stayed at the Roberts road ranch last night.”

  It was Lawrence’s turn to pitch, and he planted his left foot even with the stake, stepped stiffly out with his right, then swung his right arm back and then forward without the slightest bend of the elbow, like a pendulum. It seemed that none of the joints halfway down any of his limbs worked. The wobbly shoe landed on its side then rolled away from the pit. It was, without a doubt, the least graceful act I ever witnessed. From the corner of my eye, I could feel Jack’s gaze on me, and I had to turn my head, knowing that I would have to stifle one of those explosive bursts of laughter if I glanced his way.

  “How is that road ranch doing, anyway?” I asked. “I wouldn’t think they’d be getting much business with everyone either broke or buying vehicles.”

  Lawrence tossed his second shoe, this one soaring with less wobble but no better results. “As a matter of fact, not too well. They’re talking about buying more land, going back to ranching.” He stepped away from the pit, surveying his tosses with a calculating expression, as if he might figure out what he did wrong if he studied it long enough. “Or they might move to town. They were in Oregon for almost a year after Sophie’s husband passed on. So they’re having a hard time getting back into the routine anyhow.”

  “Sophie’s husband?”

  Lawrence nodded. “Cancer.” He brushed his hands together, then looked them over. He spotted a smudge on the edge of his palm, and he licked his thumb and rubbed the spot clean. Then he took a sudden, almost threatening step toward me. A flicker of a smile flashed across his face. “I’m going to marry her,” he said.

  Lawrence came so close to me that I had to stiffen my muscles t
o prevent myself from stepping backward, and the others stopped what they were doing and turned toward Lawrence. We were not so much surprised by the announcement as by the peculiarity of its delivery. My first instinct was to ask whether Sophie knew about this plan, but I had a feeling Lawrence wouldn’t get the joke. He was so proud.

  “Look, Blake.” Lawrence held his horseshoes out. “Why don’t you take over for me here? I’m not much good at this anyway. And I want to go see what’s cooking.”

  “All right.” I took the shoes, feeling a sudden admiration for Lawrence’s modesty. “Nice meeting you, Lawrence. And congratulations.”

  The others offered Lawrence good wishes.

  “Thanks, fellas,” he said.

  I watched Lawrence, his long gangly frame teetering like a newborn colt’s through the crowd. “Have you ever seen a prouder groom-to-be?” I asked.

  Art Walters, who had been silent since the announcement, looked from the side of his eyes at me. “That fella is in for trouble,” he said.

  We all smiled, a bit uncomfortably, knowing that Art’s one attempt at marriage had fallen short of a year. “Why’s that, Art?”

  “Any man who’s that worshipful of his bride is gonna be gathering eggs before the ink is dry on the marriage license,” he said.

  We all laughed.

  Art sniffed. “You can laugh, but take my word on that. Just wait and see.” And with that, Art tossed a perfect ringer.

  It was an ideal day for the fair. The temperature topped out at eighty degrees, with no wind. The mosquitoes were light. I bathed in the heat, playing horseshoes for a while before partaking in the tents bursting with homemade food. I wandered among the displays of livestock and children’s art and always, always, maintained a vigilant awareness of where Rita was. I couldn’t help it. Jack had even teased me about it on occasion, accusing me of being lovesick. He had no idea how right he was.

  I noticed the endearing tilt of her head as she listened to my mother tell a story, and the way she relished a leg of fried chicken, or a piece of rhubarb pie. I noticed the elegant movements of her hands, no matter what she was doing. Even wiping the corner of her mouth with a napkin, Rita had a graceful air.

  “You ready to play some ball, Blake?”

  I dropped my horseshoe and followed Jack toward the two baseball fields that several of us had carved out of the sagebrush. We had stuffed six flour sacks with sand for the bases, and Steve Glasser cut a couple of wooden home plates. He sank them into the ground back-to-back, a little off center, so two games could be played in different directions without interfering with each other. He then rigged a couple of canvas tarps, like sails, to prevent balls from scooting past the catcher onto the other field.

  There were coin tosses to decide which teams would play, and we ended up drawing Belle Fourche, while Capitol and Camp Crook took the other field. Our little community, which was about a fifth the size of Belle, had never beaten them that any of us could remember, so we stormed the field with a resolve to change history. I took my position at third base, and Jack started out catching.

  Ever since I can remember, every baseball game between two of the communities out here starts out with an air of easy banter, with everyone acting as if they don’t really give a damn who wins or loses. But nobody’s really fooling anyone. The polite chatter usually lasts an inning or two; then the jaws set, the eyes narrow, and the spoken word takes on a harder edge.

  Belle Fourche scored three runs against us in the first inning. We answered with three of our own on a solid, bases-loaded triple by Jack. And we scored two more in the second when Gary Glasser hit a grounder between the legs of Lawrence Andrews, who was as awkward in the field as he’d been in the horseshoe pits.

  After Teddy Teagarten, Belle Fourche’s blacksmith, hit a ball over everyone’s head with two runners on, Belle Fourche led by a run, and our pitcher surrendered the ball, which took five minutes to find, to me. I trotted in from third base, and took a few deep breaths while I warmed up. I nodded to the next hitter.

  I felt as if the desire of our entire community was being funneled toward me, and I discovered that I liked the responsibility. I liked the pressure. But in the fifth, my determination to live up to these expectations took over, and I started throwing too hard. I walked the first two batters, bouncing several pitches in the dirt. I took a short break, walking behind the mound, breathing deep, and when I returned to the rubber, I looked up to see Lawrence Andrews at the plate. He had shown little promise with the bat, so I felt myself relax a little. My first pitch to him was a good curveball, screaming toward the middle of the plate. Lawrence took a big swing, but when the ball broke down and away, he missed completely with a twirl that looked more like ballet than baseball. His bat was tipped at an angle, toward the sky, and one leg kicked up behind him. I had to bite my lip to keep from smiling as I took the throw from Jack.

  I took a little something off the next pitch, and lost control of it, bouncing the ball a foot in front of the plate. The runners moved up one base, now standing on second and third. Jack held up his palm, encouraging me to relax, and I tried to talk myself calm before throwing again. The ball sailed toward the inside corner, and Lawrence twirled toward it. Somehow, the bat plunked its target, and the ball squirted along the bumpy ground, bouncing back and forth like a jackrabbit, toward Steve at shortstop. He crouched, but the ball caught the nub end of what had been a scrub of sagebrush. The ball bounded into left field, and both runners scored as Lawrence loped to first. In his excitement, he rounded the bag, looking bewildered about what he should do next. His pause gave our left fielder time to throw a strike to the first baseman, who tagged Lawrence on the thigh. Lawrence trotted off the field with a huge grin, not the least bit discouraged about getting thrown out. The Belle Fourche crowd was delirious, clapping him on the back and ruffling his oiled hair.

  I took a deep breath, got my rhythm back, and retired the next two batters, striking out the last one. But with those two runs, we came to bat behind by one. Still, I was excited. The competition, the energy from the crowd, it all felt good. I was pitching well, and I knew that Lawrence’s hit was a fluke. As I ran off the field, I glanced over at the crowd and saw Rita, who was clapping, and smiling at me. She waved when she saw me looking at her, and it made my heart swell a little.

  “What the hell happened there?” Jack stood next to me, his face toward the ground. At first I thought he was angry, but a glance at his expression told me otherwise. He was laughing.

  “I don’t think that guy could hit his chest with his hand,” he said, still laughing.

  I chuckled. “Hell, his eyes weren’t even open.”

  Jack spit into the dust, smiling, but his tone became businesslike again. “Yeah, well, let’s beat these guys for once, huh?”

  I nodded.

  “Don’t hold anything back.”

  A thin coat of dust gathered over the crowd as the game moved from inning to inning with no runs scored by either team. Jack, who had moved to shortstop, made an incredible diving catch of a shot up the middle by Teagarten. And we had a good laugh when one of my pitches got past Steve and hopped over the tarp, skipping onto the other field just as the batter there hit a grounder toward the second baseman. Both balls came toward him, from different angles, and he froze as if he’d just come upon a rattler.

  But the highlight of the game came in the seventh inning, when Shag Tompkins hit a long fly ball to right field. Art Walters, whose legendary status in the community had nothing to do with his athletic ability, was standing out there with his back to the game, gazing at something. We all yelled, and Art turned just in time to see the ball coming right down at his head. His hands flew up in front of his face, and the ball bounced off his palms, and ricocheted directly into the front pocket of his overalls.

  Art was looking around at the ground, crouching, trying to find the ball, when he suddenly spotted the dome of dusty white in his pocket. He plucked the ball from his overalls and held it up, prou
d as hell, as though he’d planned it that way. Our fans cheered as if a three-month drought had broken.

  Shag argued briefly that the catch couldn’t count, but he was laughing too hard to make a very convincing case for himself.

  By the top of the ninth inning, I had not allowed any more runs, and we were ahead by one thanks to Jack’s second triple of the game. Belle Fourche was up with one out and a runner on second. I walked the next batter, knowing that Lawrence was up after him. I felt confident that Lawrence couldn’t repeat his earlier heroics, especially if I gave him my best curveball. So I took a deep breath, and bore down, snapping off a beauty. The ball dropped toward his shoes. Lawrence spun, his eyes clamped tightly shut. And in a miracle of almost religious proportions, the ball and the bat crossed the plate at the same moment, in the same place. A pock rang out, and the ball floated like a sick bird out over second base. Jack raced toward it and dove, but missed it by a foot. There was so much spin on the ball that it squirted past the charging center fielder. Both runners scored, and if Lawrence had run like anything other than a lame colt, he might have scored himself. But he stood with both feet on second base, too happy to care that he was perhaps the most comical sports hero in the history of Montana.

  I shook my head, half angry but also amused. And as I tried to gather myself for the next batter, I caught a look from the crowd—an intense expression aimed right at me. Thinking it was Rita, I looked away immediately, knowing that a look from her right then would completely destroy my concentration. But as I wound up, my eyes quickly glanced that way again, and saw that it wasn’t Rita at all. After I threw the pitch, and the batter swung and missed, I looked over again to see the same powder-blue eyes staring at me with an unnerving allure. I knew the face was familiar, but because I hadn’t seen her for several years, it took me a second to recognize Sophie Roberts. She smiled, a smile so inviting that I blushed, quickly averting my eyes, remembering with some alarm that just a few hours before, I had learned that this woman was engaged to Lawrence Andrews. And then it occurred to me that he was standing behind me, and I realized that she wasn’t even looking at me, but at her fiancé, the hero.