Every time he swung one, a distant, atavistic rush overcame him. The bat felt like an extension of his body, as though his own blood coursed through it, his own pulse throbbing at its extreme end: a lonely human thud in the cold and silent wood. Perhaps a symbol of the loneliness of his own existence in the vast, uncaring desert? Perhaps not. But in any event, to Ron, the bat was a manifestation of his own power, his own potential to impact the world, and he loved it. He loved the feel of it in his hands, the smooth fit of the grip in his palms. He loved the vibrations of the impact against his fingers as they traveled back through the wood and into him, where his body absorbed and fed on them.
But to the kids, he was just a coach, a grown-up who liked baseball.
“You see, it’s all in the hips. That’s where all the power is. If you try to just swing hard with your arms and shoulders, you won’t be accurate, and you won’t hit very far. Form is the most important thing. Feel the bat in your hands. Treat it like an extension of your body. Become one with the bat.”
But ten-year-olds have no philosophy. They bounced around from foot to foot, puffed out their cheeks, bored only three minutes into practice. Across the grass, beyond the diamond, far out into center field, was another team already forming up. The sight of it made Ron’s team even more restless and he knew he was mere minutes from complete systemic breakdown.
While he enjoyed coaching little league, the headache of dealing with a mob of unruly ten-year-olds was something Ron Grimaldi had little tolerance for. He gave up hope, tossed the bat onto a pile of bats and clapped his hands together.
“Okay, listen up, red team on the field, blue team’s batting first.” The kids split up, with members of the red team complaining about having to take to the field. “Go on, get out there,” Ron said to two stragglers, who immediately went from a slouching walk into an unenthusiastic trot.
He stood on the sidelines and watched the lights click on all around the field. The high chain-link backstop occupied one corner of the only park in town, which also comprised about eighty percent of the town’s green grass. The desert climate was bad for grass, but the warm evenings were perfect for baseball.
The team practiced ineptly and Ron stood along the first base line shouting instructions to the shortstops, outfielders, the batter, catcher, and pitcher. A small group of parents sat in the bleachers behind the backstop and clapped or called out to their kids for little or no reason at all. On the whole, little league practice wasn’t very exciting, but it attracted a decent crowd regardless. Weeknights in Nickelback had little else to offer.
Along the parking lot there were a dozen cars with people leaning against them or sitting at the park benches, watching the action, or lack of it. One of those cars was the Chevy Suburban police cruiser driven by Sheriff Mickey O’Reilly and one of his deputies. They came to every practice. Ron could set his watch by it.
After four years in Nickelback, Ron could tell a stranger where the police were at almost any given moment. They were that predictable. He saw them at Ruth’s in the morning, getting coffee and stealing donuts from the tray by the register. Then they drove out east of town, did a long circle through the monument, and were driving near the schools by mid-morning to make sure there wasn’t any trouble. Then he would see them out around the refinery when he took his lunch break and sat out in the parking lot, keeping to himself, eating a sandwich and taking an occasional nip from a flask he kept in his glove box. They’d sit at one of their four or five favorite radar traps in the afternoon and try to catch people speeding home from the refinery or coming in on the south road from the freeway. Then, in the evening, they’d stay around Main Street and walk through the bars and the cocktail lounge at the Golden Dragon Mandarin Palace, keeping the peace, which was harder to do lately, with the layoffs and all.
But Ron Grimaldi could give two shits about Mickey O’Reilly and his deputies. The only thing good about knowing where they were was knowing you could stay the hell away from them—not that he needed to—not these days. Since moving to Nickelback, he had become a model citizen. Not that that was his nature, he was just holding up his end of the bargain, but it was the truth, nonetheless. The local cops had no idea who he was. To them, he was just a lucky guy who’d managed to land one of the last jobs at the refinery and hang onto it, even in the downturn. Ron Grimaldi was a lucky guy, and he aimed to keep it that way.
“Follow through!” he called out, with his hands cupped around his mouth. Showing the kids something was like talking to a rock. They didn’t listen to anything. “Scottie! Look!” Ron demonstrated the follow through again, but the kid just nodded and proceeded to jerk the bat at the ball in convulsive fits.
“Hey Ronnie!” It was Rick Smitts—a strange and childless Vietnam vet who came to every practice—calling from behind the backstop, his fingers poking through the chain link. “Ronnie!”
“What, Smitts?” Ron turned toward him, irritated. He’d long since stopped correcting him by reminding him his name was not “Ronnie.”
“The kids are really shaping up.” The fat bastard smiled and gave him the old thumbs up. Smitts was an idiot. Only an idiot would feel the need to call something like that out in the middle of practice.
Ron just nodded and sneered. “They sure are.” Smitts had annoyed him from the moment Ron first met him. He hadn’t been on the job for twenty minutes and Smitts came wandering up to him and started talking like they were old drinking buddies. Smitts was that kind of guy. He had no ability to see that he annoyed the people around him. Sometimes Ron would look into Smitts’s eyes when he was talking and wonder if there was anything behind them at all. There was a certain emptiness there, like the brain was on autopilot, the last few neurons flickering in the vast darkness inside his skull.
When practice was over, and the kids had raided the coolers for sodas and slices of orange, Ron made his way to the parking lot with the heavy canvas sack of bats, balls, and bases. He tossed them over the side into the bed of the truck and took off his hat. Nine at night and still hotter than hell. April to October, it never seemed to cool down enough to keep him from sweating. Ron leaned against the truck and closed his eyes, remembering the Jersey shore, the cool breeze of a June night coming in off the water. Now that was living. This, the high desert, Southern California, this was something else entirely.
Although four years at the refinery had gone quick enough, Ron knew he had his limits. He knew when he came out here that he’d reach his breaking point eventually. Frankly, he was surprised it took four years. What was almost worse was that, despite the layoffs, the arrangement was such that they wouldn’t let him go because of the tax break the refinery got for hiring what they believed was a disabled veteran. With that, he’d be the last guy they fired because it cost them damned near nothing to keep him around. Hell, they’d probably have him put the lock on the gate the day they finally shut it all down and have him hand himself his own pink slip.
So he was stuck there with nothing to do but drive his forklift around unless he took action on his own. Of course he could quit. He could always quit. But where would he go? He ended up out here because it was the best place for him. And it had kept him out of trouble. But it was only natural that he get into a little something out in the desert. Something low risk. Something designed merely to spice things up. And now that he had, he was feeling more content than ever.
Back by the bleachers he could see Smitts looking over at him, trying to break away from the people he was talking to so he could come over and say something else inane. Ron got in the truck and started it quickly. The bat he kept under the seat rolled forward and he kicked it back under with his feet, trying to work the pedals so he could get away. Too much shit in the truck, he really needed to clean it out.
But the bat reminded him of the two buffoons. Ron backed out of the space and took off, watching Smitts start to walk toward him and then stop with his mouth half open, staring at the back of Ron’s truck as it sped away. Ron laughed at
the image in the mirror. It was the same look the buffoons were wearing the night before. It was the slack expression of someone whose brain has simply shut down, quit processing, ceased every effort to comprehend the world around it.
But unlike Smitts—who was actually a moron—the buffoons were just slackers with no focus or direction. Ron imagined they’d learned a thing or two last night and he was expecting them to shape up, quit fucking around, and start getting serious. In many ways the buffoons were like the kids. They needed direction, training, otherwise they’d flounder aimlessly. But Ron knew what he was in for when he got involved with them—both the kids and the buffoons—and his batting instruction had come in handy with each.
He waited at the light and watched the Suburban with the red and blues on top pull out of the parking lot and come up behind him. Ron turned up the radio and let his left arm dangle out the window, his fingers tapping the door in time to “Sympathy for the Devil.” He glanced in his mirror at the two cops behind him.
When the light changed, Ron drove away slowly. Nothing was wrong, he was just the baseball coach heading home from a late practice. When he checked his mirror again, he saw the Suburban still sitting at the light. Then its blinker came on and the cops turned and headed out the south road toward the freeway.
Just like clockwork.
IV
“The guy’s fucking crazy, man. What’re we gonna do?”
“Will you relax? Jeez. Just mellow out.” Eli sat back on the couch and exhaled a long, slow cloud of smoke. He watched it drift through the lamplight and dissipate. Then he slouched sideways and stretched to reach over the side of the couch, passing the pipe to Eddie, who took it and continued to worry.
“How can I relax? You saw what he did. What the hell do we know about this guy anyway?” Eddie ran his fingers through his overgrown curls and then scratched at his chin. “What, he’s just some forklift driver out at Monarch? I don’t think so. There’s something scary about this guy. I mean, it didn’t seem to bother him at all.” Eddie leaned forward to look directly at Eli. “Hey man, you listening?”
“Will you stop talking for three seconds? I’m trying to fucking think. Just shut up and smoke.” Eli rolled his head on its side and smiled at Eddie, trying to stifle a laugh and then letting it go. “Man, that’s what I always say.” He snorted, watching the tick in Eddie’s neck. Then, in a mock shriek, like a heavy metal singer, he yelled: “Just shut up and smoke, muthafuckah!”
“Dude, I’m serious.”
Eli moaned and sat up straight as Eddie took a long hit off the pipe, taking in a series of short breaths and holding them, letting the smoke fill his lungs and the pressure build. Eli shook his head and stared at the Metallica poster affixed to the opposite wall with yellow thumbtacks. It seemed slightly off center on the wall, crooked, the right side just a little lower. Maybe it was him.
When his attention snapped back, Eli said, “Man, I know. I’m just trying not to think about it right now. Dude scared the shit outta me last night too.”
“No shit.” Eddie spoke in the short, clipped manner of a man holding his breath. “I couldn’t believe it.” He shook his head and exhaled, setting the pipe on the coffee table among the crumpled beer cans, overflowing ashtrays, used paper plates, empty pizza boxes, cigarettes, lighters, matches, baggies of pot, and the large ceramic bong shaped like a mermaid—Eli’s one prized possession.
“Did you look at his eyes, man?” Eddie continued. “Nothing. Just blank. He’s an animal. How the hell can we deal with a guy like this?”
“We’ll come up with something.” Eli smiled and swung his arm around behind the couch, feeling low between the back of the couch and the wall, finding it, and then pulling his Fender Stratocaster up and onto his lap. “Just relax, man. We got time to figure shit out.” Eli reached out and turned the four hundred watt Marshall on and plugged the guitar in. A sonic hiss filled the room.
Eddie let out a sigh and said, “I think we gotta go to the cops.”
Eli stared at him and shook his head, flabbergasted. “Are you insane? What the hell are we gonna tell them? They’ll be poking around, asking all kinds of questions. No cops. No fucking way.”
“But shit man, we can’t just leave that guy out there.”
“Why the hell not? Nothing we can do for him now.” Eli strummed a power chord and the room erupted with warbling, discordant sound.
“Will you put that thing away? I can’t think with that noise.”
“C’mon, it’ll relax you.” Eli sat forward on the edge of the couch and held the Fender in position, like he was really going to play. “Here, I’ve been working on something new. It’s sweet, man, check this out—”
Eli tore into a rapid fire succession of poorly fingered chords until he held on a distorted C sharp—strumming hard and fast—jugga-jugga-jugga-jugga—and then screamed again in his heavy metal shriek:
“When I,
Comb my ass hair,
I think about you!
I think about you!
And when I,
Find a nugget back there,
I think about you!
I think about you!”
He continued strumming with abandon for several seconds until feedback wailed from the speaker and threatened to shatter the windows. Eli let go of the guitar’s neck and the last chord resonated through the room like the final squawks of a dying cat.
Eli smiled. “So?”
“So?”
“The song. I mean, it’s only one verse but I think I’m onto something. It’s kind of a proto-post-punk ballad for the new millennium, you know, about the politics of love in a world gone to hell. I think it’ll speak to all the kids out there who don’t really have a chance.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Eddie took a long drink from his warm beer and shook his head.
“Art, man.” Eli switched off the amp and leaned the Fender against the coffee table. “Jeez, don’t forget why we’re involved in this. We get enough cash together we’ll be able to pack our shit and get down to LA and make something happen.”
“Man, why don’t we just pack up and get out now? I mean, what the hell is Ron gonna do? He can’t run things by himself. He doesn’t know a damned thing about the oil business. Who the hell is this guy anyway?”
“Man, I don’t know.” Eli was back to running his fingers through his hair. He took a drink from his watery whiskey and Coke and said, “I’ll tell you one thing though, he ain’t no forklift operator from Houston, that’s for damned sure.”
Eddie laughed and let out a sigh. “Right, so why don’t we just take the money we got and leave? I mean, we could live for a while on what we’ve got already.”
“Where the hell would we go? And if we took the twenty-five grand, shit, Ron would sure as hell come looking for us.” Eli shook his head. “No way man, we can’t just run from this guy. Like you said, we don’t know who the hell he is.”
They both stared at the walls. After several minutes Eli picked up the pipe and took another hit. He spoke while he held the smoke deep in his lungs. “Besides, they’d find all the equipment and shit eventually and they’d trace it back to us, not Ron. I mean, dude’s totally clean.” Eli let out his breath and there was almost no smoke. “Look at that shit. Talk about the iron lung. My body absorbs cannabis clouds. It’s my super power.” He laughed and handed the pipe to Eddie, who dumped the ashes on the oil-stained carpet and picked up a baggie from the table.
“That’s just it. I mean, the guy is completely clean, no one can trace him to anything. That’s why he’s got our ass over a barrel.” Eddie smelled the sticky green weed in the baggie, plucked the end off a thick bud, and packed it into the bowl of the pipe as he spoke. “But we gotta do something.”
“We need to turn the table on him somehow, get everything square again. I mean, this asshole didn’t do a damned thing but put up the money. We’ve done all the work.”
“Totally.” Eddie nodded and put the pipe
to his mouth, sparking the lighter and inhaling with the fluid and graceful motion of a world class dope smoker.
“Hell, it was my property. You got the gear running.” Eli was getting incensed. “I mean, who the fuck does this guy think he is, threatening us like that?” He took the pipe from Eddie and looked down at it, as though it might know the answer.
Eddie said, “I don’t know man. But he did a damned good job, that’s for sure. He got my attention anyway.”
“Yeah,” Eli mumbled at the carpet and the room went silent. The images ran through their heads: crammed in the cab of the truck speeding down the highway; Ron bitching about getting the operation moving, bitching about the lack of volume, wanting a return on his investment; the argument escalating; then Ron stopping to pick up the hitchhiker and telling him to climb in the back—poor kid, young hippie looking guy, probably only twenty years old, cruising around the country with his backpack—and then Ron turning down the dirt road; pointing his finger at them, threatening to kill them; the hitchhiker getting nervous in the back of the truck and tapping on the window; Eli telling Ron to fuck off, that he wasn’t the boss; Ron screaming something like, “You wanna bet, you fucking pussies, watch this shit!”—and climbing out of the truck, getting the bat from under the seat, and taking after the hitchhiker like a lunatic. When another minute had gone by, Eli fired up the pipe. Anything to stop thinking about it.
Eddie finally spoke. “Goddamn,” he said, shaking his head, the shock lighting up his glossy eyes. “I never thought I’d see something like that.”
Eli exhaled slowly and set the pipe on the table. He leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head, hoping to drift off into better thoughts. “I know,” he said. “The guy’s head came apart like a melon.”
$200 and a Cadillac Page 2
