by Gerald Duff
“Gemar,” he said, shifting that wad of Brown Mule chewing tobacco in his jaw. “We got a few minutes here before the first pitch, so I want to tell you what Mr. Guidry’s been talking to me about. A couple of things that’s bound to do you some good and the Rice Birds, too, maybe. We want to see what you think. Ready to listen?”
I nodded.
Dutch had started talking at a pretty good clip. “Everybody’s real happy with the way things have been turning out for you here in Rayne, Gemar.” Dutch was saying. “It ain’t no reason to tell you what you been doing on the diamond for the Rice Birds. Hell, you want to hear more about that, go read the newspapers or listen to the radio station. The thing is, see, that you being who you are and what you are has got as much to do with your time on the team here as your hitting and pitching does. It has more to do with it, to tell you the truth. Do you see what I’m getting at?”
“Not right off, no,” I said.
“Let me put it to you this way. What do the fans do when Dynamite Dunn gets a hit or Hookey strikes out a batter or Mike Gonzales does a flip and catches a hot grounder and throws somebody out?”
“Holler?”
“Right. What do they holler?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just holler. That what you mean?”
“That is exactly what I mean. Now what do they holler when you get a hit or strike somebody out when you’re pitching?”
“The same thing?”
“Nope,” Dutch said. “Sometimes they just yell, yeah, sure. But most of the time, they holler chief or Thunder Bolt or tomahawk or scalp’um or some shit like that. Am I lying now, Gemar? Tell me the truth.”
“Some folks do, yeah. They holler stuff like that. Don’t make much sense, it seems like to me.”
“Not to you, no,” Dutch said. “You’re just doing your job, and that’s playing baseball. But to them folks in the stands, the ones that buy them tickets that feed the bulldog, a lot more is going on than just baseball. Hell, anybody can play baseball.”
“No, they can’t.”
“Well, not anybody. What I’m saying is that any baseball player can play ball. There can’t just anybody be an Indian and play baseball. You can take that and write it up on the wall and get it by heart.”
“No,” I said. “You’re right about that, manager. First you got to be an Indian to do that.”
“We’re getting somewhere now,” Dutch said, leaning forward in his chair quick enough to make the toad jump in his hat. “I see we’re talking about the same thing here. We’re getting to a meeting of minds now, like they say on the radio when they’re doing the news.”
“An Indian is got to be an Indian first if he’s going to be an Indian playing baseball. Yes, sir,” I said. “I will go along with you on that.”
“People will find that six bits to buy a ticket and a sack of peanuts and come to a ballgame if they figure it’s worth it to them to spend their money that way. And what they’re looking for is not just pitchers throwing the ball and batters hitting and running the bases. No, what people want, Gemar, is not just to see ballplayers doing what they do. The way how the players do it is what counts, and more than that, it’s who’s doing it is what really matters to your average man in the stands. You still follow me?”
“If you mean that folks want to see good players on the field, making good pitches and good at-bats and good plays in the field, I go along with that. And getting more runs than the other bunch, too. They want that. They don’t want the short end.”
“You still not hearing what I’m saying, at least not all of it,” Dutch said. “Let me put it this way. Do you know I used to play baseball myself? Over in the Dixie League and up in the Sally League? A season and a half in the East Texas League, before they run me off.”
I nodded.
“I wasn’t that good, but I wasn’t that bad,” Dutch said. “A good journeyman first base and I’d hit the long ball now and then. But you know what? They stopped letting me play, and it wasn’t because I got that bad so quick I had to be let go. No, it had nothing to do with whether I could still play or not. They did it because the folks in the stands watching me play got to where they didn’t give a damn whether I got base hits or made good plays or came through in a pinch. I was bald-headed and had a belly and you see how I ain’t no John Barrymore in the face. Fans never noticed me much to start with, and when they did start noticing me, they decided they didn’t like me.”
I didn’t make a sign, just kept my eyes on Dutch’s cap where Herbert seemed to have found a good lodgment and wasn’t moving around now at all. In a minute or so, Dutch started talking again, and I looked straight at a spot right in the middle of his forehead while he cranked up.
“No, they wanted to watch a goddamn college boy with a pretty face and blonde hair and blue eyes called Lonnie Lambert. He couldn’t hit for shit, and he made more errors at first, but they let him take over where I’d been. That taught me something I ain’t never forgot it. I’ll tell you what it is. Stay pretty and do something people ain’t used to seeing on the baseball field. Do that, and you’ll stay around longer.”
“But you got to leave finally,” I said, “once you step across that white line that marks off the diamond from everything outside it. You can’t get back across it.”
“Huh,” Dutch said and spit into the coffee can on his desk. “Well, to get down to it. Here’s what Mr. Guidry and Mr. LeBlanc wants to happen with you. We got to play up this Indian business, and you got to do your part. Since you got here, more people has started coming to see the Rice Birds play than they ever did before, and not just here in Rayne at the home games. Wherever we go on the road now, the crowds there is bigger in every ballpark we play in. And it’s because of Chief Batiste and the Thunder Bolt and the Snake Crawler, and since you did what you did in that All-Star Game in Baton Rouge, it’s because of that goddamn homemade bat you used to do it with, too.”
“That particular bat might be getting old,” I said. “I ain’t going to use it again much. I’m afraid to.”
“Gemar, you got to use it, and that ain’t all you got to do.”
“It’s a bat I used in only the one game,” I said. “I got the rest of my hits all season with just any one of the bats I’d pick up.”
“That ain’t what the fans believe, hoss,” Dutch said. “And what they believe is what matters. They come to these ballparks in the Evangeline League all the way from Monroe to Morgan City to Houma mainly just for one thing.”
“To see a baseball game get played,” I said. “That’s what they’re there for, I reckon.”
“You reckon wrong, Gemar. Most of them’s coming because they want to believe something good might happen that’ll take their minds off what they dealing with, and it’ll happen not because ballplayers are working hard at playing a game of ball. It’s because some little thing you can’t explain might pop up. Some little bit of magic is what they hoping to see. They don’t believe just keeping your head down and doing a job of work is going to get it anymore. Not in this country. Not in this damn depression. It’s the starving time, son. Folks have come to know you can’t depend on nothing. Hard work ain’t for shit. You got to count on magic.”
“You talking about a mojo?” I said. “Some kind of a charm or a good luck piece?”
“Call it whatever you want to, Gemar Batiste,” the manager of the Rice Birds said. “It comes down to this, what I’m fixing to tell you. Mr. Guidry and Mr. LeBlanc want to take you fishing out in the Gulf and talk things over with you.”
“Indian things,” I said.
“Indian things it is,” Dutch said and slapped his hand on the desk. It made a hard flat sound in that little room, like a beaver slamming its tail on the black water in Lost Man Marsh back in the Nation. “Next week when the Rice Birds play in Morgan City, that’s when they’re going to s
how you that good time out on the water. Catch some big fish, drink a little beer, and enjoy the fellowship. They’ll lay things out for you. You ever been out on the ocean where you can’t see land no matter where you look?”
“I spent all my time in the Nation looking for some other place I can see from there,” I said. “I ain’t seen no speck of land yet to this day.”
“That’s good, then, and I’m glad we had this talk and got these things said,” Dutch said, standing up from his chair and pulling at the crotch of his pants. “And got it all straightened out. You feel like you ready to go four for four today?”
“I never count on hitting a single ball that’ll drop fair before any game I play in,” I said. “It ain’t never no percentage in letting your mind take over like that.”
“Use that special bat today then, Chief. I bet you’ll surprise yourself.”
23
I didn’t use my red oak bat against the Lake Charles Explorers, and I didn’t get but one hit, and it was an infield grounder that a good shortstop would’ve had no trouble getting to and throwing me out at first if he’d kept his head down. The man at short for the Explorers was scared I’d outrun his throw, so he didn’t tend to his business right, and I beat him by half a step. The only thing good I did at bat was to hit a long fly deep to right when we had Phil Pellicore on third. He was able to tag up and beat the throw at home, but that was the only run we made all game.
The Rice Birds was the bunch that died that day on the diamond, and we didn’t look at each other much after the first three innings. We could feel it and smell it in the air whenever we drawed a breath. It was the little stench you can pick up now and then when you’re deep in the Big Thicket, the smell that tells you Buzzard is happy and about to get his belly filled with rotted meat.
After that first game with Lake Charles was over and done, all of the Rice Birds got changed quick and got out of there. Nobody talked much to anybody else, and there wasn’t a speck of hoorawing taking place after that game we’d lost.
You deserved to have lost because of something you didn’t do right, a way you played that wasn’t good baseball. Nobody points out what anybody else did wrong then. You make the mistake of doing that, and the best that can come from it is nobody else says a thing. The worst is that men might lock up and start throwing punches at each other.
Cliff Labbé held them to three runs, and we didn’t get but the one. That made all of us clear out of the clubhouse at Addison Stadium, and not a one of us looked at Cliff Labbé as we did. He was sitting on a bench by his locker holding a sock in his hand and staring down at his shoes as I was going out the door. It was quiet enough in that big room to hear the water dripping back where the showers were. Everybody left by himself.
When I got to Miz Doucette’s house, it was at the hour for supper. Our landlady had a set time for when she would cook and plate up what she’d made for me and Mike Gonzales and her to eat, but she would listen to the radio when we were playing a day game in Rayne in case the timing would be off. When she heard me and Mike come in the front door that day, she called out to us that we could eat right then.
I could hear Teeny talking to her as I came down the hall. I hadn’t seen her since that night after the All-Star Game, and I hadn’t expected I ever would at supper time again. She would work it that way, I figured, and I had told myself not to let my mind dwell on anything having to do with her again. Put all that in a place in my head where I could keep it locked up and not ever open to the light, I told myself. Let it be like facing a strong pitcher for the first time, one who has the stuff to set me down. Let me take my medicine and see if it works to any benefit.
“Gemar,” Teeny said as I walked into the room. “How are y’all feeling after the game today? Too bad it ended up like it did, huh?”
I knew I had to look at her. When I tried that, taking the chance of looking into her face just long enough to let everybody in the room see that I could, she had changed her eyes. They wasn’t the same. They wasn’t hidden the way they were the last time I’d seen them. That’s when they had all their power, when I couldn’t see them for the dark.
What her eyes were now was nothing like that. They didn’t show a thing to me but she was pleased to see me and Mike Gonzales. Teeny made the look out of her eyes friendly and happy and sorry we’d lost a baseball game, and the way they looked fitted suppertime just perfect. Sit down, her eyes said, and let me and Mama help you feel better about losing. You played all right, it wasn’t your fault personally, and you’ll get them next time.
I emptied my plate and never tasted a mouthful of it. Mike Gonzales perked up and laughed a lot and told stories about the Rice Bird players and predicted we’d be in the playoffs and said one loss wasn’t nothing to be worried about.
“You just watch,” Mike Gonzales told all of us there at the table. “See if what I told you ain’t right. Am I lying, Gemar?”
“You don’t know when you are and when you ain’t, Mike,” I said. “And that’s the truth.” Everybody laughed at that, Teeny the loudest and longest, and I sat there at the table and listened to myself join in.
24
The second game in that series with the Lake Charles Explorers was at night. Back in those days that was an advantage to pitchers, the lights then not having the strength they got now. It was still good daylight when the first ball would be throwed, and I was warming up with my last few pitches. Dynamite Dunn was catching me. He took a pitch from me and held up his glove before tossing the ball back.
“Damn, Gemar,” he said, trotting out to the mound to hand me the ball. “Save that fire ball for the game, why don’t you? You among friends until Jimmy Lanier gets finished singing the National Anthem, so let up.”
“Why does he have to sing that same song every damn game?” I said. “We heard it yesterday already. It’s about wore out.”
“Jimmy Lanier will sing it as long as they let him. It gives him a chance to show off his vocal cords, and my, don’t he hit his high notes.”
“Get back there behind the plate, and let me throw a couple of more,” I said. “I ain’t finished warming up yet. I don’t want to talk.”
“Is it something wrong with you?” Dynamite said, tapping me on the shoulder with his mitt and tilting his head to the side as he looked up at me. “You sound as grouchy as Dutch Bernson.”
“Let me get my throws in to you, like I said.”
“Save them bad feelings for the sorry-assed Explorers, Chief,” Dynamite said.
“My name ain’t Chief,” I told him. “I feel like I’m missing something. Somebody might’ve took it, and I need to get it back.”
“Find out if that Lake Charles bunch has got what you dying to get back. See can you take it,” he said and trotted back to the plate.
When the game started, I threw the first man up nothing but fastballs, and he sat down after I’d put three of four across the plate. It felt good to me to rear back and sling it, and I kept doing that for the next two men up. Just one of them got a bat on the ball, a little foul that rolled down the third base line and died like a shot dove. The next one he just waved at, and then he had to drag his sorry bat back to the dugout and pick up his glove.
The day before Lake Charles had made us feel as sick as a bunch of old men sitting in the sun. Now, we were as young and healthy as a litter of half-grown foxes playing around their den. Our batters wore out that first pitcher and the next one they put up on the mound just the same way. It was about like batting practice to us. Every Rice Bird player that came to the plate was leaning forward, swinging hard, and meeting the pitches. Everybody put a boost to their batting average that night.
Every inning, I was getting the Explorers out any way I wanted to. The more I threw the fastball, the better it felt to me. There ain’t nothing that feels more comfortable to a pitcher than to feel that sweat rolling down
his face and arms, so much he has to wipe himself down as he works. It shuts everything out of his head but the sight of the catcher’s mitt behind the plate, getting bigger and easier to hit with every pitch he makes to it. It’s like a warm shower loosening your muscles up. The more you sweat, the better it contributes to you.
By the seventh inning, the ones who’d been sitting by me on the bench had stopped saying anything to me and when I’d look over them, they never would look back at me. Instead, they’d stand up, move away, take them a drink of water, start talking to somebody else, turn their backs in my direction, and act real interested in anything but what I might be doing or saying.
I knew what that meant, of course, but I never made a sign that I cottoned on to what was happening. That’s part of the game, and you got to play by all the rules. I started hollering a little bit, when one of the Rice Bird players would get a hit or take an extra base or stay alive. That wasn’t the way I acted usually on the bench, because I never wanted to waste energy trying to think of something to say.
Top of the ninth inning with us ahead by eight runs, I took the mound after Dynamite had made the third out for us. Standing out there waiting for Dynamite to come to the plate, I looked over at the first batter who’d be up for the Explorers. He caught my eye, tapped his bat on the ground, and pointed his finger at me. People in the stands were making a good bit of noise, and a lot of them were pretty full of beer by that late in the game. I couldn’t hear what the Lake Charles player was saying because of that crowd noise, but could read his lips as he looked directly at me and said what he did.
