Dirty Rice

by Gerald Duff

  “I don’t play for the white eyes. I don’t play for nobody.”

  “Don’t you play then for yourself? Don’t you play because you can do it better than most folks? Don’t you do it to beat them other ones? Show them you’re better than they are?”

  “Some of that’s in it,” I said. “But I ain’t proud of that, beating somebody else just to show him I can. It’s the baseball, playing that better than him, being better at the game. That’s what I want to do.”

  “Ain’t that what I just said? Showing him you’re better than he is.”

  “You don’t listen any better than Jay Bird does, Mike,” I told him. “He wants to hear himself holler. He likes that more than any other sound in the world.”

  “Oh, hell,” Mike said. “Some more of that Indian shit again. I’m hungry. I don’t mind telling anybody that, and you won’t never own up to wanting something you ain’t got.”

  “I got a chocolate candy bar you can have,” I said. “There in that dresser drawer, if you want to eat it.”

  “I’ll eat it right up now,” Mike Gonzales said. “I’m ready to eat anything.”

  • • •

  There are ways to cheat in baseball, and I’ve seen a lot of them tried and some of them work. Sometimes it’s real easy to cheat, and sometimes it’s harder to make cheating pay off than it is to just play it straight. When you’re playing baseball, it’s a simple game, and all it calls for is for you to do one of two things. If you’re at bat, you try to hit the ball and stay safe. If you’re in the field, you try to stop the other ones from doing that.

  At bat, how can you cheat a pitcher who’s got good stuff? You can’t. All that matters when you’re at bat is being able to hit that ball so it falls safe. You can’t do no tricks, and you can’t fool nobody into thinking you hit the ball. The truth is always before you, and a lie can’t get no purchase when a man is trying to hit a baseball.

  No, cheating mainly comes when you’re trying to lose. And it comes the easiest when your team is in the field, not up at bat.

  Up at bat, if you’re trying to lose, you can swing and miss a ball on purpose, you can stand there and take a called strike you should’ve tried to hit, and you can miss a sign from your third base coach and say you’re sorry about that. But I ain’t ever seen a game won or lost yet because of one missed sign, no matter how much hell a manager will raise with you about it.

  If you’re trying to lose a game, the ways you can do it belong mainly to the time your team is in the field. A man who wants to cheat is good at making things up. He gets practice thinking, so he gets good at that, like anything else you do over and over.

  In the field, to find ways to lose, you can always start with the most simple thing. Baseball is about hitting, throwing, and catching a hard little ball. It’s easy to throw it so the man who’s supposed to catch it can’t. It’s easy to drop the ball another man throws to you. It’s easy to miss catching a ball hit so hard it gets to you like a bolt of lightning. It’s easy to look in the wrong direction and miss a runner taking off to steal a base.

  That’s fielding hit balls I just talked about. What about the pitcher, the man with the job of getting that ball by another one with a bat in his hand? It’s easier for him than it is for any player in all the other positions on the diamond. All a pitcher has to do is throw balls and not strikes. A pitcher can put a man on base that don’t belong there anytime he wants to.

  Any pitcher at any point in a game can lose his mind and his stuff, and there ain’t no predicting when it will happen and no way to cure it. A pitcher who wants to cheat so his team will lose can do that whenever he wants to. Groove a fastball with nothing on it to a strong batter, and you’ll see what he does with that pitch most times. Hit a batter and put him on base if it comes to needing that. Things will go bad for a pitcher’s who’s gone crazy, and they will do that fast.

  When you come to believe somebody on your team is considering ways to lose and that gets mixed into the game, the stuff you’re called upon to notice and take account of will multiply.

  So it came to me late in the season in a game the Rice Birds were playing against New Iberia that I was about to have a lot more to think about when I pitched than I did ordinarily. That was enough for me to handle whenever I was on the mound, just trying to get the other ones out, even with a weak bunch like New Iberia was that year.

  In the third inning, we’d already got ahead by three runs, and I could tell I had my good stuff that day. It was going to be a quick one to play, it’d put us even with Opelousas in standings if we won it. It would mean money in the pocket. The Alexandria Aces wouldn’t be able to catch us. You could tell all the Rice Birds was happy, joking in the dugout, hoorawing each other and feeling loose. Nobody was saying much to me, but now and then G.D. Squires and Tubby Dean would look over at me to let me know they saw how good the pitching was going.

  I don’t remember much else about that game with New Iberia. Like I said, they was a weak bunch of hitters, and the Rice Birds was playing like baseball is supposed to be played, so it went by quick and we were all back in the clubhouse taking off our uniforms pretty soon after then. Mike Gonzales was dancing around the room, talking loud and making jokes with whoever would listen to him, Cajun music was coming out of somebody’s radio, and four or five folks was milling around among us. One of them was Tommy Grenier talking to players about what was going on and what we expected to happen in the last few stands of the season, writing in his little notebook so he could fix up his story for the newspaper, and two others of the ones visiting was Sal Florio and Soapy Tonton.

  Sal was moving from one player to the next, slapping them on the back and shaking hands, and I expected he’d be wanting to say hello to me before long. Soapy wasn’t saying nothing to nobody, that fedora on his head, and it was mostly business as usual.

  Everybody was feeling good, steam was coming out of the shower room where some folks were still washing up, Dutch Bernson was hoorawing Dynamite Dunn, and I was getting dressed so I could leave and get something to eat.

  “Gemar,” Mike Gonzales said to me, “You did some good pitching today. You ain’t fixing to go back home to Miz Doucette’s house and eat that old cold supper, are you?”

  “It’s paid for,” I said. “And I want to get my money’s worth, I reckon. So yeah, I’ll be walking up Serenity Street here in a minute or two.”

  “You don’t have to settle for that old French cooking tonight. Let me buy you a steak at Venable’s. Come on, let’s go.”

  “How you going to pay for a meal of beefsteak at Venable’s? You been saying you ain’t got a dime to spare. I thought you was broke.”

  “I was broke,” Mike said. “Broke as the Ten Commandments, but I ain’t broke no more. Come on go with us. Dynamite’s done took me up on the offer.”

  “Did you find some money on the sidewalk or rob a bank or something?”

  “Uhn-uh. I made me some extra money, and I earned every cent of it.”

  “Tell me how you did that,” I said. “Did you get you a job on the side?” Some of the Rice Bird players did work now and then other than playing baseball, especially the ones that had a wife and kids to support. They wasn’t supposed to work nowhere else during the season, and the contract all of us signed said that. But some would find ways to make a little money on the side. I reckoned they had to, even though they could get fired. But getting fired depended on how good you was playing baseball, naturally. The weaker you were as a player the more you lived by the rules and the paper you signed. The higher your batting average or the games you won if you pitched, the less you had to worry. That was the way it worked back then.

  “Didn’t you see me batting today?” Mike said. “Cast your mind back and see can you figure out what I’m talking about.”

  “You got one single, didn’t you? I don’t remember nothin
g else but outs you made.”

  “I ain’t talking about singles and grounding out,” Mike said, leaning over to speak close to my ear. “I’m talking about knocking foul balls.”

  “You did hit a bunch of them at one at-bat,” I said. “But it didn’t do you no good. Porky Sanders kept throwing you strikes until you got put out at first. He never walked you, and you didn’t hit him that time up.”

  “No, I didn’t do no good that way, but I did myself a whole lot of good by hitting all them fouls in a row like that.”

  “That don’t make sense to me. Not a lick.”

  “See if this makes sense,” Mike said, reaching into his pants pocket and drawing out some bills to show me. They wasn’t singles. “Is this thirty-five dollars sense enough for you, pitcher?”

  Mike stuck the money back in his pocket and walked off laughing to talk to somebody else, and it wasn’t until a couple of hours later sitting in Venable’s Restaurant on the main street in Rayne that I learned how hitting foul balls made him enough dollars to be able to buy steak dinners and beer and whiskey for the three of us.

  “See,” Mike said, taking a swig out of his glass of beer, which wasn’t Jax but a premium brand, “Mr. Florio seen me bat in one of them games against Lake Charles. It was Glen Mouton pitching, and y’all know how cute he is when he’s throwing them drops and curves and knuckle balls up there at you. He will wear you out waiting for them to get there.”

  “Most of them’s strikes, too,” Dynamite Dunn said. “And he don’t throw a fastball that’ll hurt to catch it. He ain’t like some cold bastards who don’t give a damn about damaging their catcher’s hands. Ain’t that right, Gemar?”

  “Some catchers ain’t afraid to catch a well-thrown pitch,” I said. “They just put their heads down and catch what’s throwed them, and they don’t whine about it.”

  “Listen to what I’m saying, y’all,” Mike said. “What Mouton throws is easy to get the bat on, but the damn ball won’t go anywhere most of the time you hit it.”

  “It won’t for a banjo hitter, no,” Dynamite said. “Though I have noticed some batters drive them little piss ant curves and drops to the wall and over it. I have seen them very pitches get the literal hell knocked out of them. Ain’t that right, Gemar?” I nodded and Mike kept on talking.

  “So I just kept fouling them balls off that Mouton was throwing me, figuring I’d wait him out until he walked me. And I did, but I had to hit eight or nine fouls before I got that fourth ball throwed me so I could go to first free. Later on there in the clubhouse, Sal Florio asked me how many foul balls I could hit in a row, and I said if it was against a control pitcher who didn’t have a big fastball, I reckoned I could hit fifteen or twenty before I got too tired and missed.”

  “Sal gave you money for hitting foul balls?” I said.

  “No, not directly. No. He laid a hundred dollar bet with Bobo Chenier over in Crowley that I could hit ten fouls in a row, and y’all saw me hit twelve off of Porky Sanders. So Sal won the bet and paid me part of the money and added a bonus for me hitting two more than ten. Eat up, gentlemen, and drink your beer and whiskey. Y’all owe it to foul balls.”

  “I will declare you the foul ball king, Mr. Gonzales,” Dynamite Dunn said. “But I wouldn’t be telling this story around too much.”

  “Why not? I didn’t hurt nothing by hitting foul balls. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Some folks would say that sounds a little like gambling, Mike. And they would say a player who gets paid money by Sal Florio for doing something on the baseball field to win a bet is consorting with a known gambler.”

  “It ain’t against the law to gamble in Louisiana,” Mike said. “Hell, it’s slot machines and crap tables everywhere you look.”

  “If you judge whether something’s against the law in Louisiana by the fact you can witness it being done, my friend,” Dynamite said, “it would be legal to screw a whore on the steps of the capitol building in Baton Rouge.”

  “Did you really see that get done?” Mike said. “On them big white steps?”

  “See it done, hell, I was the one that did it,” Dynamite said. “But it wasn’t my fault, and I’m sorry it happened. I’ll never do it again. I swear.”

  “I believe you, Dynamite,” I told him. “You’re my catcher, and you wouldn’t lie.”

  “I will give you credit for one thing good you did, Mike,” Dynamite said. “You got Gemar here out of that old lady’s house for at least one night. He will hang around there and read the Bible and I don’t know what all. Thinks them Indian thoughts. Getting him out on the street is an accomplishment.”

  “Another good thing Mike done,” I said. “He broke Bobo Chenier from betting on people hitting foul balls, I do believe.”

  “He’ll have to find something else to do,” Dynamite said. “And I’ll lay a bet with anybody that’ll take it. It’s this. Bobo Chenier and Sal Florio will be betting on some other things involving the Rayne Rice Birds in what’s left of this season. That is a sure bet I ain’t going to lose.”

  “I sure hope they do,” Mike Gonzales said. “I’m getting to where I’m liking the gambling life.”

  29

  Tommy Grenier started showing up after every game the Rice Birds played from then on whether we was home or on the road. What was happening with the Rice Birds was the best copy around, he told us, and finally right before we left for a trip to Monroe to play our last two games of the season with them, Tommy came in hot and excited. He’d been assigned by the New Orleans Picayune to write a story for the sports page on what Tommy called the battle for the Evangeline League playoffs. “Chief Batiste,” he said to me, “does it prey on your mind to realize that if the Rice Birds win these next two games with Monroe that it means it’s impossible for Alexandria to catch you?”

  “No, I hadn’t thought about that,” I said. “I don’t even know that’s a fact.”

  “It is that,” he said. “The Rice Birds win those two from the Zephyrs it means it’ll be Opelousas and Rayne in the playoffs for the championship. How’s that hit you, Chief?”

  “That’s real good, I reckon,” I said, “to know that. But I don’t believe we going to let down in any of the games we got left to play. I expect we’ll win them last two, even if we don’t need to.”

  “Damn, I got to get that quote down,” Tommy Grenier said. “I don’t believe I’m going to have to change a thing about the way you said that.”

  “Could be only one fly in the ointment,” he went on to say. “If Rayne does end up losing the two games with the Zephyrs, that’ll mean y’all will have to play one extra game with Alexandria to see who gets to play Opelousas in the playoffs. That’s pressure, right?”

  “I reckon it could be.”

  “Do you think the Rice Birds will beat the Zephyrs up there in Monroe on their home field, Chief?”

  “I always think we’ll win,” I said. “I like to let my mind dwell on winning.”

  “Another damn fine quote. Got another thing or two to say to me, Chief?”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say that might interest, so he went off in a little while to find somebody else.

  When we left the next day for Monroe, that was going to be the last long road trip we’d be taking that season. Monroe is way up in the north part of Louisiana, and back then it took a long time to get there, roads being what they was in the thirties. Dynamite Dunn had explained to me that Governor or Senator Huey Long was building new highways and bridges all over Louisiana, but I guess he hadn’t got the ones finished yet between Acadia Parish and the parish up north where Monroe is. The road was two narrow lanes, naturally, and it was so full of curves once you got out of that flat country in South Louisiana that it slowed every car and truck down.

  I could see the country change as we went north, the rice fields at first and water
everywhere you looked. As we moved on, the country started changing to stands of scrub pine and little farms. By the time we got two or three hours out of Rayne, what I was seeing put me in mind of East Texas more than it did of what I’d got used to in South Louisiana. Even the mailboxes on the sides of the road was different, and going as slow as the bus was moving, you could read the names painted on them.

  After a good long while, getting on toward time to get something to eat, the driver pulled the toad mobile off the road in a little town called Kindry, and stopped in a big gravel lot in front of a café with the word EATS painted on a sign hanging off the porch. The building hadn’t never been painted, like a lot of the ones I was used to seeing back in Coushatta County, its boards the color they turn when the sun and rain’s had a long time to work on them.

  “How did you find this one, Dutch?” G.D. Squires hollered out. “I bet it took a while to locate such a place for fine dining.”

  “I imagine Dutch has got a financial interest in this establishment,” Dynamite Dunn said. “I expect some kind of a kickback is about to kick back in a minute or two here.”

  “I have ate here before, boys,” Dutch said. “I will tell you that, and they serve up a real nice plate lunch.”

  “How long can a man hold it down?” somebody else said.

  We all unloaded, and in a little while, we’d filled up several tables inside the place called EATS. A couple of fellows wearing overalls were up at the counter eating, and scattered around at some other tables was a few more folks looking into their plates. The waitress and a man from behind the counter came around to talk to Dutch, and you could tell that they’d already been told we was coming there sometime that day to eat.

  I’d sat down at a table with Mike Gonzales, and a couple of other fellows came up and joined us. We were all looking up at a blackboard above the counter, and Dutch stood up and called out for us to listen to him. “Gentlemen,” he said. “We already made special arrangements about what you’ll be eating today, so there ain’t no use looking at the menu and thinking you’re going to order off that. We going to have a real good plate lunch, and everybody’s getting the same thing. So just sit back and relax, and Mr. Arlis Pritchard and his girls will be bringing your plates to you just as quick as they can. You boys are going to enjoy this meal. I flat guarantee you.”