Dirty Rice

by Gerald Duff

  “He looks like he just got the news his mama’s in a dying state and that his dog got run over by a gasoline truck. He just heard his house is caught fire and his old lady’s drunk in the middle of the day in a bar in Baton Rouge,” I said. “Yeah, he looks to me like he’s ready to pitch a game of baseball.”

  “What if things don’t go right in this last one?” Dynamite said, after grinning a little bit about I’d said about Hookey’s appearance. “Will it matter that much? We had a real good season, the Rice Birds did. Best we had so far. And for you, it couldn’t be no damn better. Now, could it? If the Rice Birds win or lose, you’re in the driver’s seat. Just relax and take it easy, come what may. That’s all you got to do. I don’t think we got much to lose, one way or the other. It don’t make that much difference now, I reckon, if we lose this last one or win it.”

  “Let me put it to you like this, catcher,” I said. “I want to win this last one, and it don’t make a bit of difference what happened in any game before this one with the Opelousas Indians today. Baseball don’t give a damn what you did in your last at-bat or how good your last curve ball broke if you’re the pitcher, or where your bunch ranks in the standings. Now is all baseball’s studying. Right now, and even now don’t last. It’s gone before you can say it’s here.”

  “You talk like baseball is something alive, Gemar,” Dynamite said. “Like it’s as real as these shin guards and chest protector I put on every day. It ain’t nothing like that. It ain’t here. What you’re calling baseball don’t even exist. It can’t think.”

  “Baseball don’t think,” I said. “It does better than that. It knows. You don’t have to think to know. The more you think about a thing, the less you know about it. Everything jumps around and won’t stay still when you have to think about it.”

  “God a mighty, you pitchers are crazier than shit. No wonder my nerves is gone, having to deal on a regular basis with you bunch of insane naturals. Let me tell you one more thing, hoss. All pitchers as a breed is crazy, but there ain’t nobody crazier than a pitcher who’s an Indian on top of that. That don’t mean I don’t like you fine, understand. I’m just stating a fact.”

  “All right. That’s fine with me. I don’t want you to like me. I just want you not to let no more balls I pitch get by you. Get down in the dirt and dig them out.”

  “I got to go see about Hookey,” Dynamite said. “He’s my next patient in need of treatment.”

  “Go ahead, catcher,” I said. “I know he’s waiting on you, but let me tell you one more word I learned the meaning of a day or two ago. It’s one I might have read or heard somebody say once, but I never paid no mind to it before, like I wouldn’t to the name for an engine part on a brand new automobile or what WPA means.”

  “What word’s that? It sounds interesting.”

  “It’s nuptials,” I said. “That is the word I learned. That’s the one I got by heart now and know what it means down to the bone.”

  “I told you, didn’t I, about that woman. I said not to let yourself get dragged into anything having to do with her, tempting as it is. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “You did, Dynamite,” I said. “But you know pitchers. They will not listen to a thing a catcher says to them.”

  “To my sorrow I know that. It’s my burden, and that’s the cross I got to bear. Let me go talk now to this next son-of-a-bitch that ain’t going to pay mind to a single word I say.”

  It didn’t make any difference to Hookey Irwin what that last thing was that his catcher told him before the umpire hollered play ball and got things going, but I reckon he made out like he was listening well enough to get Dynamite Dunn willing to stop talking, go out on the diamond, and crouch down behind the plate set and ready. He did that, and the game kicked off fine. Hookey had his stuff for a good long while before things began to show some signs of unraveling.

  I was in right field for that last game instead of center, because Dutch said he had a feeling it was going to be more balls hit in that direction than usual. I didn’t bother to ask him why he felt that way. Sometimes a hunch will pay off, even for a baseball manager, and it will look like his master plan was thought through and was the only one that could’ve been right. I believe in signs and wonders as much as the next man on a baseball team, and I know it’s no way to prove a one of them. So I didn’t question Dutch, and he didn’t have to convince himself he had a reason for putting me in right field.

  I liked playing center field more than right, since you’re likely to get more chances for action in that position, but there’s advantages for the man in right, too. The main one is you can see better from that angle what the pitcher is doing, him being side on to you rather than in front with his back turned your direction, and you can tell better when he’s staying strong and when he starts to flagging. A pitcher’s posture is the tip off, the way he holds himself, both in his motion and in between pitches. Hookey stayed strong well up into the sixth inning, bending and striding like he ought to, and he didn’t start to lose velocity on his fastball until the seventh. His curve was still biting the air pretty good even then, though, and he started going to that and to a change-up and a drop, what they call now a cut fastball or sometimes a slider. I don’t buy all them new extra names they give pitches these days, since a man throwing a ball now ain’t that different from a man doing the same thing in 1935.

  Pitching don’t depend on finding new ways to throw a ball. If it did, the new ways would’ve been figured out a long time ago. The back and legs and arms of a human being will not change over the years, except to weaken and stiffen up. Show me a new pitch, and I’ll tell you we had it back then and let you know what we called it in the Evangeline League days. Names for pitches get changed, but the pitches don’t. The only thing that can change in baseball is the equipment.

  I had a few chances in right that day, and I handled them like the game of baseball expected me to do, right by the book. What I was interested in mainly out in the field, other than watching Hookey to see if he was showing signs of breaking down, wasn’t the balls hit in my direction, though. You either get to them or you don’t, and you throw to the right base when a fair ball lands in your area or you don’t, and you guard that right field line like you supposed to or you don’t. There ain’t a lot to study on or make thoughtful decisions about. Your body takes care of right field, not your mind.

  No, what I was watching was the infield play on grounders and throws to the bases, and in particular, I was interested in what Mike Gonzales was going to do at shortstop. Up to that time late in the game when Hookey Irwin started showing signs of flagging a little, Mike was doing what he was supposed to in the field. Handling grounders, rollers and hard-hit shots with clean pick-ups, putting the ball over to first with zip on it, and in the fourth, even starting a double play to end the inning. He was acting like a shortstop interested in keeping that other bunch from being safe. I was breathing a little easier by then, thinking maybe he had got his mind right.

  The trouble came in the eighth inning. That’s when Buzzard flew up from off that dead limb where he was resting. Buzzard never hurries it when he starts to work, but when he shows that he’s ready to leave where he’s been roosting high up and sail off to land somewhere low down, you can depend on Buzzard knowing the time is ripe. He has got the best nose of all the creatures, and it will not fail him when he’s waiting for something to die. He smells the first sign of rot long before any man can do that, and Buzzard knows when a living thing is fixing to quit the world.

  The Rice Birds had been ahead up to then, all the way from the fourth inning when we’d got three men safe at home. I drove two of them in, and Phil Pellicore fixed it for the other one to come home safe. The Opelousas bunch got two runs later on, both in the seventh, when Hookey gave up a home run to the first man up and then one more run after a walk and a couple of singles. We was still all right, thou
gh, going into the eighth, if we’d hold on, but I could hear the sound of wings rustling deep inside my head, out there in right field by myself, as I watched Hookey pitching real careful to the men he was facing. I was afraid what that sound might be, since I knew I was the only one hearing it.

  Hookey had walked a man, then struck one out. The next one singled to left and that put him and the runner on first and second. Then came a fly ball deep to me in right, which I caught for the out and threw to second. The runner tagged up, they sent him, and he beat the cut-off man’s throw to third. So there we was set for the next man to come to bat. If Hookey Irwin got him out, that man at the plate, we was still ahead and wouldn’t have to score in the bottom of the eighth. We could go into the last inning, and we could finish the Indians off without having to bat and score again.

  The batter was the pitcher for Opelousas, and he had the disease that runs in most of the family playing that position, particularly with white men. He couldn’t hit the ball, he wasn’t interested in seeing that done, and like the rest of the ones with that sickness, he hated hitters so much he didn’t want no part of doing what they did. It was revolting to him.

  G.D. Squires gave out a little yelp in center field, and I looked over at him while Hookey stood up on the mound messing with his glove and rubbing on the resin bag. “This ought to do it, Gemar. Pitcher up,” G.D. said. “Talk about luck.”

  I bobbed my head at him, but I could still hear that rustling sound deep inside me, and I didn’t take any comfort from seeing who was at bat. Buzzard was shifting his wings, getting ready to flop off that limb and see what was making that stink rise up. What’s going to be my dinner, Buzzard was wondering. Where is that good smell of rotten meat coming from?

  That stink was coming from what happened when Hookey put a pretty good fastball just off the plate to the right-handed batter, the Opelousas pitcher ready to swing at the first three balls offered up, like that whole breed always is, just trying to get it over with and die as soon as possible. He was thinking like that all that bunch does. Rip that bandage off quick, no matter if it ain’t healed up. Let the blood come, and let me make my out, throw this club down, and get back up on the mound where I got my chance to hurt these bastards.

  That pitcher at bat got a piece of the ball, though, with his weak little swing, and it bounced between second and third, right toward the shortstop, ready with his glove down to scoop it up and take the easy out at first. Mike Gonzales, I’m talking about, Mike Gonzales, who proceeded to let the ball roll between his legs and just under his glove and about fifteen feet out onto the grass.

  The runner scored from third, Buzzard flew up off his dead branch in the sycamore tree and started his float toward where the stink was strongest, and the score was tied up. Hookey struck out the next man up, but I couldn’t hear the ball pop in the catcher’s mitt or the crowd in Addison Stadium yelling over the sound of Buzzard’s wings creaking in my head. I caught a good whiff of what Buzzard was headed for, though, strong enough in my nostils to make me rub at my nose.

  When I got to the dugout, Mike Gonzales was already there, face to face with Hookey Irwin, explaining how the ball died just as it took its last bounce toward him, and how it was supposed to hop into his glove, not scoot underneath it where it made him miss picking it up. “I had that damn little weak grounder timed just right,” Mike said. “If it had been hit better I would ate it up. What went wrong was it was hit so feeble. Damn that son-of-a-bitch.”

  Hookey wasn’t saying anything back to Mike. He gave him one look, then sat down on the bench in the dugout by himself, as far away from everybody else as he could get. Like all pitchers, he didn’t want a fielder who’d messed things up to say he was sorry about an error, or explain how it wasn’t his fault he’d ruined somebody else’s good job of work. A pitcher never wants excuse or justification. All he wants is for some one of the eight other men on the field to catch every ball of his that’s been hit by a goddamn batter trying to take the bread out of his mouth. It ain’t possible for a reasonable man to want that perfection, but that’s the last thing you can accuse a man in the middle of pitching a game of baseball of being. Reasonable.

  We did score a run in the bottom of the eighth, though, and when that happened, I told myself I ought to look up to see if Buzzard was still flying around looking for his dinner. I knew he wouldn’t be visible to the eye, not even to me there in that Louisiana country so far from the Nation, but I figured it couldn’t do no harm to fool my mind a little. When you’re playing a game of baseball, you do not want to consider what’s going on to be just what it looks like on the face of it. If you do that, all baseball comes down to is a wooden club, a hard leather ball, funny looking clothes, and men running from one bag fastened to the ground to another one. Why would you want to play something that simple?

  It is folks who see it to be just that way. I’ve encountered lots of them over the years, even some of them players who claim they never get worked up playing baseball because that’s that’s all the game is. Leather, cloth, wood, dirt. I used to let that bother me some and want to argue the point. I learned better, finally. You can’t talk to a dead man and have him answer you back. But maybe a dead man can hear you, even if he can’t talk back. And maybe Buzzard was circling that day of the last game of the Evangeline League playoff, looking for the stink that would lead him to what he wanted to eat. A dead man can’t answer a living question, and Buzzard can’t be seen gliding in circles while he waits for a game of baseball to turn to rotten meat. That don’t mean Buzzard ain’t there, if you have the eyes to see and the nose to smell.

  After we scored in the bottom of the eighth, the ninth inning started with us ahead one run, and Hookey needing only to get three outs without the Indians getting a man home. If he did that, the Rice Birds would be the champions of the Evangeline League. He was bearing down, and you could tell that by the way he didn’t seem to be noticing how he was standing on the mound and working off of it.

  When the first batter stepped up and knocked his bat on home plate, to give the signal he’d rather be using it on the pitcher’s head but would settle for hitting the ball, Hookey started him off with an outside pitch the batter laid off on. Nothing wrong with that, I told myself. Just seeing if he’ll bite at a bad pitch. That’s all Hookey’s doing. He meant that to test the batter with a first nibble.

  Next one was inside, though, and the umpire called it a ball, which it was, but the Rayne fans in the crowd didn’t want to believe it and let the man who’d misjudged it know what they thought of his eyesight. Two strikes by Hookey quieted down that kind of hollering and started up a different kind of noise when the count moved to two and two. I heard a wing creak about then, though, somewhere deep in my head as Buzzard shifted on that dead limb in that invisible sycamore tree where he was perching, and I wasn’t really surprised when the next two pitches Hookey laid up there were balls and the batter got to trot down to first base free, easy, and in no hurry.

  If it hadn’t been a bright sunny day, I would have been sure a noise I heard just then was thunder way over the horizon somewhere down in the river bottom, but it couldn’t have been that. Just people mumbling in the stands at Addison Stadium, shifting in their seats, making racket moving their feet around and drawing in on themselves with their eyes all fixed tight on the diamond. There wasn’t no river bottom, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. If it was a storm coming on, it’d be so far off it wouldn’t have nothing to do with where all of us were, and the worst we’d see would be heat lightning, maybe, a sprinkle or two of water, and then the bad weather would move on off to the west where the sun was headed.

  But the next two men Hookey faced didn’t have to swing a bat, didn’t have to step out of the box to slow things down to get their minds right after being fooled into striking at the ball and missing, didn’t have to pick up a handful of dirt to rub on their hands and give them time to look down to t
he third base coach throwing signs like a policeman in heavy traffic downtown in a big city like Baton Rouge, didn’t have to look back at the umpire to let him know he’d made a punk call when he made a strike sign, didn’t have to draw in a deep breath and let it out slow to make their reflexes do like they’re supposed to, didn’t have to do none of the things a batter in trouble gets driven to try to ease his suffering—no, not a particle of the fidgeting and excuse making a man at-bat will throw himself into was needful—and the reason why was that Hookey Irwin proceeded to throw eight straight balls by the two Opelousas Indians at the plate in the top of the ninth, with the Rayne Rice Birds one run ahead in the last game of the Evangeline League playoff series.

  Dutch Bernson came out of the dugout after the third man went to first, loading the bases with nobody out, and stepped across the white line onto the diamond. Dynamite Dunn was already on the mound talking to Hookey, and the infielders had all pulled their gloves off and were standing near the bags looking down at the skinned-off ground like they were hunting for pebbles to pick up and stick in their pockets. You never can tell what a small rock will cause a ground ball to do, whether it’s hard-hit or just a roller. You learn to hate little things that can get in your way like that, and you try to get rid of them. You got to expect the worse to happen in a baseball game all the time, and you get as nervous as a housewife about keeping things neat and picked up and smoothed out.

  “Kiss my ass,” G.D. Squires said to me, coming over from center field and speaking low to be heard under the sound of all the hooting and hollering coming from the Opelousas bunch in the stands and the groaning and cussing coming from the Rayne folks. “I never seen Hookey blow up like that before. Ain’t this a hell of a time for him to do it?”

  “It happened real slow, and then it happened real quick,” I said. “Just like Buzzard taking off from a dead snag the minute he smells it.”