Field of Fantasies

by Rick Wilber

  “Well, goddamn,” Zloto said, “I’ve had enough talk. I want to see Alvarado; whether he wants to do it is up to him.”

  “That,” Castro said, “is typical bourgeois thinking. You would alienate the man from his fellows, let him think that his decision is personal and lonely, that it represents only the whims of an Alvarado and does not speak for the larger aspirations of all Cubans, and all exploited peoples. The wants of an Alvarado are the wants of the people. He is not a Richard Nixon to hide out in Camp David surrounded by bodyguards while generals all over the world are ready to press the buttons of annihilation.”

  “No more bullshit, I want to see Alvarado.”

  Estelle said, “He is in Oriente Province on maneuvers with the army. He will be gone for . . . for how long, Fidel?”

  “Achilles Alvarado’s unit is scheduled for six months in Oriente. I could bring him back to see you, Zloto, but we don’t operate that way. A man’s duty to his country comes before all else.”

  “Then I’m going up to see him and deliver the commissioner’s letter. I don’t trust anybody else around here to do it for me.”

  “We’ll all go,” Fidel said. “In Cuba Libre, no man goes it alone.”

  II: On Maneuvers in Oriente Province

  The Ninth Infantry Unit of the Cuban Army is on spring maneuvers. Oriente is lush and hilly. There are villages every few miles in which happy farmers drink dark beer brewed with local hops. The Ninth Army bivouacs all over the province and assembles each morning at six a.m. to the sound of the bugle. The soldiers eat a leisurely breakfast and plan the next day’s march. By two p.m., they are set up somewhere and ready for an afternoon of recreation. Colonel Alvarado is the only member of the Ninth Infantry with major-league experience, but there are a few older men who have played professional baseball in the minor leagues. Because there is no adequate protective equipment, army regulations prohibit hardball, but the Ninth Infantry plays fast-pitch softball, which is almost as grueling.

  When Fidel, Zloto, and Estelle drive up to the Ninth Army’s makeshift diamond, it is the seventh inning of a four-four game between the Reds and Whites. A former pitcher from Iowa City in the Three I League is on the mound for the Reds. Colonel Alvarado, without face guard or chest protector, is the umpire behind the plate. His head, as in the old days, seems extremely vulnerable as it bobs behind the waving bat just inches from the arc of a powerful swing. He counts on luck and fast reflexes to save him from foul tips that could crush his Adam’s apple.

  When the jeep pulls up, Reds and Whites come to immediate attention, then raise their caps in an “Ole” for Fidel.

  “These are liberated men, Zloto. The army does not own their lives. When their duties are completed they can do as they wish. We have no bedchecks, no passes, nobody is AWOL. If a man has a reason to leave, he tells his officer and he leaves. With us, it is an honor to be a soldier.”

  When Zloto spots Alvarado behind the plate he runs toward him and hugs his old friend. He rubs Alvarado’s woolly black head with his oversize hands. Estelle is next to embrace her husband, a short businesslike kiss, and then Fidel embraces the umpire as enthusiastically as Zloto did. An army photographer catches the look of the umpire surprised by embraces from an old friend, a wife, and a Prime Minister in the seventh inning of a close game.

  “Men of the Revolution.” Fidel has advanced to the pitcher’s mound, the highest ground. The congregated Reds and Whites gather around the makeshift infield. “Men of the Revolution, we are gathered here to test the resolve of your umpire, Colonel Alvarado. The Revolution is tested in many ways. This time it is the usual thing, the capitalist lure of money. Yet it is no simple issue. It is money that rightfully belongs to Colonel Alvarado, but they would degrade him by forcing him to claim it. To come there so that the capitalist press can say, 'Look what the Revolution has done to one of the stars of the fifties. Look at his stooped, arthritic back, his gnarled hands, from years in the cane fields.’ They never cared about his inadequate English when they used him, but now they will laugh at his accent and his paltry vocabulary. When they ask him about Cuba, he will stumble and they will deride us all with the smiles of their golden teeth.

  “The commissioner of baseball has sent us this behemoth, the Polish-American veteran of eleven campaigns in the American League, Victor Zloto, who some of you may remember as Rookie of the Year in 1945. This Zloto is not an evil man, he is only a capitalist tool. They use his friendship for the colonel as a bait. Zloto speaks for free enterprise. He has two cars, a boat, and his own home. His province is represented by their hero of the right, Barry Coldwater, who wanted to bomb Hanoi to pieces. Zloto wants the colonel to come back, to go through the necessary charade to claim his rightful pension, and then return to us if he wishes. Mrs. Alvarado shares this view. I say no Cuban man should become a pawn for even one hour.”

  “What does the colonel say?” someone yells from the infield. “Does the colonel want to go back?”

  The umpire is standing behind Castro. He is holding his wife’s hand while Zloto’s long arm encircles both of them. Castro turns to his colonel. “What do you say, Achilles Alvarado?”

  Zloto says, “It’s twelve grand a year, Archie, and all you have to do is show up just once. If you want to stay, you can. I know you don’t like being a two-bit umpire and colonel down here. I know you don’t give a shit about revolutions and things like that.”

  Castro says, “The colonel is thinking about his long career with the Chisox, Bosox, Tribe, and Birds. He is thinking about his four fractured skulls. He justifiably wants that pension. And I, his Prime Minister and his friend, I want him to have that pension, too. Believe me, soldiers, I want this long-suffering victim of exploitation to recover a small part of what they owe to him and to all victims of racism and oppression.”

  Colonel Alvarado grips tightly his wife’s small hand. He looks down and kicks up clouds of dust with his army boots. He is silent. Zloto says, “It’s not fair to do this, Castro. You damn well know it. You get him up here in front of the army and make a speech so it will look like he’s a traitor if he puts in his pension claim. You staged all this because you are afraid that in a fair choice Archie would listen to reason just like Estelle did. You can bet that I’m going to tell the commissioner how you put Archie on the spot out here. I’m going to tell him that Archie is a softball umpire. This is worse than Joe Louis being a wrestling referee.”

  “Think fast, Yankee,” one of the ballplayers yells as he lobs a softball at Zloto’s perspiring face. The big first baseman’s hand closes over the ball as if it were a large mushroom. He tosses it to Castro. “I wish we could play it out, Fidel, just you and I, like a world series or a one-on-one basketball game. I wish all political stuff could work out like baseball, with everybody where they belong at the end of the season and only one champion of the world.”

  “Of course, you would like that, Zloto, so long as you Yankee capitalists were the champions.”

  “The best team would win. If you have the material and the management, you win; it’s that simple.”

  “Not as simple as you are, Zloto. But why should we stand here and argue political philosophy? We are interrupting a game, no? You have accused Fidel of not giving Alvarado a fair opportunity. I will do this with you, Zloto, if Achilles agrees, I will do this. Fidel will pitch to you. If you get a clean hit, you can take Alvarado back on the first plane. If not, Alvarado stays. It will be more than fair. This gives you a great advantage. A former big leaguer against an out-of-shape Prime Minister. My best pitch should be cake for you. You can go back and tell the commissioner that you got a hit off Castro. Barry Goldwater will kiss your fingertips for that.”

  Zloto smiles. “You’re on, Castro, if it’s okay with Archie and Estelle.” Colonel Alvarado still eyes the soft dirt; he shrugs his shoulders. Castro says, “Do you think this is a just experience for you, Achilles Alvarado? This is like a medieval tournament, with you as the prize. This smacks of capitalism. But thi
s once, Fidel will do it if you agree that your fate shall be so decided.”

  “What’s all this about fate and justice,” Estelle says. She takes the ball from Castro. “Archie had eleven brothers and sisters and hardly a good meal until he came up to the Chisox. He cracked his wrist in an all-star game and that cost him maybe four or five years in the big leagues because the bones didn’t heal right. It’s a mean, impersonal world with everything always up for grabs. Alvarado knows it, and he accepts it. He is a religious man.” She throws the ball to her Prime Minister. “Get it over with.”

  The teams take their places, with Castro replacing the Three I League pitcher. Zloto removes his jacket, shirt, and necktie. He is six five and weighs over 250. His chest hairs are gray, but he swings three bats smoothly in a windmill motion as he loosens his muscles. Castro warms up with the catcher. The Prime Minister has a surprisingly good motion, more sidearm than underhand. The ball comes in and sinks to a right-handed batter like Zloto. Colonel Alvarado takes his place behind home plate, which is a large army canteen.

  “Achilles Alvarado,” says Castro, “you wish to be the umpire in this contest?”

  “Why not?” Zloto says. “It’s his pension, let him call the balls and strikes. If it’s a walk or an error, we’ll take it over. Otherwise, a hit I win, an out you win.”

  “Play ball!” the umpire says. Castro winds up twice, and his first pitch is so far outside that the catcher diving across the plate cannot even lay his glove on the ball. Fidel stamps his foot.

  “Ball one,” says the umpire.

  The infield is alive with chatter: “The old dark one, Fidel,” they are yelling. “Relax, pitcher, this ox is an easy out, he can’t see your stuff, there’s eight of us behind you, Fidel, let him hit.”

  Zloto grins at the Prime Minister. “Put it down the middle, Mr. Pink, I dare you.”

  Fidel winds and delivers. Zloto’s big hands swing the bat so fast that the catcher doesn’t have a chance to blink. He has connected and the ball soars a hundred feet over the head of the left fielder who watches with astonishment the descending arc of the power-driven ball.

  “Foul ball,” says the umpire, eyeing the stretched clothesline which ended far short of where Zloto’s fly ball dropped.

  The power hitter grins again. “When I straighten one out, Castro, I’m gonna hit it clear out of Cuba. I never played in a little country before.”

  Castro removes his green army cap and runs his stubby fingers through his hair. He turns his back to the batter and looks toward his outfield. With a tired motion he orders his center fielder to move toward left center, then he signals all three outfielders to move deeper, Estelle Alvarado stands in foul territory down the first-base line, almost in the spot of her complimentary box seat at the Chisox home games.

  Zloto is measuring the outside comer of the canteen with a calm, deliberate swing. He does not take his eyes off the pitcher. Castro winds and delivers another wild one, high and inside. Zloto leans away but the ball nicks his bat and dribbles into foul territory, where Estelle picks it up and throws it back to Castro.

  “One ball, two strikes,” says the umpire.

  “Lucky again, Castro,” the batter calls out, "but it only takes one, that’s all I need from you.”

  The Prime Minister and the aging Rookie of the Year eye one another across the sixty feet from mound to plate. Castro mbs the imagined gloss from the ball and pulls at his army socks. With the tip of a thin Cuban softball bat, Zloto knocks the dirt from the soles of his Florsheim shoes. The infielders have grown silent. Castro looks again at his outfield and behind it at the green and gentle hills of Oriente Province. He winds and delivers a low, fast ball.

  “Strike three,” says the umpire. Zloto keeps his bat cocked. Estelle Alvarado rushes to her husband. She is crying hysterically. Fidel runs in at top speed to embrace both Alvarados at home plate. Zloto drops the bat. “It was a fair call, Archie,” he says to the umpire. “I got caught looking.”

  “Like Uncle Sam,” Castro says as the soldiers stream in yelling, “Fidel, Fidel, the strike-out artist.” Castro waves his arms for silence.

  “Not Fidel, men, but Achilles Alvarado, a hero of the Cuban people. A light for the Third World.”

  “Third World for Alvarado. Third strike for Zloto,” an infielder shouts as the Ninth Army raises Fidel, Achilles, and Estelle to their shoulders in a joyful march down the first-base line. The Prime Minister, the umpire, and the lady gleam in the sun like captured weapons.

  Zloto has put on his shirt and tie. He looks now like a businessman, tired after a long day at a convention. Fidel is jubilant among his men. The umpire tips his cap to the army and calms his wife, still tearful atop the bobbing shoulders of the Cuban Ninth.

  “Alvarado,” Estelle says, “you honest ump, you Latin patriot, you veteran of many a clutch situation. Are you happy, you fractured skull?”

  “Actually,” Alvarado whispers in her ear, “the pitch was a little inside. But what the hell, it’s only a game.”

  Bruce McAllister taught literature and writing at the University of Redlands in Southern California for twenty-four years, and helped establish and direct the Creative Writing Program. He was the Edith R. White Distinguished Professor of Literature and Writing from 1990 to 1995. Known primarily for his short stories, McAllister has published several dozen short stories in a variety of mainstream and genre magazines and he has been a finalist for both the Nebula and Hugo awards. Here, as others in this collection have done, he takes a counterfactual lookat a Fidel Castro who in this story is a famous, if fading, baseball player, and one who must wrestle with his dreams in any of several ways as he talks with another Cuban star about life in America and life back home.

  The Southpaw

  Bruce McAllister

  Eventually New York Giants’ scout Alex Pompez got the authorisation from their front office to offer Castro a contract. After several days of deliberation with friends, family, and some of his professors, Castro turned down the offer. The Giants ’ officials were stunned. ‘No one had ever turned us down from Latin America before, ” recalled Pompez. “Castro said no, but in his very polite way. He was really a very nice kid. ...”

  —J. David Truby, Sports History, November 1988

  FIDEL STANDS ON THE pitcher’s mound, dazed. For an instant he doesn’t know where he is. It is a pitcher’s mound. It is a baseball diamond, and there is a woman—the woman he loves—out there in the stands with her beautiful blonde hair and her very American name waving to him, because she loves him, too. It is July. He is sure of this. It is ’51 or ’52. He cannot remember which. But the crowd is as big as ever and he can smell the leather of his glove, and he knows he is playing baseball—the way, as a child in the sugarcane fields of Oriente Province, he always dreamed he might.

  His fastball is a problem, but he throws one anyway, it breaks wide and the ump calls the ball. He throws a curve this time, a fine one, and it’s a strike—the third. He grins at Westrum, his catcher, his friend. The next batter’s up. Fidel feels an itching on his face and reaches up to scratch it. It feels like the beginning of a beard, but that can’t be. You keep a clean face in baseball. He tried to tell his father that, in Oriente, the last time he went home, but the old man, as always, had just argued.

  He delivers another curve—with great control—and smiles when the ball drops off the table and Sterling swings like an idiot. He muscles up on the pitch, blows the batter down with a heater, but Williams gets a double off the next slider, Miller clears the bases with a triple, and they bring Wilhelm in to relieve him at last. The final score is 9 to 4, just like the oddsmakers predicted, and that great centerfielder Mays still won’t look at him in the lockers.

  * * *

  Nancy—her name is Nancy—is waiting for him at the back entrance when he’s in his street clothes again, the flowered shirt and the white ducks he likes best, and she looks wonderful. She’s chewing gum, which drives him crazy, but her skin is like a dream—like
moonlight on the Mulano—and he kisses her hard, feeling her tongue between his lips. When they pull away she says: “I really like the way you walked that Negro in the fifth.”

  He smiles at her. He loves her so much it hurts. She doesn’t know a damn thing about the game and nothing about Cuba, but she’s doing her best and she loves him, too. “I do it for you, chica" he tells her. “I always do it for you.”

  That night he dreams he’s in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra, at a place called La Playa. He has no idea why he’s here. He’s never dreamt this dream before. He’s lying on the ground with a rifle in his hand. He’s wearing the fatigues a soldier wears, and doesn’t understand why—who the two men lying beside him are, what it means. The clothes he’s wearing are rough. His face itches like hell.

  When he wakes, she is beside him. The sheet has fallen away from her back, which is to him, and her ass—which is so beautiful, which any man would find beautiful—is there for him and him alone to see. How can anything be more real than this? How can I be dreaming of such things? He can hear a song fading but does not know it. There is a bay—a bay with naval ships—and the song is fading away.

  Guantanamera ... the voice was singing.

  Yo say un hombre sincero, it sang.

  I am a truthful man.

  Why, Fidel wonders, was it singing this?

  * * *

  After the game with the Cardinals on Saturday, when he pitches six innings before they bring Wilhelm in to relieve him and end up a little better than the oddsmakers had it, a kid comes up to him and wants his autograph. The kid is dark, like the children he played with on the finca his father owns—the ones that worked with their families during the cane harvest and sat beside him in the country school at Marcana between harvests. He knows this boy is Cuban, too.