The Essential W. P. Kinsella

by W. P. Kinsella

  “How did you do that?” I asked, as he flopped on the bench beside me after the inning. Manny just smiled and pounded his right fist into his left palm.

  Later, back at the hotel, I said, “There was something fishy about that play you made in the sixth inning.”

  “What fishy?”

  “You moved about three long strides to your right and managed to get directly behind a ball that was hit like lightning. No Major-League shortstop could have gotten to that ball. You’re not a magician, are you?”

  “I’m not anything but a shortstop, man.” But he looked at me for a long time, and there was a shrewdness in his stare.

  What I could not understand was that no one else had noticed that one second he was starting a move to his right to snag a sure base hit, and an instant later he was behind the ball, playing it like a routine grounder. When I carefully broached the subject, no one showed any interest. He had not even been overwhelmed by congratulations when he came in from the field.

  I admired his audacity. It troubled me that on one of my many visits to Detroit to see the Tigers, the Pistons, or the Red Wings, I may have passed Manny/Jimmy on the street, in one of those groups of shouting, pushing, swivel-jointed young men who congregated outside the Detroit sports facilities.

  The trouble between Chuck Manion and Manny Embarquadero began on a hot Saturday afternoon, before a twi-night doubleheader. Chuck Manion, wearing a sweatsuit worth more than I was getting paid every month, showed up to work out with the team. He was accompanied by his dog, a nasty spotted terrier of some kind, with mean, watery eyes and a red ass. Manion sometimes left the dog in the clubhouse during a game, where it invariably relieved itself on the floor.

  “After losing in extra innings, it’s a fucking joy to come back to a clubhouse that smells of dog shit,” The Deer said one evening.

  “Tell him where to stuff his ugly, fucking dog,” one of the players suggested. We all applauded.

  “Wouldn’t I love to,” said Dearly. “Unfortunately, Manion’s family actually puts money into this club. An owner like that can do no wrong.”

  On that humid Saturday afternoon, Manion brought the dog out onto the playing field. Dearly spat contemptuously as he hit out fungoes, but said nothing.

  Manny and I were tossing the ball on the sidelines, when Manion pointed to Manny and said to me, “Tell Chico to take Conan here for a couple of turns around the outfield.”

  “His name is Manny,” I said. “And he can understand simple sign language. Tell him yourself.”

  “You’re the one who’s retiring end of the season, aren’t you?” Manion asked me in a snarky voice.

  “Right.”

  “And a goddamned good thing.”

  He walked over to Manny, put the leash in his hand and pointed to the outfield, indicating two circles around it.

  I wondered what Manny Embarquadero would do. I knew what Jimmy Williams would do. But which one was Manion dealing with?

  It didn’t take long to find out.

  Manny Embarquadero let the leash drop to the grass, and gave Manion the finger, staring at him with as much contempt as I had ever seen pass from one person to another.

  Manion snarled at Manny and turned away to hunt down Dave Dearly. At the same moment, Conan nipped at Manny’s ankle.

  Manny’s reaction was so immediate I didn’t see it. But I heard the yelp, and saw the dog fly about fifteen feet into left field, his leash trailing after him.

  Manion found Dave Dearly, and demanded that Manny be fired, traded, deported, or arrested.

  “Goddamnit, Chuck,” Dearly responded, “I got enough trouble baby-sitting and handholding twenty-five players, most of them rookies, without having you and your goddamned mutt riling things up.”

  The mutt, apparently undamaged, was relieving himself on the left-field grass, baring his pearly fangs at any ballplayer who got too close.

  Manion continued to froth at the mouth, threatening Dearly with unemployment if he didn’t comply.

  At that moment, Dearly must have remembered his reputation as an umpire-baiter. His face turned stop-sign red as he breathed his fury onto Chuck Manion, backing him step by step from third base toward the outfield, scuffing dirt on Manion’s custom jogging outfit. Manion had only anger on his side.

  “Take your ugly fucking dog and get the fuck off my baseball field,” Dearly roared, turning away from Manion as suddenly as he had confronted him. Dearly punted his cap six rows into the empty stands, where it landed right side up, sitting like a white gull on a green grandstand seat.

  Manion retrieved the dog’s leash and headed for the dugout, still raging and finger-pointing.

  “From now on walk your own fucking dog on your own fucking lawn,” were Dearly’s parting words as Manion’s back retreated down the tunnel to the dressing room.

  The players applauded.

  “Way to go, Skip.”

  “You better watch out,” I said to Manny, over a late supper at a Jack in the Box. “Manion’s gonna get your ass one way or another.”

  “Fuck Manion and his ball club,” said Manny Embarquadero. “And fuck his dog, too.”

  Manion didn’t show his face on the field all the next week, but he could be seen in the owner’s box, a glass wall separating him from the press table, pacing, smoking, often taking or making telephone calls.

  Manny continued his extraordinary play.

  “Did you see what I did there in the second inning?” Manny asked in our apartment after the game.

  “I did.”

  “I can’t figure out how I did it. If anybody but you sees . . . what would they do, bar me from the game?”

  In the second inning, Manny Embarquadero had gone up the ladder for a line drive. The ball was far over his head, but I saw a long, licorice-colored arm extend maybe four feet farther than it should have. No one else, it seemed, saw the supernatural extension of the arm. They apparently saw only a very good play.

  “Want to tell me how you do what you do?” I said.

  Manny had made at least one impossible play in each of the last dozen games. At the plate it was less obvious, but probably magically inspired as well. He was batting over .400.

  “Must be because you know who I really am that you can see what I do,” said Manny. “Besides, no one would believe you; I’m just a poor, mute, black, immigrant ballplayer.”

  “I’ve no intention of spreading your secret around. I’m going to be through with baseball for good in a few weeks.”

  “If you want a professional career, I might be able to arrange it. It would involve a trip to Courteguay. And I don’t know, you being white and all.”

  “Not interested.”

  “There’s a factory down there. They sing and chant over your body, wrap it in palm fronds, feed you hibiscus petals and lots of other things. After a week or so, you emerge from the factory with an iron arm and the speed of a bullet and the ability to be in more than one place at a time.

  “It’s just like a magic trick, only the whole ballplayer is quicker than the eye. They send a couple of guys up to the Bigs each year. I just lucked out. I really thought I’d stand a chance of getting a professional contract if I came from a backwater like Courteguay. The reason I got into the factory, got the treatment, was I got caught stealing food that supposedly belonged to this guerrilla leader, Dr. Noir. Looks like Idi Amin, only not so friendly . . .”

  “What do you have to do in return?”

  “You don’t want to know,” said Manny.

  “Probably not. You’re kidding me, right? There’s no factory in Courteguay that turns out iron-armed infielders.”

  “Think whatever you want, man. This Dr. Noir was from Haiti: voodoo, dancing naked all night, cutting out people’s spleens and eating them raw. At the moment Dr. Noir leads the insurgents in Courteguay, but some day soon he’ll be president again.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t want to know.”

  A week later, after a short road
trip, Dave Dearly was fired. We were in first place by a game, thanks mainly to Manny Embarquadero’s fielding and hitting.

  The grapevine reported that Chuck Manion had been unable to convince the parent club to get rid of Manny. Dave Dearly was another matter. Since Manion and his family put large amounts of their own money into the stadium and the team, the top dogs decided that if keeping him happy meant jettisoning a minor-league manager, so be it.

  The third-base coach, a young guy named Wylie Keene, managed the club the next night.

  “It was because The Deer went to bat for your Courteguayan friend over there,” Keene told me. “Chuck Manion wanted Manny given the bum’s rush out of baseball. But The Deer stood up to him./span>

  “He told the parent club that he wouldn’t have his players treated that way, and life was too short to work for an asshole like Manion. But, we all know money is the bottom line, so The Deer is gone. He thinks the organization will find another place for him.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. He’s a good man. He’ll catch on somewhere, but not likely in this organization.”

  When we got home I passed all that information to Manny.

  “Manion is a son-of-a-bitch,” Manny said. “I’d love to get him to Courteguay for a few minutes. I’d like to leave him alone in a room with Dr. Noir. Hey, he’s got a degree in chiropractics from a school in Davenport, Iowa. Dr. Lucius Noir. I saw his diploma. According to rumors, he deals personally with political prisoners. Just dislocates joints until they confess to whatever he wants them to confess to. Wouldn’t I love to hear Manion scream.”

  “Look, you’re gonna be out of this town in just a couple weeks. You’ll never have to see or hear Manion again.”

  “But there is something I have to do. Come on,” he said, heading for the door.

  “It’s after midnight.”

  “Right.”

  We walked the darkened streets for over half an hour. Manion’s house overlooked the eighteenth tee of a private golf course. It loomed like a mountain in the darkness.

  “Listen,” I said, “I’m not going to let you do something you’ll be sorry for, or get arrested for . . .”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to touch him. The only way you can hurt rich people is by taking things away from them.”

  We crawled through a hedge and were creeping across Manion’s patio when Conan came sniffing around the corner of the house. He stopped abruptly and stood stiff-legged, fangs bared, a growl deep in his throat.

  “Pretty doggie,” said Manny Embarquadero, holding a hand out toward the hairless, red-assed mutt. They stood like that for some time, until the dog decided to relax.

  Manny struck like a cobra. The dog was dead before it could utter a sound.

  “I should have killed Manion. But I’ve got places to go.”

  “Somebody’s gonna find you out.”

  “How? Are you gonna tell? In Courteguay they’d barbecue that little fucker. Dogs are a delicacy.”

  “You’re not from Courteguay.”

  Manny was going to get caught, there was no doubt in my mind. He was going to ruin a promising baseball career, which may or may not have been aided by the supernatural. Personally, I had my doubts about Manny’s stories, but I admired his chutzpah, his fearlessness.

  “Manny Embarquadero is pure magic. They’ll never lay a hand on me,” said Jimmy Williams.

  “You forget,” I said, “There isn’t anyone named Manny Embarquadero.”

  “Oh, yes, there is,” he said. “Oh, yes, there is.”

  As we crawled through the hedge, I let a branch take the creased cap off my head. A bus passed through town at 4:00 A.M., and I’d be on it.

  The Indian Nation Cultural Exchange Program

  Every once in a while the Government tries to do something nice for us Indians. Usually it is just before an election when that something nice is announced. Whether it ever come about or not is another matter. Sometimes they announce a new program, then after the newspapers get tired of writing about it, they file it away, hope no Indian will ever apply. That is the way it was with the The Indian Nation Cultural Exchange Program.

  OTTAWA TO SPEND TEN MILLION

  ON WESTERN INDIANS

  was how the Edmonton Journal headline the story, and right up until the election, whenever some sneaky-looking politician from Ottawa speak within 50 miles of any Indian reserve west of Ontario, he mention the program and the amount but be pretty vague about the details. He know that after the election that program get filed deep in a Government vault somewhere.

  That would have happened to the Indian Nation Cultural Exchange Program if it weren’t for Bedelia Coyote. Bedelia is famous for causing the Government grief. Not that they don’t deserve it. One time the Government send 52 John Deere manure spreaders to our reserve. Nobody asked for them, and hardly anybody farm enough to want or need one. Some of my friends try to strip them down as if they were cars, but nobody want to buy the loose parts. Eventually a few of them disappear, the way a cattle herd get smaller if it ain’t tended. All that happen maybe eight years ago and there are still eight or ten manure spreaders rusting in the slough below our cabins.

  “They should have sent us 52 politicians,” say Bedelia. “They’re all born knowing how to spread manure. It keep them busy and they be doing something useful for the first time in their lives.”

  “Even crime wouldn’t pay if the Government ran it,” say our medicine lady, Mad Etta.

  It is Bedelia who go to the Wetaskiwin office of our Federal Member of Parliament, a Mr. J. William Oberholtzer.

  “The Conservative Party could run a dog here in Alberta and win by 10,000 votes,” I say.

  “J. William is about two points smarter than most dogs,” says Bedelia. “I seen him tie his own shoes one day. Most politicians don’t have that much coordination.”

  Bedelia have to go back to Mr. Oberholtzer’s office every day for about three months, and she have to fill out a whole sheaf of forms, but finally they have to give her the details of the Indian Nation Cultural Exchange Program. Turn out that three people, under 25 years old, from each reserve in Western Canada, can visit another reserve at least 250 miles away to learn the other tribe’s culture and teach them about their culture.

  “I’ll teach them how to drink,” says my friend Frank Fencepost. “That’s part of our culture, ain’t it?”

  “Unfortunately,” say Bedelia.

  “I don’t know,” says Frank, screw up his face. “I can’t drink like I used to. Used to be I could really put it away. But now fifteen or twenty beers and I’m right out of it,” and he laugh deep in his chest, sound like someone pounding on a drum. “Maybe I teach them how to have sex appeal instead.”

  “And I’ll demonstrate brain surgery,” says Bedelia.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” says Frank. “Can’t teach other people to be sexy—you either got it or you ain’t.”

  “Bedelia is a little like the wind,” our medicine lady, Mad Etta, say, “she slow but steady—wind wear down even mountains eventually.”

  Bedelia fill out another ton of forms and finally all the papers arrive for people from our reserve to apply to go somewhere else. We get out a map of Canada and try to decide where it is we’d like to go.

  “How about California?” says Frank. “I hear they got good weather and pretty girls down there.”

  “California ain’t in Canada,” we say.

  “Then we’ll go down there and talk them into joining up with us.”

  We argue for a long time about different places, but we know we going to where Bedelia decide, because she done all the work so far.

  “You guys ever been to the Land of the Midnight Sun?” Bedelia ask.

  “We been to Las Vegas,” says Frank.

  Bedelia’s look is so cold it could freeze us both solid.

  “I’m talking about the Arctic. There’s a place on the map called Pandemonium Bay, only 300 miles from the N
orth Pole. There’s an Indian reserve there and I think that’s where we ought to go.”

  Like Frank, I’d a lot rather go where it’s hot. But I smile at Bedelia and say, “We’re with you.” I mean, how many times does the Government do favors for poor Indians?

  I remember another time the Government decide to do us Indians a favor. Someone in Ottawa get the notion that we all need new running shoes. Everyone on the reserve. Someone must of told them that Indians like running shoes, or that we all barefoot.

  To save money they do the project by mail. Everyone on the reserve get a letter, a big, brown envelope that have a five-foot-long sheet of white paper about two feet wide, folded up in it. Instructions are that everyone is supposed to trace the outline of their right foot on the paper and send it to Indian Affairs Department in Ottawa. Then they supposed to send everyone their running shoes.

  We have more fun laughing over the idea than the time we move Ovide Letellier’s outhouse forward about ten feet, so when he go to park his brand new Buick behind it, the car fall nose first into the hole.

  There are really over twenty people in Louis Coyote’s family, and there is hardly enough room to get all the right feet on the paper. The kids draw around feet with pencils, pens, crayons, finger-paint, peanut butter, Roger’s Golden Syrup, and 10-40 motor oil. Some people leave their shoes on; others take them off.

  Frank Fencepost draw around a foot of Louis Coyote’s horse, and of his own dog, Guy Lafleur. When the running shoes come in the mail, Smokey Coyote get four short, fat shoes, and Guy Lafleur Fencepost two pairs of tiny-baby ones.

  When the Government give you something, you got to take it. Mad Etta she put that length of paper on the floor to use as a doormat. The Government write her three letters, say she got to trace her foot and send it to them. Finally they send her a letter say she liable to a $500 fine and 60 days in jail if she don’t do as she’s told. Mad Etta sit down on a sheet of paper, trace one of her cheeks, and mail it off. A month or two later come a letter say they only make shoes up to size 32, and her foot is a size 57.