Left Field

by Elizabeth Sims

  All of us Grinders watched Jackie pause, swivel her neck, and tremble. You had to look hard to see it, and I don’t think the other team noticed it. But every Grinder felt her loss of confidence.

  A crow cawed harshly from a wire along the street, seeming to reflect the new, downer mood. I lifted my glove to my nose and took a deep sniff of the leather. What a reassuring smell.

  Jackie walked the next batter on four pitches, one shockingly in the dirt two feet ahead of the plate. She threw a couple of high balls to the next, and with another hit—this one a double—the game was tied. The woman on base was small and quick; I remembered her from the first inning when she’d beaten Helen’s throw from center to second by a hair. All it took to get her home now was a blooper to left by the next batter, which I fielded on one hop and threw home as accurately as I could and as hard as I dared. If you throw extra hard, you’re liable to miss wild. But if you focus on a good throw, at least the catcher can stay in position and get it, and hey, maybe the runner will turn out to be slower than you fear.

  But the little gazelle dove under Carmen’s catch and the Robins were ahead by one, still nobody out. I’d done my best, but I felt bad anyway. Every athlete can relate to that.

  Although Jackie kicked some dirt around the mound to show she wasn’t worried, her eyes appeared blank, like nobody was home. I watched Mercedes, but she stayed where she was. Behind the plate, Carmen took off her mask and called time.

  It seemed the whole team held its breath as Carmen walked to the mound. Something told me to trot in too, to lend a word of support. But I stopped a few feet away when I heard Carmen say in a low, intense tone, “You crummy bitch.”

  Jackie hung her head. I froze.

  Carmen went on, throwing her words up into Jackie’s face. “You call that pitching? You might as well forfeit now. Just walk over there and say, ‘We forfeit because I suck as a pitcher and a human being.’ Go ahead.”

  Slowly, Jackie raised her head to look over Carmen’s, toward the enemy bench.

  Carmen hissed, “I should kick your ass.”

  Jackie lifted her eyes over the heads of the Robins on their bench.

  “I should stab your tits with knitting needles,” said Carmen. “You’re the lousiest whore softball player I ever saw. You can’t even hit either. You haven’t been on base the whole damn day. I should whack you in the head with this mitt since you’re not giving me anything good to catch in it. Whack you really hard.”

  Jackie took a deep shuddering breath, the same as some women do just before they have an orgasm. She gazed down at Carmen’s angry face. Very faintly, the corners of her lips turned up. I swear they did.

  Satisfied, Carmen pulled her face mask down and said in closing, “I’m ashamed to be on the same team as you.”

  I backed away. Neither had taken any notice of me.

  Jackie’s next pitches went consistently in the strike zone or close to it. The Grinders exhaled. The life had returned to her eyes. She turned to the outfield and sighed as she massaged the ball.

  Standing in the middle of left field, I understood everything. Carmen’s obscene talk wasn’t an aberration; that was the way she’d been talking to Jackie every time she had gone to the mound all season. And that was the secret combination to Jackie Quiller: slap her around, and she finds peace and happiness. Mercedes had to know; that was the only reason she would have stayed on the bench.

  Jackie got us out of the inning on two grounders and a strikeout. Every Grinder who came to bat next seemed more poised and confident. Risenda hit a triple straight off, and then I crowded the plate enough to take a pitch on my left upper arm from the Robins’ exasperated pitcher. Our shortstop smacked a double. We thus tied it up, then surged ahead with a few more hits (one a surprise homer from Jackie herself), plus some fancy baserunning by yours truly.

  We defeated the Robins 9–5, which meant we were going to play in the championship game against the Stubby’s Joint Wildcats, and everybody was happy but me.

  I knew I should join the team for pizza or invite Lou and Flora to my place for a beer or something, but all I wanted was to go home and be by myself. My deepening understanding of Jackie’s dark needs made me feel like I’d been kicked by a horse. On top of that, my nerves were edgy from my conversations with Dr. Briggs and Christy, and I wanted to get Abby’s notebook home and have a look.

  I thanked Lou and Flora for coming, and Flora suggested we go get something to eat. I said I wasn’t feeling well.

  “Is it cramps?” asked Lou. “Cramps can really make you feel like hell. Whenever I get—”

  “No, it’s more like my stomach. My upper stomach.” Yeah, so upper it’s actually my heart.

  I followed Christy to her car, where she dug the notebook out of the trunk. Feeling furtive, I covered it with my sweatshirt and walked to my car. In the scrum of everybody leaving, I noticed Mercedes go over and start a conversation with Flora. Somehow that made me smile. I threw my glove and the notebook into the Crown Vic, fired it up, and headed for home.

  My funk deepened as I drove. I snapped on the radio, punched a rock station, and listened to some vintage Stones in an effort to pick up my mood. As I headed up Conant toward McNichols, I thought of all my past girlfriends/lovers/one-night stands. I dodged the horrendous potholes and remembered lovemaking. It had been damn swell, I thought, except in a very few cases when somebody was too drunk or upset about something. What I’m trying to say is, sex itself was hardly ever a problem. But with Jackie it was different.

  While I had hurt people in the past, it was through stupidity or fear. On the occasions I’d intentionally said something calculated to hurt, there was at least a reason: I’d felt betrayed, or somehow wronged, and I’d wanted a little payback. I never had struck anyone. To strike someone—especially a lover, a beloved—seemed to me the height of wrong. You’re supposed to care for the people you love; you’re supposed to pet them and kiss them and be nice to them. I’d never understood S&M, never understood how pain can be pleasurable. Never bothered to try to understand it—either side of it—but I was trying now.

  The cityscape sped by, all the rundown places on McNichols, the sagging telephone poles and crumbling curbs. I knew I should give my mind a break from all this but also knew I wouldn’t.

  A motorcycle zoomed up behind me and hung annoyingly on my bumper. I was in the right lane already. “Pass me, asshole.” I slowed down and dropped back from the car on my left to give the bike room to get around me. It stayed on my tail, then finally eased over into the left lane.

  Even though darkness was falling, I saw the biker well enough. McNichols, right along there, was on the dicey side, one of those blighted light-industry zones. The bike pulled even with me, and as I glanced over, the rider lifted a black rod in one hand. The helmeted head turned toward me, the face guard as dark and anonymous as a bug’s eye. At moments like this—it’s true—time slows down. For an instant I was as baffled as if the person had held up a ventriloquist’s dummy. Even in the melting twilight, I clearly saw the object—a dark rod with a hole in the end, pointed at me—and before I’d even told my body what to do, I ducked over to the right, let go of the wheel, covered my head, and stomped on the brake, all at once.

  26

  The driver’s-side window exploded. Glass rained down on me for seconds, it seemed. My ears didn’t register the blast. The Crown Vic crashed into something and stopped. My body slammed into the dashboard. My nose hit the radio. The music changed to some chamber piece I’d heard before but couldn’t place a composer on.

  I sat up, way more pissed off than scared. The fucker had come after me. Son of a bitch. My heart surged into my throat as I saw the deepening sky—Yes, thank you very much; I’m not dead—then a gigantic Budweiser bottle. My car had bashed into a parked beer truck. Get out of here, get out of here.

  The engine had stalled, so I grabbed the ignition and got it going again. I looked left and right—a vacant lot, a chain link fence, a closed brake
shop—no one around, no one out walking on this desolate stretch of street, and sure as hell no other driver was stopping for this. Any Detroiter on foot who saw this would have run for his or her life, and any driver would know it was a gang hit and just keep going.

  As I threw it into reverse, I heard the same motorcycle whine, increasing in pitch. He’s coming back. I pressed the accelerator but the Crown Vic didn’t move. I hit it harder, and the tires screamed and smoked, but nothing doing. I jumped out, saw the bumper interlocked with the beer truck’s, and started running in the same direction I’d been driving, knowing traffic would be thicker as I approached the expressway, and maybe I could flag somebody down. The bike zoomed along the street, dead straight for me. You fucker, you fucker.

  I cut onto the sidewalk, my Chuck Taylors slapping faster and faster. The bike was on me now, the gun raised. I dove for the pavement as the shooter unleashed another blast.

  You picked a perfect spot for this, buddy, I thought. The pellets zinged through the fence, and I got up and ran again. My nose and mouth felt wet, and my breath bubbled in and out. The bike sped off. I kept on running, though I saw no safe haven—just closed shops and more vacant lots. One of my Chucks was coming undone; the lace tripped me once; I stumbled but didn’t go down. Before I could find a place to change course or hide, headlights flared up behind me and a horn blasted.

  “Lillian!” screamed a woman’s voice. I turned, still running, to see the Happy Van jump the curb and pull up ten yards ahead of me. Just as I reached it, the back doors burst open and Viv was there, her eyes wild with excitement. “Get in, get in!” Without breaking stride I leaped into the cabin. She pulled the doors shut, and the van accelerated, bumping off the curb, picking up speed toward the expressway.

  For a minute I lay sprawled on the floor, panting. I was aware of Viv ripping open pads of gauze and whatever. “Oh, my God…Oh, my God,” she said. “Here, can you climb up here?” I crawled onto the cot and rolled onto my back. I started choking from blood flowing down my throat, and I struggled to sit up. But Viv had buckled one of the safety straps across my upper body, and I couldn’t move.

  “Don’t worry. Here, let me suction you out. Can’t have you whamming around in here like a watermelon.”

  She slipped something like a straw into my mouth, and in a moment I could breathe. I was bleeding all over the place: from my nose, my arms on which I’d skidded, maybe from the shattering glass as well. But I hadn’t gotten shot, I hadn’t gotten shot, the son of a bitch hadn’t gotten me. Whoever it was. For the first time I wondered, Why? Why me? Why me now?

  Viv smiled down at me kindly as she blotted the blood and removed the suction tube. She adjusted my neck so I could keep breathing all right. Her curly brown hair bounced cheerfully as she worked. “Just relax,” she said. “The bleeding’s slowing down. You’re going to be fine.”

  “Thank you, thank you,” I said. “My God, you saved my life. That psycho was going to come back again, I’m sure of it. God bless you, Viv Briggs. God bless you. We have to call the police.”

  She kept working. I saw all the paraphernalia of the little clinic: the oxygen bottles and the equipment cabinets and so on.

  “Where’s the doc? Is he driving?”

  “He’s coming, dear.”

  “Coming?”

  “I think you might have a concussion.”

  “No, I feel all right. I didn’t go unconscious or anything. I’m OK. We need to call the police, all right? Have you called 911? That guy tried to kill me. Did you see it? You saw it, the guy on the motorcycle. We have to call the police right now and figure this out, because it’s probably the same person that killed Shirlene Cord, no doubt, and—”

  “Hang on, sweetie. One thing at a time.”

  The van jolted violently, then stopped.

  “Where are we?”

  Viv looked tense and shook her head.

  I heard a motorcycle zoom up and stop at the back of the van.

  “He’s back! He followed us!” I screamed. “Let’s go, let’s go!” I tried to leap to my feet, but the chest strap held me down, and somewhere along the line Viv had buckled another over my legs.

  She flung open the doors.

  “What are you doing?!” I craned my head up and saw cracked pavement, weeds, night sky, a backstop fence with a jagged hole in it. Jayne Field, where the Grinders had just prevailed over the Robins. The motorcyclist rolled into view, killed the engine, and dismounted.

  Viv pulled a metal tread from beneath the cot and slid it out. The tread juddered on the doorsill.

  The blood froze in my veins.

  The cyclist pushed the bike up the incline. There was just enough room in the Happy Van for it to fit.

  Avoiding my eyes, Viv retrieved the tread and stowed it. I couldn’t speak.

  The rider, no more than a foot from me, stripped open the helmet’s chin strap and lifted off the shiny black shell.

  “Well, Lillian,” said Dr. Briggs, rubbing his hair and looking down at me with a tight smile, “you sure can run.”

  Viv said, “Where’s the gun?”

  He glanced at her. “I dropped it. I’m sick.”

  “Atth!” The gap between her front teeth made her exclamation sound funny, though there was no reason for me to smile at this point. “Now what do we—”

  “Easy,” said the doc, and he did appear sick. His face was covered with sweat, and the skin around his eyes was dark. He looked like he was in pain. “I’ve just thought of a better way,” he said. “Easier, safer.”

  My voice returned. “Doctor, what the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice trembling. I realized I’d heard that tremble in his voice before, once in a while. What was up with him? A possibility dawned on me, sort of piggybacking onto something I’d learned from his Happy Van patient, Peter Allwood, in Palmer Woods, something about their prescriptions. Oh, yeah. OK.

  “Mercy,” Dr. Briggs said, “I don’t like doing this. But I promise it will be painless.”

  He straddled the motorcycle—some Kawasaki racer, I believe—and put in the clutch and pressed the ignition button. The engine burst to life. He screwed over the throttle to make sure it was going steady, then fixed it so it stayed at just above an idle. In a brisk voice, he told Viv, “Let’s go.”

  As Viv opened the doors, he called up to the driver, who had remained silent the whole time, “Come on, we’re temporarily evacuating.”

  I heard the driver’s door open. Briggs yelled, insistently, “Come on, get out! It’s all right!” After a gentle rock of the van, indicating that the driver had stepped out, the door slammed shut.

  Roland and Vivian Briggs hopped out, rocking the van again. The doctor turned. “Sometimes this is the only way. I’m very sorry.” He closed the doors firmly on my scream.

  So much zoomed through my mind during that scream that it was like the light show at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

  Briggs had killed Shirlene Cord, possibly because he wanted to take over DeMedHo. He’d stashed the motorbike in the Happy Van the night he shot her, thus establishing an alibi: show your face at the game, putt-putt away on the bike when everybody’s attention is on the field, then return quietly once the deed is done. All the random traffic sounds of Detroit easily covered the coming and going. Then he tried to kill me because—why? Because I was looking into DeMedHo, I knew something about Shirlene’s fraud, because he saw Christy hand over that notebook to me? But how could my pediatrician be a murderer? Was somebody else holding something over him? Or maybe it all had to do with his “sickness.” I knew enough about the streets to know that when somebody says, “I’m sick,” they mean they need a fix. Pain-killer addiction, opioid addiction—everyone knows it’s common enough among doctors. Jesus Christ, maybe Viv was addicted too. What about—Christy?

  I had only minutes, maximum. The little bike puttered jauntily, spewing fumes from its twin tailpipes. Supposing I actually got out, Briggs probably would
brain me with a rock, but at least I’d have a chance. I’d already been struggling against the straps and knew I couldn’t break them. However, I had some leeway with my legs. The blanket that acted as padding beneath me had rucked into a little roll at the side of my right leg, next to the van’s wall. I squidged around, trying to breathe shallowly and not cough as the air grew ever more noxious, and managed to mash down the ruck enough that I could move my leg. The fumes filled my nose and mouth and stung my eyes.

  As I worked my leg free of the restraint—and boy, that required a lot of wrasslin’ around—I knew that even with my more advanced toe dexterity, I wouldn’t be able to unbuckle the strap. But I saw the possibility of survival. I got my leg free, and then I used the other to scrape off my Chuck Taylor, the one with the undone lace. I scraped the sock off too, and shimmied as far down the cot as I could.

  My goal was the oxygen tank. Strapped to the back wall like a fire extinguisher, it had a hose looped over it with a plastic mask on the end, and I knew I could reach it. I grasped the small black knob with my toes and turned it. The insane thought occurred to me that if I took a short nap, I’d feel better. Oh, hell, no, said another part of my brain. That’s the poison working. Come on! My adrenaline molecules must have understood, because an electric-current-like feeling zoomed through me, and I knew I was good for a few more seconds.

  I grabbed the hose with my toes, lifted the loop free, and swung it toward my face. Luckily I had enough strength in my neck to reach up and catch the hose in my teeth.

  While the bike’s motor doodled on, I worked the plastic mask close to my mouth and nose. My eyes were slipping shut in spite of my effort to stay awake, when I took my first sip of oxygen. Yes, I felt the flow of cool, clear oxygen, and I breathed it, supporting the green-tinted cup with one scrunched-up shoulder, craning my lips to the flow of life-giving gas.

  I’m sure I was still breathing some carbon monoxide, but the pure oxygen was counteracting it in my bloodstream, because my head began to clear.