Bucky F*cking Dent (28 page)

There was an erratic, swirling breeze. Phil Rizzuto said, “I tell ya, did you take notice of the flag? I couldn't believe it. Just as Jim Rice came to the plate, the wind started blowing to left field. It not only helped Yastrzemski's homer, but it hurt Jackson's. The wind was blowing to right field when Jackson hit the fly ball, when Yaz hit the homer the wind was blowing to left field, kept it from going foul. Somebody told me the Red Sox controlled the elements up here. I didn't believe 'em till today.”

Ted wished, for the thousandth time, that his intransigent seat could recline as they listened to Dent coming up to the plate against Boston's Mike Torrez. For the millionth time, the announcers, with the numerical fetishism common only to baseball fans, astrologists, and Kabbalists, described the short left-field porch guarded by the Green Monster. The Green Monster always put Ted in mind of Sir Gawain's deathless adversary, the Green Knight. Fenway's eccentric dimensions, to baseball aficionados, were as much a numerical given as the Pythagorean theorem—a throwback to the days before conformity and cookie-cutter ballparks, its height making up for its lack of depth. Only 310 feet from home plate, barely farther than a Little League field, the wall rises up like a thing in nature, 37 feet 2 inches, exponentially higher than any fence in any other major league ballpark. Like a capricious god, the wall could punish well-hit balls that would be home runs in other parks, but, in Fenway, without enough loft, might merely line into the high scoreboard and ricochet back for only a single. And yet the wall giveth and the wall taketh away; the Monster could reward an unworthy pop fly, a can of corn in any other park, and decree it a home run. It was a ridiculous, unreasonable, Old Testament wall.

On the radio, Rizzuto was growing more nervous. He was such a biased homer, blatantly pulling for the Yankees. It was the seventh inning, the Sox were still up 2–0, and the former Yankee Mike Torrez was strong, throwing a shutout. But the Yankees were mounting their first real threat of the game with runners on first and second. The announcers pessimistically discussed the number-nine hitter coming to the plate now, the light-hitting Bucky Dent, batting a mediocre .243 for the year, with no power, only four home runs. They talked about how the Yankee manager, Bob Lemon, who had been brought in to replace the volatile Billy Martin mid-season, probably wanted to pinch hit for Dent, but there was no one left on the bench. They were stuck with Bucky Dent.

It's a funny feeling because Ted and Marty, even as they are listening, can feel the energy from the nearby stadium, where 32,925 are focused on the actions of two men playing a child's game. Dent swings at a pitch and fouls it off his ankle. He takes a minute to walk it off. He's in obvious pain and limping, but Lemon has no choice but to keep him in. Dent steps back in, swings, and fouls off another pitch, breaking his bat this time. There's another minute while he heads back to the dugout for a new bat. The Yankee center fielder, Mickey Rivers, in the on-deck circle, tosses one of his own bats to Dent, saying something like “Use mine, you can't hit anyway.” Bucky Dent laughs and walks back out to the plate with Mickey Rivers's bat.

Bucky digs in again. Torrez delivers, Dent swings. And then a strange sound comes from the stadium, from Fenway. It's the sound of 32,925 people holding their breath. Tens of thousands of people absolutely quiet watching the arc of a ball and doing mental calculations of its parabola. And then another odd sound emanates from the stadium, a sickening mixture of disbelief, horror, fear, and animal disapproval: 32,925 souls, minus a few hundred gate-crashing Yankee fans, just got gut punched. Bucky had lofted a lazy fly ball, but because of the capricious Green Monster, the easy out became a will-sapping, confidence-destroying, fateful home run. Water had been turned into wine, lead into a lead. The ball cleared the wall. Bucky Dent had hit a three-run homer over the Green Monster; what the Boston pitcher Dennis Eckersley later called “a fucking piece of shit home run.”

There's a general feeling of panic riding on the air. Shadows are falling and the temperature is dropping in the early October afternoon. There is quiet in the car except for the radio. Bucky Dent rounds the bases on his way home. Yanks are up 3–2. Phil Rizzuto said, “Don't ask me to say anything, I've been holding my breath, Bill White … I'm in a state of shock, so I'm not going to be much help up here. I'm like a hen on a hot rock, I don't know whether to jump or sit or lay an egg.”

Marty spoke first. He reached over and turned the radio off, silencing Rizzuto and White and the world.

“Bucky Dent?! Bucky Dent??!! Bucky Fucking Dent???!!!”

“It's okay, Dad, there's a couple of innings left. We'll come back. Let's go in. It ain't over till it's over.”

Marty settled back in his chair, seemingly emptied of hope. “It's over.”

“It's not over. It's a one-run lead in the seventh. Far from over.”

“Ted. It's over. I can feel it. I know it.” And then Marty just kept repeating in disbelief, “Bucky Dent? Bucky Dent? Bucky Fucking Dent?” As if, if he said it enough, he could turn back the clock or at least make it make sense to himself. Marty was right: within the hour, the season would be over. The Longingness would continue because of Bucky Dent.

“Bucky Dent. Bucky Dent. Bucky Fucking Dent.”

 

74.

 

75.

They drove quietly as they made their way back to New York City, still in shock, really. Ted didn't even put on the Dead. They were a couple of hours outside of the city, in middle-of-nowhere New England, when Ted finally spoke. “Bucky Dent? Sixty years and six innings and then Bucky Dent? Outta nowhere.”

Marty began to shake his head. “No, not nowhere. Of course, Teddy, of course it's Bucky Dent.”

“What?”

“I never saw it before. I see it all now. All of it. It's never Mickey Mantle that kills you. Never Willie Mays. Never the thing you prepare for. It's always the little thing you didn't see coming. The head cold that puts you in your grave. It's always Bucky Dent.”

Ted looked at his father. The old man looked like he was in a trance, like a seer.

“And don't let the Yankees fool you, Teddy, life's not about winning, life's about losing—Yankee fans don't know anything about life, but Boston, Boston knows the truth.”

Ted nodded and kept his eyes on the road, as Marty grew hushed, but continued, “Life belongs to the losers, Teddy, like me and you. And Mariana. And Bucky Fucking Dent. Don't ever forget that.”

“I won't.”

Marty settled back in his seat and reclined it. He seemed to be drifting off, but then, almost like a benediction, he said, “God bless Bucky Fucking Dent.”

Ted smiled and repeated softly to his dad, “Yeah. God bless Bucky Fucking Dent.”

Ted waited for something else, but Marty had now grown quiet. He looked over at his father, who seemed very, very still despite the bumping of the road. Ted had a bad feeling announce itself. He extended his hand to touch Marty.

“Dad?”

Ted rested two fingers on his father's neck for a pulse and found none, checked for breath escaping his mouth, felt none. Ted knew his father was dead. Marty was dead. Ted's father was dead. He looked away from his father and back to the darkening road ahead, and said, only to himself now:

“God bless Bucky Fucking Dent.”

 

76.

In his mind, the Dead sang “Box of Rain”: “Such a long, long time to be gone and a short time to be there.” Over and over, like a needle stuck on vinyl. Ted drove for another hour before he began to think of how to be done with his father's body. He decided that he'd escort him all the way into the city, back to Beth Israel; he wasn't ready to let go of him yet, to give him up or hand him over in some strange New England suburban town. He felt like he wanted to negotiate the best terms for his father's surrender to the afterlife, but he knew there was no real negotiation. The body would be taken and hidden from sight from the living and then buried. The living did not like the dead among it. Didn't like to be reminded. Like a dead body was the rude guy at the party who kept flicking the lights on and off, pointing to his watch and saying, “Party's almost over, people, start wrapping it up.”

But he wanted to talk to Mariana first, make sure that she'd be there, that she knew. He pulled off at a gas station, wondering if it was okay to leave his father in the car like that. Ted walked a few paces away to make a call. He could see the Corolla at all times, never took his eyes off Marty. The old man looked like he was sleeping. Ted remembered what his mom used to do whenever they were on a family road trip and they happened to pass roadkill—dog, cat, deer, skunk, possum, raccoon. First time, it had been a cat, and Teddy, at three or four, had been alarmed by the house cat in the middle of the highway, motionless. He pointed out the window and showed his mother, asked what was wrong with it. Why wasn't it moving? His mother had looked at his father, who shrugged, and she then turned to the backseat with a smile, and said, “Sleeping kitty, baby, sleeping kitty.”

Sleeping kitty. Sleeping daddy.

Ted pulled Mariana's card out and dialed again. When she picked up, Ted knew he'd woken her. “You alone?” he asked.

“Yeah, what is it?”

“He's gone.”

“I'm sorry, Ted.”

“You know, it's okay, it was time, it was right. It was his story to the end.”

He could hear her breathing catch.

“Where are you?”

“A gas station in New England. We're driving back home.”

“Okay.”

“Mariana, I know.”

“You know what?”

“About her. Your tattoo. I'm so sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“I get it now. I get it. I get why. I get you.”

“What do you get?”

“You're right, I can't protect you. I can't erase the past and I can't promise anything.”

“Yeah.”

Ted looked over at his father in the car to check on him. Hadn't moved. He was reminded of that old
Saturday Night Live
Weekend Update sketch, Chevy Chase reporting the fake news every week with “This just in, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.” People always seemed to laugh so hard at that, but Ted never did. Never quite got the gag. He didn't laugh now either.

“But even though I can't do any of those things, I still want to try, and I think that must be the definition of love.”

“Love? You love me? You barely know me.”

“I'm falling in love with the little I do know, and it makes me desperate to know more.”

“Don't say these things.”

“I have to. It's how my story goes.”

“Your story. Maybe it's not how my story goes.”

“Well, how do you choose whose story wins, whose story gets to be history? My story's a lot happier than yours, where two fine people love each other. Your story has two people fucking and then walking away lonely. I mean, objectively, which story sounds better? Shouldn't the happier story win?”

Ted kept looking back to Marty, almost compulsively. He remembered reading about the “corpse walker” tradition in ancient China. That if a person died far from home, his family might hire someone, a professional, to “walk” the corpse back so it could be buried at home. And they didn't rush. They walked. And you could see these figures in the countryside. A living person propping up a dead person on a road trip, stopping to eat and sleep, stopping to wander and wonder. It was not just an errand, or even a custom for the benefit of the living to adjust to the death of a loved one, it was an experience for the corpse, one that would keep its spirit from being unsettled and homeless, a final time of unconscious, undead reflection. Ted imagined hitting the road with his father now, corpse walking him around New England. He thought maybe that was his final duty as a son.

He was glad he was driving his father home now and praying his spirit would settle in at home in the city. This was not the delivery of inert flesh and bone, this was the final leg of his journey with his father. He bet that Mariana, as a death nurse, was learned in how other cultures dealt with death and must be aware of corpse walking. He made the decision then and there to drive Marty right now to Brooklyn first, then the hospital. He would corpse walk Marty's spirit all the way home.

“I've always hated rewriting, but you make me want to rewrite everything, whatever that means.”

“Ted?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you ever been in love before?”

“Tonight I realized that I hadn't, no. But I know now.”

“How do you know?”

“Because my father is dead and I'm next in line. Because everything is new. And I suddenly don't mind that you listen to disco. That's love.”

He sang to her quietly and nicely, like a Dan Fogelberg cover of Sly and the Family Stone, “‘At first I was afraid, I was petrified, kept thinking I could never live without you by my side…'”