Dirty Rice (30 page)

I didn't say anything, since I'd just caught sight of Mike Gonzales coming into the gym from the room where the showers were, and I wanted to see how he'd look at me when he came over.

“Here it is,” he said. “You're listed by your manager as the starting pitcher against the Monroe Zephyrs tomorrow. It's got to be on your mind that it's up to you to seal the deal if the Rice Birds are going to be in the playoffs against Opelousas at the end of the season. Your team just got beat by Monroe, and you've got to try to stop them from throwing your team into a sudden-death game against Alexandria to see which one of you gets to play for the championship of the Evangeline League. How much weight are you feeling right now? It's your responsibility to put out the fire. Hookey Irwin's loss has put you in a hole. Do you think you're up to the job of digging out of it?”

“Monroe didn't beat us today,” I said. “We gave them the game. Hookey Irwin didn't lose it for us. We give them runs they didn't make.”

“You're talking about the throwing error by Gonzales in the eighth inning,” Tommy Grenier said.

Everybody stopped talking when Tommy Grenier said that. Baseball players always know what makes a game get away from them, but they don't never want to say it was because somebody did wrong or didn't do right. We all knew that. But if you start going over how a thing was done wrong or how it wasn't done right, all you are asking is for it to happen again.

When Mike Gonzales came across that gym finally and walked up to us, nobody said nothing to him at first. “We going to be on our own tonight to get supper?” G.D. Squires asked. “Or has Dutch found us somewhere to go on the cheap?”

“I ain't going where he might direct us,” Dynamite Dunn said. “I know a chili parlor close to the Smooth Sailing Tourist Court, where we ate a couple of times last year. It ain't that bad, and I'll pay for my own grub before I'll put anything in my belly that Dutch Bernson's turned up for us tonight.”

“I don't know why I threw that damn ball over Phil's head,” Mike Gonzales said, “and let in them runs. I must've caught my cleats on a little rock or something. I felt my foot slip right before I turned the ball loose. It just sailed on me.”

“You know, the dirt in an infield is funny,” G.D. Squires said. “It will look smooth as a tabletop, and that will fool you. You will trust it to be what it looks like, and lots of times that dirt will be just eat up with them little pebbles that'll slide under you.”

“I believe the closer a ball field is to the Gulf of Mexico the better the infield surface is going to be,” Dynamite Dunn said. G.D. wanted to argue about that, and the conversation got into that in a lot more detail than anybody normal would want to listen to. It was in safe water now, I could tell, what folks in the hearing range of Mike Gonzales was wanting to talk about. G.D. and Dynamite wasn't about to back off on any position on any subject they'd decided to argue about, and even Mike Gonzales could tell that nobody wanted to hear him try to justify that throw he'd made.

I knew what I didn't want to know. I knew what'd happened when Mike Gonzales threw that ball halfway to the wall, that one I had to chase down, but when later on that night him and me had got back to our room in the Smooth Sailing Tourist Court in Monroe and he wanted to explain some more to me, I told him I didn't want to hear any more about it.

“Gemar,” Mike said, “you done made throwing errors before. I know you have. I remember a couple of times you did. You ought to understand what I'm saying.”

“I ain't contending about that,” I said. “I know I've made errors. But I ain't going to talk about a single one of them bad actions.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don't have to. I made them, and I made them fair and square. So they're gone now.”

“You ain't listening to me.”

“You're right. I ain't listening, and I'm easy in my mind. I ain't got a thing to explain about why I struck out with a man on base today, neither. You know why I did that?”

“Tell me why.”

“I struck out,” I said, “because that pitcher for the Zephyrs fooled my ignorant head. And that was my fault. And that was the one and only reason I struck out.”

“See,” Mike said, “I believe I figured it out, what happened. I was cheating a little toward second, thinking Bell wouldn't be able to pull the ball none, so I was overbalanced when I threw the ball. That's the way I see it.”

“I ain't going to say what I'm thinking, Mike, because I might be thinking wrong. I hope I am. It's like being fooled by that curve today I struck out on. I ain't going to be fooled by it again. I'll be watching for it the next time when it comes.”

“You ain't making any sense,” Mike said.

“Sometimes the best thing to do is not to make sense. When you make sense, you can be wrong. It's timing that'll tell, not sense. I'm going to sleep now. I got to pitch tomorrow.”

“I wish I could go to sleep, with all that's on my mind,” Mike said. The last thing I remember hearing before I drifted off was Mike saying the name of some woman and talking to himself about money and how much of it he owed somebody.

Later that night lying in a strange bed, I woke up from a dream I'd been having. I couldn't remember a lot of it, but what did stay in my mind I wished hadn't.

Mike Gonzales was asleep in his bed across from mine, groaning every breath he took, and I felt like I had to get out of that dark tight place and step outside where there'd be some light and open air to take into my lungs. I got up, and I walked out of the room and away from that bed where the dream had been closing down on me.

I didn't know what time it was by the clock, but it smelled late outside, the air not stirring but cooler, no cars moving on the street, and all the houses and buildings dark. I took off walking back in the direction the Rice Bird bus had come from, and by the time I'd got a block or two down the street, I was breathing better, and I could see the moon was about three-quarters full. It was hanging like a stone high in the sky, and I set my eyes on it as I walked on.

A good ways up ahead, one house had a light burning in a window, so I knew somebody besides me was awake. In a few minutes of steady walking on that street in North Louisiana, I could recognize that I was coming up on the ball field where the Monroe Zephyrs played.

The thing that would let me turn around and go back to the room where I was supposed to be able to rest was waiting in that ballpark, I thought, and if I looked at what was there in the right way, I'd be able to go back to the tourist court and crawl back into bed.

Coming up that street, I reached first the corner of the ballpark where the left field line runs into the wall. I stopped at that corner and climbed up on the two-by-four boards that supported that part of the wall. Other folks before me had done that, I could tell, even in the light of a moon less than full. The place on the wooden support where I put my feet to stand and look over the left field wall felt smooth and slick from people doing that before me.

Once up there, I could see what I needed to, and it was well lit up by a big bulb hanging on a pole behind it. I'd figured they wouldn't leave all the lights turned out at night in the ballpark where the Zephyrs played. I didn't think the light they left burning would be where it was, though, just in the position and at the angle to show clear what it did.

Home plate had light falling on it, shining from that bulb above it, and as far away as I was then, standing on a two-by-four plank outside, I could see the white shape of the diamond.

I watched it for a good long time. The longer I watched, the brighter home plate at the point of the diamond got, and by the time I'd seen enough to satisfy me, it was giving out more light on its own than the moon above the ballpark. Home plate was there, it wasn't moving, and it was settled in where Abba Mikko had put it.

After I hopped down off that two-by-four and started back up the street toward the tourist court, I could see my shadow from the light of the moon moving ahead of me. Now and then I swung my arms out to the side, and I shook my head to watch the shadow man do the same thing. He didn't miss a single motion I made, and home plate behind the two of us stayed right where it was supposed to be.

• • •

The next day when it was time for me to step up on the mound, I knew in my bones it was going to happen somewhere along the way. What inning it would be in, I couldn't have told, but it would come at a time when it made a difference, and that difference would be all that was needed to make the wrong thing happen. Depending on any particular game, the wrong thing can be so little and so hard to see that most folks will never know it was even there. A player can look off at a time when he ought never to have done that, because looking off just then will let something get by him. It can be as simple as that and as hard to notice.

Baseball can't talk to you when you're a man trying to play the game the way it's supposed to be done, but it can let you know when you fall short of what it expects of you. It does that not in your head where words come from, but in the part of your body that can't think and can't imagine what might be contrary to what the truth is. When you fail at some part of what you got to do when you're playing baseball, you don't have to ask your mind what just took place. Your body tells you.

Your body will sag, it will quit looking outside where things happen on the diamond, and turn inside where the blood lives and the heart pumps and the breath comes and goes. The body will stop its working and quit living in the world, and that's the way the body notifies you of a failure to do what you ought to've done.

In that second game with the Monroes, I had good stuff. It wasn't my best like it'd been at times before, but it was working all right. I was getting folks out when I needed to, the times they hit my pitches wasn't hurting me too bad, and the ones on my side were picking up during the times I let down. A couple of hard hit balls to the outfield ended up being outs instead of doubles or triples. Phil Pellicore at second base caught a line drive he ought not to have able to, and he doubled up a runner when he did that. We were behind, though. The Zephyrs had scored three runs by the end of the eighth inning, the Rice Birds had just two, but the Monroe pitcher had got real tired by then, so we felt real encouraged when we got a man on third and first with only one out in the top of the ninth.

You could feel something fixing to happen, and you could tell it was going to favor our side. You can't measure that exact, but anybody that's played baseball for a while can call up times when the air changes and all the motion slows down on the field and everything around you gets a hard edge around it that glows a little, enough for you to see it, if you're on the field playing that game of ball.

That kind of light don't come from sunshine or electric bulbs. It's coming from inside the things you're looking at.

That was happening for the Rayne Rice Birds in the top of the ninth with men on at the corners, only one out, and the shortstop coming to bat. We were about to pick up that run at third that would tie the game, then get the man at first around the bases and safe at home so we'd be ahead, and after that, no matter what happened when we made our last out of the inning, I'd get up on the mound and put three more Zephyrs down and finish them off. We'd ride back south to Rayne in the toad mobile, knowing we'd be in the playoff games with Opelousas and maybe end up the season on top in the Evangeline League.

All of us was standing up in the dugout by then, watching Mike Gonzales walk to the plate squeezing his bat and looking out at the third base coach. It was Harry Nolan.

Harry did a useful job coaching at third. He watched Dutch Bernson close as he sat in the dugout flashing signs, and he made us all get used to changing signs and paying attention when we were at bat being told what the manager wanted us to do. Signs is Harry's livelihood was the way Dynamite Dunn put it. He dreams about signs like a starving man dreams about eating.

So when Mike Gonzales came to bat in that ninth inning situation, he knew what Dutch was likely to want and what he'd tell Harry to signal to the batter. Mike never was a long ball hitter, but he could work a pitcher, and he didn't strike out much. He could put the bat on any given ball most of the time, too. But it was late in the game, and the Monroe pitcher was flagging a good bit. I forget his first name, but I can still see Menard up on the mound, sweat pouring off of him in that late afternoon sun, looking at his catcher and hoping to be able to get out of that last inning.

The worst thing Mike could do right then was hit in front of the runner. That could lead to a double play, and that would be the end of things with Monroe. We'd have lost both games. We'd have rode the toad mobile all the way from Rayne to Monroe and back and not got a thing out of it but sore muscles and lost sleep.

Harry was flashing signs at Mike, touching his nose, putting his hand on his head, pawing the dirt with first one foot and the other, rubbing the letters on his shirt, hollering Mike's name, saying shortstop, shortstop, shortstop, and weaving around in the coaching box like he was fenced up with barbwire and couldn't find a way to get out of the pen.

Mike Gonzales turned away from looking hard down at Harry jumping around at third and took his stance in the box, Menard went into his windup, and it was just then a sound started up in my head, a heavy buzz with a thin whistle somewhere behind it. That told me here it is. It's now that it's going to happen. And it did.

The pitch left Menard's hand, Phil Pellicore took off for home from the good lead he'd eased into at third, and Mike stuck out his bat the way everybody is taught to do when bunting a ball. The runner from first was headed for second, but I didn't have my eye on him. Instead I watched the ball pop up in the air from Mike Gonzales's bat, not down into the dirt like a bunt's supposed to do, and settle into the pitcher's glove as he came down off the mound to field it and then throw it to the catcher for the tag of Phil Pellicore sliding into home, hoping to be safe at last. He wasn't, though. He was out, and Mike was out, and the game was over.

There was lots of noise started up then from the Monroe crowd in the stands. All that was in my head was the little click the ball made when Mike Gonzales bunted it after getting the sign from Harry for the hit and run.

“The son-of-a-bitch bunted,” Dynamite Dunn said. “He popped up a goddamn bunt to the pitcher.”

“You noticed that, too, huh?” G.D. Squires said. “I wondered if I was the only one seen it.”

Nobody laughed at what G.D. said, and nobody said another thing but a cuss word or two. That business cut off quick, though, and by the time Mike Gonzales came walking back to the dugout holding his bat by the barrel instead of the handle, everybody had turned away from looking at the same spot where every single one of us had our eyes set not a minute before.

When something goes wrong, and it's done and can't be fixed no matter how much you might want it to be, you will not look into another man's eyes to see if he knows how wrong is the deed you just witnessed. You don't want to be part of another man's knowing what you already know and don't want to know. That misery ain't for passing around so everybody can take a little piece of it to carry. You've got all the personal load you need, and you can't bear taking on a speck more of that burden from somebody else's share.

When Mike Gonzales got back to the dugout where the Rice Bird players were picking up their gear and heading for the door into the clubhouse to get dressed as fast as they could and crawl into the bus, he had something he wanted to say. He needed somebody to look him in the eye and listen to him say how it wasn't his load to carry all by himself. He was ready to persuade whoever would look straight in his face that what had just happened couldn't have gone any other way than it did. Just wait, he was saying by the way he was carrying his bat, shaking his head, and getting ready to talk to anybody who'd meet his gaze, just wait and give me a chance, and I will make you understand why I couldn't have done a thing else but what I just did.

“Gemar,” he said. “You saw the sign Harry gave me, didn't you? I know how close you watch the third base coach. You saw him put the bunt sign on.”

I kept on doing what I was doing, picking up my glove it may have been, or looking around for the jacket I wore between innings to keep my arm hot when I was pitching.

“Harry put on the bunt sign,” Mike Gonzales said. “There can't nobody say he didn't do that. I saw it, and all of you saw it, if you was watching. I just did what I was told to do.”

“I don't doubt that a damn bit,” Dynamite Dunn said. “I would testify to it. You did just the exact thing somebody told you to do.”

“The bunt sign was on, goddamn it,” Mike said, rubbing his hand across his mouth like a bug had flown up into his face and he was trying to wipe off where it'd landed. Was it still around somewhere? Was it about to try to crawl in his mouth?

“It was on, all right,” Dynamite said. “Right up to the time Harry took it off.”

“He never took it off,” Mike said. “Harry never did. All of y'all, hold up your hand if you saw him take off the bunt sign.”

“This matter is not subject to popular vote,” G.D. Squires said. “We ain't in the Louisiana legislature. I'm done sick of hearing about it, and I've got things to do somewhere that ain't here.”

“What's that, G.D.?” somebody hollered out, wanting to talk about something else, you could tell by the way he said it.

“I got to get drunk,” G.D. said. “That's what I got to do, and I ain't looking forward to it.”

“Why not?”

“The means I got at my disposal to get drunk are low and sorry,” G.D. said. “But it's a poor workman that quarrels with his tools. Let's get on the goddamn bus, boys, and go home.”

“Y'all heard what G.D. just said,” Dutch Bernson said to us as the Rice Birds headed into the clubhouse in Monroe.