Dirty Rice (37 page)

I'd heard the white children in Annette talk about Santa Claus that first year I went to school with them, and I asked my mother about who this man was they were talking about who came to their houses at Christmas time to leave presents for them. “That's a lie the white people tell their children this time of year,” she told me. “If their kids ain't been good, Santa Claus won't come see them.”

“Does it make them be good?” I asked. “When the kids hear that?”

“No,” she said. “You know better than that.”

“Why do they lie to their kids, then?”

“The white eyes like to lie. It's fun to them, and they do it real good. It satisfies them to lie about Santa Claus.”

“Do the kids get presents?”

“If they act like they believe that lie about Santa Claus, they will. They don't, they won't,” she said. “Go get me some wood for the cook stove.”

“I'll believe a lie if it'll get me some presents,” I told her. “Tell me it's true about Santa Claus coming.”

“It won't work for you. You're an Indian. Believing lies won't never do you no good.”

“You ain't going to tell me Santa Claus is true, then.”

“I'll tell you it's true, but I'll lie doing it. Believe it if you want to. But you still ain't getting no presents. Go bring me some wood. Not no rotted-out pine chunks now. I want hardwood.”

“Santa Claus,” I said to G.D. Squires as he stood out of position beside me watching the Rice Bird manager kicking at the pitcher's mound and holding his hand on his cap so Herbert couldn't get out and hop away. “Do you believe in Santa Claus, outfielder?”

“Yeah, sure I do,” G.D. said, “and I believe in the virtue of forty-seven year old relief pitchers and triple plays coming when you need them, too.”

“Dutch is waving at us,” I said. “I believe he wants us to come over there.”

“Partner, that manager with the toad in his hat ain't waving at us. He's looking right at you. You're on the receiving end of that wave, relief pitcher.”

By the time I reached the mound, the rest of the infielders had already got there before me, Phil Pellicore and Tubby Dean and Lon Anthony clustered around Dutch Bernson and Hookey, with Mike Gonzales hanging back a little bit from the rest. Hookey was at the center of the bunch, but from looking at his face, you'd have thought he was still out there by himself with nothing but the resin bag for company. He was looking toward the stands behind home plate like he'd seen somebody he thought he knew but wasn't certain about it yet. It didn't appear to be somebody he wanted to see, but he wasn't going to let whoever it was know the sight of him mattered one way or the other. The plate umpire hadn't walked toward the mound yet, but he was making motions like he was about to.

“Gemar,” Dutch said. “How you feeling?”

“I guess about like the rest of you,” I said. “I ain't that pert right now.”

“I ain't asking if you're happy,” Dutch said, and then talking to the rest of the infielders without looking at any one of them in particular. “You know where you're supposed to be standing, I hope. See if you can remember your place on the field, and go get on it.” They began wandering off, Phil Pellicore catching my eye and winking, and then it was just the four of us left.

“I got to go talk to the umpire here in a minute,” Dutch said. “Gemar, I'm fixing to put the ball in your hand and see if you can finish up the inning for us. Hookey has done run out of gas.”

“Well,” I said. “I don't know if I can do any better than what he's done.”

“I know you just pitched a full nine innings in that last one, but I'm between a rock and a hard place. Cliff is stove up, and Harry
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well, he ain't going to be able to help us none. Hookey thinks he can do it, but they wouldn't want to see Nolan out here.”

“They? The Rayne folks in the stands?” I said, and as I said it, realized how wrong that was.

“Them, too,” Dutch said. “Sure. That's right. That's who I'm talking about. But let me tell you what. I want you to relax. If we can get out of here with no more than two runs scoring, it'll look real good. Everybody'll be satisfied. Don't think you done bad when they get some runs across. You got us here in the first place. ”

“I want to say something,” Hookey said, speaking for the first time since I'd walked up to the mound and joined the rest of them standing there. “I'm not downgrading Gemar, but I think he's still worn out from that last game. Harry Nolan's rested, and the junk he throws might put a batter off stride.”

“I understand your position on this deal, Hookey,” Dutch said. “But it ain't yours to say. Go out there in right field and take a rest. You done all you can do here.”

Hookey opened his mouth to say something else, then closed it like a man deciding he didn't need to spit something bad out of his mouth right then after all. He'd keep tasting it and give it a little more time before he hawked it up for good.

“You sure about this, Dutch?” Dynamite Dunn said. “I think maybe Hookey's got it right. That's the safe thing to do. Let Harry throw that soft stuff up there.”

“I tell you what I am sure about, Dynamite,” Dutch said, not looking at anybody as he spoke, his eyes directed down like he was an infielder himself trying to harvest some little rocks that might present a danger to a action he wanted to go smooth. “I'm sure before God that every base on this diamond is full, and we ain't got a single damn out to work with. You got the ball with you?”

“Yeah,” Dynamite said, reaching into his mitt. “Here's what's fixing to cause all the trouble.”

“Is it a new one?” Dutch said, taking it out of Dynamite's hand.

“It sure ain't been hit by nobody,” Dynamite said. “I can flat guarantee you that.”

“Let's get started,” Dutch said and handed me the ball. “They going to let Gemar throw as many warm-ups as he wants, since he's coming in to relieve like this from another position. Go get you a drink of water, Hookey, and hope you can still catch a fly ball hit to you, if you need to, now you've swapped out with Gemar.”

That left me and Dynamite on the mound as Dutch walked up to the umpire to tell him about the shift of me from right field to the pitcher's mound. The noise in the stands had died down from a roar to a rumble, and you could hear the Opelousas base runners calling back and forth to each other and talking to the Rice Bird infielders as they waited by the bags. The noises they made were jolly, like the ones you hear talked about in Christmas songs, and I thought again about Santa Claus and all those lies told about him by white folks as I looked at Dynamite.

“Look what's going on now,” he said. “Ain't this a hell of a mess, pitcher?”

“I know just what's going on, catcher,” I said. “I figured it out a while ago, and I don't need you to tell me nothing about it. I know what odds are and what they mean.”

“You didn't have no part in this, Gemar,” he said. “Whatever happens won't make no difference. It ain't no skin off of you.”

“That's what you believe, huh? Winning or losing a baseball game don't include me. That's what you're trying to make me think.”

“You're all set up, Gemar,” Dynamite said. “Ain't no hard times coming you got to be scared of. Look at it that way. It's the times, son. The times. They're hard and getting harder. This whole country's gone to hell, not just Louisiana. A man's got to do what he can to make it. It ain't no fun in it. We all feel bad about this business. But it's just business. Tell yourself that, because that's what's true.”

“What you know about true? Here comes the umpire to tell us to stop all this chin music. Get behind the goddamn plate, and let me warm up.”

He did that, and I threw about eight or ten pitches, not feeling a one of them leave my hand, and then I pointed toward the umpire, Jake Toomer, and nodded my head. He made a hand signal that told me I could throw a few more if I wanted to, but I shook my head no, and he told the batter to step into the box for the game to start up again.

I didn't notice who the batter was, since I didn't bother to look at his face or the stance he was taking, and I wasn't studying none of that like I ordinarily would do when a man stepped in against me. Out of the corners of my eye, I could see the runner at first and the one at third take short leads, and I knew the one on second was doing the same. I didn't bother to turn around and look him back to the bag, though, just like I didn't with the ones I could see. I was working on the man at bat, and that was what I intended to do for the rest of the inning. That was Hookey's mess on base, and it was Mike Gonzales' and Dynamite's and it belonged to lots of others, too, I reckoned, but I wasn't going to stop to count them all up, that bunch that wanted to tell lies to baseball and get away with it.

Baseball wasn't fooled by that, and it never is fooled by nothing, any time. It is proof against fools, and that's the way Abba Mikko set it up to begin with. Inside the white lines that mark off the diamond, a lie cannot live and it cannot prosper. It can stay hid for a good long time, but it has got to show itself at the end. Snapping Turtle can stay underwater for hours and days and weeks. He can hold his breath and not need to suck in air longer than any other creature. He can do that, yes. But the time comes when he's got to raise his old head covered with green scum and water vines and let the light get to it while he sucks at the air. He's got to rise finally, want to or not, and that's when you see his beak and his little eyes and how displeasing he looks to all the other creatures Abba Mikko put in the world. He's got to show his ugly head to live, and that's when he shows his true nature.

I threw four pitches to that first batter for the Opelousas Indians, and all of them was strikes, but he got the bat on one and rolled it foul down the third base line. He sat down after taking a called third strike, and the Rayne Rice Birds crowd hollered some. They got a lot louder with that second one, the one I threw only three strikes to, two of them fastballs he didn't offer at, and the third a curve he got out in front of and swung a good six inches below. Then was when the noise got to be the loudest, and after that second batter was when Dynamite stood up to come out to the mound to talk to me. I didn't have nothing more to say to my catcher. I waved him back and turned around to look at the runner on second, listening to hear if Dynamite would come trotting up behind me anyway. He didn't, and I looked the runner on second straight into the eye until he grinned at me.

“I ain't done nothing to you,” he hollered at me.

“And you ain't going to,” I said back to him, but I don't think he could hear me over the noise coming from the stands and the bleachers and the benches set up along the base lines for the Evangeline League playoff and above all that somebody blowing a bugle. It wasn't a song, just noise, the racket the bugler was making.

When I turned back to face home plate, I looked close at the batter since he was the third one, and I wanted to remember his face later on, maybe at the times when I couldn't get to sleep late at night and needed a face to settle on to study and let me drift off. He was a man I recognized, Tom Stephens, who'd hit me hard in two games back in the regular season, times when I'd tried to get too careful with him, throwing him off-speed pitches after I thought I'd got him set up good with fastballs early in the count. He hadn't been fooled, and he'd unloaded on me, driving the ball to the center field wall both times, one a double and the other one he'd turned into a triple by running the bases smart.

Tom Stephens saw me look at his face, and he lifted his bat up and pointed it at me, tipping it like a salute. I touched my pitching hand to the bill of my cap, that one with the picture of the black bird holding a grain of rice in its mouth on it, and then I threw him three fastballs, starting at his knees and working my way up to his belt with the second one and putting the last one letter high. Tom Stephens took a full swing at every one of them, not a man afraid to fail. He was not willing to keep his bat on his shoulder and hope for a ball, and I appreciated him for that then, and I still do. The third one popped into Dynamite Dunn's mitt with a sound like a dead tree falling in Lost Man Marsh, and the game was over. The Rice Birds had won the championship playoff, and Gemar Batiste had throwed the last ball he would ever throw in the Evangeline League.

I didn't want to go into the clubhouse after the game was done with, but I had to so I could get my red oak bat out of the locker where I kept it wrapped up in the tow sack I'd brought it to Louisiana in, still holding the hits it had left in it. Lots of folks wanted to slap me on the back and shake my hand and take my picture and ask me questions, especially Tommy Grenier and some other reporters I didn't know, and I put up with some of that before I would walk out the door into the street that ran in front of Addison Stadium. I didn't see Sal Florio or Soapy Tonton in the building, and I didn't look for them. I figured they'd be busy dealing with lots of other people in different places for a good long while.

The owners of the Rice Birds was there in the clubhouse giving interviews and getting their pictures took, along with their families. That meant Clayton LeBlanc was there, the woman he was going to marry standing right close beside him the whole time, but I didn't look at her full on after I'd caught a glimpse of the color of the dress she was wearing. I could not have stood that without doing something a grown man shouldn't be caught showing.

I got my red oak bat stuck down in the tow sack with the other stuff I wanted to carry with me, and I reached down into the front of my shirt to touch the medal they gave for how I did in the All-Star Game in Baton Rouge. It was there all right, hanging by the rawhide string I'd put in the hole in the silver disc where they'd had a ribbon stuck when they first give it to me, so I figured I had everything with me that I wanted to carry away from Addison Stadium where the Rice Birds played ball. I still got that medal around my neck today.