Independence Day (58 page)

In fact, two “A’s” who pass right by us—
R. Begtzos
and
J. Bergman
stitched to their backs—have sizable Milwaukee goiters and seam-splitting butts, which argue against their having played anytime in recent memory.

“I’m clueless,” Paul says. His own outfit is no more appetizing than Bergman’s and Begtzos’s.

“It’s an important part of the whole Cooperstown experience to take a look inside here.” I begin moving us toward the tunnel behind the “players.” “It’s supposed to be good luck.” (This I’ve made up on the spot. But his euphoria has now burned off like ether, and I’m back to conflict-containment drills and getting through our last hours as friendly enemies.)

“I’ve got a train to catch,” he says, following along.

“You’ll make it,” I say, less friendly myself. “I’ve got plans of my own.”

When we walk through to the end of the tunnel we could easily stroll straight out onto the field where the players are, or else turn and climb steep old concrete steps into the grandstand. Paul shies off from the field as though warned against it and takes the steps. But to me it’s irresistible to walk a few yards into the open air, cross the gravel warning track and simply stand on the grass where two teams, ersatz Braves and ersatz A’s, are playing catch and limbering stiff, achy joints. Gloves are popping, bats cracking, voices sailing off into the bright air, shouting, “I could catch it if I could see it,” or “My leg won’t bend that way anymore,” or “Watch it, watch it, watch it.”

Un-uniformed, I venture far enough that I can see up to the blue sky from within my shadow and all the way out to the right-field fence, where the numbers spell “312,” and bleacher seats and treetops and neighborhood rooflines are beyond, and above that a shining MOBIL sign revolves like a radar dish. Heavy, capless men in uniforms sit in the grass below the fence palings, or lie back staring up, taking in moments of deliverance, carefree and obscure. I have no idea what’s up here, only that I would love to be them for a moment, complete with a suit and no son.

Paul sits alone on an old grandstand bench, affecting timeless boredom, his Walkman earphones clutching his neck, his chin on a pipe railing. Little is afoot here, the place being mostly empty. A few kids his age are far up in the drafty back rows, cackling and cracking wise. A scattering of chatty wives are below in the reserved seats—women in pantsuits and breezy sundresses, sitting in pairs and threes, viewing the field and players, laughing occasionally, extolling a good catch or merely occupying themselves with the neutral subjects they each are at ease with. And happily—happy as linnets in a warm and gentle wind, with nothing better to do than twitter.

“What’d the bartender say to the mule when he ordered a beer?” I say, coming down the row of seats. I feel I have to break new ground again.

He turns his eyes to me disparagingly without moving his chin off the pipe rail. This won’t be funny, his look indicates. His “insect” tattoo is visible. An insult. “Clueless,” he says again to be rude.

“‘I’m sorry, sir, what seems to be bothering you?’” I sit beside him, wanted or unwanted, and muse off down the first-base line in silence. A tiny, antique man in a bright white shirt, shoes and trousers is pushing a chalk wheel down the base path. He stops midway and looks where he’s been in estimation of his trueness, then resumes toward the sack. I raise my camera and take his picture, then squeeze one off at the field and the players seemingly readying themselves to play, and finally one of the sky with the flag raised but motionless above the “390” sign in center.

“What good is it to come to some beautiful place?” Paul says broodily, his chin still resting on the green pipe, his heavy, downy-haired legs splayed so as to reveal a scar on his knee, a long and pink and still scabby thing of unknown origin.

“The basic idea, I guess, is you’ll remember it later and be a lot happier.” I could add, “So if you’ve got some useless or bad memories this’d be a great place to start off-loading them.” But what I mean is obvious.

Paul gives me the old dead-eye and shuffles his Reeboks. The hatless ballplayers who have been running sprints and stretching in the outfield are walking in together now, some with their caps on backward, some with arms on each other’s shoulders, a couple actually walking backward and clowning it up. “Come ahnnn, Joe Louis!” one of the wives shouts, getting her sports and heroes confused. The other wives all laugh. “Don’t yell like that at Fred,” one says, “you’ll scare him to death.”

“I’m sick of not liking stuff,” Paul says, seeming not to care. “I’m ready for a big change.”

News not unwelcome, since a move to Haddam may be on his horizon. “You’re just getting started,” I say. “You’ll find a lot of things to like.”

“That’s not what Dr. Stopler says.” He stares out at the wide, mostly vacant ballyard.

“Well, fuck Dr. Stopler, then. He’s an asshole.”

“You don’t even know him.”

I fleetingly consider telling Paul I’m moving to New Mexico and opening an FM station for the blind. Or that I’m getting married. Or that I have cancer.

“I know him well enough,” I say. “Shrinks are all alike.” Then I sit silent, resentful of Dr. Stopler for being an authority on all of life—mine included.

“What is it I’m supposed to do again if I’m not supposed to be a critic of my age?” He’s been studying this subject since last night. The thought of a whole new leash on life might in fact have inspired his short-lived euphorics.

“Well,” I say, watching the players coalesce into two rival but friendly “teams,” as a hugely fat man with a tripod and box camera emerges slowly out of the runway, his one leg stiff. The cameraman appraises the sun, then starts to set up in accordance. “I’d like you to come live with me a while, maybe learn to play the trumpet, later go to Bowdoin and study marine biology; and not be so sly and inward while you’re there. I’d like you to stay a little gullible and not worry too much about standardized tests. Eventually I’d like you to get married and be as monogamous as possible. Maybe buy a house near the water in Washington State, so I could come visit. I’ll be more specific when I have time to direct your every waking movement.”

“What’s monogamous?”

“It’s something like the old math. It’s a cumbersome theory nobody practices anymore but that still works.”

“Do you think I was ever abused?”

“Nothing I was personally involved in. Maybe you can remember a few minor cruelties. Your memory’s pretty good.” I stare at him, unwilling to be amused, since his mother and I love him more than he (of all people) will ever know. “Do you want to file a complaint? Maybe talk to your ombudsman about it on Tuesday?”

“No, I guess not.”

“You know, you shouldn’t think you’re not supposed to be happy, Paul. You understand that? You shouldn’t get used to not being happy just because you can’t make everything fit down right. Everything doesn’t fit down right. You have to let some things go, finally.” Now would be the moment to bring to light what a quirky old duck Jefferson was—the practical idealist
qua
grammarian—his whole life spent gadgeting out the mysteries of the status quo in quest of a firmer foothold on the future. Or possibly I could borrow a baseball metaphor having to do with some things that happen inside the white lines and those that happen out.

Only I am suddenly stopped cold. Not what I’d planned.

The A’s and Braves have formed two team-photo groups down the third-base line, taller men behind, shorter men kneeling (Messrs. Begtzos and Bergman are shorter). The kneeling men have their gloves and a fan of wooden bats arranged prettily on the grassy foreground. A low, portable signboard has been wheeled out and placed in front of them. O’MALLEY’S FAN-TASY BASEBALL CAMP, it says in red block letters, and below it, in temporary lettering: “Braves vs. ’67 Red Sox—July 3, 1988.” The sign makes all the Braves laugh. None of the Red Sox seem to be present.

Pictures are quickly snapped. The man who has chalked the base paths supervises wheeling the sign over to the canary-suited A’s, where he jiggers the letters to read O’MALLEY’S FANTASY BASEBALL CAMP: “Athletics vs. ’67 Red Sox—July 3, 1988.”

All clap when the pictures are done, and players begin straying toward the dugout and down the baselines, or just wandering out onto the infield in their too-tight uniforms, looking as if something wonderfully memorable had just happened but they’d missed it or it wasn’t enough, this even though the
big game
with the BoSox, the whole megillah, what it’s all about, is still to come. “You look great, Nigel,” a husky-voiced wife shouts out from the stands in a yawky Aussie accent. Nigel, who’s a big, long-armed and bearded “Brave,” with a thick middle and turned-in toes that make him seem shy, pauses on the dugout steps and lifts his blue Atlanta cap like ole Hank on his glory day. “You look damn good,” she shouts out. “Damn good on you.” Nigel smiles introspectively, nods his head, then ducks into the shadows along the bench with his mates. I should’ve taken his picture.

For, how else to seize such an instant? How to shout out into the empty air just the right words, and on cue? Frame a moment to last a lifetime?

A dead spot now seems to be where these two days have delivered us—not even inside the Hall of Fame yet, but to an unspectacular moment in a not exactly bona fide ballpark, where two spiritually wrong-footed “clubs” make ready to play a real team whose glories are all behind them, and where by some system of inner weights and measures I have just run out of important words, but before I’ve said enough, before I’ve achieved a desired effect, before the momentum of a shared physical act—strolling the hallowed halls, viewing the gloves, license plates, strike zones—can take us up and carry us to a good end. Before I’ve made of this day a memory worth preserving.

I’d have done better to have us wait with the crowd until the doors were cleared, instead of seeking one more chance at quality time and risking this flat-footed feeling of nothing doing, with our last point of significant agreement being that I had probably not abused my son. (My trust has always been that words can make most things better and there’s nothing that can’t be improved on. But words
are
required.)

“People my age are on a six-month cycle,” Paul says in a reflective adult voice. The “A’s” and the “Braves” mill the sidelines, wanting something to happen, something they’ve paid good money for. I still wouldn’t mind joining them. “Probably the way I am now will be different by Christmas. Adults don’t have that problem.”

“We have other problems,” I say.

“Like what?” He looks around at me.

“Our cycles last a lot longer.”

“Right,” he says. “Then you croak.”

I almost say, “Or worse.” Which would send his mind off inventorying Mr. Toby, his dead brother, the electric chair, being fed arsenic, the gas chamber—on the hunt for something new and terrible in the world to be obsessed by and later make jokes about. And so I say nothing. My face, I suspect, bears promise of some drollery about death and its too, too little sting. But as I said, I’ve said all I know.

I hear the steam organ begin tootling away on “Way down upon the Swanee River.” Our little ballpark has a lazy, melancholy carnival fruitiness afloat within it now. Paul looks at me shrewdly when I don’t answer as expected, the corners of his mouth flickering as if he knows a secret, though I know he doesn’t.

“Why don’t we head back now?” I say, leaving death unchallenged.

“What are those guys doing down there?” he says, looking quickly to the level playing field, as if he’d just now seen it.

“They’re having a great time,” I say. “Doesn’t it look like fun?”

“It looks like they’re not doing anything.”

“That’s how adults have fun. They’re really having the time of their lives. It’s just so easy they don’t even have to try.”

And then we go. Paul first, down the aisle behind the wives, then struggling over the stumpy steps to the runway; and I, having a last fond look at the peaceful field, the men at loose ends but still two teams with games on tap.

We walk through the tunnel’s shadows and out into the sunny parking lot, where the steam-organ music seems farther away. Up on Main Street cars are moving. I’m certain the Hall of Fame is open, its morning crises resolved.

The batting cage boys have now shoved off, their metal bats leaned outside the fence, all three cages empty and inviting.

“I believe we have to take a few chops, whatta you think?” I say to Paul. I am not at full strength but am ready, suddenly, for
something
.

Paul estimates the cages from a distance, his clumsy feet turned out now, as slew-footed as the least athletic of boys, heavy and uninspirable.

“Come on,” I say, “you can coach.” Possibly he makes a tiny double
eeeck
or a fugitive bark; I’m not certain. Though he comes.

Like a militant camp counselor, I lead us straight across to the fenced cages, which are fitted out with fifty-cent coin boxes and draped inside with green netting to keep careening balls from maiming people and injuring the pitching machines, which are themselves big, dark-green, boxy, industrial-looking contraptions that work by feeding balls from a plastic hopper through a chain-drive circuitry that ends with two rubber car tires spinning in opposite tangency at a high rate of speed and from between which each “pitch” is actually
expelled
. Signs posted all around remind you to wear a helmet, protective glasses and gloves, to keep the gates closed, to enter the cage alone, to keep small children, pets, bottles, anything breakable including wheelchair occupants out—and if none of these warnings is convincing, all risk is yours anyway (as if anybody thought different).