Just North of Nowhere (35 page)

Dead faces. Not-wide eyes. She ran out of steam in their eyes and silence. The steam came back with the sweet smiles that followed. “I wish to Goddamn hell you for once would loose because you were trying to make something happen! I wish you’d for once stop being so Jesus Christ on a shit stick polite!” Forget grammar, the hell with couth; this was baseball!

Each Catbird looked at another. Each nodded nicely. “Cool,” someone said. Jill thought it was Kyle, but it might have been Lyle. And, sadly, she knew they were talking about her language.

They drifted apart after the traditional fuss over the check with Jill covering most of it just to get going. The sky was still postbox blue as her long legs ate the path upward through the trees. She liked the way her legs burned the steep climb—hated the way her butt felt: it was dragging back there. She’d work that butt this summer, yessir! Spring evening washed day’s leftover warmth from the coming night. Cool shadows slid over her. Deep in the woods on either side, night had already arrived. Animals and small winds ruffled the darkness into little noises. It had taken years, but Jill had gotten used to night sounds and the silences between. This city girl had grown country easy.

She was alone on the dark path home. Then she wasn't.

“Your boys need help,” the voice said.

Jill jumped, tingling as though she’d been caught at who-knew-what.

The librarian, Miss Potter, stepped from the shadow. She had blended with the night.

“Startle you?” she said.

“Not much.”

“You were somewhere else, I think.” Miss Potter slipped into step beside Jill, three choppy paces to each of the coach's long strides. “I'm familiar with the concept.”

Jill stepped up the tempo.

“I want to talk about your team.”

“So-called,” Jill said.

Ruth huffed. “Oh, they're a team. They're together.”

Jill snorted, stretched her step even further.
What the hell did this Porter...Potter, whatever her name was...know about baseball, about a team of boys?
“Be happy to hear,” Jill said.

“I hope.” The little librarian stopped dead on the path, stood her ground panting and offered her hand. “Name's Ruth Potter. I run the library. How do you do?”

Jill turned, looked at the tiny hand, gave it a polite jerk. “Jill Lukowski. I know who you are, Miss Potter. I’ve lived here a few years, myself.” The hand was dry, harder than it looked, firmer than it might have been. Taller by a foot, standing higher on the path, Jill looked down on the librarian.
Why, she's going bald
, Jill realized. Somehow, the knowledge made Jill smile, warmed her to the lady. She gave the hand a second shake. “Thank you for being so loyal to the team.”

Ruth snorted. “I want to talk about your team. That's a sad thing.”

That chilled it. “You’re a fan of the game?”

“No. I like children.”

Jill doubted that. She scanned the woman, top to bottom. She doubted it very much.

“I like the
idea
of them, anyway. I want to help. I can help.”

“Miss Potter. Ruth. I doubt...”

“...All you have to do is send them to the library.”

“For books?”

“For an afternoon. One at a time. For a little background.”

“Book background?” Jill smiled.

“Plate time! A field trip, call it.” Jill thought a smirk had pressed the corners of Ruth's mouth, but it was hard to tell. Night had come.

The kids came back different.

The day after their meeting on the path, Jill released Walter Bowswinger from practice. Her utility fielder, Walter hadn't had more than a couple half-inning's play that season – one at shortstop for Hap Gilli, and another disastrous stint relieving Kyle Yinger on the mound, pitching into an already way-lost game. In a weak line-up, Walter was, maybe, the exception to her “you don't suck” affirmation.

Nice boy, though.

After school Tuesday, Jill packed him off, his head hanging, to the library.

Wednesday, Walter punched the crap out of Pal Johnson, the third baseman. Walter blacked his eye, bloodied his nose and was still wading in, both fists, to Pal's guts and nuts when Jill pulled him off by his belt; sent him home to mom and dad, still fuming.

“What the heck was that?” Jill asked Pal.

By then, a bloody plug of toilet paper hung like a tusk from Pal's nose. “Said I ought to...” He stopped dead, stared at Jill.

“What? Said you ought what?”

“Can I swear?” he asked looking at her.

She nodded.

“Said I 'ought to piss or get off the G-D effing pot,' and I stunk up the whole third base line…

“Left field too!” Harold Gilli threw in.

“'Mother effing left field,'“ Roy corrected, checking his book. “'Mother-effing,'“ he confirmed. He didn't smile.

Everyone else did. There was giggling around.

“He didn't say 'effing',” Leslie B. Fritz said. Something like smiling played around her eyes. “Want to know what he really said?”

Jill cut it off. “Look, guys. Dustups happen! All right? Tomorrow you'll shake hands and forget it. Okay!? Let's go, let's go, let's go! Batting practice all 'round, guys. You need to learn how to place your hits. No point hitting a ball to where the other team wants it! You got to learn to hit 'em where they're
not
! I'll pitch...and I'm not going to take it easy!”

“Eff no!” someone shouted.

“Burn the G-D things over the ess-oh-be-ing...” Kyle began.

“...emm-effing plate!” Lyle finished.

“We can handle it, ess-aye-ess!” Harold shouted back.

“'Sure As Shit'“ Leslie translated for Jill.

Even Roy laughed.

Following, was business as usual.

Next afternoon they fudged a practice game. Lyle and Kyle switched positions, Kyle caught, Lyle pitched, the outfield took turns on the bases, center swung left and right, short went long into the outfield.

The left fielder, Fat Whendol Rifkin, rotated to the library.

Back at practice, unrepentant, Utility Walter covered left. He shook hands, but wouldn't talk to Pal Johnson, wasn't a bit chastened by yesterday's duster. Fact was he was proud of it. And he’d taken to spitting.

What truly was different, was his play. Normally, Walter took the field, his glove over his head, as though wearing a lobster pot for protection.

That afternoon, Walter Bowswinger stood open on the field, head up, arms at his side, daring the ball. It came his way, he ran to be there; ran to connect, as though catching with his face. Odd kid.

His efforts seemed to inspire Magnus Ingebretsohn at center. Magnus stayed almost busy that afternoon reaching for pop flies and grounders – he'd taken two bouncing pebble-balls to the gut and one to the inner thigh that just missed his privates.

Neither Magnus nor Utility Walter had gotten a glove on a ball all afternoon, though, and most hits simply bobbled to the ground or rolled unimpeded to the outer dark. Enthusiastic stupidity wasn't talent, after all and a string of uniquely foul language drifted to the bench from Utility Walter's patch of evening-shaded grass. That was different.

When the shadows reached the backstop, Jill called it a day.

Next afternoon, second baseman Magnus Hacker went to the library and Fat Whendol returned from his afternoon field trip with Ruth Potter.

Practice was interesting.

After warm-up, Jill fungoed a handful of drives to left to give Whendol a chance to catch up on yesterday's fielding practice.

Nearsighted and a good 20-overweight, Whendol thrashed through the tall grass. He dove, flopped and slid everywhere he worked. He missed it all, but missed with energy and graceless sweat. By the time of the accident his uniform carried the team's first grass-stains of the season.

Jill had put one between left and right fields. Hitting to where they weren't, as the saying was!

Whendol's pudgy legs pistoned like a hare humping a bunny; took him to where the ball fell from twilight. His glasses slipstreamed over his shoulder and even that didn't stop him, not one bit. Both arms groped ahead, blind, and his legs pumped like cherub wings grabbing air to get aloft.

In the rush, he ignored Darlow Grimm.

For an inspired moment, rail-thin Dar made a three-step feint toward the ball. When he realized 120 glandular pounds of Whendol Rifkin were bearing down, blind upon him, Dar Grimm back-peddled toward safety.

Alas, there was no safety in the Catbird outfield.

Whendol heaved himself aloft. Terrible. Noble. Awful. It was not a beautiful moment. He soared not high. Lacking slow-mo grace, Whendol's flight was quick, heavy, and hard. It ended on Darlow, Darlow, who'd gone to ground, back first, as though preparing a soft place for his teammate to land.

Belly to belly, two full-bodied
WHOOOF
s sounded from the outfield to the bench.

The big
WHOOOF
was Whendol's.

The simultaneous
WHOOF-PO
P was Darlow's gut emptying and his left arm dislocating. It drowned the subtle
crunch
as his nose met his cheekbone and the Catbirds had their first injury of the modern era.

And Utility Walter joined the Catbird line-up.

He grabbed the position, sneering. “I'm sharpening these spikes,” he announced, pointing with a bat to the dull plastic nubs on his shoe. “Just so's you know!” he added and spat.

Jill was now officially curious.

The library was locked. She knocked. Nothing. Two minutes after, the shade flapped up, the lock clicked and Lyle Younger, the older of the Yinger-Younger kids, stepped into the sun.

He looked like he didn't belong on the street. Not there. Not in Bluffton. Not anywhere. His eyes were shocked bright, his face flopped slack, and him only half in town, the rest somewhere Jill didn't know where.

Miss Potter stood behind, still in the afternoon dark of the library. She looked at Jill and did not smile.

“Send what's his name...?”

“Kyle...” Lyle said.

“Kyle,” she said, “Tomorrow.” That was it. Door closed, lock snapped. Shade pulled. Conversation done.

“Lyle?” Jill said.

“Call me Bear,” he said. And drifted toward home practicing a walk.

They were not related: Yinger. Younger. Kyle and Lyle. Their families lived next door, was all. Yingers had lived beside Youngers on Memorial Post Road for as long as...? As
that
! Mrs. Yinger and Mrs. Younger had gotten pregnant within days of one another – apparently. They gave birth the same day, anyway. Lyle first.

Kyle slipped into the world twelve minutes later and happy to be there, thank you very much. The standing, knee-slap, gut-convulsing joke between them was: “Yinger's younger!” Between the two, they had worked for years to find the other side of the gag, the rest of the rhyme: “Yinger's
younger
but Younger’s...”

...something...

They'd get it. They had a lifetime.

They were affable kids. More like brothers than not – except they
liked
each other: never fought, enjoyed the same comics, same cars, same songs. What they didn't like, they didn't like it together. When one got something, the other was happy for him. When one got tired of something, he offered it to the other before tossing it.

When it came time, neither thought it would be too bad an idea to play some ball. Maybe it'd be fun. Baseball they figured. Kyle could throw a little and mostly put it near where it ought, and, while Lyle couldn't, he liked catching what Kyle threw – those big hands – so that worked out pretty darn good.

Neither was great, but the team never won anyway and none of the other 'Birds made either Lyle or Kyle feel bad about how not good, not lousy
they
were, so both were pretty happy.

After Kyle's Field Trip, he announced his Goddamned name was Bear, and Lyle better just give Goddamnit the hell up on the mother-effing think that anyone was ever going to call
him
Bear and, anyway, pitchers were more important than mother-humping catchers, didn't he friggin' know that?
Especially
catchers who couldn't catch the sweet mother-humping God-awful fast shit he burned over the plate to
Kyle's
butter baby-fingers any-the-hell-way.

He hadn't said 'effing', either.

Apparently, Kyle had also grasped the virtue of the bean ball. In actual fact, he seemed more intent on beaning his own catcher than on dusting opposition batters who seemed, annoyingly, to want to get between him and his Goddamned best-friend-for-life, Lyle.

On the mound, Bear Kyle had become a series of walks, language and attempted assault.

Warned, Kyle told the umpire, “I'm not hittin' anyone! It's the Goddamn
idea
that counts, Goddamnit? Pitcher's gotta keep the bastard's
thinking
don't he?”

‘Bear’ was tossed for poor sportsmanship right there, along with Lyle who had refused to return any pitched ball to Kyle without trying to put it up his neighbor's nose.