Nobody Bats a Thousand (29 page)

“It does if it’s part of
your
job.”

“Shouldn’t I stand up for what I feel is right?”

“Not if it’s the same as beating your hea
d against a wall.” M
y dad finished his beer then signaled the bartender for two more. “Look, I’m not saying that McDonald’s was a good job, but anything you do for a living you are going to have to make sacrifices. You always seem to work harder figuring out reasons to quit than you do working.”

“Well, I guess I’ve always thought I had some kind of hidden talent that would surface someday.”

“If you did it would be in full flower by now, and believe me, eating, sleeping, and watching TV aren’t the most marketable of skills.”

“I did once give about ten seconds of thought about being a TV critic. But then I thought what a drag that would be, like writing book reports for a living. I used to really hate writing book reports.”

“Talent
don’t
mean shit,” said a big bald guy sitting next to my old man. “There’s a hell of a lot more talent out there than there is opportunity, so talent don’t mean shit.”

“Jimmy, this is my bo
y, Billy. He’s twenty-one today,” m
y old man introduced me to the old bald guy with deep lines in his leathery face who had just butted into our conversation.

“That so?
That calls for a celebration. Gus,” he yelled toward the other end of the bar.
“Three shots of JD.”

“You don’t have to…”

“Bullshit.”

Shortly, we had huge shots of whiskey in short round glasses sitting in front of us. The glasses were raised and clinked together, and then the liquor was downed quickly, though I almost gagged when the end of mine hit the bottom of my throat. I tried to sit as still as possible to keep from belching it back up.

“Talent
don’t
mean shit. Am I
right or am I right, Scooter?” t
he old guy said to my old man who just sort of shrugged before he turned to me.

“I wish I could do something to get you on at work, but the office here is pretty small, and any new openings usually go to women lately. You not being a vet or a minority or a woman it would tough for you to get on no matter how well you did on the test.”

“You like working at the post office?”

“It pays the bills. I mean I don’t like humping the mail when it’s raining like hell or when
it’s
115 degrees, but every job has its ups and downs I guess.”

I played with my beer bottle, sliding off the label, which was moist and loose from condensation. “I got an interview next Tuesday with a friend of Gina’s dad down at the irrigation district.”

“Great!” My old man was surprised and happy.

“Well, the thing is…I don’t know if I want to work there.”

“That’s a good-paying, stable job with benefits. The days and hours are weird, but there are kids your
age, shoot there are guys my age
that
would kill for an opportunity like that.”

“I just don’t see myself driving a pick-up up and down ditch banks for the next thirty years.”

“Billy,” m
y old man
said as he
signaled the bartender for two more beers. “Life is what you make it son. Don’t let a dumb decision haunt you for the rest of your life.”

The old guy next to my dad stood and slapped my old man on the shoulder. “See ya, Scooter.”

“
Thanks,
Jimmy. You be good.”

“Scooter?”

“That’s what everybody in town use to call me ‘til I got out of high school.”

“From when you played baseball?”

“Yeah.”

“How come you never talk about playing?”

“That was a long time ago.”

“I heard you were pretty good.”

“Where did you hear that?” H
e smiled.

“I
dunno,
maybe Gina’s mom or somebody.”

My old man absently rubbed his jaw with the outside of his hand.  He seemed to be staring off a thousand miles away.

“Baseball was my best sport, and I a
lways thought I w
as pretty good.” H
e finished his beer and slid the empty forward. “The Angels offered me five thousand to sign, but I turned them down. I wanted to play in college first.”

“Like your cousin Alvin?”

“That was probably part of the reason, besides getting an education. Alvin had a half scholarship to USC when they were the big powerhouse in the country. He didn’t play much, but hell, I always knew I was better than him. At least I thought so. I guess I’ll never know for sure.”

“So what happened?”

“I turned down a few scholarships, waiting on USC like a dummy, and I was working, saving up some money when I got drafted.”

“By what team?”

“By the army.”

“Too bad you didn’t sign pro.”

“There was a war going on
. Mayb
e the Angels could have pulled some strings and got me
into the Reserves but at the time the chances were pretty slim. No, the army
was going to get me no matter what
.”                                                

“I always thought you joined.”

“Hell no, I got drafted. I would have never volunteered with a war going on, especially with what I know now.”

“Well, Vietnam wasn’t like World War Two…”

“I wouldn’t have volunteered for that on
e either, that or any other war.” H
e sat there with a dull stare. “It’s really incredible if you think about it. How men can talk other men into risking their lives to go and kill other men, convincing them that they have to do it, and
they should feel good about it.” S
till with the hollow stare, he shook his head.
“
It’s just fucking crazy.”

I sat still. Filled with shock over hearing my old man say ‘fuck’ for the first time in my life when the bartender delivered two more giant glasses of whiskey to go with our fresh beers.

“What’s this?” my dad asked.

Gus, a short fat guy with gray hair and a big nose, pointed to the other end of the bar.

My old man focused in then raised his glass and smiled. “Thanks Tim.”

Tim looked about the same age as my dad. “No problem, Scooter. Happy birthday, kid, you poor bastard, I wouldn’t want to be twenty-one again today if you gave me a million dollars.”

My old man smiled and held his glass up again. “I guess we can’t be impolite,” he whispered to me
, “but
we should slow down after this.”

The whiskey was a bit easier to take this time, but it still took me three swallows to clean out the glass. By this time, though the room and the people had not changed, everything began to take on a new edge, a new expediency. We were all now the center of the world, me, my old man, and all the rest of the warm souls grouped in this frayed bar on the outskirts of this tired little town. I suddenly wanted to tell my old man how much I loved and respected him. I wanted to rush up to everybody in the place, get right into their weathered faces, and tell all of them how great and special and full of character they were, but something inside told me that the deep truths I felt wouldn’t be readily accepted, that the whiskey was fooling with me, and I would do best just to sit quietly and pass the time.

The front door opened, a rush of sunlight quickly there and gone, and in came a fat guy in a light blue suit who looked around before deciding to sit next to my dad. The guy wore the only tie in the room. He ordered a cocktail then nodded to my dad without smiling. “Gleason, how’s it going?”

“What’s with you,
Jimbo
? Long
time no see
, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in here before. What happened did
McGill’s
close down? Why are you
slumming
it?”

“I saw my ex-wife’s car in front of
McGill’s
. It’s been a rough enough
week
. I’m not in the mood for her aggravation.”

“With all of your ex-wives how to you keep track of what they’re all
driving
?”

“Ha, ha,” he mocked a laugh, took the drink just set before him, stirred it, tossed down the short straw and took a long sip. He set his glass down. “Did you hear about the Briggs kid?  He got killed on 95 not far from where Sam
Kennison
bit it. It’s sad.”

“Death isn’t happy or sad,” my old man told him. “It just is.”

“Well, tell that to his family. My wife talked to his mother. You know that kid was something else, a real go-getter. You know he kept a day planner since junior high. There wasn’t five minutes in a day he didn’t have planned out. Smart, organized, focused, who knows what that kid could have done in life.”

“Could have, should have, might have, don’t mean shit.”

The guy looked at my old man briefly but didn’t respond. It was just then I realized who he was, why he looked so familiar. He was Jim McHale Jr., the guy who owned the biggest furniture store in the whole tri-county area. He did most of his own commercials on TV, so I’d seen him hundreds if not thousands of times though now for the first time real and up close. This sort of amazed me. The guy was a local celebrity, and here he was sitting in a bar having a drink just like one of the guys.

I needed to pee. My old man told me where the bathroom was, so I followed his directions all the way to the far end of the building down a short dark hallway until I found the door, which pushed into a small bright room. There was a guy using the urinal so I went into the stall.  It took me a while to get going, like I suddenly had a bashful kidney or something, but the whole time the guy at the urinal was pissing like a racehorse, going on and on. I still hadn’t started when he finished, flushed, and began to speak, an anonymous voice from the other side of the partition.

“So, you’re Gleason’s kid, huh?”

“Guilty.”

“Played ball with your dad in high school.
Knew your mom too.”

“It’s pretty weird, but I never really talked to him about playing baseball until today. Were you guys any good?”

“Your dad
was,
aggressive hitter, great shortstop. Probably the best high school shortstop this town has
ever seen.”

“Well, no offense, but it’s not like the competition around here is that fierce. I mean it’s not like L.A. or New York or someplace big.”

“Well, I’l
l tell ya, we played twice a year
against Rod Willis out of Bakersfield, he ended up playing a couple of years for the Cubs, and I’ll tell ya, he couldn’t carry your old man’s cleats out to the field.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

I heard the water as he briefly washed his hands. “Enjoy being twenty-one, kid. It only comes once, and
b
elieve
me it goes by in a flash.
” I heard him go out the door.

I stood there pissing, thinking about my old man being a hell of a ballplayer, and I was shocked, mostly because I’d never heard him mention anything about it.
We’d played catch a little when I was real young but it was never a big deal.
I finished up, washed my hands, and stood looking in the mirror, thinking about my own brief baseball career. It lasted from when I was about eight or nine until I was about sixteen. Little League, Babe Ruth League, and when that wasn’t going on there were always vacant ball fields around town, and a hardcore group of five or six of us, sometimes growing to ten or twelve, would play three hundred days a year. No matter how hot it got we’d play until it got too dark to see; three files up, over the line, four on four or five on five, playing just to play not really worrying about who won or lost or even what the score was. Though I hadn’t touched a glove or a bat in years it was there, standing in that crusty bathroom, where it all sprung back to me, how I prided myself on my defense and my ability to place hit the ball, and how much I loved the game until high school came, and everything became too organized and serious with the coaches acting like drill sergeants, treating everybody like shit and worrying about winning like their lives depended on it. I remembered quitting the football team, knowing it would keep me from playing baseball that spring, the first big decision of my life, the first time I ever remember feeling that I was right and they were wrong, no matter how it looked or what anybody else had to say.

I walked back into the
bar,
saw two more shots of whiskey in front of my beer and two empty shot glasses in front of my old man who was turned talking to Jim McHale.

“So nobody has any control over what happens to them?” I heard McHale say as I sat down.

“That’s right, what happens
happens
. It’s fate. You can’t change it.”

“So whether I advertise or not doesn’t affect my business?”