Prairie Hardball (2 page)

True to her Supermum form, my mother had baked my favourite chocolate-chip cookies for my homecoming, which she brought into the living room and put next to the tea tray.

She was the reason I had begged off the first half of a two-week Titan home stand to make the trip. Back in the forties, before she met my father, Helen MacLaren, as she then was, had been one of fifty-odd Canadians to play in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the one celebrated in the movie
A League of Their Own
. Half of them came from Saskatchewan, and those “girls,” Mum included, were to be inducted into the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame in Battleford on the weekend.

My mother and I have never been close. I was a dreamy sort of child, and she admired practicality. I was sloppy and forgetful (still am) and she thought tidiness next to godliness. As a teen, I found her smug conventionality stifling and was unable to comprehend her contentment with a life revolving around parish work, the hospital board, and weekly visits to the salon.

My father, a scholar and a dreamer in his own way, was my hero. He had travelled as a young man. He had gone to University of Toronto. He had visited London and Paris, Rome and Florence. He had served as a chaplain in World War Two. When I was still little, my best treat was to spend Friday evenings curled up in the armchair in his study reading while he worked on his sermon.

My only bond with my mother was forged on Saturday afternoons. It was she who taught me to love baseball. I couldn’t meet her standards on the field, but she did manage to teach me how to throw hard, not like a girl, a skill that gives me credibility at the ballpark even now.

More importantly, she taught me to watch, to understand strategy, to think like a ballplayer. She had been a backup outfielder for the Racine Belles, and had used her time on the bench well. As in major-league baseball, it is not necessarily the biggest stars who best understand the game. To this day, when I want fresh insight, I go to the utility players in the clubhouse, not the multi-million-dollar guys.

Indian Head was a baseball town, host to fierce annual provincial tournaments in the fifties. For a few seasons, the Indian Head team was all black, recruited from the southern United States to give us a lock on all the tournaments. I can’t imagine what those players must have made of lily-white rural Saskatchewan back then.

When there was no game in town, we would find one on the radio or, later, on television. My mother being my mother, she would peel vegetables or do her mending in front of the set, but she never missed an inning. She was more passionate about the game of baseball than she seemed to be about anything else in her life. I know that the only times I ever heard her raise her voice was to argue an umpire’s call.

She still follows the game, especially the team I cover, the Titans. When I phone home each week, she can be counted upon to second-guess the manager’s moves. I once passed on one of her suggestions to Sugar Jenkins, the hitting coach, and it’s become a running gag in the clubhouse to ask me what my mother would have done.

“Mum, do you still have that scrapbook I used to look at when I was a kid?” I asked her, after she finished pouring. “I bet Andy would like to see it.”

“Oh, he probably doesn’t want to be bothered,” she said.

“Of course I do,” Andy said.

“Well, I did have to get it out anyway, for the dinner. The Hall of Fame people asked me to bring it.”

“I’ll fetch it,” my father said, getting out of his chair.

“Wait until you see her in uniform,” I told Andy.

“Like in that movie you took me to?”

“Exactly,” I said. “Mum looks just like Geena Davis.”

“Hardly, dear,” she said.

“Did you see the movie, Helen?” Andy asked.

“Yes. Some of it was quite good.”

“But it was really like that? You really had charm school and chaperones and all of that?”

“Of course. My parents would never have let me go if it wasn’t for the chaperones. I was only twenty, after all.”

“And Racine, Wisconsin was Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one,” I laughed.

“Compared to Wolseley, Saskatchewan, it was,” my father said, limping back into the room, favouring his bad hip.

“Did you ever see her play?” Andy asked him.

“Just once. When I went to Racine to ask her to marry me.”

“And you accepted on the spot?” Andy asked my mother.

“Of course not,” she said, almost smiling. “I waited until the season was over.”

“Baseball came first in those days,” Dad said, handing Andy the big blue album, held together with laces. I went and sat beside him on the couch while he opened it and turned the thick pages to the first picture.

“I remember this one,” I said. “It was my favourite.”

I pointed at the clipping from the Regina
Leader-Post
in 1946 which showed my mother sliding into second base, skirt flying, just ahead of the tag. Her hat had blown off and her curls were wild against her cheek.

“It’s not very ladylike,” she said, sitting next to Andy on the other side of the couch.

“I don’t imagine ladylike probably cut it on the ball diamond, even in those days,” I said.

“I remember that game like it was yesterday. Edna Adams hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth and we beat the Rockford Peaches for the championship.”

“Is she going to be at the ceremony? Edna Adams?”

“I hope so. I’ve lost touch with most of the girls, but the last I heard, she was living in Watrous. She’s widowed, I think. Edna Summers, she is now.”

“What about Virna Wilton?” I asked. “She was a good friend, wasn’t she?”

“She’s coming up from Indiana, with her son. I got a letter just last week.”

“Any other teammates?”

“I think there are five of us still alive from the Belles. Five from Saskatchewan, that is. I don’t know about the American girls.”

“And they’re all going to be there?”

“Far as I know.”

“How many are going to be inducted?” Andy asked.

“Twenty, if they all come,” my Dad said.

“You must be very excited,” Andy said.

“It was a long time ago,” she said, turning the pages of the album. “We probably won’t have anything to say to each other.”

That’s Mum. She’s spent her life protecting herself against disappointment. Of course, she has also protected herself from spontaneity or surprise, but she’s willing to make the trade-off.

The clock on the mantel in the hall whirred, hiccupped, and gave four feeble dings. My mother closed the book and got up.

“I’d better be seeing to supper,” she said.

“Can I help?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“No, you just relax. You’ve had a long trip.”

“I think I’ve got enough energy left to peel a potato or two,” I said.

“You stay and talk to your father,” she said, firmly, and left the room.

He smiled.

“She’s the boss.”

“So, Daddy, what’s new?” I asked.

“Nothing much,” he said. “The usual.”

“Is your hip bothering you? I notice you’re limping a bit.”

He waved his hand dismissively.

“Just getting a bit creaky,” he said.

“You should have it replaced,” I said. “Andy’s stepfather had it, and he’s walking really well now.”

“It’s not so bad I can’t handle it.”

Silence fell in the room. Shadrach got up from the floor where he had been lying and started to climb up onto to the armchair I had been sitting in.

“Oh, dear, I’d better get his blanket or your mother will have a conniption.”

“I’ll get it,” I said. “Where is it?”

“In the hall closet. She wanted things to be nice for you.”

“Treating us like company, eh? I don’t know whether to be insulted or flattered.”

I covered the armchair with Shadrach’s red plaid blanket. He climbed on and curled up in a ball, letting out little grunts of pleasure, gazing adoringly at my father. My family has always had dogs, but I moved on to cats the moment I left home. My current one is Elwy, who is getting on in cat years. He’s probably lived about eight and a half of his lives by now, and is fairly obnoxious in his dotage. But he doesn’t stick his nose into people’s crotches or bark. And I don’t have to follow him down the street at seven o’clock in the morning in the dead of winter, carrying a plastic baggy.

“Your mother is more excited about this trip than she’s letting on,” Daddy said.

“I know that.”

“We’ll drive to Saskatoon tomorrow and stay over with Merle and Stanley.”

My father’s sister and brother-in-law. We had been over these plans several times by phone over the past months.

“Are they coming to Battleford, too?”

“No, he’s not up to it, after his surgery.”

“You know, Daddy, Andy and I could stay in a hotel in Saskatoon. It will be less trouble for them.”

“Merle wouldn’t hear of it,” he said. “They’ve got room.”

“It just seems like a lot of trouble.”

“It’s no trouble. They’re family.”

It wasn’t worth fighting.

“I wish you had let us meet you at the airport. It’s a shame for you to go to all the expense of renting a car when we could have all driven up together in the Chrysler.”

We’d been through this before, too.

“We both like driving, Daddy. Besides, this way it gives us more flexibility if we want to do different things.”

In fact, it had been a condition of Andy’s agreeing to come.

“If you’re sure,” my father said. “But we’d like to pay for the gas.”

“Daddy, you are on fixed income. Andy and I both have jobs. We can afford the gas. We don’t feel put out in any way. We made the decision to take this trip, and we’re delighted we did. Aren’t we, Andy?”

“Of course,” he said. “I’ve always wanted a chance to dig up all the secrets in Kate’s past.”

Andy handled supper admirably. I’m sure my parents didn’t notice his distress. It was a typical prairie supper: ham with new potatoes, peas, and a salad, all fresh from the garden, three kinds of homemade pickles, home-baked bread, and, of course, a Saskatoon-berry pie. With second helpings encouraged. The sheer volume was enough to nonplus him, but the timing threw him completely. In typical prairie fashion, we were finished, with the dishes done, by six o’clock, an hour before we even contemplate dinner in Toronto. We left my parents listening to the CBC news and went for a walk.

I revert quickly when I come home to the different pace of life. So I found myself struggling to keep up with his impatient Toronto stride.

“Hold up,” I said, “or else we’ll have seen the whole town before I’ve finished my smoke.”

He didn’t know what I was talking about.

“Slow down, Andy, you’re in Saskatchewan now. You don’t have to rush. No one’s going to get there before you.”

“There’s no there to get to anyway,” he grumbled.

I took his arm, partly for companionship and partly to hold him back. It was a beautiful evening. The sun was getting low in the sky, and the light was so soft and luminous I could almost feel it caressing my skin. It felt like home.

I worried about Andy on this trip. Even though I got out of Indian Head as fast and as far as I could once I had the chance, it’s still part of who I am. As are my parents. I couldn’t expect him to embrace my world, but I wanted him to see what was good about it. Being with him here made me a little edgy, as if my home town was on trial.

The streets were emptier than when I was a child playing after supper. I suppose the current generation is more interested in Nintendo than kick-the-can, although we did see some boys on bicycles, riding no-hands.

“I wonder where they’re going,” Andy said.

“Boy business,” I said. “When I was a kid, I always wanted to go with them on their adventures. They seemed to have more fun than the girls.”

“I can’t imagine that ever stopping you.”

“I wonder if they still play cowboys and Indians. That was big when I was a kid. That and war. There’s probably some politically correct alternative now.”

“What did girls play?”

“House, and brides, and being members of the Royal Family. Except when I went to my friend Doreen’s. She lived on a farm.”

“What would you play then, farm chores? Milk maids?”

“Her dad had a couple of old workhorses we’d ride bareback and be Indian warrior maidens.”

“Warrior maidens?”

“Yeah. The only problem was, we had to walk the horses across the pasture first, then get on and they would walk back to the barn. Slowly. It was good enough at the time, though.”

A dog barked from the porch of a big brown stucco house with the front yard full of caragana bushes.

“That’s where my friend Gail lived,” I said. “Her dad worked at the forestry farm. She collected bugs, which made her very popular with the boys. The other girls thought she was gross, but I liked her a lot.”

“You know what surprises me?” Andy asked. “There are so many trees. I thought that Saskatchewan didn’t have any trees.”

“Another myth perpetrated by Eastern bastards. The Saskatchewan motto should be ‘Every tree a wanted tree.’ And almost all of them came from the forestry farm outside town. That big old spruce tree in Gail’s backyard was the first conifer west of the Rockies, or so her dad used to tell us.”

“It’s prettier than I thought.”

“It’s beautiful here. That’s what I’ve always told you.”

“Okay, so I didn’t believe you. Sue me.”

We walked on for a while in silence, past the community skating rink.

“Lots of memories there?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah. Well, at the old rink, anyway. It was a wonderful place. The wood floors were all scarred from our skate blades, and there was a stove to keep us warm. The first time I ever held hands with a boy was there, when I was about twelve. Bobby LaPointe. He was the RCMP constable’s son. He wasn’t afraid of me because I was the preacher’s daughter. I think he was actually a Catholic. He was older, too, like about fourteen. We skated with our mittens off, which was a very big deal.”

“Major prairie rite of passage, I guess,” Andy snickered, taking my hand.

“Oh, yeah, Mr. Sophistication. What was yours?”

“Spin the bottle in the basement rec room, probably.”

“Oh, very worldly.”

“But when we got older, we could go to Yonge Street on the subway with false ID and hang around Le Coq D’or listening to Ronnie Hawkins. Or to Yorkville to smoke dope. Where did you go?”

“The nuisance grounds.”

“The what grounds?”

“The dump. That’s where we went to drink and make out.”

“Charming.”

“Well, it had one advantage. You could see the cops coming from a long way away. By the time they got there, our beer bottles would be indistinguishable from the rest of the garbage.”

“This explains a lot.”

“Like what?”

“Well, since your happiest teenaged memories were at the dump, I can understand why your study is the way it is.”

When we got to the corner of Howard Street, I stopped.

“Okay, we’re here,” I said. “Look around you. This is an important landmark of my youth.”

He did a 360-degree turn, looking around the neighbourhood of newish houses for something that could possibly be of interest. I could see by his expression that he had failed.

“When I was a teenager,” I said, “this was the edge of town. From here on, it was bald prairie. I used to stand here and tell myself I was in the Middle of Nowhere. That’s with capital letters.”

“You weren’t far from right.”

“And then I would tell myself that I was going to go capital-S Somewhere and be capital-S Somebody.”

“And?”

“I guess I have. It doesn’t feel the way I thought it would, somehow.”

He put his arms around me.

“You’re somebody in my books,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, hugging him back. “Still, sometimes I wonder what I would be like if I had stayed.”

“A fate too horrible to contemplate.”

I disentangled myself.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Who knows what I could have made of myself here?”

“You could have been keeper of the Indian Head statue.”

“Exactly,” I said. We headed back towards Grand Avenue.

“Does everybody here drive a pickup truck?” Andy asked, as another one drove by, slowing to check us out.

“Lots of them do. Farmers and ranchers need them for their work. The rest, I guess, just like trucks.”

“I like trucks, too. Why don’t we get one?”

“Right. A pickup truck in Toronto.”

“Why not? It would be great for hauling things.”

“Hauling things.”

“Like when we buy antiques in the country.”

“Which we have done exactly once in our collective life.”

“We could do it more, if we had a truck.”

“And where would we find room for these famous antiques? Our place is already full.”

“Well, maybe not antiques then, but stuff.”

“And where would we park this pickup truck?”

“In the garage.”

“And our cars?”

“We could sell yours.”

“Oh, now it’s me driving the pickup truck around downtown Toronto. Forget it.”

“It would be safer than your Citroën. Sitting up high, you could see right over the traffic.”

“Your concern for my safety is touching,” I said. “But if you want a truck, you’ll be driving it.”

“Spoilsport.”

“That’s me. No fun at all. Speaking of which, we’ve pretty much wrapped up the trip down memory lane,” I said. “What do you want to do? Do you want to go to the Rainbow Café for a coffee?”

“What about a drink? Haven’t had one of those in a while.”

“I guess we could go to the beer parlour,” I said.

“The nightlife hot spot, no doubt.”

“That and the Legion Hall. But you’ve got to be a member.”

We walked up to the Sportsman’s Bar, which had replaced the old hotel when it burned down a few Christmases ago. I paused outside the frosted-glass doors.

“It’s not very grand,” I said.

“I can take it, trust me.”

I was surprised when we walked in. The carpeting on the floor was clean, and the Formica tables were new. The place was nearly full, with a lot of action around the small pool table and a row of video gambling machines, where skinny men in jeans and baseball caps pumped in coins, squinting through their cigarette smoke at electronic fruit lined up losers. The television sets were turned to the ball game back in Toronto. We found a table and sat down.

“I guess a fine single-malt is out of the question,” Andy said.

“A Martini would be dicey, too,” I agreed, “and I wouldn’t ask for the wine list.”

The waitress came to the table.

“Hey, Kate, how are you?”

I looked up. Hidden behind the makeup and country-and-western hairdo was a face I knew. I searched the dustier corners of my brain for the name.

“Doreen, it’s great to see you,” I said, and meant it. I turned to Andy.

“Doreen was my best friend back in school,” I explained. “I was just telling you about her.”

“The one with the horses,” Andy said, shaking her hand.

“Right, remember when we would play warrior maidens?”

“Among other things too embarrassing to talk about,” she laughed, hip cocked against an empty chair.

“So, catch me up,” I said. “What’s your news?”

“Ed and I divorced a while back. You probably heard. The kids are all grown. I’m even a grandma, if you can believe that.”

“No, I can’t, Doreen. That’s incredible. I was sorry about the divorce, though.”

“Ancient history,” she shrugged. “What can I get you?”

I ordered a vodka and tonic. Andy asked for Scotch.

“Coming right up.”

“When you’re not busy, come back and talk,” I said, then after she left, turned to Andy. “That’s sad, her ending up here.”

“Don’t be a snob,” Andy said. “How do you know it’s not exactly what she wants?”

“Not Doreen. When we were in high school we both dreamed about getting out of this place. She even had a scholarship to the university in Saskatoon. But she never made it.”

“How come?”

“The typical story of women of my generation. She got pregnant, married, and tied down to the farm. Her daughter followed in her footsteps, from the sound of it. She’s my age and she’s a grandmother already.”

“There but for the grace of God?”

“You’ve got it.”

I looked around the room. The crowd was mixed, young and old, mainly male. I looked at the middle-aged ones, trying to see if I knew any of them. At a table of business types, one of them caught my eye and raised his beer glass. There but for the grace of God, indeed. It was Oren Roblin, my first serious boyfriend. He and I had spent a lot of time at the nuisance grounds and parked on some of the lonelier grid roads around town the summer before I left home. His uncle owned the drugstore, and he could get all the condoms he wanted, so I had avoided Doreen’s fate.

I hadn’t spoken to Oren in years. I had followed him through the pages of the
Indian Head-Wolseley News,
the weekly paper. My parents subscribe for me. He’s a big cheese now. Chamber of Commerce. Homecoming Committee. He’s even had a stint as mayor.

He spoke to the other men at his table and got up. As he moved towards us, I could see that the years had played their tricks on him. He had lost the easy grace of his teen years and his chiselled good looks had got lost in jowls. When we were young, he had a wild mane of curly hair. Now, with it cut short at the sides and receding at the temples, he bore an alarming resemblance to John Diefenbaker in his middle years. But the eyes were the same, those blue, blue eyes that still appear in my dreams from time to surprising time.

“How are you, Oren?” I looked up at him and put out my hand.

“Long time no see,” he said, taking it gently in his big palm and looking into my eyes. I broke contact first.

“Andy, this is Oren Roblin, an old friend,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. “Oren, Andy Munro, from Toronto.”

Oren let go of my hand and grasped Andy’s.

“Why don’t you join us?” Andy asked, mischief in his eyes. He hadn’t missed a nuance.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Oren said, pulling out a chair. Doreen appeared immediately with our drinks.

“Same again, Oren?” she asked.

“Sure, why not?”

She put our drinks down, winking at me.

“Old times, eh, Kate?”

I just shook my head and laughed. Doreen leaned closer.

“Your guy’s a hunk,” she whispered.

“I’m not sure hunks are allowed to be forty-five.”

“Middle-aged hunks are the best. And he’s definitely a middle-aged hunk.”

She went back to work. I turned back to my middle-aged hunk and my old flame and waited for the fun to begin.