Shoeless Joe (29 page)

The garish canvas banners and loudspeakers are trussed to the top of the trailer.

After supper I keep pestering Richard. “What kind of voice did you hear?” I ask as we make our way toward the baseball field, where the brilliant lights of the stadium reflect off the high, clear sky.

“She was teasing; I don’t hear voices,” says Richard. He is taller than average, and his hands, like mine, are long and thin. He wears a cap with a long red bill. The cap advertises Turfco Fertilizer. Gypsy and Annie trail along behind us. They are virtually the same size and might have been cut from the same pattern, though on opposite sides of the earth.

“Oh, wow!” says Gypsy as we walk along the third-base line. “It’s all there, isn’t it? Just like the big leagues. I saw a game in Minneapolis once. This could be the same stadium.”

So Gypsy sees. I turn to find Annie grinning with approval.

“There’s nothing out there but an empty ballpark,” says Richard, “and it’s a little one, like the place in Montana where we went when we were kids.” But we ignore him. Annie and I and Jerry are joyous as children, welcoming Gypsy to our special fraternity.

As we sit down on the warped bleacher, Richard looks for a long time at Gypsy, at her tough but beautiful face with the laugh lines patterned around her eyes and mouth like spider webs. And I think I know what he is feeling. That somehow he sees her slipping out of his arms, moving further and further away from him though remaining perfectly still.

“Ray,” he says to me, looking wildly around him. “Ray, teach me how to see.”

Several days later, as we are all watching a game, I imagine Eddie Scissons sitting to my right, his hands cupped over the head of his cane. His veins are so blue and bulging that his hands might be backed with spruce bark. On the other side of me, Jerry leans forward, engrossed in the game, his chin cupped by his left hand. The humid air surrounds us like a cocoon. Karin, in a green-and-gold sunsuit, sits between Richard and Gypsy, sipping Coke from a frosty green bottle.

I seem to posses magnified sense perception, where the protection of my miracle is concerned. Over the hum of the crowd, I hear a car crossing the cattle guard, then a door slamming, feet climbing the steps to the house, a knock, the creak of the door opening, voices, the door slamming, feet descending. The voices get louder.

Then I see them behind the backstop: Mark and Bluestein, walking right through the grandstand, oblivious to all but themselves. In the distance, I hear the screen door slam and Annie’s light footsteps tattoo down the stairs.

Mark and Bluestein are talking and gesturing to each other as if no one else were present, as if the lights weren’t blazing, as if a flamingo-pink sunset were not painted on the right-field sky.

Annie rushes past them, disregarding the crowd.

“Mommy,” says Karin, standing and pointing, slopping her orange drink and making puddles on the dark green boards at her feet.

“What?” says Jerry as Karin’s voice brings him back to reality.

“Ray, they’ve got an order of some kind,” yells Annie from below. “They have temporary control of the farm.”

On the field, the action is suspended. The White Sox, who are on the field, relax, as if a pitching change is taking place. Happy Felsch drifts over to right field to talk with Moonlight Graham.

“Go back to the house,” says Mark, grabbing Annie’s arm.

“The hell I will. You thieving …”

“I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” says Mark. “We’ll see that you’re taken care of. You and …” He has never been able to remember Karin’s name.

Like an irate manager, Annie kicks dirt all over Mark’s shoes and the cuffs of his expensive suit. He grabs her and picks her up by the arm. Annie knees him. He drops her. We lose sight of them for a moment as Jerry and I scramble down the bleacher and walk around the end of the fence. We stay outside the foul line as long as we can, but then cut across the field to where the others are standing. They are in shallow left field, Annie shrilling like a blue jay at Mark and Bluestein. Bluestein is carrying an ax.

“What’s going on?” I demand of Bluestein, who is wearing a wide-shouldered green corduroy suit that makes him look like a gangster.

From the inside pocket of the suit, probably from a leather holster, Bluestein produces a sheaf of papers that I suppose are as deadly as any weapon. I hear him explain that they have some kind of court order giving them what amounts to protective custody of the farm. If the mortgage payments are not brought up to date within seventy-two hours, the farm belongs to them. “But while we have custody of it,” Bluestein says, his malevolent black eyes coming close to smiling, “we’re going to knock down that eyesore of a fence and that pile of rubble you call a bleacher.” He waves the ax, the blade sparkling dully under the lights.

I try to imagine how Bluestein and Mark must view the stands. Their eyes are as blind as newborn kittens’. All they can see is the single battery of floodlights behind left field, and the empty stadium cooling in the sunset.

“Who are they?” Bluestein says, pointing the sheaf of papers toward the spot where Richard, Gypsy, and Karin sit on the bleacher. When I don’t answer, he says, “Tell them to get down.”

“Tell them yourself,” says Annie.

He looks at me, but I’m not going to make things easy for him. The three figures on the green bleacher have moved closer together.

“Hey you!” Bluestein shouts.

Richard looks up, a mildly startled expression on his/my face. He still cannot see. He still will not admit to me that a voice of unknown origin has spoken to him. Sometimes he claims to see things—shadowy outlines, perhaps of the stadium, perhaps of players—but I suspect it is only because the rest of us have told him so often about what is there. The ballpark remains shadowy to him, he says, as if it is obscured by leaves and foliage.

“Get down off there!” bellows Bluestein.

Richard and Gypsy stare down at the group of us standing in an uncertain pattern, like chess pieces knocked off their squares.

“Why?” says Richard.

“Never mind why. Just get down.”

“I don’t do nothing unless Ray or Jerry says it’s okay.” I notice that Gypsy is holding a green furry monkey on a fuchsia-colored stick.

“I’ve got a court order,” Bluestein insists.

“What do you say, Ray?” asks Gypsy, pointing the monkey in my direction.

“Stay where you are,” I cry. “Everybody.” I bolt for the yard and my car. I recall Annie’s words to me as I left on my odyssey a few weeks ago: “Ray, it’s so perfect here. Do whatever you have to, to keep it that way.” The stands part magically, as if I am running into a television picture. Behind me, I hear Bluestein saying, “Then I’ll chop it down with them on it. The court is with me.”

I feel my cap ripped from my head as I crash through the honeysuckle near the house. As I yank the keys from my jeans, I break the little beaded chain that holds them together, and they fall silently into the warm dust.

I retrieve only the one for the trunk of my car, slam it open, and rip my gun from a scuffle of rags, where it has slept since I purchased it in Des Moines. In my hand the gun is heavy, but warm as a sun-toasted rock. Its oily smell surrounds me as I race back to the field.

Everyone is still, seemingly arranged in a tableau, and I am reminded of the soldiers raising the flag over Iwo Jima. Richard, Karin, and Gypsy still sit in the stands, but their backs are a little straighter, Gypsy’s monkey-cane pointing downward like a magic wand. Jerry stands with his back to the bleacher, facing Bluestein. He has his arms folded across his chest and is nose-to-nose with Bluestein—nose to chin, rather, for Bluestein is a full foot shorter than Salinger, even with his platform shoes. Behind them, Mark keeps grasping at Annie’s arms, holding her at bay as she aims and kicks at his shins. The ballplayers congregate in groups of two and three, patiently waiting, seemingly unaware of the drama being enacted around them.

Then I come running out of the stands, like a character leaping fully alive from an oil painting, holding the gun over my head like a starter’s pistol.

I intend to fire a shot in the air, to let everyone know I mean business. I squeeze the trigger, slowly increasing the pressure, as I read somewhere you should do. Nothing happens.

I keep trotting forward, trying to disengage the safety; but not having handled the gun for months, I have forgotten exactly how to do it.

Then there is a loud pop like a fast ball hitting a catcher’s mitt, followed by the smashing of glass and the whang of metal off metal. My hand feels numb, as if I’ve been hit a sharp blow on the elbow. I see fragments of one of the floodlight bulbs from my own light standard drift to the ground slow as feathers, sparkling orange and blue. The tableau freezes. At least I have captured their attention.

Annie stops kicking, and Mark releases her arm. In the stands, Karin fastens on to Gypsy’s denim-covered leg like a baby monkey clutching her mother. Bluestein steps away from Salinger and faces me.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

The gun feels hot in my hand, as if firing it has raised its temperature. I imagine it turning a rosy hue like the lids of my mother’s wood stove did, long ago, when I was a child in Montana.

“I’ll shoot again,” I say, my voice cracking. “Get off my property!” I yell at Bluestein. I lower the gun and wave it unsteadily in his direction. Everyone makes an effort to get out of the line of fire: Salinger moves a few steps to his left, Mark moves closer to Annie. Only the threesome in the bleacher remains stationary. I concentrate on waving the gun at Bluestein, who is still babbling about having a court order, and is pushing the papers toward me squashed tightly in his clenched fist.

“Does it say we have to leave the land?” I ask.

“Not yet,” says Bluestein, “but we have control of crops and equipment and buildings. You can’t sell or move anything.”

“The only thing that’s going to move is you and him,” I say, and I point the gun toward Mark, who moves closer to Annie, so I have to point back toward Bluestein.

“Be careful with that thing,” says Jerry, and he is about to say something else, perhaps to remind me of my mechanical incompetence, when a sound and movement from the stands attract us.

Gypsy, Richard, and Karin have risen. Gypsy taps her black cowboy boot on a green board to give them a beat, and, waving the monkey-on-a-stick as a baton, she conducts the three of them. Richard, with the bill of his cap pulled down so far his face is invisible, and Karin, in her green-and-gold sunsuit, dancing like a cheerleader, waving her half-eaten hot dog—they look like a surreal rock group about to assassinate the national anthem. “The world’s strangest babies are here. This gallery of human oddities. You owe it to yourself to see these strange babies. Mothers bring your daughters. Fathers bring your sons. See the baby born to a twelve-year-old mother …”

“You’re crazy,” Bluestein rages. “You’re all crazy. You build baseball fields in the middle of nowhere. You …you dress funny …and you sit around with your weird friends and stare at …nothing.”

“I’ll count to three …”

Bluestein and Mark begin backing slowly toward the house. “One!” They begin backing a little faster.

And then it happens. I see everything out of the corner of my eye. Seeing me advancing and Mark and Bluestein backing away, Karin apparently decides to join us. As she takes her first step down, her foot skids on the spilled orange drink and she is falling forward as if she is diving from the side of a pool. I feel as if I have a steel egg stuck in my chest as I watch helplessly. She appears to fall in slow motion, and it takes forever for her body to come down with a sickening sound on the hard green boards. Her hot dog flies off, the bun and wiener separating in midair. One small sandal bounces end over end and lands at the foot of the bleacher.

Seconds later, everyone is standing around her where she lies on her back on one of the bottom rows of seats. Jerry is staring down at her, his long face as white as his hair. Annie hovers, her hands opening and closing, reaching in close, then moving back. Mark and Bluestein are rooted to their spots at the foot of the bleacher, as if they’ve been driven into the ground like pins in a map. Bluestein’s ax leans impotently against his leg. We are all afraid to touch her.

“Should we move her?” We each say the words, all of us looking around wildly, hoping for advice from some non-existent authority.

“You can use my car,” says Mark, all the arrogance and pomposity gone from his voice. I look at my hand and find I’m still clutching the gun. I turn and hurl it in a high arc and watch as it disappears over the back of the bleacher, landing somewhere in the soft earth of the cornfield.

Annie and I reach our hands out toward Karin, then withdraw. She is unconscious, fighting for breath. Our eyes meet, and the anguish I see in Annie’s expression chills me. I hope the terrible fear that grips me like steel bands around my middle does not show in my eyes, but I know it does.

I curse myself for not knowing anything about first aid; for not knowing any medical techniques, for not even having read about any. Initials like NBC, FDS, CPR, STP flash across my brain like subliminal advertising blurbs. One of them is a rescue technique, or mouth-to-mouth, or at least for heart attacks. I don’t know. My brain is numb as a piece of liver.

“We’d better
not
move her,” I hear myself saying. “They never move anyone on TV shows.” I realize as I say it that it must qualify for the inane-statement-of-the-year award.

Karin’s lips are bluish and her eyes are open, the pupils rolled back to reveal a bloodshot whiteness ugly as beef fat. She gasps for air, and it seems to me that she is convulsing.

“Call an ambulance,” I say to Annie, and she sprints for the house, happy to have a task to take her mind off the tragedy. Gypsy follows along behind her. Richard stands silently beside me.

“How long?” asks Jerry.

“It’s a twenty-minute drive from town.”

In the silence, we can hear the corn rustling behind the fence. What if I am wrong? What if I’ve made a decision that will kill my daughter? I look furiously at Jerry, who reads my face.