The Bartender's Tale (18 page)

Chatting away next to Zoe and me, Pop and the vice president shook their heads every so often at the local version of the national pastime. Surprisingly, however, Fargo did not manage to score, inning after inning, despite all the chances the Selectrics handed them.

Then, in the bottom of the fourth, the first Great Falls batter let a pitch hit him in the butt, the sharpest play of the day by the home team. (“Ouch!” Zoe let out a little mouse cry that drew her a look from Pop.) There followed what passed for a rally on a team of anemic hitters, the lineup scratching together a pair of runs out of the hit batsman and some walks and bloop singles. GREAT FALLS 2 VISITORS 0, the score flopped into place in the slots of the center field scoreboard, and hope sprang eternal that the Shellactrics, such losers on the radio, might actually reverse that in person.

Not for long. In the top of the fifth, errors produced base runners, a couple of Fargonauts hit three-run homers, and that was obviously that—another shellacking, to put it disloyally—although there were still four innings to go.

Zoe was starting to shift in her seat on a regular basis, and I confess I was losing interest in every ball and strike. The vice president noticed we were turning into wiggle worms.

“Say, how would you like to see a little of the game from the press box?” He checked with Pop. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll get the traveling secretary, he can show the kids a good time for a couple of innings.” He chuckled meaningfully. “We can have some of our product to keep us company.”

Pop eyed the pair of us squirming hopefully, and with only the slightest fatherly hesitation okayed the proposition, and the vice president shepherded us through the grandstand all the way up to the press box, then went off to find the traveling secretary.

This was more like it, Zoe and I agreed without having to say so, luxuriating in our lofty new seats. The press box was like a long, low shed hanging from the grandstand roof. At the far end was the glassed-in radio booth, where the sportscaster could be seen gamely trying to milk excitement from the proceedings on the field. Also at that end of the booth from us, a few sportswriters were occasionally pecking at typewriters, but mostly talking among themselves in bored tones. Which left the two of us in splendid isolation to take in everything now below us, the pool-table green of the ball field, the players in harmless miniature, the beer vendors going through the stands shouting, “Seee
lect
,” the Sunday crowd a universe of details we could peer right down onto, even the bald spots on men and women’s hair roots under bleach jobs. We grinned at each other, smug as spies atop the Empire State Building.

“Rusty, what if”—how something like this is possible I still can’t explain, but I swear I knew Zoe’s mind was about to go in some direction not on any compass—“a person couldn’t see any of this?”

My heart beat faster. “You mean do a blind bit?”

“I bet all I’d have to do is—”

“Hi there, I’m Irv,” fate announced itself to us in a cheery voice. “Glad to have you as guests of the Great Falls Selectrics.”

The traveling secretary was a chubby young man with the hearty attitude that so often substitutes for genuine ability; if I didn’t miss my guess, he was the son or nephew of someone in the team’s management. Smiling broadly, he asked what our names were, how old we were, where we were from, right down the list. We answered by rote, Zoe giving him an unblinking gaze throughout this, until he confidently wanted to know if we were having a good time.

This caused her to stare, still as blank as a fish, toward the ball field and sigh heavily. “I suppose so.”

Irv’s heartiness diminished somewhat. “What’s wrong?” he asked me.

“Nothing. She’s blind, is all.”

“Oops. I wasn’t told that.”

The crack of a bat and the groan of the crowd interrupted things. Zoe did a good job of gaping vacantly at the sky. “What was that? Lightning?”

“Don’t be afraid, sis,” I provided in my best phony-faithful manner, “it was only Fargo hitting another home run.”

“Ooh, I wish I could see one of those just once.”

By now Irv was glancing around nervously at the circumstances of the press box, where a person could fall out and a foul ball could fly in. “Your folks don’t mind if you’re up here by yourselves?”

“It’s just our dad with us, and he’s busy with the brewery man.” I took the opportunity for a fantasy of my own. “Mom”—Zoe perked up her ears at that unexpected word from me—“is home, tending bar.”

“She is? I mean, well, your family is really dedicated to selling beer, isn’t it.”

“The Select Pleasure Establishment of the Year,” Zoe recited. “When our dad read those words to me, I cried, I was so happy.” She sniffled a little at the memory of it.

“Well, ah . . .” Irv cast around for anything to head off tears. “Would you like a hot dog?”

A swift intake of breath by Zoe. “I’ve heard of those! I’d love to taste one just once.”

“You haven’t ever—?” Irv looked at me. I meekly shook my head.

“We’ll fix that, right now. Sit tight, don’t move.” He bounded out of the press box to hunt up a vendor.

Zoe blinked about twenty times and rubbed her eyes. “Whew. All that staring is hard.”

“But it’s working! Anybody would think you’re blind as a bat.”

“If my eyeballs fall out of my head from this, I will be.”

“
Shh.
Here he comes.”

Irv came hustling back bearing hot dogs. Mine he handed me without trouble, but Zoe’s he couldn’t decide what to do with as she sat there staring into space. “Let me,” I said tenderly, lifting her hand into midair like a marionette’s and then depositing the hot dog into it.

“Mmm.
Mmm.
” Actually munching away at the roll and wiener, she was really giving this her all. Talking with her mouth full, she wondered, “You’re the traveling secretary. Do you go all around the world?”

Irv laughed, although not much. “Only to Canada, actually. Saskatoon and Medicine Hat.” I knew those were the towns, not far over the border, of the Saskwatches and the Toppers, two more teams that habitually trounced the Selectrics.

“I bet it’s nice,” Zoe said dreamily, “flying everywhere, stewardesses bringing you pillows and stuff to eat.”

“Actually, we go everyplace on the team bus,” came the uncomfortable admission.

“Mister Irv?” She dabbed at some mustard on her chin and deliberately missed, which I thought was overdoing it somewhat. “I was too embarrassed to ask around the brewery man—but what are they doing out there? I mean the baseball players. It sounds like one side throws the ball for a while, trying to hit the other side, then the other side gets to throw the ball at them. Doesn’t it hurt, all that getting hit with the ball?” She gave me an apologetic stare. “My brother tried to explain the game to me, but he has trouble figuring it out, too.”

More perplexed than ever, Irv asked me: “You haven’t even heard baseball on the radio?”

“There’s a lot of static where we live.”

He turned back to Zoe and her big blank eyes. “Well, see . . . oops, I mean, if you can visualize,” he pursed up with the effort of this, “the field is made up of the infield and the outfield, and there are nine players on the field—”

“Lined up, but not very straight, I bet,” Zoe put in knowledgeably. “I heard somebody say the Selectrics don’t have a very good lineup.”

“That’s . . .” Irv stopped to regroup. “That’s actually not what a lineup means. The players are more like . . . scattered around,” he summarized as if just noticing this. He was spared further attempt at description by another crack of the bat and one more muted groan from the crowd.

“What was that?” Zoe asked excitedly. “Another home run for the Fargoes?”

I deferred to Irv to see what would happen. “A ground ball to the shortstop,” he reported for her benefit.

“Isn’t it mean to call him that?” she scolded. “How short is he?”

“What? No, he’s only called that because the position he plays is between second base and third, it’s, ah, a shorter space than the other infielders cover.”

“That doesn’t sound fair to the other players. Do they get to take turns at being shortspot?”

“Short
stop,
as in he
stops
the ball from getting through the infield—”

“Aren’t they all supposed to? Rusty.” She pouted as if betrayed. “You told me the players run all over the place after the ball, but now it sounds like there’s only one in charge of stopping it.”

“It’s a funny game,” I said.

Searching around for help, Irv had a sudden inspiration. “You know what,” he confided to me, man to man, as though Zoe were deaf as well as sightless, “this is a terrific human-interest story, your sister at her first ball game. I’ll get the
Trib
writer over here and—”

“NO!”

My outcry set him back on his heels. “No, please don’t,” I rattled out desperately while Zoe sat frozen, “our dad feels too awful about her being blind. It would ruin his day.” Ruin a pair of smart-aleck twelve-year-olds along with it, for sure. I could already hear, drumming in my head, Pop’s everlasting admonition:
Don’t put beans up your nose.
And from her paralyzed look, Zoe knew as well as I did we had gotten ourselves into a noseful of trouble. What were we thinking—what was
I
thinking—in pulling a stunt like this, today of all days?

“Well, gee,” Irv stood on one foot and then the other, “I sure don’t want to upset anyone. It’s a shame to pass up such good publicity, though. Why don’t I go and try to talk your dad into—”

Just then a Selectrics batter was called out on strikes, ending the inning. A leather-lunged fan below the press box hollered: “That was ball four if there ever was one! You’re blind, ump!”

“Ooh!” Zoe came to life and clapped her hands. “They hire blind people in baseball? That’s so kind of them.”

While she furnished that distraction, I wildly tried to think of how to get Irv to evaporate. It would take a miracle and I couldn’t think how to produce one.

“Could you get me a job here”—Zoe was improvising like a trouper but she couldn’t keep it up forever—“when I grow up? As a—what is it, umper?”

“Ah, chances aren’t good,” Irv equivocated. “See, I mean, you can imagine that to be an umpire you have to be able to—”

All of a sudden, as if the entire stadium of people had decided to give up on the Selectrics and go home, people in the grandstand below us and out in the bleachers were getting to their feet, but only standing and rubbing their tired behinds and working various kinks out, and I realized we were saved.

“Sis, remember? It’s the seventh-inning stretch—”

“All right.” Staying in her seat, Zoe stretched her neck like a languid swan, although telepathy told me she was as ready to bolt as I was.

“—and we’re supposed to go back down to where the brewery man and Dad are, aren’t we. Let’s hurry.”

“I’d better go with you,” Irv prepared to spring into action. “Miss, if you could manage to take my arm and we’ll—”

“That’s okay, I’ll lead her, I do it all the time at home,” I babbled, and beat him to Zoe’s side by a whisker.

“My seeing eye,” she said fondly. I made a big show of helping her out of her seat and she made one of clinging to me to be guided. “Oh, Mr. Irv? Thanks for the hot dog,” she called over her shoulder to him as he peered after us in concern, while I steered her urgently out of the press box and down the stairs.

“Is he still watching us?” Zoe moaned as we reached the grandstand aisle. “My eyes are getting really tired.”

“Hang in there, we’ve almost got it made,” I said out of the side of my mouth. With everyone still standing around and stretching, we were able to slip into the crowd in the aisle and become our normal selves, more or less, as we neared the guest box.

“Was that great or what?”

“You were fantastic!”

“No, you were!”

“Actors get paid for that! Can you believe it?”

We were welcomed like the long-lost by the vice president and Pop as we clambered into seats on the far side of them, away from prying eyes in the press box. Feeling the effects of the bottles of Select, Pop sat back like king for the day, turned to Zoe and me, and grandly asked: “How was it up there? Could you see good?”

“The whole bit,” we chorused.

—

THE JOURNEY HOME,
in my memory, capped the day perfectly, Pop driving and smoking in contentment, Zoe smiling as she dozed between us, while a sunset that would have made Charlie Russell grab for his paints drew down over the mountains and prairie. When the car cruised into Gros Ventre with the darkened trees over the town like a canopy of night and the lights softly on in the houses beneath, Pop roused Zoe with a gentle “Hey, princess” as we pulled up to the cafe. Sleepily she got out and thanked him for the day and yawned us a good-night. But before I could close the car door, she whirled like a dancer and whispered as if giving me full credit, “Your dad is wild!”

—

THE PLAQUE PROUDLY WENT
into place in the barroom below the buffalo head, where no customer entering the Medicine Lodge could possibly miss it, and on the other side of the wall Zoe and I eagerly resumed our routines after the triumphant Great Falls trip. Rehearsing Cloyce Reinking into cross-eyed high-toned perfection in her role, doing ballpark bits to each other like old vaudevillians reciting beloved punch lines, rooting around in the treasures of the back room, listening hungrily at the vent for fresh lingo from the loosened tongues of Pop’s clientele, life at the moment was just right for the two of us, the midsummer air fairly bubbling with laughing gas, every minute together promising fresh intoxication of our imaginations. Could I have told even then that, like the thirty-year winter, this was a summer all others would have to be measured against? Everything in me says so.

A week spilled past, and in practically a blink, here was Sunday again and I was up so early and so full of life that I trotted across to fetch the Great Falls
Tribune
from the front doorway of the Medicine Lodge to read the comics and sports sections while waiting for Pop to get up and fix breakfast. Walking back, I idly thumbed the brown wrapper off the hefty Sunday paper. FARGONAUTS FLEECE SELECTRICS 11–3, not a surprise. But the photo near the top of the front page surely was.