The Brothers K (21 page)

So Hugh, Laura, Everett, Pete and me moved to Kincaid Oklahoma for two whole seasons, where to our amazed surprise we ended up loving the place so much we named my little brother after it just to remember those happy days by. (“Lucky I wasn’t born in Stenechkudee!” Kincaid told us once he got old enough to crack jokes of this type.)

On that note concludes THE HISTORY OF MY DAD FROM HIS BIRTH UP TO KINCAIDS’S! And what a History it was! Though to tell the truth, if I’d of dreamed any dad of mine had even a tenth this much information to him I’d of wrote my Essay about somebody who died the instant they were born instead. Like you for instants! (I’m
only kidding, Mr. Hergert! Seriously!) I mean it though. Full grown adults get darn complicated when you set their life down on paper end to end. Yet it’s almost worth it when you finish, just to look at ol’ Hugh clomping around the house in his skanky old baseball t-shirts or whatever, knowing what you now know about him. “GOSH! WHAT A GUY!” one can’t help thinking. Or Laura too, walking by this very second in her bathrobe and curlers. “WHAT A GAL!” you come to realize. Even crusty old Marion Becker Chance in her weird way. “WHAT AN OLD BIRD SHE IS AS WELL!” one can’t help mentioning.

So thanks again for your attention here, and also for the excellent grade you’re about to reach up and give me! (Just kidding!)

THE END!!!!!!!

nothing is stationary
everything wiggles

—John Gierach

I
’ll never forget the time Papa taught me about strike zones. It happened the night after I’d hoed out the little batter’s box for him—another one of those unseasonably warm spring evenings. Papa had again rushed home from the mill before my brothers got home from ball practice, and when I’d seen the new spotlights snap on I’d rushed outside in a tizzy, thinking I was about to see him pitch for the first time. When, instead, he came trudging out of the garage in his dirty work clothes carrying a brush, a pint of thinner, and a quart can of Dutch Boy white, I couldn’t hide my disappointment. Slouching against the garage, I grumped, “What’s
that
for?”

But Papa didn’t seem to hear. He’d pulled a piece of white chalk from
his pocket, stepped up to the canvas-covered mattress, and begun scowling at it as though he and the mattress were having an argument. When the scowl deepened, I figured the mattress must be winning. Sighing every bit as theatrically as the McLoughlin High kid who’d recently played Hamlet in the worst play anybody in Camas, even Grandawma, had ever seen, Papa commenced to draw. There wasn’t much to the drawing he did, though. He just chalked up a rectangle maybe fifteen inches wide and three feet tall. Didn’t even bother to get the sides straight. I understood now that he was making a target at which to aim his pitches, and that he intended to paint it Dutch Boy white when he was done. What I didn’t understand was why this simple process had him looking as though it were taxing his brain to the limit. Slapping a tape measure against his chalked-in rectangle, he swore under his breath, grabbed a rag, furiously erased it, then chalked up another rectangle slightly shorter than the first. But after a few seconds he threw his tape at it, cursed, and erased this one too. Then he spun on me and snapped, “It’s
nonsense
to paint a strike zone at all!”

Knowing it wasn’t safe to speak, let alone sulk, I snapped out of my slouch, grabbed a screwdriver, pried open the paint, found a stick and started stirring, striving all the while to look as innocuous as the Dutch Boy on the can.

“Why?” Papa demanded. “Why is a fixed strike zone nonsense?”

I was perfectly honest: I shrugged.

“Think about it!” he huffed. “Say we make our rectangle about the size of the strike zone on a six-foot hitter. This leaves out shorter and taller hitters, that’s an obvious defect. But the deeper defect, the
crucial
defect is, where the hell is the strike zone on a six-foot hitter? Where is it on
any
hitter?”

I thought about it, as commanded, but was forced to shrug again. But this time Papa cried,
“Exactly!”
and whammed me happily on the back.

Bewildering as all this was, my confusion on another point had vanished: the reason my father did not wax lyrical about warm spring nights or baseball fever was that he wasn’t the poet, he was the topic. Papa didn’t present the case for baseball, he
represented
it, and to stand in front of him wondering if the scent of mown grass and plum blossoms made him think of baseball was like asking a bloodstained man with a fly rod and ten dead trout on a stringer if he ever thought about fishing. “The reason no one can say where the strike zone is,” he said with vehemence, “is that the
actual
strike zone has almost nothing to do with
the width of the plate or the size of the hitter. The
real
strike zone is located somewhere else entirely. Isn’t it, Kade? Isn’t it?”

Heck if I knew. What I did know was that he’d begun to remind me of someone. But before I could think who, he was proclaiming, “Damn right it is! The strike zone that matters, the only one we’ve got to work with really, is the one locked up inside the skull of the plate ump. And that, m’boy, is why it’s no rectangle, no well-defined shape, no sort of plate-wide knee-high armpit-low configuration at all. A strike zone is a damned
illusion
is what it is, Kade. It’s a
figment
. It’s a geometrical will-o’-the-wisp perched on a twig inside the ump’s law-abiding little brain.”

I had it: the intensity, the thought-swamped smile, the “I dare you to disagree” manner, the enlarged pupils—for the first time I could remember, Papa was behaving exactly like Everett. On one of his late-night philosophical jungle cruises, no less. I was flabbergasted. Could my calm, soft-spoken father be the genetic source of the beans my big brother was so full of? It didn’t seem possible. But there was no time to speculate: he’d taken his rag, erased every line from the mattress, said “Look here!” in a way that sounded like I damn well better, and quickly chalked up a yard-high, upside-down pear. Like the mandibles of a giant ant, his gaze grabbed and held me. “Know what
that
is?” he demanded.

I was terrified to confess that I didn’t. But Papa saved me the trouble. “Of
course
you don’t!” he bellowed.

I shook my head, nodded, shrugged, giggled, and threw in a
Whew!
for good measure. Meanwhile Papa’s face had broken out in a very Everett-like leer.
“That,”
he said, “is a genuine Josh Kendall strike zone. Damned if it’s not. Umped me twice at Schenectady, once in Tacoma, he’s a big-shot American Leaguer now. But I watched him work two games on TV last season, and Kendall’s zone is
still
a goddamn inverted pear!”

I smiled and began to contemplate the pear, but Papa was already ragging it into oblivion, and chalking up a small, thin oval in its place. “Now this little beauty,” he said, “is a Wally MacCloud. Works the Nationals now, Wally does, but he still hasn’t heard of the inside or outside corners. Likes a lot of action, MacCloud does. Lots of walks, hits and homers for the hitters. Early showers for the pitchers. A high-scoring game for the fans.” He borrowed Everett’s most derisive sneer and stabbed the little oval with it. “You hear a ton of talk about a
pitcher’s
earned run average. But what about the ump’s? They’ve got ’em too, you know, and the way they vary is a damned disgrace! Wally’s ERA was up around 15.00 the year I knew him. That’s 7.5 runs per team per game, Kade! I pitched six innings of what might’ve been shutout ball against
him in Phoenix once, gave up six Wally-walks and five earned Wally-runs, and still won the game 14 to 9. Does that take the cake or what?”

I grinned and started to allow that it did, but Papa held up a palm and shouted “Wait!” as if all grins and cakes must be reserved for what he was about to show me … He wiped out MacCloud’s oval, then chalked up a small, triangular shape, like the roof of a little pagoda, but nearly touching the ground. “I know this looks more Twilight Zone than strike zone,” he said, “but I swear it’s
right
where Eddy Aaberg called ’em.”

He was waiting for me to do something. Oh yeah. I grinned and said, “Now
that
takes the cake!”

Papa laughed, and nodded. “Talk about a pitcher’s ump! The Moundsman’s Best Friend, ol’ Aaberg was. For which reason he’s still umping A ball down in California, calling dust-covered third strikes, throwing apoplectic hitters and managers out of games while the pitchers just stand there trying to keep a straight face. Needed art school, not ump school, Eddy did. A life-drawing class, maybe. The man just never got it through his head that kneecaps aren’t ankles, waists aren’t shoulders, and some hitters’ shoulders are actually a bit wider than their necks.”

Papa beamed at the pagoda. “Wreaked havoc with the hitters, Aaberg did. But he turned out some fine young golfers once they gave up and quit playin’ ball.”

E
verett was crammed—like all the other POWs (Prisoners of Worship)—into a crowded pew, cringing like a fresh-kicked dog as the sixty-member Walla Walla College Choir blored out what the church bulletin called “a rousing medley of Authentic Negro Spirituals.” It must have been ninety degrees inside the church. Everett couldn’t figure out how the choir was still standing. Must be their faith, he reasoned after a while, since it was primarily the brain that needed oxygen to function, and faith, as he saw it, was a kind of scripture-breathing brain-eating termite you turned loose in your head on the day you were baptized, causing your need for oxygen to steadily decrease. Loosening his tie when Mama wasn’t looking, sighing three sighs to get one sigh’s worth of air, Everett wished for the millionth time that he had Peter’s constitution. But not (at least today) for its baseball ability. What he envied this day was its squeamishness—because when Pete had stood for the opening hymn
he’d fainted on the spot, so he was now outside in the shade, basking in the oxygen-rich zephyrs. Most of the POWs looked as alert and slap-happy as the choir, though. Four-part “Authentic Negro” harmony was an unheard-of commodity in these parts. The choir was singing,

That’s what you think
, Everett thought.

But he saw tears of joy threading down Irwin’s cheeks; saw Bet’s flesh covered with goose bumps despite the heat; saw Mama’s stone-stolid face lit up like neon by the glory; saw behatted POW heads and shiny-shoed feet bobbing and tapping all over the place. Even Elder Babcock had busted out one of his Antedeluvian Patriarch Grins and started tapping a big wing tip against his throne chair—out of time to the beat, of course.

There was actually one “Authentic Negro” in the white-robed white-faced Walla Walla choir—an even greater rarity in this town than four-part harmonies. He was a short, overweight kid with a face almost as black, shiny and pocked as Babcock’s wing tips. His wire-rimmed glasses gave him a scholarly look, and one front tooth, made of something silver, made Everett wish he had one every time it flashed. But the kid’s face had been serious to start with, and when the choir eased into “Old Black Joe” it grew downright morose. Everett felt miserable for him. How must he feel, standing up there crooning crapped-out songs about whip-scarred plantation chattel to a big White-God-worshipping flock of crackers?

bleah. The absurdity was too great, the oxygen too scarce, the sky outside too blue: Everett’s mind began to drift; he started to compose his own little medley:

He shut his eyes, smiled, realized no one could hear him over the choir, and started to croon it aloud:

Then Everett did Stephen Foster one better: he turned himself black: he became the sad, silver-toothed Walla Walla Negro kid. But once he became him he saw no reason not to stretch himself out, to make himself taller, thinner, stronger, better-looking, till he was no longer some Token Black Tenor surrounded by cross-licking hicks. He was the glint-toothed leader of his own scarlet-robed eighty-member all-black choir now, with a (why not?) twenty-piece blues band backing them, and a (what the heck?) dumpy Token White fat boy back in the percussion section—a dead ringer for Babcock in his youth—playing a … let’s see, a triangle. Yeah. Everett shut his eyes, gave his audience a solemn nod, and informed them in the mellifluous, almost Elizabethan English he’d learned as a lad in Trinidad that they were about to perform a
contemporary
spiritual, with
eight-part
harmonies—a song composed, of course, by the dashing young E. M. Chance himself.

He turned to his choir. The young Camas ladies, in unison, lifted their church bulletins to fan their lust-flushed faces. He raised his baton, and—

arrrrrgh! The Walla Walla Warblers charged like rebels at Gettysburg into “When Dem Saints Go Marchin’ In.” Everett shuddered, scrinched his eyes and brain shut, focused on the rows of beautiful black faces in his mind, delicately raised an eyebrow, dropped it, and in a soul-stirring, hair-raising a cappella, the Big Black Plus One Cracker Choir thundered: