The Brothers K (42 page)

H
iding in the old toolshed, unable to see a thing, but so close to the pitching shed that we could hear even grunts and head-scratching, Everett and I heard Durham say, “You’re gonna have trouble fieldin’ bunts on that retread foot there, Hubert.”

“The hell I am,” Papa told him. “All that mattress ever does is bunt, and I never field a one.” And with that he fired his twentieth or so Kamikaze, which must have taken another wicked down-snap, since for the twentieth or so time G.Q. spat, then whispered, “Sheeee-it.”

“How long,” Durham asked, “in terms of innings, an’ how often in
terms of days, do you think you could do what I’ve been watchin’ you do here?”

“I throw fifty to seventy hard pitches every other night,” Papa said. “But it’s got nothing to do with innings. There’s no hitters, Gale.”

“So we’re talkin’ relief,” Durham mused, ignoring him. “We’re talkin’ stopper. I like that, Hubert. It suits your serene, stubborn goddamned nature.”

“We’re talkin’ backyard hobby, is all we’re talking,” Papa said. But after the hiss and thud of another pitch and another appreciative “Hot
damn!”
Papa laughed like a happy kid. Hobby or not, he liked throwing in front of a fan.

“Know what’s gonna happen when they see the action on that thing?”

“When who sees it, Gale?”

“The folks upstairs. Enemy coaches, mean-minded hitters, malicious ol’ umps. Know what they’re gonna think?”

“I’m through facing hitters,” Papa said. “We’ve been over this, what, ninety times now? But go ahead. If I
was
upstairs, what would they think?”

“That you’ve overcome your number one flaw.”

There was a silence. Then, in a lowered voice, Papa said, “Laura?”

If the Bull hadn’t let out one of his harebrained cackles, Everett’s snort would have given us away for sure. “Hubert!” the old man chided.
“Shame!
I meant
spit
, you nimnam!”

“Spit?” Papa sounded confused. “I never threw spit, Gale. You know that.”

G.Q. phooted out a weighty-sounding hocker. “Whaddya think I meant by ‘flaw’?”

While Everett struggled not to snort again, Papa said, “So you think the other team’d suspect me?”

“Action like that, they’d be fools not to.”

“Good thing I’m retired, then.”

“Why’s that, Hubert?”

“I
am
usin’ spit.”

There was a several-second lull, during which Durham must have been gathering all the outrage and energy he had in him, because at the end of it he gasped, “You
wouldn’t!
You’re
not!
You
can’t!”

“I would, I can, and I am,” Papa answered.

“My Lord, Hubert! Where’s your moral fiber and all that type o’ crapola?”

“What’s immoral about a backyard spitter, Gale? Who’s gonna complain? The mattress? The garage wall? The neighbors?”

“Them ain’t the fibers I mean!” Durham retorted. “The gall of a man, the shiftlessness of a man, the two-facedness of a man who’d let one o’ the all-time additives experts stand here thinkin’ he was seein’ sheer, bare-balled genius—
that’s
the lack that wounds and troubles me.”

“Oh,” Papa said. “Well. For that I do apologize. The genius you’ve been watching, like my thumb and foot, has been ever so slightly doctored.”

“Hot
damn!”
Durham roared, and a chill shot through me. Nobody could hot-damn as blissfully as G.Q. “This is
good!
This is
fine!
I’d of sworn on my life them balls was as dry as my own, if ya don’t mind stoopin’ to catch a sad ol’ man’s meaning.”

Papa’s gleeful snort showed he’d no qualms about making the stoop.

“Where the hell’re you gettin’ it, dammit? An’ what’re you usin’, Hubert? How’re ya workin’ it in?”

“Trade secrets,” Papa said—and I could just picture his demure smile.

“Well I’m damned!” Durham said.

“That we’ve always suspected.”

“The so-called master bows to his student,” said the Bull. And from the grunt and groan that followed, Everett and I deduced that, so far as his gut would allow it, that was exactly what Durham proceeded to do.

W
hen they came inside for a beer afterwards (or in Gale’s case, for four beers afterwards) and all six of us kids surrounded them, demanding the old man’s expert opinion, I think his response surprised even Papa. “Soon as Hubert gives me the word,” he said, “I’ll be on the horn, seein’ but what I can’t arrange a little tryout with the Twins.”

Standing right beside Durham’s ear, Irwin roared, “You mean the
Minnesota
Twins?”

“No!” Gale said with a wince. “I mean your little sisters.”

While Irwin and the twins cracked up, Papa grabbed Durham’s shoulder and squeezed it hard. “Damn!” the old man shouted, trying to wrest his hand away. “A whole family o’ bullies! Pick on somebody your own size!”

“Then you do the same,” Papa said, trying to nod, subtly, toward Irwin and the twins.

But G.Q. didn’t get it. “What the hell are you ravin’ about?” he asked.

Papa let go of his shoulder, sighed, and spelled it out. “No more comeback talk, Gale. You’ll get the kids all excited.”

“Then it’s even Steven,” G.Q. retorted, “’cause whaddya think your pitchin’ just did to me?”

“Cut it out!” Papa snapped.

“Ah ha!” Durham cried. “Now I see the true problem. He dudn’t like the Twins. Okay. All right. I admit they aren’t much to write home about these days. So how ’bout this. It’ll have to be a secret, ’cause it’s one o’ these Benedict Arnold-type deals, but Smokey Alston an’ me go a good ways back. So what say I get you a shot with the Dodgers?”

“Forget it, Gale,” Papa said—as Everett’s disbelieving ears nearly popped off the sides of his head (and later that summer Alston’s Dodgers and Durham’s ex-Senator Twins won their respective pennants).

“Okay,” Durham replied. “I hear ya. No Twins. No Dodgers. Fine. How about a go (sorry there, Everett) with the despicable damned Yankees down in St. Petersburg for chrissake?”

“You’re worse than all my kids put together, Gale.”

“Well,” Durham said, still playing dumb. “It’s true the Yanks, thank God, ain’t what they was since they fired ol’ Casey. But hey! How
about
Stengel? Would a tryout with the mangled young Mets be grim and lowly enough to make our humble Hubert happy?”

“A tryout,” Papa answered, “as you very well know, just isn’t the point.”

“Refresh my brains, then,” G.Q. said. “What
is
the godforsaken point?”

“That not even the Mets are interested in a thirty-five-year-old gimp with a plastic toe on his foot and a real toe on his pitching hand.”

“Now
you
listen to
me!”
Durham barked. “The Twins, Dodgers, Yanks, Mets an’ anyone else in their right baseball minds is interested in any man, woman, chicken, fish or Space Man who pitches the way you’re pitchin’.”

“The way I’m pitching,” Papa said, “is completely illegal.”

But G.Q. only looked disgusted. “What is a man? Eighty, ninety percent water? An’ when does he play ball? In summertime—Sweat Capital of the Year! So how is an ump ever gonna monitor what’s runnin’ nonstop out every pore o’ everybody in the place? The truth is, you couldn’t throw a bone-dry legal pitch if you wanted to, Hubert.”

This argument completely convinced six-sevenths of Durham’s audience. But Papa didn’t even appear to hear it. G.Q. tried again:

“I checked them balls an’ found nuthin’. I watched you an’
saw
nuthin’. An’ if the likes of me can’t see it, Hubert, the likes of
umpires
sure as hell won’t. The spit that’s gone ’fore it reaches an ump is what we
in the trade call incidental percipitation. An’ I say, if it’s incidental, it’s
legal.”

I felt like applauding, this time. But Papa just sighed.

“Oh, all right,” G.Q. growled. “Think small, then, dammit. With the majors, mind you, age is no problem. In the minors it gets sticky. But if I explain that gettin’ you is gettin’ both the best minor league reliever an’ the second-best pitching coach in the land, two for the shape o’one, some PCL team ought to go for it. So pick your climate, Hubert! Albuquerque? Hawaii? Salt Lake?”

But Papa kept droning no, no no. He said Gale had gotten all carried away by a damned spitball. He said it’d been nine years since he’d faced a real hitter, he’d just been made a foreman at the mill, he had seven people depending on his paycheck, and he was too old to go knocking around with a bunch of ass- and dream-chasing teenagers anyhow. He’d learned that much from living with his own. One good year, the Bull countered, even in the minors, and a quality baseball man like Papa could “crawl out of that shithole mill” and into a job as a pitching coach or scout that’d brighten the rest of his days.

“I appreciate the thought, the praise, your time and trouble, and all the rest of it,” Papa said. “But there are other things too. My kids, for instance. The scholarships the older ones are fighting for now are worth more than a year’s minor league salary. So they can’t move. But I can’t leave ’em alone here either. We’ve got troubles here, to tell the truth, Gale. Laura and me aren’t doing that great lately, and if I … well, it’s too thick for explaining. But I’m
needed
here.”

“Then it’s clear as beer,” said the Bull. “You try out with Portland. Won’t have to move an inch if it’s the Tugs.”

“Tell you what,” Papa said. “Promise me they’ll match my Crown Z pay and keep me till I’m sixty-five, and okay, fine. I’ll try the Tugs.”

“Keeeeerist!” Durham exploded. “Where’s your sense of
adventure?”

“This family,” Papa said, “is all the adventure I can stand right now.”

“Then stand ’em less for chrissake! Where’s your sense of
baseball
adventure?”

“You just saw it,” Papa said calmly, “out in that shed.”

“But why, why,
why?
Why jail it up out there?”

“Because I’m baseball ancient, Gale. I’ve
had
my adventures. And if I don’t pay some bills the next few years I’m gonna screw up the adventures of my kids.”

“So you admit it,” the old man said bitterly.

“Admit what?”

“You’ve betrayed the game,” Durham said. “You’ve sold out.”

Papa’s face blackened. “To that mill? Me? You’re dead wrong there, Gale!”

“Then what is a sellout?” G.Q. fired back. “Explain this love for your paycheck and retirement benefits some other way. And explain the whole damned rest o’ this ensemble while you’re at it. What is this St. Hubert Savior of Kids crap? What’s this mill foreman, middle American, PTA an’ NRA an’ Three A
Car
Club member shit? Dwight D. Christ! Votin’ the straight Republican ticket now, are we, Hubert? Ain’t drank none neither, I s’pose, sance we jined the charch?”

“Are we gonna part enemies, Gale,” Papa said, “or are you gonna shut your mouth?”

“What I’m gonna do, my onetime ballplayin’ friend,” Durham said softly, “is die lovin’ the game of baseball. An’ what you’re gonna do, if you betray that same love, is die confused.”

That did it. The old man had finally loosed an arrow that flew straight to Papa’s heart: we felt it hit; we saw Papa start to bleed. “Look at
me,”
G.Q. said. And for a terrible moment he let all the passion and animation fall out of his face, so that it just hung there, gray and slack and listless.
“This
is baseball ancient,” he said. “An’ now look at you.”

We looked. And saw a beautiful, vital, miserably confused man.

Durham said, “Just tell your kids and me the truth here, is all I’m askin’ o’ St. Hubert the Confused. Don’t, number one, throw fifty pitches better’n the best fifty o’ my big league life, then tell us you ain’t got the stuff. An’ don’t, number two, argue spitball morality with me. The Good Book itself says a man should earn his livin’ by the sweat of his brow. Now the situation with Laura I know nothin’ about. But don’t, number three, Hubert, try tellin’ me it’s good for these kids to see their old man stay a factory hand, an’ hate it, for a buck. Don’t tell me that not bein’ true to the work you’ve always loved most an’ did best is a help to your kids. Just repeat after me, if it’s the truth: ‘I give up on baseball, Gale. I just don’t love the game no more.’”

Somehow the silence that followed, in my ears, had a stadium roar. And Papa found nothing to say to quiet it.

“You got one choice, son,” Durham said finally. “These kids here think you’re a ballplayer. You an’ Laura used to think so too. An’ I’m here to tell the world you sure as hell still
pitch
like a ballplayer. But an honest player let’s the
game
decide when he’s finished. There’s no other honorable escape. So you got one tryout left, Hubert. Show the game what you got, an’ let
it
decide.”

“O
h, now
there!”
The Tugs’ pitching coach, Buddy Sears, was sprawled in a box seat behind home plate, sipping a Coke, basking in pale winter sunlight, and grinning as he pointed Papa out in the crowd of walk-ons and no-hopes that had survived the first two cuts. “There’s a
real
prospect!”

But Johnny Hultz, the Tugs’ manager, just nodded and said, “Good eye, Buddy.”

“No no!” Sears laughed, and pointed more emphatically. “I mean that tall
gray
drink o’ water, in the
khaki
cap. The guy with the limp. And the road-killed mitt. And all them nice, coachlike wrinkles.”

Again Hultz just nodded matter-of-factly. “Name’s Chance,” he said. “Pitched for Tacoma when I played for Portland. Never could hit the son of a bitch.”

“Bullroar!” Sears chuckled.

“No bull,” the manager insisted. “He’s got a plastic toe on one foot, a real toe for a thumb, and he throws a pitch his kids call the Kamikaze.”

“Oh, right!” Sears was in stitches now.

“Best sinking fastball we may ever live to see.”

“Says who?” Buddy wheezed.

“That’s another story,” Johnny told him. “G.Q. The Junkman Burman or Furman, he called himself. Woke Beth and me with a midnight phone call two weeks ago to say sorry, he never could figure out the time zone thing, but that hey, an all-around baseball genius and old nemesis of mine was comin’ to grace our camp, so don’t by God let the gray hair and plastic leg and freak hand and ten-year layoff fool me. ‘That I won’t, Junkface,’ I tell the guy. ‘But now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna hang Alexander Graham the Phoneman Bell’s contraption the fuck up here and get me a little shut-eye.’ Click.”