Wingshooters (7 page)

I wanted to forget the last few hours; I wanted not to feel how I felt. And because it wasn’t comfortable, all of a sudden, to be in that house, I pulled myself up out of the bed and looked at the postcards I’d tacked to the wall. They were from my father, from his various stops on his way out west the year before—Des Moines, Topeka, Denver, Salinas, Salt Lake City, and Reno. At first, they all said more or less the same thing:
I hope things are good there. I haven’t talked to her yet.

When he arrived in California, though, his writings had changed. He
had
talked to her, eventually; he’d found her in Sacramento. Then he followed her to Stockton, San Francisco. For a while the letters—they’d turned to letters once he was more or less settled—included descriptions of where he was staying, whatever odd local radio or newspaper jobs he picked up, the new friends he made or the older ones with whom he’d reconnected.
You’re going to love it here,
he’d written from San Francisco.
You’ll feel right at home. It’s wild and beautiful and everyone can be who they are.

He’d say a bit about my mother—
I talked to her on the phone the other day
, or,
I caught up with her outside the place she works
—and always tried to sound upbeat. He promised that he’d come and get me soon, that we’d all be together again.

But as the months passed he began to refer to her less, or with a different tone—he hadn’t seen her in a while, he wrote at one point, but he was sure that he’d speak to her soon. She gradually faded from his letters until finally, a couple of months before, he stopped mentioning her altogether. Then he had written from Kansas City, worrying my grandmother. And now there was a new postcard that I hadn’t put up yet, which had arrived just that week from Springfield, Missouri. He was on the move again, but heading east, maybe toward Wisconsin.

Although I tried not to dwell on it, I missed my father. He wasn’t a bad man, or even a particularly bad parent—I had good memories of him bouncing me on his knee and ruffling my hair, and singing songs while he fried bacon and eggs in the morning. He was gentle and big-hearted, and he cared about things being right in the world. It was just that he wasn’t centered, the way that Charlie was. He couldn’t really focus on anything, except on the one thing that he could never hold, my mother. Even when the three of us were still living together, she had seemed to be leaving already. I could still recall her perfume and her high, impatient voice—but I couldn’t, despite the pictures in the attic, conjure her face at all.

I didn’t want to think about my mother, though, so I got up and went over to the bureau where the postcard from Springfield lay. It was a picture of a Civil War—era cannon in front of a church, against a backdrop of clear blue sky.
I’m staying with some friends I met this summer at the music festival
, my father had written.
I’ve got a job here with a radio station starting next week, and I’m going to save some money. As soon as I do, I’m coming to get you—and then we can go back to California!

There was a hopefulness to this postcard that was different, that seemed real this time, and it raised my own hopes too. I thought about writing back, but as usual, there was no return address. In my shirt drawer were half a dozen letters I’d written, waiting for when I’d have a place to send them. If he was staying in one place long enough to work and save some money, maybe that time would be soon.

But while I stood looking at the postcard, I felt jumbled, confused. As unsettled as I’d felt at the dinner table that night—and as uncomfortable as I felt with most of the people in town—I still loved living with my grandparents. The everyday routines of their house and their lives, the meals and chores and evenings at home, were comforting and solid. And I loved wandering in the country; I loved my life outside, I loved playing and biking with the dog. It was a different kind of life than I had with my father, and with both of my parents; living with them had been shifting and uncertain. I wasn’t sure I was really eager to go back to that life. But I did want to feel like they wanted me.

Thinking about all of this, I felt a sudden surge of loneliness. Then I heard scratching at the door. When I opened it, I found Brett there, ears lifted in concern and questioning. I leaned over and petted him on the head, kissed him on the snout. I brought him into the room and invited him to jump up on the bed, which he did, and then I hugged him until I drifted off to sleep.

FOUR

D
uring the fall of 1974, time seemed to move both faster and more slowly than usual, with each event brightened and magnified like the leaves on the maple trees, which were bursting then with color. I remember that time vividly, the particular tensions in the air, the way that all of us faced the morning with a heightened awareness, as if we were preparing ourselves for whatever the day might bring. The uneasiness in town was sharpened by events in the larger world—the resignation of the president, long lines at gas stations, the kidnapped heiress who was still missing even though her captors had been killed or arrested, the escalating crisis in Boston. Everyone seemed to be on edge, and at nine years of age I felt suddenly old, as if I knew that the things I was witnessing then would propel me into an early adulthood.

But there was more to those weeks than tension and difficulty. Some good days were mixed in, too. And as those days grew increasingly rare, I held on to them more tightly.

The Saturday after I’d been questioned about the Garretts at dinner, Charlie and I loaded the car up with several bats, two gloves, about three dozen baseballs, and headed out into the country. My grandparents’ car was a lime-green ’64 Pontiac LeMans, so big it could have fit eight people in its long bench seats, one short of a starting lineup for a baseball team. The car had clocked 22,000 miles in the ten years they’d owned it, just slightly more than I rack up now in a single year in California, and it’s a measure of my grandfather’s view of the world, of his essential satisfaction, that he never saw reason to drive more than fifty miles from Deerhorn, and then, really, only to hunt.

That day, he sat with his right arm thrown across the back of the seat and his knees spread wide, so relaxed he might have been sitting in his living room. His left hand rested lightly on the bottom curve of the wheel, even as we hurtled along at eighty miles an hour down a two-lane country road. I wasn’t scared because everything about the way he held himself made clear that he had this powerful machine completely in his control. Besides, I was eager to reach our destination. There was a baseball field about ten miles into the country, which used to be the home of the Deerhorn Bombers until the new ballpark was built close to town, and which now served mostly as a practice field for the boys who still lived out on the few remaining farms. It was at the far end of a pasture that backed up to the woods, and deer would wander into the outfield at dusk. Charlie drove me out there sometimes when we knew the place would be empty to work on my batting and fielding. We always brought Brett with us, and as we approached the field that morning, he raised his head to feel the rushing air against his face, the wind lifting his black ears like sails. When we pulled off the road onto the gravel parking area he began to circle and whine, as eager as Charlie and me to be outside.

Is there any place more perfect than a baseball field in autumn? Anything better than the smell of the grass; or the crisp, cool air; or the red and yellow leaves against the clear blue sky, which was paler now than it had been in the summer? I didn’t think so, and this field was my favorite. Because it wasn’t used as much as the fields in town, there weren’t any worn spots in the grass, and the infield was perfectly level. The backstop was simple—about fifteen feet tall and thirty feet wide—not one of the huge, imposing structures they had put on the newer fields. The dugouts were just benches behind a six-foot fence, and the bleachers along the base lines were made of wood. The outfield wall, which was painted a fading Brewer blue, had a few old ads from businesses in town—Dieter Tires, Ronnie’s Bar and Grill, the
Deerhorn Herald News
. Past the third base line was a wide, unbroken view of the countryside—the slightly rolling hills spotted here and there by stands of wood, a few red barns in sharp relief against the green of the fields. It was quiet there, so quiet you could hear the individual songs and conversations of the birds, the approach of a car on the distant highway. Any home run ball was hit into the woods beyond the outfield, where it became part of the landscape with the rocks and fallen leaves, maybe scaring a deer or two as it landed.

There was something about stepping out onto a baseball field that always gave me a thrill, as if some energy source, some element in the grass, entered my feet and moved up through my body and set off an extra charge in my heart. I knew that my grandfather felt it, too. He was grinning as we unloaded the gear and carried it to a spot along the first base line. And seeing his worn Brewers cap and the muscles that still lined his arms, I could imagine him at eighteen or nineteen years old, driving out to the country with a duffel bag and glove, just looking for the next field, the next game.

We played catch for a few minutes to warm up. Brett followed the flight of the ball through the air and ran back and forth, barking, between us. Then my grandfather sent me out to the shortstop position. He stood at home plate and threw the balls up for himself, hitting them as they fell. He sent ground balls, line drives, and pop-ups across the field, moving me left and right, making me charge or take balls on a hop or run backwards to keep them from flying over my head. I was a fairly good fielder for a nine-year-old—proficient at judging hops and even backhanding grounders—although I still flinched at very hard-struck balls that whirred straight at my head. Brett waited patiently through this barrage, sitting between first and second at the second baseman’s spot so he could watch but not be in the line of fire. He knew not to chase balls that were intended for me. But if I couldn’t handle a scorching grounder or a high line drive and the ball went past me into the outfield, he’d chase after it, sprinting full speed, as if he planned to pick the ball up, turn, throw it back toward the infield, and cut the base runner down at home plate. But once he actually retrieved the ball the urgency was gone; he’d trot casually outside the third base line, lifting his head as he readjusted his grip, supremely proud of himself, and drop the ball at my grandfather’s feet. Then he’d run back out to second base and wait for my next miss.

After thirty minutes or so of fielding, I would take up my bat and Charlie would go out to the pitcher’s mound. At first he’d just throw the ball straight across the plate until I could hit it consistently. Sometimes he’d yell out instructions—move up in the batter’s box, don’t let your shoulders fly open, take your step toward the pitch a bit sooner. Batting is about muscle memory and repetitive motion, and you have to get to the point where you’re moving perfectly and acting without thought. If you think too much about any part of the swing—the position of your hands on the bat, the timing of your step, the relative movement of your hips and shoulders—you can break the rhythm and throw everything off. When players, even professionals, get into a hitting slump, it’s often because they’re thinking too much, breaking down the various parts of their swing until it becomes a series of separate, fallible mechanical actions instead of a unified expression of grace. At nine years old, I already knew this. Sometimes I could hit beautifully, as if the ball sought out my bat. And other times I couldn’t hit a thing.

But that day I was able to connect. After my grandfather was sure I was swinging smoothly and consistently, he started mixing up his pitches a bit, moving them inside and outside, higher and lower, offering curveballs and change-ups to test my eyes and my timing, even throwing the occasional splitter. He’d been a pitcher as well as a third baseman, so he could make all those pitches, and sometimes, on my more futile batting days, I’d believe he was trying a little too hard to get them past me. I wasn’t as good with these more difficult pitches, swinging way out in front of the change-ups and on top of the splitters that looked like strikes but then dropped precipitously just before they reached the plate. But when I
did
connect, when the ball hit the center of the barrel of the bat and flew out into the field, I felt a sense of joy and freedom as powerful and true as anything I’ve ever experienced. If you have never felt the resistance and connection of a bat hitting a baseball; if you have not heard the crack of the bat split an autumn afternoon; if you have not watched that ball sail through the open air and settle into the fresh-cut grass, you have missed one of life’s purest feelings of achievement. Hitting a ball is like catching a piece of the sky and sending it back up to itself. It’s like creating your own crack of thunder. And stopping a ball—especially a grounder you have to reach for, or a line drive that should have flown past your glove—is like catching a bolt of lightning.

We were out on the field practicing hard, both covered in a sheen of sweat. By now, my grandfather had stripped off his short-sleeve shirt and was pitching in his undershirt. (It’s funny how even the simplest things can change with time and context. Those shirts—which then were simply part of the working man’s unglamorous uniform—have now taken on a hip, modern masculinity, as well as the more descriptive name of “wifebeater.” This, even though the men I knew who wore them—my grandfather and Uncle Pete—were as likely to hit their wives as they were to give up beer or hunting.) But for all of our exertion, our efforts didn’t feel a bit like work. For Charlie, there wasn’t a real distinction between work and play, anyway, or at least there shouldn’t have been. In his mind, if something wasn’t enjoyable, it wasn’t worth doing, and this held true even for the things he did to make a living. He’d taken pleasure, he said, in cutting out perfect pieces of leather for shoes; in watching freshly plucked chickens move down the assembly line. And there was no mistaking the pleasure on his face when he played baseball with me, or when he was walking through the woods at dawn with his shotgun in hand. All work should feel like play, he said, and all play should involve hard work. This was a lesson I learned well, and still adhere to. The things I do for fun, I do with effort and dedication, and the things I do for work must always involve some pleasure. I can’t stay focused at my job unless I’m enjoying myself. And as I sit here at my desk I’m wearing a wool Dodgers hat because of something else that Charlie told me, which is that all serious work should be done in a baseball cap.

That day, we were out there for more than two hours before Charlie said we should start to think about going back. Then, just after I’d hit one last ball, we heard the faint but growing sounds of approaching birds. I looked up over the woods, and there they were—a large flock of birds, a hundred or so, flying in a jagged V formation. They were well up in the sky, but not so far that we couldn’t hear their chorus of honking, the deep-throated calls they made to each other and announced to the rest of the world. Their V was uneven, left flank longer than the right, and when they were almost directly overhead, a few birds from the longer line broke out sharply to the left, shifting because of instinct or wind patterns or the sun into a more southerly direction. They gradually became the head of an entirely new V, the birds on either side of them assuming positions downwind. Then slowly the rest of the flock fell into line, the ones that had headed the previous pattern forming the new right flank; the ones who’d made up the rear flying double time now to catch up and form the flank to the left. In a minute or two the entire flock had completely rearranged itself. And as they flew off further away from us we could still hear the honking, their arguments and debates, their calls of life.

We simply stood and watched them go. There was something about them that made me want to take off my cap, and when I looked at Charlie, I saw that he had done exactly that. He gazed up at them not with the hungry look of a hunter, but more like a man admiring a landscape or a beautiful woman. Even Brett sat and watched them, ears erect but body still, tongue hanging out in a happy pant. Somehow, we all knew it was the end of our day. My grandfather came over then and rubbed my head.

“Those were Canada Geese,” he said, “heading down south for the winter.”

“Where do they go?” I asked.

He watched them as they became indistinguishable spots in the sky. “Down to Kentucky, I think. Or Missouri. Those geese come down from Canada along the Mississippi Flyway. They take the same path every year. They mate for life, and when they have babies, the whole family stays together until the young ones are grown. They even make the first few migration trips together so the parents can teach them how to do it. What we were looking at just now was a whole little town of them.”

I stared up at the sky long after I could no longer see them and thought about my grandfather’s words. Those young ones had it good. But I didn’t, even with my parents gone, feel like I had it so bad—not when I lived with my grandparents, who fed and sheltered me; not when my grandfather towered over me and warmed my days like the sun. Besides, my father was closer now, and chances were he’d be there soon. “I haven’t seen you bring one home,” I said.

“They’re not for hunting,” he said, bending over to pat the dog. “I mean, you
can
hunt them, but I don’t. Never have. There’s something about the idea of breaking up those families.” He smiled. “Plus, they’ll fight you, boy. They’re not helpless little birdies. One time a dog of mine, a German shorthair I had when your pop was just a kid, made the mistake of getting too close to a nest. We didn’t even know it was there. We were out fishing and the dog, Jackson, was sniffing around ’cos he was bored. He practically stepped right on a nest that had five chicks, and then suddenly this big male comes back from his patrol and starts screaming and honking like the dickens. Well, old Jackson just about jumped out of his skin, and then the gander came straight at him. Beat the hell out of that dog with those big strong wings—the poor dog just cowered and covered his head. By the time I chased the bird away, he’d got pushed back fifty feet. He was so embarrassed he couldn’t look me in the eye for a week. Was pretty much ruined for hunting after that.”

I looked over at Brett, who was watching us, ears erect, wondering what was going to happen next. Charlie must have known what I was thinking.