Magic Time, page 17
I’ll confront Emmett the second he gets to work. I walk aimlessly up and down the green, leaf-sheltered streets of Grand Mound. Daylight has broken, I know it will only be a short time until the Doll House Café opens. I think of the corny jokes Emmett is always telling. “Why did the night owl go home? It dawned on him.” I’ll get Mrs. Nesbitt to cook me a good breakfast. Then, since I have my own key to the office, I’ll lie in wait for Emmett and we’ll have things out.
The Doll House opens at 6:00 A.M. I’m making my third circle of the block — the lights are on inside and I imagine I can smell coffee percolating as I wait for the “closed” sign on the front door to be reversed — when I hear the familiar purr of Emmett’s Buick. I duck between two buildings as the car cruises by, Emmett, hair dishevelled, a jacket thrown over pajamas, behind the wheel. Tracy Ellen must have wakened him.
I can’t go to breakfast or to the office. I could leap out in the street and confront Emmett now. But something holds me back. What if I’m making a fool of myself? I will stay out of sight until the Grand Mound Library opens at ten. There is something I want to check out. Then I’ll take on Emmett and Dilly Eastwick, and whoever else I have to.
I decide the ballpark is the least likely place Emmett will look for me. The gate is chained shut. Roger Cash’s key is not where he usually hides it. Try as I might, I can’t force myself though the narrow space created by the slackness of the chain. I back off, take a short run and land with one foot on the chain, using it as a thrusting point to catapult myself upward just enough to grab onto the top of the fence with both hands. With some struggle I pull myself over the fence and make the long jump to the ground.
The grass of the field is still covered in dew, the stadium silent as a holy place. I walk slowly from first base to the center-field wall, marvelling at the tracks I leave, a trail of silvered footprints. I am overcome with sadness at the thought that I may have played my last game here.
Looking around this serene little stadium I understand why Roger Cash settled here. But if I’m right, and I’m certain I am, I will never forgive Emmett and the citizens of Grand Mound for the way they’ve treated me, for what they’ve concealed from me.
As the morning warms, I stretch out on the top row of the first-base bleacher to catch the morning sunlight full on. I sleep, then wake with a start. I’m sure I hear Emmett’s car crunch across the parking lot. The hum of the motor has a distinctive timber. The car stops for a moment by the gate. I hear the car door open, then slam. I hear Emmett’s footsteps on the gravel, can picture him studying the gate into Fred Noonan Field. He must decide there is no way I could be inside, for his steps recede. The car door opens and closes, The car pulls away and the sound of it gradually recedes until I am again alone in sunshine and silence.
As ten o’clock approaches, I walk very carefully, by back streets, to the Grand Mound Library, an old, stone-pillared building with a semi-circle of low concrete steps up to the door. One of the original Carnegie endowments, Emmett told me proudly. The minute Mrs. Thoman, the librarian, unlocks the front door I squeeze inside.
“Well, Gunboat, how may I help you?” Mrs. Thoman is a sturdy little woman in a blue crepe dress.
“I’d like to see the Grand Mound Leader for the current month, but from, say, three and four years ago.”
I find it embarrassing to be addressed by my nickname, especially by this cross-looking, matronly grandmother. But I also know she never misses a game, and somehow, in spite of holding this full-time job, manages to be present at most afternoon practices. I will have to read quickly, for Mrs. T. is a member of the Grand Mound Booster Club.
“Are you certain you want to do that?” Mrs. Thoman asks, in what I’m sure is her best grandmotherly way.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I say. “I’m a great fan of Dilly Eastwick. I just want to read some of his past columns.”
Actually, for all his good humor and sincerity, for all the praise and nicknames he heaps on the players, there is something sneaky about Dilly Eastwick, not exactly evil, but furtive. He seems to be looking over his shoulder. After a game, even while he is smiling, praising my play, shaking my hand, his eyes are somewhere in the corner of the room. I expect to see Dilly Eastwick’s photo flashed on one of these television crime-solving shows. I surmise that in a past life he embezzled a million dollars from his employer, perhaps poisoning a nagging wife, leaving behind dazed friends and relatives who tell the police, “He was a nice guy. Always quiet and polite.”
Mrs. Thoman turns away without speaking. The library smells of dry paper and varnished wood.
She returns a few moments later with an armful of newspapers and deposits them on an oak table.
“Here you are, Gunboat,” she says, giving me a knowing look. “I’m looking forward to the game tonight. You know, you’re the best second-base man we’ve had in Grand Mound in over twenty years.”
“Thank you. That’s very kind of you.”
“It’s true. Just keep it in mind, that’s all I ask.”
As I turn through the newspapers, Mrs. Thoman makes a number of phone calls. Though I try, I cannot make out any of her whispered conversation.
I only have to read through a half-dozen newspapers to confirm my suspicions. Four years ago, Dilly Eastwick wrote, “Last night, our new second-base man for the Green team, Lew ‘Gunboat’ Driscoll, danced like Baryshnikov all around the infield, handling six chances flawlessly, while turning the pivot on two double plays and taking a high throw but still managing to cut down a speedy runner attempting to steal.”
A day later, he wrote, “August Marsh threw a clothesline to second base in the seventh inning to nail a runner. The flight path of the ball was so straight and true that it remained marked in the air for innings.” Dilly closed by saying, “August ‘Clothesline’ Marsh is going to have an outstanding season for the Greenshirts.”
There it was, exactly as I suspected. There was something sneaky about Dilly Eastwick. Everyone in Grand Mound was sneaky. Lew “Gunboat” Driscoll had my nickname. I hadn’t met Lew Driscoll, but I had heard he had retired after suffering a career-ending ankle injury last season. He was still in Grand Mound. He had married a local girl during his first few months here. They have a child, another on the way, a small home. Lew Driscoll drives a truck for the local heating-oil dealer.
I try to imagine a meeting of the Grand Mound Booster Club, maybe even with Lew Driscoll present. There would be some secret ceremony where the name “Gunboat” is retired; a moment when Gunboat Driscoll, second-base man, becomes Lew Driscoll, truck driver and permanent resident of Grand Mound. Possibly he is inducted into the Grand Mound Boosters at the same time his nickname is repossessed.
Until this morning, it appears that I was the only person in Grand Mound, with the possible exception of Stanley Wood, who did not understand what was going on. Now I know why.
When I’ve pressed team members to make a trip to other towns in the Cornbelt League or to Iowa City or the Quad Cities to catch a baseball game or go looking for girls, they look at me strangely and decline, claiming some obligation to their real or adopted families. There is something odd about an unattached baseball player who does not want to go into the night searching for girls. How many of the baseball players have married local girls? Half? More than half? Is there something evil going on here? I remember a movie called The Stepford Wives. Are local girls being raised to be baseball brides?
I suddenly remember a line of Casey Stengel’s that Dad used to quote whenever the subject of chasing girls came up, “Being with a woman never hurt a ballplayer, but being out all night looking for woman, that’s what does them in.”
And last week Emmett announced, just as we were dressing for afternoon practice, that opening day had had to be postponed because several of Mechanicsville’s college players had not arrived. Not one of the players batted an eye. It was as though they were expecting the announcement, an announcement that I now see was probably made for my benefit alone.
Everyone in Grand Mound, including Tracy Ellen, is laughing at me.
Well, no more.
I return the newspapers to Mrs. Thoman’s desk.
“Did you find what you were looking for, Gunboat?”
“Yes, I did. You know, Dilly Eastwick is really a very fine sports writer. I’ll bet he could catch on in the big city if he set his mind to it.”
It was my intention to walk over to the office and confront Emmett, but just as I open the front door of the library, the Buick pulls up at the curb. Emmett leaps out and walks around the car toward me. He has changed into his usual grey business suit, his tie hangs loose around his neck.
“Mike, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Get in the car. There are some things I have to explain.”
Emmett heads the car out of Grand Mound, on a narrow county road, like a pencil line between fields of new corn.
“I expect you have some questions?” Emmett begins.
“I certainly do, Emmett. First of all, Grand Mound doesn’t really have a team in the Cornbelt League, do they? Be honest with me.”
The sun is blazing out of a high, clear sky. Heat waves are already rising from the pavement in front of us.
“Well now …”
“My agent was given to believe he’d found me a high-class amateur league where the big-league scouts looked in regularly …”
“Well, now, Mike, your agent’s way out in California, and what he doesn’t know about Iowa would fill a book or two. When we were negotiating we may have exaggerated a bit, stretched the truth if you will …”
“Like lying about Grand Mound being a member of the league?”
“Mike, we have the league’s word that if a team ever drops out, or if a franchise fails, why, Grand Mound gets first opportunity to enter a team.”
“For how long?”
“Pardon?”
“How many years has Grand Mound been waiting?”
“Folks here in rural Iowa are set in their ways, Mike. Things don’t change much, and when they do, they change slowly.”
“HOW LONG?”
“We’ve … we’ve been in our present holding-pattern situation since just after World War II.”
I am so frustrated by this deception that I can hear tears in my voice the next time I speak. “How could you do this to me? To the other players? Do you realize how unfair you’re being? I’ve passed up good-paying jobs with national corporations to make one last stab at being a professional baseball player. What baseball scout is going to come to watch perpetual exhibition games? You’ve ruined my chance of getting a professional contract.
“The worst thing is you’ve done it so subtly that I’ve enjoyed being deceived, I’ve enjoyed being part of your family, I’ve enjoyed thinking of how life might be if I stayed permanently in Grand Mound, worked with you year round. I was even thinking of how life might be if Tracy Ellen and I got together.”
I’m shouting now. In frustration I bang my fist on the padded dashboard. Emmett eases the car to a stop. We are approaching a grove of trees, new, pale-green leaves aflutter in the morning breeze.
“It’s not like that at all, Mike. The last thing we wanted to do was hurt you. I think deep down, you know that. You’re a smart young man, and I like you a lot. I like you so much I’d be proud for you to stay in Grand Mound, to have you as a business partner, to have you as a son-in-law …”
“Stop it! This isn’t the time to be selling Grand Mound to me, to be pimping your daughter. If things aren’t the way I described, how are they? How do you see them?”
“Mike, there’s a reason I drove out here. There’s somebody else I want you to talk with. I realize you’re disappointed, frustrated … but give us a few minutes of your time.”
My teeth are clenched, my chest heaving in anger.
“And who might that mystery person be? Dilly Eastwick, recycler of nicknames? Suicide Walston, professional failure? Maybe Tracy Ellen, armed with cherry pie and ice cream to seduce me into staying?”
We sit in silence for a few moments. I roll down my window and smell the tender odors of the earth, the greenness of the ankle-high corn. The sun is evaporating the dew, tendrils of steam rise from the nearby cornfield.
I can hear a car, Emmett is watching it in the rearview mirror, but I force myself not to turn around until it has pulled off the road behind us.
All my speculation has been wrong. It is the spotless, cream-colored Cadillac that sighs into silence as the ignition is turned off. Roger Cash unwinds from behind the wheel. He closes the door of the Cadillac carefully, brushing imaginary dirt off the door, and walks stiffly to Emmett’s window. I let myself out of the passenger side and walk around the front of the Buick.
“I should have guessed,” I say to Emmett, who is standing by the car. “If anyone is an expert at deception it’s Mr. Cash here.”
Emmett looks sharply at me. Doesn’t he know of Roger Cash’s past? Or, does he just not know that I know?
Roger leans carefully against the Cadillac. “Mike, I volunteered to talk to you when the time came. I pegged you as someone who’d need a lot of talking to. Besides, I’ve known you longest.”
“You’re smart, Mike. You’re the only person who knows the secret of my career. I never got careless again.”
I smile slightly in spite of myself. “You’re not going to tell me this situation involves judging distances, are you?”
“Do you think it doesn’t?” Roger asks, his voice gentle.
Roger Cash is dressed in a black leather jacket over a white turtleneck, a pair of pants the same color as his Cadillac, and black motorcycle boots. He looks as if he could play Fred Noonan, the handsome navigator who vanished forever into the blue Pacific with Amelia Earhart.
“Emmett,” Roger says. “I’ll drive this young man back to town after we have our chat. It may take a while, so would you open the ballpark for afternoon practice?” He tosses Emmett three keys on a ring.
Emmett looks worried.
“I’ll do my best,” Roger assures him.
“You take care, Mike. I’ll see you later,” says Emmett.
“Don’t count on it,” I say, but too softly for Emmett to hear.
He looks sad and a little bewildered as he eases the Buick into a U-turn and heads back toward Grand Mound.
TWENTY-FIVE
We wait until the drone of Emmett’s car is beyond hearing before Roger speaks.
“Tell me what you think you know, Mike.”
“Only that Grand Mound doesn’t have a team in the Cornbelt League, that I’ve been wasting my time playing in a place big-league scouts don’t know exists. I’m mad as hell. If I’d known I wasn’t going to get a chance at pro ball I could be playing in Double A in Knoxville right now, or making serious money at IBM or some other corporation. All these people in Grand Mound are interested in doing is beefing up the population of the town and marrying off their daughters. Talk about weird.”
“Those may appear to be the facts.”
“I’ve already been through this with Emmett.”
“Mike, what kind of a ballplayer were you in college?”
“What the hell’s that got to do with the price of corn?”
“Just tell me the truth. What kind of a player were you in college?”
“I was pretty good. Dilly Eastwick published my statistics in the Leader and in the Greenshirts program. You must have read them. If you’ve become like everybody else in Grand Mound you probably memorized them.”
“Statistics lie, Mike. Any real sports fan knows that. As Mark Twain said, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Your stats may have looked okay on paper, but what did you do when the pressure was on?”
It was like Roger was reading my mind. I could play wounded with Emmett. But Cash knew about distances and odds and the importance of performing in the clutch. He knew that one strikeout with the bases loaded is worth ten strikeouts with two out and nobody on.
“I … well …”
“What did you do when things got tough, Mike?”
“I choked. Dammit, I choked. Does it make you happy to hear me admit it? I’ll say it again. I choked. Not that it has anything to do with my present situation. I haven’t choked here. I’m playing like a pro. I liked it here so much that last week I turned down a chance to go to Double A in Knoxville. Did you know that? Oh, you probably did. Emmett’s phone is probably tapped. And now I find out everything here is a fraud. I can see why you fit right in. I’m such a complete fool.”
Roger didn’t take the bait. I wanted to fight with him. Like Emmett, he simply smiled grimly when I insulted him.
“The year you had to impress the scouts, Mike, you choked. Your stats in clutch situations have always been bad. We know that, and we understand.”
“Wait a minute. Are you saying you recruited me because I’ve been known to choke? Are you saying everyone on the team is like me?”
“Including the manager.”
I’d just thrown the statement out to be perverse. I can hardly believe it. A team of chokers. Suicide Walston. Of course, if anybody ever choked in the clutch, it’d be Suicide.
“Do the other players know?”
“About themselves? Yes. About what’s going on in Grand Mound and why it’s so special? Yes.”
My mouth was hanging open.
“Are you aware how much razzing Emmett has taken from the boys down at the Doll House Café? The players even have a pool on the hour and day you’ll twig.”
Roger checks his watch. I can picture him announcing the exact time and date before practice, counting out bills into a grinning player’s hand.
“After the first few days,” he goes on, “after giving a new player time to acclimatize, we don’t take a lot of pains to hide what’s going down. You must have believed in the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny for a long while, too.”
“So, now I’m stupid as well as a choker?”
“Get the chip off your shoulder, Mike. Everybody wants to do what’s best for you, to see that you do what’s best for you.”
