1933 Was a Bad Year

by John Fante

  I spluttered an apology and bent to pick the brushes up.

  “I’ll do that,” she said. “Just go.”

  I blundered out into the street. It was time to die, the end of my life. I walked down Twelfth Street, searching for a place where I could lie down and hide, never to rise again. After half a block I came to the alley. It was out of the sunlight and in shadow. I found a friendly garbage can and took hold of it with both hands, staring down at a turmoil of greasy rags, empty oil cans and chunks of machinery, longing to dive in and hide.

  For weeks I thought of that morning, afraid to walk in front of the hardware store, thinking of it suddenly at odd times, having it explode in my memory like a bomb, holding my temples against it, ashamed to look at myself in mirrors, feeling it explode at night as I lay in bed writhing like a bullet had hit me. I blamed her, finally. She should not have gone up that ladder. She should have allowed me to go up. She had done it on purpose.

  I never saw her again until her brother and I became friends and Kenny asked me over to his house. He took me into the Parrish living room and there she was—twenty-one now, beautiful as a glacier, her yellow hair down to her shoulders. She was sitting in a leather chair, reading through large, black-rimmed glasses. It had been three years since the fiasco in the hardware store, and I held my breath as we crossed the room and Kenny introduced me. She said, “Hi,” over the top of her glasses and went back to the book on her lap. I breathed easier. She had not recognized me.

  “Be right back,” Ken said. He dashed upstairs. I sat on the divan and we were more than alone together, because it was as if I wasn’t even in the room. She sat near the window, the afternoon sun filtering through the gently swaying curtains. Her legs were under her, the silken knees glossy as golden globes. Even when she lit a cigarette her eyes ignored me, and I was glad.

  The room was vast, with beam ceilings and a fireplace large enough to stand in. The chairs and divans were of soft green leather. Hundreds of books lined the walls. A phonograph played Ravel’s Bolero, barely audible.

  “Mind if I smoke?”

  She picked up a pack of cigarettes and tossed it. I made a nice one-handed catch and said, “Thanks, I got my own.”

  More silence. I lit up and sat back in the comfortable chair, blowing smoke toward the beams.

  “Sure have a lot of books,” I said.

  Not a word. Her hand turned a page. I stood up and went over to the shelves. They were mostly new books, the kind displayed in the front window of Martin’s Stationery Store: Hemingway, Caldwell, Bromfield, Waugh. My own reading range was strictly St. Catherine style: Quo Vadis, Life of St. Teresa, Ivanhoe, The Deerslayer, Two Years before the Mast.

  Ken’s mother was something else, plump and stylish, very social, always in the papers. She didn’t like me, but she tried. Every time she came upon me in the house, her eyes flared in astonishment, and she had trouble remembering my name.

  “Hello, Tony,” she’d say.

  “Dominic. Dominic Molise.”

  “And what is it Ken says you do so well?”

  “Throw a baseball.”

  “I see. Well, to each his own, I suppose.” And she’d turn to Kenny and say, “Now I don’t want you and Tony to get into any mischief.” Out she’d go to her car, driving off to some important meeting.

  I didn’t see much of Mr. Parrish. He had been a great athlete at the university, but now he was grey and heavy, wearing the same tweed suit and chain-smoking cigarettes, worried about business, always listening to the news on the radio, hating Roosevelt, the Denver papers torn apart and strewn around his chair.

  Kenny liked coming to my house. It was old and plain, but he was comfortable there, sitting beside the window in the kitchen, eating a dish of spaghetti or a bowl of minestrone with homemade bread. It pleased my mother to have him asking questions about her cooking. He was wild about Grandma Bettina, who buzzed him suspiciously, frowning at his handsome shoes, his tailored slacks and his cashmere sweaters. With folded arms she sat at the table and watched him eat, muttering insults in Italian that Kenny enjoyed but never understood.

  “What’s that?” he’d ask. “What’s she saying now?”

  And I would translate, “She says you’re the son of a whore who’s been banged from here to Palermo.”

  “Marvelous!” he’d shout. “Beautiful!” And he would leap from his chair and throw his arms around her, trying to kiss her as she slapped him with small hands and ran for her bedroom.

  Waiting for Kenny, I half dozed on the locker room bench. The room was warm, smelling of steam and sweat and antiseptic. I could feel my future making waves around me, the promise of days to come, the exciting years that lay ahead. It was always this way with great men, a stirring in their bones, a mysterious energy that set them apart from the rest of mankind. They knew! They were different. Edison was deaf. Steinmetz was a hunchback. Babe Ruth was an orphan, Ty Cobb a poor Georgia boy. Giannini started with nothing. People thought Henry Ford was crazy. Carnegie was a runt like myself. Tony Canzoneri came out of the slums. Poor young men, touched with magic, lucky in America. Thank God my father had the good sense to leave Torricella Peligna! Times were bad, to be sure, with the depression going full strength, but what a glorious future lay ahead for those touched with fame.

  Kenny arrived about four. He wore a fur hat and a three-quarter length sheepskin coat. It was brand new.

  “Pretty nice,” I said, watching him peel it off.

  ‘You want it?” He flung it to me. ‘Take it. Be my guest.”

  I told him, no thanks, for he did not mean it, a trick of his to make light of the fact that he had so much that was unimportant.

  He felt lousy, kicking off his shoes and throwing them against the lockers.

  “Fucking snow,” he said.

  He pulled off his pants. He had his sister’s features, the same grey eyes and bone structure. I was always surprised at his Dorothy legs, his lean Dorothy waist. His shorts were delicate and frivolous, the things one would expect to find on a girl, and I thought they foredoomed his future as a first baseman. No self-respecting ballplayer would dare show up in a locker room wearing shorts like that.

  He put on his sweat suit and shoes, and we got our gloves and walked out to the bowling alley and began tossing the baseball, not talking, just warming up. Through the small windows we could see the snow falling heavily. It was depressing. One of my tosses was low and wild, under his glove, bouncing off the wall.

  Disgusted, he didn’t even turn to retrieve it.

  “Screw it,” he said. “Let’s quit.”

  “We barely started.”

  He flipped his glove clear across the alley and into the locker room.

  “It’s madness. Two intelligent human beings tossing a baseball around in the Elks basement in a one-horse town in Colorado in the dead of winter. It’s sickening.”

  “It’s better’n hanging around doing nothing.”

  “I’ve had it, buster. I’m ready to blow this Godforsaken village. We’re just jacking off.”

  We stripped and showered. Under the stream of hot water I could see the snow falling outside. Roper was just a way-station on the road to the Hall of Fame. A man could bear up under any temporary crisis if he had faith in the future.

  We dried off with the thick fluffy Elks Club towels. The street was dark now. We heard the clang of tire chains, the muted chimes of the courthouse clock striking five.

  I stretched out on my back across the rubbing table and held up The Arm. “He needs you, Ken. He’s crying for your magic touch.”

  “Okay, honey,” he said, patting the bicep.

  Pouring alcohol into his palm, he smeared it over The Arm and began massaging it, starting at the finger tips and slowly working upward, kneading the alcohol into the pores, stroking and patting the muscles until the tension was gone and The Arm was soft and pliant, hanging limply in his grasp.

  “Isn’t he beautiful?” he said. “Just like soft leather.”

/>   I clinched my fist and felt the arm harden to iron all the way to the collarbone. It had never felt better. Here it was, only February, and The Arm was tuned up as if it was the middle of August.

  He raised it by the finger tips and it was heavy and loose as a big fish. “Priceless,” he said. “A deadly weapon.”

  I sat up, pleased.

  “Thanks for taking such good care of him.”

  “My pleasure, Dom. I envy you.”

  “Don’t. Nothing’s happened—yet.”

  “I’m just a half-assed high school ballplayer. I got no future at all.”

  “Same here. My old man laid it out last night. He’s gonna make a bricklayer out of me.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “It’s all worked out. I finish high school and start learning the trade.”

  “He can’t be that stupid! I’ll talk to him.”

  “He means well. He just doesn’t understand, the poor dope.”

  He grabbed me. “Dom! Let’s get out of here, before it’s too late.”

  “Where’ll we go?”

  “Catalina, where the Cubs are.”

  “I thought you were a Yankee man.”

  ‘They’re in Florida. Too far, too late. Catalina’s only fifteen hundred miles.”

  “What’ll we do when we get there?”

  “Try out for the team, you ass.”

  I got excited. “You mean it?”

  “As God is my judge!”

  I jumped off the table and rubbed my hands together. I walked back and forth. I kicked a towel. “Oh, God!” I said. “Me with the Cubs!”

  He danced up and down, his balls bouncing. He crossed to his locker and got out a pack of cigarettes. We lit up. After a couple of drags we grew calm, thoughtful.

  “I want to ask you something,” he said.

  “Shoot.”

  “In strict confidence. The truth.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Dom. Oh God, don’t deceive me! It’s too important.”

  I covered my heart.

  “You have my word of honor.”

  He hesitated, ground out his cigarette. “Am I good enough to try out for the Chicago Cubs?”

  Pow! What a question! His hungering eyes begged for only one answer. Any other would have been a knife through his heart. Also, the end of our friendship. I had to play it out, make it good. I crossed to the locker and pulled on my shorts, then moved to the mirror and combed my hair.

  “You’re destroying me, Dom.”

  “You’ve got to give me a little time to think this out,” I told him. “I hate to say anything that will change the course of your life. It’s a tough question. I wish to God you hadn’t asked me.”

  A sickly smile turned his lips.

  “You don’t have to answer. I already know what you’re going to say.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and covered his face.

  “Don’t jump to conclusions, Ken. I’m still thinking.”

  “Go ahead and say it. Tell me I’m nothing but a bush leaguer.” He laughed, a cackling, insincere laugh, and then spoke bitterly. “You could be wrong, you know! I’m still young, still developing, I got great hands, I hit a long ball. Hell, I got just as good a chance as you!”

  I walked over to him and laid my palms on his shoulders and smiled. “Kenny, you asked me a question. I haven’t answered it yet.”

  “Then answer, for God’s sake! Stop torturing me!”

  “Ken Parrish, you’re the finest first base prospect I ever saw. Right now, as a fielder, I’d say you’re major league caliber. In three, four years you’ll surpass Charlie Grimm, maybe your idol Lou Gehrig. As for hitting, how can I ever forget your three homers against Fort Collins? One of them musta gone four hundred feet. Ken Parrish, you’re ready! You’re a major leaguer right now, right this moment.”

  A big sigh and he held out his hand.

  “Thanks, Dago.”

  We shook hands.

  “I had to be honest,” I said. “At the same time, I didn’t want it to go to your head.”

  “I appreciate your frankness.”

  Now it was my turn.

  “I’d like to ask you a question.”

  “Fire away, pal.”

  “I was honest with you. Now I want you to be honest with me.”

  “That’s what friends are for. What’s on your mind, Dom?”

  “The same thing: what are my chances with the Chicago Cubs?”

  He frowned. “Pheew, that’s a tough one.”

  “Not if you’re my friend, it isn’t.”

  “I’ll have to think it over.”

  “Go ahead, take your time.”

  He squeezed his chin and lapsed into silence. I watched him slip into his shorts and shirt, then his pants. He was concentrating, squinting at the ceiling. He put on his socks and shoes, crossed to the mirror, and fastened his necktie. Then he wet and combed his hair. If he was trying to irritate me it wasn’t working, because I already knew the answer. Still, he was taking a long time, longer than I did.

  “Well?” I said.

  “Just one thing bothers me. How tall are you?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Let’s face it,” he shrugged. “Good pitchers are tall, rangy.”

  I didn’t care for that.

  “How tall are you, Parrish?”

  “Six feet.”

  I folded my arms and circled him. “And you call yourself a good hitter?”

  “The best,” he grinned. “You said so yourself.”

  “How many hits you had off me in the last three years?”

  “I’ve had my share,” he said, being very gay about it. “Five or six, maybe.”

  “You’re a dirty fucking liar! You’ve only had one hit off me, and that was a lucky single when you fell away from a pitch and blooped it into right field!” I pushed up close to him, my shoulder in his chest. ‘You know how I pitch to you, Parrish? In tight, close to your cock, because you haven’t got the guts to stay in there and swing!”

  I bulled him against the wall.

  “Wait a minute!” he said, holding me at arm’s length. “You asked me a question: do I think you’re ready for the Cubs. Do you want to hear my answer or not?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  We grew silent. The steam pipes hissed. I gathered up my stuff and slammed it into a pile in the locker. He pulled on his new coat and adjusted his fur hat before the mirror. Then he turned to leave. I didn’t want it to end that way. We had too much going for each other, too many good times in the past.

  “Wait a minute,” I said.

  He stopped, came back.

  “I’m not mad at anything,” I said.

  “Why should you be?” he smiled. “You’re the greatest left hand prospect in America today.”

  “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

  “I was testing you. The mark of a great pitcher is desire. And confidence. You’ve got it, Dom.”

  I held out my hand.

  “Thanks, Ken.”

  We shook hands. He clung to my fingers, turned my hand over. “The fingers of an artist,” he said. “Just as precious as Yehudi Menuhin’s. When I think of them laying brick it makes my blood run cold.”

  I stared at my ten fingers, thick and short and powerful, like my father’s must have been before falling brick and mason’s tools twisted them like root stumps, like the claws of a bear. It made me writhe. I kicked the lockers.

  “I’ll never lay brick!” I swore. “May God strike me dead if I ever pick up a trowel.”

  “Catalina!” Ken gasped. “Palm trees along the blue Pacific! Blue skies bathed in sunlight, warm tropic nights! No snow! A little island paradise where all you do is play baseball and eat good food in a fine hotel.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Think of it! And here we are, down in this ratty old basement, buried alive in a snowstorm. My
God, Dominic! Catalina’s just over the mountains, a measly fifteen hundred miles away!”

  It burst out of me: “Let’s go, Kenny! Let’s get the hell out of here before we die!”

  “Shake on it.”

  We shook hands again.

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll grab a bus and be there in two days.”

  That cooled me off. There were problems.

  “How much will it cost?”

  He figured fifty apiece, until we signed our contracts. I groaned. All the furniture in our house, including the kitchen stove, wasn’t worth that. I remembered my father’s slack jaw as he counted off our debts—the rent, the lights, the milk man, the grocery store, the coal company, the doctor, the lumber yard. We were so broke that even the poor nuns at St. Catherine’s accepted us tuition free.

  And there was Kenny in his new coat and English shoes and fur hat, talking of fifty dollars as if it was fifty cents, and I screamed out, and what I said was:

  “Why doesn’t your sister Dorothy ever talk to me? What’s she so snobby about? What did I ever do to her? What am I, a bum or something? She turns her back every time she sees me. It’s insulting!”

  His jaw hung open in amazement.

  “What’s Dorothy got to do with this?”

  “Plenty!” I said, buzzing around, kicking the wet towels, slamming lockers shut. “Plenty, that’s all. You don’t think so? You want to stick up for her? Okay. So screw you, and your big-assed mother and your grouchy old man, and your big house and your servants and your cars and your money.”

  There was a silence and I was sick and ashamed and frightened that it had spewed out of me like a mad dog.

  He sat down, folded his hands, and stared at the floor. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. Then he shrank from me, going farther and farther away, and I spat in shame. What a vile thing to have burst from me, like pus from a blister. Dorothy Parrish had always been such a secret thing, quiet and filling me with sweet longing, a lovely girl in a chair reading a book on a summer afternoon with the sun in her hair, a dream.

  Nothing was left between us now. Even Catalina wasn’t worth the effort. We were strangers. Maybe our friendship was over, maybe we were enemies. As we climbed the stairs into the darkness of the street I was certain we had had our last workout in the Elks gym.