The Pitcher

by William Hazelgrove

  “Sometimes.”

  “Well don’t do it around me. I got delicate ears. Now go pick up the goddamn rocks.”

  After every bucket, I have to go pick up the rocks in the hot sun. Then I finish the day jogging around the field four more times and doing sit-ups and push-ups. I told you, I really hate running and I’m pretty bad at it. I’m slow and I breathe like I’m about to die. I suck in the hot-baked grass that is suffocating. When I finish, I am bent over, holding onto my knees, feeling like I am going to pass out. It has to be like a hundred.

  The Pitcher stands up and nods.

  “That’s enough for today,” he says, and picks up his cooler of Good Times.

  The second day he has on his Orioles hat and his old cleats. He smokes with his legs crossed, slumped down with one hand on his cheek like this Norman Rockwell print Mom taped to my door. The Pitcher stares out at the infield. I think maybe he is seeing the World Series, throwing that final foul tip his catcher grabbed. Or maybe he is just seeing the sand swirling around in the morning. Maybe he is just bored.

  I hear a rumbling motor and I turn to the far parking lot. Fernando pulls up, then leans back on his Harley with his feet on the high pegs. He must have gone to the house and somehow got it out of Mom. I didn’t tell you this, but Fernando used to pitch in high school and Mom says he was pretty good. I find it hard to believe Fernando was good at anything, man.

  The Pitcher stands up.

  “Grab the rocks.”

  I am tired of throwing rocks. They are tearing up my hand and my shoulder hurts. And they are heavy. I grab the bucket and lug the rocks across the field like someone about to fall over. The Pitcher sets his beer down and points to this skinny pine tree.

  “Throw at the knothole in that tree,” he says.

  I put the rocks down and stare at the tree. Man, it looks a million miles away. It’s like a Charlie Brown tree, you know, the little Christmas tree in the cartoon. There is no way I can hit the tree with a rock. And it is impossible to hit the knothole because I can’t even see it!

  “I don’t see any knothole.”

  “Don’t be a rockhead.” He points with his cigarette again. “It’s right there.”

  I squint and see this faint circle the size of an egg.

  “You want me to hit that with a rock?”

  “Yeah. You got a problem with that?”

  I stare at the tree, feeling sweat cooling all over my body. It is only nine o’clock and it is already ninety. I breathe heavily and I really want to learn how to pitch. I feel like that boy in the movie Karate Kid where the guy is teaching the boy how to wax his car you know, wax on, wax off. I mean that’s cool, but I need to start pitching. The tryouts are coming up and I feel like I am getting worse.

  So I turn to him and ask the question.

  “We ever going to use baseballs?”

  The Pitcher puts the cigarette to his mouth and shrugs.

  “Baseballs are for people who know what they are doing. Rocks are for people who don’t.” He jabs a big finger at the bucket. “So pick up a rock and hit that knothole, rockhead.”

  I reach down and pick out a rock, mumbling, “I know how to throw a baseball.”

  “No you don’t. You can’t even throw a goddamn rock.”

  I hate it when people tell me I can’t do something. It makes me see red, man. I stare at the tree on the edge of the field. Just hitting the trunk would be hard at this distance and hitting the knothole is impossible. I reach down and scoop up a flat rock.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting a different stupid rock,” I grumble, hunting for a heavier one.

  “Hey, rockhead!”

  I stand and he points his cigarette at me.

  “You know what you just told me?”

  “No!”

  “You just told me you can’t hit that knothole! When you pitch to me, I’m going to knock it out of the park like I did to Bob Mariano in the series. When someone hits off you, I don’t care if they blast it clear out of Wrigley Field into the lake! You don’t show nothing! You got it rockhead? You throw the next pitch like you are the king of the world. You got that?”

  “Yeah,” I mutter, squinting up. “Why do you keep calling me rockhead?”

  “Because until you learn to pitch, that’s what you are.”

  Then something kind of bad happens. My phone is going off in my pocket. I have that Eminem tune Lose Yourself as my ringtone. Eminem keeps rapping away. You only have one chance …so don’t blow it … feet don’t fail me now.

  I finally get my phone out and look up.

  “What?”

  “Give it to me,” he says with his hand out.

  The Pitcher keeps his hand out with these tough old-dog callouses, man. I give it to him. He leans back and pitches my phone across the field. My phone flies halfway to the infield and explodes. I can’t even breathe, man. I mean that is my lifeline to the world and he just, he just … pitched it!

  “What the hell, man!” I cry out, staring at him.

  “Yeah. I thought it would have gone further. I must be getting old.”

  “You threw my phone!”

  “Those things are pretty cheap, huh?” He frowns. “Must not be built in America.”

  “You … you threw my phone!”

  The Pitcher rolls his shoulders.

  “You want to go talk on it then go get it. I’ll get in my car and go home then.”

  “You just …” I stare at him. “You just destroyed my phone!”

  He levels his cigarette at me.

  “Does a phone have anything to do with pitching? Is that thing going to give you control, going to give you a curve, or a sinker, or keep you from hitting the goddamn backstop?”

  “No … but—”

  “That phone going to get you to hit that knothole?”

  “No.”

  “Then shut up and start throwing the rocks.”

  The Pitcher cracks a beer and looks at me. I consider walking off. I really do.

  “Yeah? … You waiting for something?”

  I kick the ground.

  “No,” I mutter, picking up another rock.

  My thing is, I don’t like to work. Not every day. And that’s what we do. Every day we work at throwing rocks. He just watches me stand there like a soldier on the mound, blasting in these rocks across home plate. Or he sits on the bench sometimes while I go through the whole bucket. Then he motions his cigarette. “Go get ’em.” Then I walk across that hot dusty infield to pick up the rocks.

  But then one day he sits on the dugout bench and doesn’t say a word.

  “I finished,” I tell him, sweating and hot.

  The Pitcher’s eyes hold the heat light, looking beyond me. He does that sometimes. He looks right over my head like he is seeing something else. And he doesn’t move, his eyes going out to that dusty infield. He just sits there with his hands on the bench in the heat. I turn around and see he is staring at the pitcher’s mound. And then he turns to me. He begins to open his mouth, then just shakes his head.

  About the second week Mom comes across the field at noon. She walks up in a red dress with a flower in her hair. She’s carrying a picnic basket. She spreads out a blanket and pulls out tortillas, guacamole, chips, fajitas, tacos. We eat our lunch and the Pitcher takes off his hat and smooths his hair and doesn’t spit tobacco juice. He listens as Mom chatters on about the weather, the price of food, and then baseball.

  “I have to pay you something for your help,” she says, looking at him.

  “No you don’t.”

  Mom holds out the tube of twenties like an offering.

  “Please take this. It will make me feel better,” she continues, holding the rolled money with the rubber band around the middle.

  The Pitcher shakes his head.

  “I ain’t taking your money.”

  Mom holds the money down, fingering the rubber band. “Then you have to let me do something,” she says, pulling back her hair, h
er dark eyes catching the morning sun. “I can’t take charity, Mr. Langford. I have to feel like I am doing something for you too.”

  He shuts one eye and rolls his shoulders.

  “Well … those fajitas you fixed the other night were pretty good.”

  “Then you come over and I’ll make you a dinner.”

  The Pitcher waves his hand through the air.

  “You don’t gotta.”

  “It will make me feel better,” she insists, rubbing a callous on her hand from playing ball. “I need to feel like I can pay you back some way.” Mom stares at him, holding back her curly dark hair. “You get that, right?”

  The Pitcher shrugs.

  “Yeah, sure. A home-cooked meal.”

  She puts the money back into her dress.

  “How’s tomorrow night then?”

  “I got nothing going on.”

  Mom smiles again. She really doesn’t want to feel like we are taking charity. Even in our worst times she won’t take food stamps or anything like that. But I also know she is making sure the Pitcher hangs in there with the Mexican kid with his crazy arm.

  ’Cause my arm is crazy, man.

  14

  MOM IS STIRRING RICE AND warming some taco shells while I put on this white shirt I wore to church and never wore again except for a wedding. I slip on long pants and brush my hair and button my shirt to the top. Then I help Mom set the table and she puts flowers in the middle. We look at each other when the doorbell rings.

  “Go answer the door, Ricky,” she says, smoothing her curly hair, looking in the mirror of the microwave, touching her lipstick.

  Mom looks great with her jangling earrings. She looks like one of those women on television getting a diamond ring in a restaurant. I’d like to give Mom a diamond ring, because she sold hers a long time ago. I smooth down my hair, which is short anyway.

  The Pitcher is standing there and he doesn’t look normal. He drops his cigarette and nods when I open the door. He has on a blue sport coat over his golf shirt and khaki pants and is wearing loafers. He looks more like a salesman than an MLB pitcher who won a World Series. He just doesn’t look right without his ratty old shorts.

  “Come in,” I say, nervous as hell.

  The Pitcher follows me while my heart goes rumbdadum.

  We eat on the patio. The stars are bright and a moon hovers over the fence. The Pitcher has three tacos and two plates of rice and two margaritas. The candles flicker and the Pitcher doesn’t say much. I can’t think of anything to say but Mom just keeps chattering. I kind of zone out and then somehow Mom is talking about immigration and the Pitcher says you can’t just let people come here illegally. Her eyes flare and I pray she won’t start giving him the attitude. She leans into the candles.

  “You think we should deport all those people, Mr. Langford?”

  He raises his eyebrows, creaking his chair.

  “You gotta send them back. What’s fair is fair. Like you people. Wouldn’t be fair to you after you went through the trouble becoming citizens.”

  Mom pulls her hair back behind her ear.

  “But what if they have created lives here with families and jobs?”

  The Pitcher shakes out a cigarette.

  “They gotta go,” he says, looking up at her.

  I see Mom pause, then she stands and starts clearing the table. I know how hard it is for her not to tell him where to get off, but she just smiles tightly and takes away his plate and grabs mine. No one says much after that. The Pitcher yawns and looks like a statue. I keep seeing that picture where he jumped into the arms of his catcher and won the Word Series. I look down and will my mouth to open.

  “What …” I start again while he stares at the Mexican kid dribbling into his plate. I give myself a count, timing it to the drumbeat of my heart. One, two, three!

  “What was it like to pitch in the World Series?”

  The Pitcher puts his lighter on the table. He leans back and holds the cigarette down to his side. His eyes come down from the sky and center on me.

  “It was great,” he says simply.

  Mom walks out and he stands up and holds her chair, then scoots it in. I noticed earlier the Pitcher let her walk ahead of him and held the patio door open. Now, he fills her wine glass and lights her cigarette before he sits back down.

  “Thanks for dinner.”

  Mom smiles.

  “It’s the least I can do.”

  Then we sit on the back patio and Mr. Hallapene from next door comes out. He wears those old guy T-shirts that hang down, with his skinny arms sticking out. Mom says he was in the war and I’m not sure which one, but he has all these blue tattoos on his arms. He stays outside in his garden watering his plants or something, then turns on his radio and this Cuban music floats over like in one of those old-time movies.

  “That’s the tango,” Mom says, nodding.

  The Pitcher ashes his cigarette and shakes his head.

  “That’s a dance I always thought would be kind of fun,” he says, pausing. “My wife wanted us to learn … but we never did.”

  Mom jumps up.

  “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  The Pitcher stares at her like she just stripped or something.

  “That’s not for me.”

  “Bullshit,” Mom says, pulling him up.

  And I mean he is one big dude and Mom uses everything to get him on his feet. The Pitcher stands there awkwardly with his big hands hanging down. Mom moves his hands around like a mannequin.

  “Alright, put your one hand on my waist,” she says, putting it around her waist. “And raise your other and I hang on to it like this.”

  I can tell the Pitcher isn’t used to this. He’s not used to anybody telling him what to do, but Mom is perfect at that. She looks up at him and smiles.

  “Are you ready, Mr. Langford?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Mr. Hallapene’s music is really going now.

  “You can do this,” she says, real small next to him. “Ready … one, two, three!”

  And they step across our small patio and then Mom says, “OK, now turn and back.” And the Pitcher and Mom turn and they step back to the table and then go away again. “Now dip me,” she commands after they go back and forth three times. The Pitcher dips Mom and her hair flies down. They stay like that for a moment and then he brings her up.

  “That was fun,” she says, smoothing back her hair.

  “Yeah, it was.”

  Mom smiles and taps him lightly on the shoulder.

  “I told you you could do it,” she whispers. “See … you are a very good dancer, Mr. Langford.”

  The Pitcher has these two spots of red on his cheeks.

  “That was really fun,” he says, holding the chair for Mom.

  I know how he’s feeling. Mom has a way of getting you to do what you think you never could. I guess even MLB pitchers need a kick sometimes.

  Suddenly it’s like I’m not even there. I mean it’s kind of weird, because Mom becomes this other person and laughs and smiles teasingly. She flips her hair and her earrings jangle. I smell her perfume on the breeze. The candlelight plays on her cheeks as she tells the Pitcher about moving from Chicago. I ride the tide, man.

  “Your ex-husband?”

  “Ex-asshole,” Mom corrects him. “ Fernando was the reason we moved out here. He hated the winters in Chicago.”

  “Yeah. I don’t care for the white stuff either,” the Pitcher agrees, shaking his head.

  Mom rubs the stem of her wine glass. Her mouth pinches in and her voice lowers.

  “I wanted to thank you for that night …,” she begins, meeting his eyes. “I appreciate what you did for Ricky and me.”

  The Pitcher frowns and shakes his head.

  “Don’t know what you mean.”

  I know his game. If he threw that ball at Fernando’s motorcycle, he wouldn’t admit it. It’s like he doesn’t want to be caught doing something nice. It’s the pitcher code, wh
ich is you don’t show anything. You keep your emotions down low.

  “Well … thank you anyway.” Mom pauses, then looks at him. “I heard you have Ricky throwing rocks.”

  “Yeah.” He smiles lightly. “He’s thrown a few.”

  Mom tilts her head.

  “Is that to develop his technique?”

  “It’s how I learned.”

  Mom nods and I can see she’s probing, trying to make sure I’m going to learn to pitch from him. She stares at her cigarette. “If Ricky doesn’t make the high school team, he probably won’t play baseball again.” She looks at him. “You saw him pitch. Don’t you think he needs a change-up?”

  “He don’t need a change-up.”

  “But all he knows is how to pitch hard.”

  The Pitcher sits back and looks at Mom.

  “Do you even know what a change-up is, Ms. Hernandez?”

  Her eyes darken.“Yes … it’s a slower fastball.”

  “No. That ain’t what a change-up is.”

  “Then why don’t you show Ricky what it is?”

  I hear the squeal of the patio door and Fernando busts out of the darkness like a pirate swinging onto a ship. His eyes are bright and he’s sweating. He kicks the door closed and smiles, but it’s not a good smile.

  “Little perfect family here, huh?”

  Mom turns around.

  “What the hell do you want, Fernando?”

  “Nothing baby,” he says, shrugging. “Just stopping by, you know. You looking fine, Maria,” he continues. “I ain’t seen that dress in a long time, man. Last time I got laid I think.” Fernando holds up his hand for a high-five. “What up, little man?” He stares at me and frowns. “You all dressed up too, bro? Trying to make the big impression, huh? ”

  “Yeah,” I mutter, hitting his hand lightly.

  “Damn!” He stares at the Pitcher, shaking his head. “You finally came out of your garage, huh? Let me shake your hand, dude!” Fernando grabs the Pitcher’s hand. He stares at me and shakes his head like damn, man, how about this? “This is the real shit, man, a major league pitcher! Maria got all over you about coaching, Ricky, huh?”

  The Pitcher shrugs.

  “I just came over for dinner with my neighbors.”