The Pitcher

by William Hazelgrove

  “This is Dr. Aziz,” this voice says with a slight accent.

  I clear my throat.

  “Yeah … uh, my name is um, Ricky Hernandez,” I begin unsteadily.

  “Oh ... yes?”

  “Yeah … um … I’ve been listening to your messages, you know, ” I continue with my heart hammering away. “I see … yes, yes, I just spoke with her.”

  “Yeah … and … and I wanted to call to find out … what’s wrong with her. ” My mouth is really dry now. “She pukes a lot ... I think … I think she’s pretty sick.”

  There is silence on the phone. I’m staring at this green lizard hanging out on the side of a palm tree. They are pretty cool. They just stay there upside down and wait for insects. Wish I could do that.

  “What can I do for you, Ricky?”

  “Yeah …” I swallow. “I want … I want to like, you know, I want to know ... like, what’s wrong with her.”

  The cell phone is silent against my ear. I have never really talked to a doctor before. I stare across the street at Shortstop asleep on his side. I try to think about something from medical shows like CSI where the doctor gives the bad news and everyone starts crying. I just wait outside in the dead heat.

  “Ricky … I can only talk to your mother,” Dr. Aziz replies. “I am sorry.”

  I stare at the Pitcher’s garage. I don’t know why, but it makes me feel better to know he’s in there. Maybe it’s just better to know someone is around. Fernando was never around; not even drunk in an old garage.

  “But please have her call me as soon as possible, so we can help her.”

  I shut my eyes.

  “Can you just tell me this?” I say. “Does what my Mom have … like, is it … is it like … you know … life threatening?”

  There is like a really long pause. And I feel like I am not even breathing. Bump Bump Bump. That’s my heart, man.

  “Yes,” she says.

  Man, I feel weak in my knees, like someone has just kicked my ankles out. I start crying, even though I can’t make a sound. My eyes just start watering and my chest is heaving, because I know what she is saying.

  “Please have your mother call me and we can make her better, OK?”

  “Yeah.”

  I wipe my eyes and hang up. I look at the garage and hear the Pitcher’s ballgame. I think about us not having any medical insurance. The heat hangs on the street like it’s on fire and I see one of my baseballs in the yard. They say Cy Young used to pitch so hard he would tear the grandstands apart when the balls flew wild. A reporter said the grandstands looked like a cyclone hit them and that’s how he got the name, the Cyclone. That’s how hard I threw the baseball at his garage. You know, like a cyclone was behind it.

  I’ll bet the Pitcher jumped straight up.

  23

  I’M ON THE PORCH READING about Zambrano getting ninety million bucks for pitching for the Cubs. So that got me thinking. Back in the seventies they didn’t pay dudes that much, but the Pitcher played a long time. Now they pay guys a million bucks who never even play. Back then players played for teams and free agency hadn’t cranked up salaries to where players are now “banks” as the Pitcher called them. I figure Mom isn’t going to the doctor because we don’t have the money. And if the Pitcher played in the majors for like twenty-five years … anyway, I figure it’s worth a shot

  So I pick up the medical bills and walk across the street. Shortstop doesn’t even look up as I stand outside the garage with the papers in my hand. I wipe my hands on my shorts, then knock on the peeling wood. I breathe in the old heated tar of his drive. I can barely hear because my heart is slamming in my chest. I knock again. The ballgame rises up and down like a rainstorm. I chip away some paint from his garage door, then slip under.

  I can’t see a thing. It’s like I’m in a dungeon, but then my eyes adjust. I see the Pitcher watching the game. It looks like the Orioles and the Cardinals. I clear my throat.

  “Mr. Langford?”

  He turns around, then jumps up. He covers his mouth with his hand, blowing smoke into the TV light.

  “You throw that goddamn baseball against my garage?”

  I shrug.

  “Yeah.”

  He stares at me like I have just barfed. Bam Bam Bam. My heart is pitching fastballs. The Pitcher stares at me like I’m some kind of alien. Who would do something like that and then come ask for money?

  “What in the hell would make you do that?”

  “I dunno,” I mumble, shrugging again.

  “Well, you must want something to do a rockhead thing like that,” he says as he walks back and stares at the television.

  The Cardinals just got a hit and he’s examining the screen like a doctor. I can’t think of anything to say. I really just want to go back outside. But then I think of Mom and don’t move. The Pitcher watches the game up until a commercial, then turns.

  “You still here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, what the hell is it you want?”

  I stare at Mom’s medical bills gnarled in my hand. And like I’ve never even asked someone for a hundred dollars and now I’m going to ask this dude for seven grand? I really had gone loco as Mom says. Who else would go ask some dude in his garage for money after they wailed a baseball against his door? Nobody. Except Ricky Hernandez. The Pitcher stares at me, trying to decide which part of my head I fell on. I can hear his fan, the ballgame. I can even hear Shortstop breathing.

  Then he turns back to the television.

  “You want a Coke or something … you look hot.”

  “Yeah.”

  He walks to his refrigerator and gets a Coke and motions to his footstool. I sit down and the Pitcher settles into his brown La-Z-Boy and cracks open a beer. I drink that Coke like water, man. He holds his beer down and squints at me.

  “What the hell’s in your hand?”

  I look at the medical bills. It seems crazy now to ask him for money.

  “Those bills?”

  I look down.

  “Yeah, they’re Mom’s medical bills,” I mumble

  “Let me see them,” he says, holding out his hand.

  I hand the bills over and the Pitcher lights another cigarette and kicks off his old loafers. Funny thing is he reached for some thick-framed glasses. One time during practice he said, “Do you see that hawk up there?” I stared at the sky and couldn’t see anything. And it was then I saw this faint little cross. “How do you know he’s a hawk?” He looked at me. “I can see his talons.”

  The Pitcher holds the papers down in his lap and takes off his glasses.

  “Seven thousand bucks they want?”

  I nod. Now I know I was nuts to even think I could ask for the money. But he saw my play and there is no going back now. The Pitcher whistles, then hands the papers back to me and turns to the game.

  “That ain’t chump change, buddy.”

  I feel the nervousness creep up. How do you ask somebody for seven thousand dollars? I thought of Mom in her bedroom. The Pitcher said it was my time to step up to the plate and that it was my game and no one else’s. The batter thinks it his, the ump thinks it his, the manager thinks it’s his, but it’s your game. You are the pitcher.

  “That why you came over here?”

  I nod sheepishly, looking down.

  “Mom doesn’t know I came over, but …” I shut my eyes and will my mouth to move. “I was wondering … I was wondering if you could, you know, lend us the money … so we could pay Mom’s medical bills … she’s sick and won’t go to the doctor … because we don’t have the money,” I finish.

  And my words just hang out there like heavy balloons, man. Like they are waiting to be popped and the Pitcher has the needle. He holds the cigarette by his cheek.

  “What’s wrong with your mom?”

  “She has lupus.”

  He takes this long, slow drag on his cigarette. The smoke pillows and curls around the television. He flicks the ash.

  “I’d
like to help you, son. I really would.” He shakes his head slowly. “But your mother would never take it from me. She’s a proud woman.”

  I feel encouraged. He hasn’t thrown me out of his garage and asked me if I have lost my mind. So that’s why I push him a little.

  “We could do it and she wouldn’t have to know.”

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t,” he says.

  I nod and put the empty Coke bottle on the table next to his chair. I didn’t really believe he would give us the money. I just got my hopes up when he gave me a Coke. A Coke? Seven Grand? Right? I stand up and stare at that World Series picture one more time.

  “How come …” I turn to him. “How come you never had a change-up?”

  The Pitcher leans back and says cool as November, “I never needed one.”

  24

  WE ARE BACK IN THE streets practicing for the tryouts. Shortstop is snoozing on his back. The Pitcher’s television drones in the background as Mom and I throw the ball. When Mom said she wanted to practice in the street, I knew why. If you don’t have hope, then what do you have, she always says. But I didn’t see it. The Pitcher is done with us. A dude that never wanted to change enough to develop a slower pitch in twenty-five years in the majors isn’t going to start changing now.

  I work hard and start to get some control back in my arm. We have been practicing about an hour when I really start hitting it. Mom is hunched down in the street and I’m drilling the ball into her mitt with a pop. She doesn’t turn away from my pitches. I know she has the catcher gear and everything, but a lot of dudes turn away from a seventy-five-mile-an-hour pitch. We are joking and she’s calling me Carlos. A warm evening breeze plays down the street and for a moment, the world is behaving.

  And then we hear Fernando.

  Rat a tat tat. His Harley sounds like him, you know, all explosions. He rolls in all greased back with his shades, feet up on the high pegs with his arms pumped. Like I said, if they make a bad movie about dads who go off and come back like wannabe gangbangers, that would be Fernando. He rolls in our drive and kicks down, leaning his bike. It’s really quiet when he kills the motor. Mom pulls off her mask as he calls out.

  “Hey … how’s the Pitcher, man?”

  “Good,” I mumble, breathing in booze from his ghetto hug. Fernando has dark glasses on, but I know his eyes are bright and glittery.

  “Yo hey, baby,” he says while Mom glares.

  She stops in front of him like a cop.

  “What are you doing here, Fernando? I don’t have any money.”

  He smiles, flexing his arms over his head. He’s all tattoos and earrings along with his Doc Martens and wallet chain. All I can think is this dude watches way too much television, man.

  “Oh you know, man, I just came to help my son pitch.” He lowers his glasses. “I hear the Pitcher dude said later on him, huh?”

  Mom waves him away, her chin moving.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  I had to wonder, man, how he would know this. Of course Fernando manages to find out things that there is no way you think he would know. He’s like the CIA of deadbeat dads or something and he just comes around for all the bad times. I know pitching is over for the day, because I sense he’s going to start some shit with Mom.

  “Hey, man. Yo, hey, let’s see that arm, bro. Throw me a couple,” he says, taking my mitt.

  Mom steps in front of him. He’s already kicking his leg up and pulling the ball in like he’s Zambrano or something. Yeah, he’s high or drunk, because he almost falls over when he kicks his leg up. I wish we had some money just to make him get back on his Harley and split. But last night we had mac and cheese again and so I know we are really tight.

  “Get the hell out of here, Fernando,” Mom shouts, coming at him.

  “Hey chill, baby, chill. I’m just going to throw the ball with my son,” he says, moving like a fighter. He turns to me. “You go down, man, and I’ll throw you some pitches. I’ll coach you, man.”

  I don’t move and Fernando nods, pulling back his arm, loosening up.

  “Go on, man,” he urges. “I’m as good as that dude. I’m the dude that should be teaching you anyway, not that old washed-up motherfu----. I’ll just throw you a couple and show you the way man.”

  He’s kicking up his leg again like’s he’s in the majors, muttering, “Yeah, this feels good, feels right!”

  Mom shakes her head and throws me the catcher’s glove.

  “Let the asshole pitch and then maybe he’ll leave,” she says.

  I walk off into the distance and squat down in the hot street. I don’t want to do this. Fernando is like a bad flu that keeps coming back. I can smell the oily tar as I hold my mitt. I’m hoping like he’ll throw a couple and take off. He usually loses interest pretty fast whenever we play ball.

  “Alright, man. Get ready,” Fernando calls out. “Here comes my fastball, bro.” He kicks up and I have to grab it out of the air. But here’s the thing, man—the ball came in like a blooper. No heat at all. I mean, here’s big bad Fernando with his tats and muscles and his Harley, and he throws a ball like forty miles an hour.

  He’s moving his arm in a circle and frowning.

  “Hey, man … let me do it again,” he calls. “I’m just rusty, bro.”

  Mom shakes her head and laughs.

  “That’s your fastball?”

  “Quiet, bitch,” he mutters.

  I squat down again and hold up my mitt. Fernando does his crazy-ass windup with his foot kicking up to the moon. He nearly falls over and the ball floats in even slower and thuds in my mitt. I throw it back and grin.

  “I thought you were throwing a fastball, man?”

  Fernando glares at me, rubbing his shoulder.

  “You think it’s funny?”

  Fernando is a dude who doesn’t like to be laughed at. Mom is covering her mouth and I’m looking away. Maybe it’s the whole age thing. He always talked about how he was this badass pitcher and maybe he was. But not now, bro. He throws in another slow ball and Mom laughs again and his face turns red. He wings the ball back to me.

  “Alright, you little shit. Let’s see your fastball!”

  All Fernando, right? He hunches down and slaps his mitt.

  “Come on, man. You think you so bad now with your pitching. I notice, man, that the Pitcher dude didn’t think you were so bad, bro. You think you better than me.” He hits his mitt again. “You can’t even hit the zone, man. You ain’t shit.”

  That stings. I mean, what kind of dad would say that? Like I said, I quit thinking about him as my dad a long time ago. I don’t know, man, maybe all the times he beat Mom and hit me and took our money came together. Maybe I was just tired of all the trouble he causes every time he comes around. Like the night on the patio where he tried to kill me. So maybe that’s why I pick his right knee.

  Like the Pitcher said, there ain’t nothing but the spot.

  “You got no heat!” he shouts. “Come on and we’ll see who laughs at who, you little fag! You think you better than me. You just nothing, man! You got no arm! If you had an arm, man, that dude would still be coaching you!”

  I listen to this shit and set myself. Fernando is hitting his glove. I breathe in, close my eyes, and feel the world go quiet. I’m on. I can feel it. I kick back into my windup with my shoulder square, pushing off my back leg, tucking my glove, whipping over my head like a windmill. I hear the crack man. I hit my spot perfectly.

  And Fernando goes down.

  “Motherf-----! MOTHERF-----!”

  He’s cussing and holding his knee in the street. Mom gives me a high-five while Fernando rolls on the ground. Then Mom gives me a knuckle bump.

  “Nice pitch, Ricky!”

  I probably hit a personal best with that pitch, you know. Then suddenly Fernando is up. I don’t know if he is drunk or adrenaline is pumping through him or what. But he jumps up and starts charging down the street like a raging bull.

  “You little ba
stard! You did that on purpose!”

  I start booking down the street. Fernando is fast and catches my shirt. He pulls me and draws back as I duck. His fist smacks the side of my jaw anyway. Pow! Like someone smacking you with a bat. You ever get up too fast and the world gets fuzzy and kind of dark? That’s what it’s like when Fernando hits you. I hit the pavement with blood warm and salty in my mouth

  “You f------ asshole, don’t you hit my son. You f------ asshole!”

  Mom is swinging and clawing and Fernando is blocking her.

  “Don’t you hit me, bitch!”

  I see Mom trying to strangle Fernando and then he hits her. Pow! She falls to the street like a rag doll. He tries to pick her up and that’s when I see the Louisville Slugger swing through the twilight. I hear that whooonh sound a bat makes when you take practice swings. The bat catches Fernando under his ribcage and he goes down to the pavement. He hold his hands up and starts crabbing backward.

  “DON’T YOU F------ HIT ME, MAN!”

  The Pitcher draws back and smashes Fernando’s shoulder, like one of those pottery bowls. He screams out like a girl and is hugging the street. Then Fernando is crawling as the Pitcher lines up and hits his other knee with a chop. He screams again and cries out.

  I think the Pitcher would have killed him if Mom hadn’t stopped him. Besides, the cops, the fire trucks, and paramedics had arrived by then.

  And all hell broke loose.

  25

  Picture this: After the swirling lights and sirens and cops and stretchers, Mom and I are standing outside the Pitcher’s garage with a steaming plate of fajitas. She’s in her blue flowery dress with the spaghetti straps (that’s her word, not mine) and high heels and a flower in her hair and her perfume hangs in the warm air. I’m holding a glass of ice tea with my bandaged jaw and Mom is there with her bandaged eye.

  I bet we look pretty funny to somebody else.

  After the police left Mom started cooking. I hope I don’t forget anything, but here’s how it went down after the Pitcher busted up Fernando. About five cop cars pulled up and it looked like a battlefield with me bleeding and Mom holding her eye and Fernando crawling in the street. He couldn’t move too good because of his busted knees and shoulder and busted ribs. He screamed F---! over and over and the cops didn’t know what to do.