The Cactus League

by Emily Nemens

  The school bus rolls into the part of town that is just plain old. There are a lot of apartment buildings that look crowded and sad and remind Alex of the places they lived in Oregon and all the cars in the parking lots look like Momma’s old Buick. The bus slows. Alex’s friend Sam usually gets on here but he’s not there so the bus speeds up again. Sam misses the bus a lot.

  Alex’s school, the one he’s been going to since they arrived in Phoenix, is all one story and all light brown mud-stuff and has a flagpole and fifteen palm trees out front. (There used to be sixteen but one got hit by a school bus and started dying so they had to cut it down.) All the kids get off the bus and have five minutes to get to class, which means four and a half minutes for Alex to run around on the playground and thirty seconds to get to class. He rushes over to the jungle gym and starts climbing to the very top. There’s some other kid, a kindergartner, trying to climb, but Alex is bigger and faster than him and he rawrs and the littler boy gets out of the way.

  He makes it to the top of the jungle gym and looks out on the playground and sees that most everyone is already inside, the fourth graders and the third graders and then Bobby Plotkin disappears, which means the first grade is inside, too. The gym teacher sees Alex and waves his hand and shouts for him to get down from there before he breaks an arm. Alex did that once when he was three and again when he was four, but he hasn’t broken his arm for two and a half years, which Momma says must be some kind of record.

  He gets down and the gym teacher walks him inside and all the way to Ms. Goodyear’s door and watches him go into class like he might just run off otherwise. The kids have assigned seats in the first grade and he is in the second row in the middle section and when he sits down he hears kids behind him snicker and whisper, “Look, he’s late” and “What happened to his hair?” Alex likes Ms. Goodyear and sometimes wonders if she knows Jason Goodyear, but when he asked about it she just said, We are NOT talking about THAT. This morning Ms. Goodyear narrows her eyes at Alex and says, “Nice shirt.”

  Ms. Goodyear says that today class is going to learn about plants and animals and the history of Arizona, which sounds boring to Alex until she tells them that sharks used to live here. Then Alex listens to everything she has to say about the dried-up oceans and woolly mammoths and the beginning of the mountains. She takes two math books and tries to smoosh them together and instead they both push up and she says that’s how mountains formed.

  Alex gets lunch for free, but it doesn’t matter it’s free because it’s gross, lumpy mashed potatoes and broccoli that’s slimy and not salty at all. Sam is at school now because his mom dropped him off and he has cheese crackers and he shares those and gives Alex half of his cupcake and then they run around the playground and climb to the top of the jungle gym and spit on girls down below because they are princes defending their castle from witches.

  The first graders have gym next and they’re playing baseball today, which is great because Alex loves baseball. He’s sure he is going to hit the ball over the fence and break all the windows of all the buses that are waiting for the end of the day, but then he doesn’t hit it very far, just to the second baseman, who throws Alex out. Alex plays outfield when the other team is batting and no one hits it that far before it’s time to do math. Alex gets all his math problems right, except for four plus six, which he has to do twice before it is ten.

  When class is over the kids go outside and find their buses and Alex finds his. Alex’s bus goes the same way it came in the morning, but backward. When it gets to his stop he gets off and so do Linus and Neal, and they are whispering and staring at him and then they say, “Hey, Alex!”

  He is surprised they even know his name, so he turns around and says, “Yeah?”

  “Where do you live?”

  Just like Momma said to say, he says, “I forgot,” and they start hooting and calling him a dummy and his face feels hot and he pretends to tie his shoe and waits for them to move. Instead they just stand there laughing. Finally they cross the street and go into their neighborhood of houses that are full of people and dishwashers and toilets and toys. Alex straightens and says rawr as loud as he can say it, but they don’t turn around, so he walks into his neighborhood of houses that are empty. Except for Miss Tami, who is in her front yard in her bikini, tanning on a pool chair. When she sees him go by she sits up and waves hello.

  * * *

  That night they have cold hot dogs for dinner. Alex gives his momma a note that says there is no school on Friday because the teachers are getting trained on how to do new things, and Momma says she needs Michelle to stay home and watch him. Michelle says she can’t because she is taking a practice SAT on Friday. Momma is drinking red wine and nearly spits it out. “It’s the last weekend of the season. We’re going to be slammed,” Momma says. “Besides, why do you have to practice if you’re so smart?”

  Michelle says it’s too fuckin’ bad about Alex, but he’s not her kid. Momma starts screaming, “Don’t cuss at me,” and, “I am your mother,” and Michelle starts yelling, “I’m getting out of this shithole,” and they yell at each other like that all the way upstairs. Then some doors slam.

  When Momma comes back to the kitchen she tells Alex he will go to the stadium with her because there will be no one at home to watch him and he’s too little to be by himself in a big house all day. “It’s like when you watched the Ducks with me.” Usually Grandpa would watch him when she was working, but when he couldn’t or wouldn’t because he and Momma were fighting she brought Alex to the stadium and said he was a volunteer from the Cub Scouts. Mostly the ticket people believed her, but one game it didn’t work; the ticket person asked to see his ticket, which he didn’t have, so Momma left Alex in the car with the car keys and told him to sit there the whole game. She said to hide in the back if anyone came looking because they might try to steal him and the car and then what would they do? If you’re cold turn on the heater, Momma said, because it was rainy and cold that day. You remember how to do that? And Alex nodded because he did. Good. Be careful, she said, and kissed him on the top of his head and then watched him lock the doors. Sitting in the car, Alex could tell when Oregon scored because it was so loud the whole stadium shook and the parking lot shook, too, and the hula dancer that Momma stuck to the Buick’s dashboard started swaying. Then the game was over and Momma was knocking on the window looking scared until he sat up and let her in. He’d fallen asleep on the floor of the back seat, a space that wasn’t big enough for an adult and wasn’t even big enough for Michelle but it was plenty big for Alex. Oh, honey, you scared me, Momma said, and, I couldn’t see you, and, It’s cold outside, how’d it get so hot in here? He’d turned on the heater, he said, just like she told him to.

  * * *

  Now it’s Friday and Alex is up early. Alex and Momma give Michelle hugs and wish her good luck on her test and Momma apologizes for what she said at dinner about Michelle being too smart for her own good. Then they drive to the stadium. There are hardly any other cars in the lot so they park close to the entrance in a section marked PLAYERS ONLY. “You ready, sugar?” Momma asks, and Alex nods because he can’t wait to go inside to see the field made of a river made of salt. He wants to find the talking stick, too, but Momma tells him it is hidden out past the outfield so good no one can find it. Alex says he bets her a million dollars he can find it and she says, “Deal.”

  They go to a gate by the left field foul post that says EMPLOYEES. Momma waves at an old man in a yellow-gold polo and says, “Hey, Troy.” He waves back.

  “Who’s the whippersnapper?” The old man reaches for Alex. His hand is knobby and crooked-looking and he has big white hairs coming out of his nose.

  “Rawr!” Alex lunges at the man.

  “My baby, Alex.” She swipes her ID in a machine on the wall that makes a loud beep. She puts a hand on his shoulder.

  “I’m not a baby!” Alex wiggles out of her grip.

  “How old are you, young man?”

&nbs
p; “Seven.” The machine beeps again and a light on it turns green.

  “Almost,” Momma says. “He’s six till next month.”

  “Definitely not a baby.” Troy nods, and smiles at Alex with yellow teeth. “You working one twenty-two again?”

  Momma shakes her head. “They have me over at section one thirteen today. You’re gonna have to walk farther for those free hot dogs, Troy.”

  “And you’ll have to go farther for your lemonade.” He winks.

  “Lemonade?” Alex spots a small cooler behind Troy. “I want some!”

  Momma tugs at Alex’s shoulder. “It’s for grown-ups, sweet pea. Come on, I’ll get you a soda pop.”

  They pass a concession stand and she waves and says, “Hi, Dot,” to a lady putting on her apron, and they walk by a guy driving around a small tractor with a big cube of Cracker Jack wrapped up in Saran Wrap.

  When they get to her stand Momma starts popping the popcorn and thawing hot dogs and getting out the salt so she can salt the pretzels. By accident Alex spills a can of popcorn butter on the floor and then he slips in it and gets butter on his butt. She makes him clean up the mess with wadded paper towels and when he can’t do it very well she sighs and says, “Just forget about it, Alex,” and takes him by the hand and walks him up the aisle and into the empty stadium and tells him to sit down. She says that he can’t leave the seat until the person who owns that seat shows up, and when that happens he has to come right back to the hot dog stand and sit in the corner and not touch anything, definitely not any more popcorn butter.

  “Don’t move a muscle, Alex,” she says again before going back to the stand, glaring and looking meaner than a wet cat. Last week Michelle told Alex that Momma’s on drugs again and that’s why she’s mad and mean and skinny, and Alex thinks maybe that’s true but maybe Michelle is jealous that Momma is skinny and Michelle isn’t. When Momma got a nosebleed Tuesday night Michelle whispered, See, I told you, and Alex was confused because he thought you got nosebleeds from being in the nosebleed seats at the football stadium, not from doing drugs or working on the ground floor. Michelle says Randy sells drugs and that’s why Momma likes him so much, but Alex thought Momma liked him because he had pretty eyeballs.

  There are only two people on the field, a guy at home plate with a baseball bat and a big bucket of balls and a guy at first base swinging his arms around like he’s a windmill. Alex recognizes the batter as Lions shortstop Ray Putney, but he doesn’t know who’s on first. He looks young, like he’s maybe the same age as Michelle. When Putney hits a ball bouncing up toward first base the guy bends down to scoop it up and Alex can see the name on his back: GOSLIN.

  It is so quiet in the stadium he can hear the players talking. “Don’t insult me, Putt.” That’s the fielder saying that.

  “Just getting warmed up, Willy. Don’t you worry.” Putney tosses another ball up in the air then swings around and hits it, harder this time. It zooms so fast Goslin has to put up his glove to protect his face and then the ball is in his glove, whap. “That’s it, Goose. Nice catch.”

  The first baseman throws the ball back toward home and it hits the bucket of balls and makes them rattle and they almost tip over but they don’t. “I told you, never call me Goose, got it?”

  “Okay, okay. Gos-lin. Got it.” Putney pulls another ball out of the bucket. “Pop up?”

  “Sure.” Goslin punches the leather of his glove and looks up at the sky. But the ball leaves the bat charging along the ground in fast, mean bounces and it goes right by him into the right field. Alex laughs.

  “Fuck you, Putt!”

  Putney smiles. “You got another left-handed batter willing to practice this JV shit with you?”

  Goslin is quiet and gets back into his crouch, his glove on his knee. “Gimme another.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  The two players go through the whole bucket of balls and then collect them and go back into the dugout and there is no one on the field. Alex counts the number of times he sees the word Lions around the stadium and is up to twenty-two when some other players come out, and an old guy that looks like the grandpa from the Grandpa House. Someone else wheels out a big machine that looks like a vacuum on stilts. The old man stands behind a metal screen and feeds balls into the machine and they get spit out and fly at the batter. The first guy misses five balls and then goes to the back of the line. The second guy hits three, misses two. The third guy hits the first one up real high, straight up, and it comes falling back into the seats with a loud clatter. It’s just a few rows away! Momma says that Alex is not supposed to leave this seat no matter what, but he can see the ball rolling around and he figures it’ll be fine if he goes and gets it.

  Turns out the players hit foul balls all the time, because after Alex finds the first ball, it is only a few swings before he hears the bang, bang, bang of another ball bouncing against the seats, clattering like those big coins that fall through the maze when his grandpa watched The Price Is Right. He finds that ball, too, and then a third foul ball nearly hits him on the head and then one lands out in the left field seats, but he finds it. He carries his treasure in his shirt like a kangaroo. When he looks up from finding one by the visiting team’s dugout, he sees the old man is dragging the ball-spitting machine off the field and somebody else is pulling the screen back to the hole in the outfield wall and all the players have gotten rid of their bats and now have gloves and are throwing balls back and forth between first and second, first and third, shortstop and first, around and around like pinball. There are more people in the stadium now, fathers and sons and some old-people couples in black-and-gold T-shirts, stadium attendants in bright yellow helping people find their seats. Alex surveys the crowd. It looks like somebody is sitting in his seat now, and anyway, he wants to find Momma and show her all his balls.

  But when he goes out to the concourse and looks for the sign that says HOT DOGS PRETZELS PEANUTS it’s not Momma but some lady he doesn’t recognize lining up hot dogs in the hot dog–spinning machine. There’s another place that looks just like the first, but Momma’s not there, either—it’s that lady she called Dot. The woman doesn’t pay attention to Alex even after he says, “Excuse me, ma’am? Excuse me!” It’s like he’s invisible even when he’s loud and polite. He goes the whole way up and the whole way back and he sees six HOT DOGS PRETZELS PEANUTS signs but he doesn’t see Momma anywhere.

  “Hey, kid!” It’s Momma’s friend Troy. He has his scary hand on Alex’s shoulder again and Alex doesn’t like it, but he likes seeing someone he’s met before. “Whatcha got there?”

  “I caught these.” Alex shows him his balls.

  “My word, you’ve scooped up more than Willy Goslin.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.” His breath smells bad, sweet and stuffy and stinky all at one time. “Your momma was looking for you.”

  “You’ve seen my momma?”

  “She and that Randy fellow had to run out for just a minute. ‘An errand.’” The old man scratches his nose. “Here.” He hands Alex Momma’s car key. “She told me to tell you to wait in the car. And to put on the air because—”

  Before Troy can say anything else or touch him with that gross hand again, Alex has snapped up the key and is running back to the car, fast but not too fast because he doesn’t want the balls bouncing out of his shirt and rolling away into a gutter or under a car, especially a car that’s still moving.

  The key only works on the front door, so Alex opens that one and then opens the back door from the inside and then goes in the back seat and locks both doors and stuffs the key in the seam between the seats so he won’t lose it. He lets the balls out of his shirt and they roll around on the back seat and then he lines them all up in a row. Nine balls! He picks out his favorite, which is the newest, brightest one, and he wipes it off with his T-shirt and some spit. There are a lot of people coming by now, tall boys in shirts that say ASU with pretty girls in tank tops and lots of grandmas and gr
andpas and some other kids and their dads, too. A girl sees Alex in the window and waves and he waves back, but then he wiggles into the space between the front and back seats. He doesn’t want people to see him, because then they’ll ask what he’s doing by himself and where’s his ticket and where’s his momma and where does he live and he’ll have to tell them I don’t know. He’s a kind of scared but also happy, because he has his new favorite baseball and he’s almost totally invisible. He lies there in the dimness, rubbing the ball’s leather, hoping Momma won’t be too mad at him for leaving his seat. Alex counts the red stitches under his thumb but then he loses count and starts again, ticking them off like they were seconds on a clock.

  He can see the tops of the people’s heads walking by. Then the stream slows and he can hear the national anthem sounding tinny, like it’s being played on a kazoo. After that only a few people pass, someone talking on their phone, a man whistling, a couple who are quiet. And then it’s just the bright blue sky out the window. It’s getting warm, so Alex scrambles to the front seat and puts the key in the ignition and starts the AC. Hot air blows on his face and he waits for it to cool off. Alex knows sometimes it takes a long time. It’s still blowing hot and not getting colder so he turns off the car. He’ll try again in a little bit; that’s what Michelle did when the blue car was her car and sometimes the air would blow cold the second time. Sometimes the third.

  Something good happens because the crowd cheers and the car’s windows rattle. There’s a new hula girl on the blue car’s dashboard, which looks like the old hula girl on the old car’s dashboard, and she shakes her hips. Alex watches her sway for a minute and tries the air-conditioning again. Still hot. He climbs back into the space between the seats, reaches for his favorite ball, and starts counting its stitches again. He wonders some more about where Momma went, but he knows she’ll be back soon.