by Guy Franks
“With thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport,” quoted the P.A. Announcer as the song “We Are The World” started playing over the stadium speakers. Many of the fans who had been shouting angrily at the Admirals immediately recognized the song, laughed, and started singing along.
“That ape’s in bad need of a facial,” said Burton.
“You wouldn’t be the first to break that nose,” replied Shake.
‘Hey, check out Percy,” said Benedict.
Shake and the others looked out at Hank Percy. The Admirals centerfielder had run in to the dirt of the infield with his glove off ready for action. He looked around for any takers. Goodfellow noticed him and walked out in front of the plate and regarded him, with a tilt of the head, as one might regard a small delinquent on the playground. Bennie yelled at his centerfielder to get back into position. Percy backpedaled, pointing angrily at the Kingsmen dugout before reluctantly returning to centerfield.
“Hothead,” commented Benedict.
“Didn’t he get suspended last year for charging the mound against the Reds,” asked Burton.
“Yep,” replied Shake. “One game. Then he did it again a week later and got a three game suspension. ‘He wears his wit in his belly, and his guts in his head.’”
The next pitch to Estrella was outside and on a 2-0 pitch he flied deep to centerfield. Percy raced back to the warning track and made the catch, pumping his fist as he did so. That ended the inning but Cappadona set the Admirals down one-two-three in the ninth to seal the win.
Shake walked up the stairs at The Mermaid and tapped quickly five times on the door. Lucy let him in without a word, kissed him on the cheek, and handed him a pewter goblet of his favorite red wine. He took a sip and watched her walk over to her small bar. She wore a see-through black negligee that revealed a black thong and a batwing bikini bra. In the muted light, which was highlighted by ultraviolet lamps, her bare legs and arms had an almost translucent, lavender hue to them.
Not many fifty-year old women could pull that look off but she did and Shake admired her form. She was neither petite nor delicate but what he considered to be handsome. She was a handsome woman. He imagined what Sigourney Weaver would look like at fifty, only shorter and slightly broader in the beam, and that was Lucy. Shake followed her over to the bar where he turned her around and gave her a lusty kiss. She returned the kiss.
“You are most hot and furious when you win,” she said, quoting Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.
Some men get turned on when women talk dirty to them but in Shake’s case it was the Bard. If he was already in the mood, like now, a well-turned couplet or clever quote from the Bard put him over the edge. It was the struck match to his fuse; the spark to his powder keg. He hungrily kissed her neck and came up to her ear where he whispered, “Let witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both.”
“Lead on and do what thou darest,” she whispered back, playfully biting his ear. They moved together towards the bedroom, almost stumbling a couple times, and within minutes were entangled in the deed of darkness.
We’ll leave them there in private to enjoy their fun.
Afterwards, Lucy sat cross-legged on the bed with a pewter plate on her lap that contained cannabis. She was naked and Shake was in his boxers lying next to her watching her perform her little ritual. Everything she did, from cleaning herself to dressing to making breakfast in the morning, had a ritual to it that Shake found strangely calming. He figured it was all tied to her Wiccan thing. Lucy fashioned herself as Wiccan and called it “the Old Religion” which, she claimed, traced its origins back to the Stone Age. Her beliefs seemed genuine and she certainly dressed the part. In the evening she wore medieval dresses that were usually black and purple with long sleeves and a collared v-neck. This look was accented by her dark hair (now tinseled with silver) and dark eyes that led to her nickname “Dark Lucy.” On top of that was the jewelry—rings, pendants, bracelets, ear rings, along with occasional choker and circlet—that all contained images of either a pentagram, crescent moon, or horns. In the daylight, though, her place was bathed in sunshine and she dressed in whites and blues and looked almost like a different person.
Larry Benedict introduced him to Lucy. Larry was dating the cocktail waitress Bernice at the time. She was Lucy Jourdain, proprietor of The Mermaid Tavern, and Shake found her eccentricities to be an entertaining diversion. They talked, and she seemed interested in him, and the more they talked the more Shake realized she had a gift for poetry and ritual. In short order their relationship became sexual, mostly due to her boldness, and they had enjoyed a free and easy carnal-fest ever since. She explained Wicca to him and even gave him a book to read but his Catholic sensibility, even tarnished as it was, found the whole thing to be no more than pagan witchcraft. But it was amusing and he didn’t judge her for it. What he appreciated most about her, besides the fact that she was older, a handsome beauty, and sexually uninhibited, was the fact that she had no expectations of him. Their relationship was without one-upmanship or recriminations and could end tomorrow without any hurt feelings. It was almost like managing a perfect game.
As is the case with women, what Lucy saw in Shake was a little more nuanced and dwelled in her subconscious caldron of passions and desires. He was a man and she liked men, but he also had a poetic side. The beast and the poet—she had been married to men like that, had affairs with men like that, and that duality was rooted in her psyche like the tree of good and evil. It’s what attracted her to Wicca with its Moon Goddess and Great Horned God. But there was something more to Shake than that. How else could she explain three years with him in an almost monogamous relationship? He was a leader of men. That was one thing. He possessed grace and rude will and understood that love and hate inhabit each human heart. That was a second thing. What she couldn’t put her finger on was the third thing though she felt it nevertheless.
The third thing she couldn’t put her finger on was something Keats called Negative Capability. It was the capacity to hold two contradictory ideas in your mind without trying to reconcile them, and it was a capacity possessed by all great artists. If Negative Capability had ever been explained to Dark Lucy she would have said “yes, that’s it.” Shake was familiar with the concept because he had studied Keats in college, but he would never have recognized the capacity in himself any more than an ace reliever would ever have recognized his unique ability to slow his heart down, yogi-like, in times of great stress.
Lucy finished her little sacrament and lit the rolled joint. She took a good hit and handed the joint to Shake. He was not a big toker, or even a big drinker for that matter, but on occasion he partook and it was usually with Lucy. He took a hit and handed it back to her as a thought came to him.
“Where do you get that stuff?” he asked.
“It’s local,” she replied as she exhaled another hit. She offered it again to Shake but he declined. “I get it from a guy over at Quick’s Cocktail Lounge… the seedy part of town… He’s the local connection.”
“What’s he look like?”
She laughed softly. “He’s a big black guy… almost rotund… He’s got this bushy beard and wears a white bandana… Looks like Blackbeard the Pirate… Rides a Harley. He’s quite a character.”
“Huh,” said Shake as he rolled onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. It was decorated with stars and a crescent moon that glowed in the black light. He suddenly got Speed’s riddle. “Ganjaman” was really “ganja, man,” Bob Marley’s smoke, and “Prince” was Hank. Shit, he thought, so that was it, but he wasn’t going to worry about it now. For now he had Dark Lucy next to him; a cup he would fill once more to the brim.
8
CHAPTER
If you’re going to be lucky you’ve got to think lucky.
Luke Appling
Sunday was a day game and the rubber match against the Admirals. Rain was expected—heavy rain—and ever
yone including Shake expected the game to get called before the end of the fifth. But sometimes luck or the baseball gods have a different outcome in mind.
Game time was 1:05 and the storm was forecasted to hit around 2:00 and rain steady and hard for the rest of the day. It was Little League Day, which made the crowd bigger than expected given the weather forecast. The Little Leaguers were paraded onto the field before the game to the delight of their parents then unceremoniously hustled off by the umpires who wanted to start the game early. Despite their efforts, first pitch was at 1:03.
After three quick innings it was scoreless and Shake stepped out of the dugout and looked north. On the outskirts of the city a black ceiling of rain clouds creeped ominously towards the ballpark. He figured they had about twenty minutes if they were lucky. Andy Ellsworth pitched a scoreless top of the fourth and the Kingsmen came into hit with the black ceiling nearly upon them.
The lights came on as Gary Hoffman settled into the batter’s box. On a 3-1 pitch he lined a single to left. Calculating time and distance the way a NASCAR driver calculates speed and position before making his move, Shake figured his window of opportunity and went for it. Goff was due up followed by Burks, and Burks was hot right now. He gave Goff the bunt sign and Hoffman broke for second on the pitch. As luck would have it, Goff missed the pitch and the catcher air-mailed the throw to second into centerfield. Hoffman popped up and easily took third.
Shake was curious to see what Jonson would do next—play this like a normal fifth inning or play it like the ninth given the impending storm. The Admirals decided to play the infield back and pitch to Goff. Shake smiled to himself but quickly started worrying again once Goff tapped back to the pitcher, freezing the runner at third, and they walked Burks to set up the double play. That brought up Estrella the catcher, who didn’t particularly run very fast. But Jonson’s gambit back-fired when Estrella hit a long sac fly to center to score Hoffman. That made it 1-0 with two outs.
As their first baseman Matt Horn strode to the plate, Shake took another look out at the approaching storm. The black ceiling, which was now a black wall, was into the parking lot but oddly enough seemed to hesitate there like a monster that had decided to catch its breath before creeping up any further. Just maybe, thought Shake. Just maybe. On a whim he took a bat out of the bat rack and stepped out of the dugout where he raised the bat like a large wand and pointed it at the storm. He traced a figure eight in the air, performing his incantation, and replaced the bat back in the rack.
“I hate to say it,” said Burton, smiling at Shake’s antics, “but we could use a quick out here.”
Shake was thinking the same thing but didn’t reply. The Admirals pitching coach came out to the mound and after a minute and a half was still there. “Come on, Blue!” yelled Shake to the home plate umpire. “This ain’t War and Peace!”
The umpire went out and broke up the confab but the pitching coach walked back to the Admirals dugout about as slow as a man could walk. This time it was Benedict: “Move it, Callahan! Pretend it’s chicken dinner and move that fat ass!”
Everyone waited as Callahan eased himself into the dugout. Jonson was stalling for time, hoping that the rain would wipe out New Britain’s one run lead. Shake knew what was next. After the first pitch—high and outside that Horn swung at for a strike—the Admirals catcher took his mask off and walked slowly out to the mound.
“Shit, here we go,” sighed Burton. Other players on the Kingsmen bench yelled out at the catcher—“Get his number and call him later” and “Really? Really? Why don’t you just crawl on all fours”—but this time the umpire was on it and followed the catcher out to the mound to quickly break it up. The pitcher shook off ten signs before delivering a pitch in the dirt that Horn swung at for strike two. The Admirals catcher took his mask off again and walked out to the pitcher’s mound. A funked-up version of “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” sung by James Brown, started up over the P.A. system.
“They’re stalling for time!” cried Burton. Of course everyone knew that, but now the crowd was into it and started booing the catcher. The ump swiftly broke it up. The pitcher stared into his catcher and shook off one sign after another. The catcher called time and took off his mask but the umpire said something in his ear that caused him to glance over at Jonson, put his mask on, and squat back down.
“This ain’t no gameshow!” yelled Jonson. “There’s no buzzer. He’s gotta a right to talk to his catcher!” The home plate umpire ignored him and signaled the pitcher to make his pitch.
Shake chuckled to himself and thought about Bennie’s predicament. If it was him, he would have picked this moment to bring in a relief pitcher to stall for time but Bennie had no one warming up in the bullpen. Too bad. He watched as the next pitch finally came in, this time right over the plate, and Horn swung and missed for strike three. The crowd cheered.
“Tally ho, go, go, go!” shouted Shake at his bench as his players leaped up and ran out to their positions. He looked back out at the storm. Still, inexplicably, it sat motionless above the bleachers, perched like Godzilla ready to strike. He fully expected the Admirals hitters to crawl to the batter’s box, take a lot of pitches, step out on every pitch to re-adjust their batting gloves and play rope-a-dope until the rains came.
But the home plate ump would have none of it. He hustled the first hitter into the batter’s box and when the hitter attempted to step out again on a 1-1 pitch, he gave the pitcher the signal to throw causing the hitter to jump back into the box. It was a called strike two. There were howls of indignation from the Admirals bench. “I love this guy,” said Burton, echoing Shake’s very sentiments about the umpire.
On a full count, the hitter took strike three for the first out. The next batter took two strikes but swung at the next pitch, fouling it off his foot. He hopped out of the box in obvious pain. Catcalls came from the Kingsmen bench (“Toe jam!” Call a toe truck!”) as he limped around, trying to shake it off. He glanced into his dugout and suddenly went down on one knee. Jonson and the trainer came out to look at him as boos rained down from the stands. “Kearny is down on one knee,” commented the P.A. Announcer, “and here comes the Admirals manager and trainer… Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” And on that note “The Great Pretender” by the Platters played over the loudspeakers.
Shake watched as the next five minutes played out in a comic pantomime. The umpire wasn’t buying any of it which lead, inevitably, to an argument and Jonson getting tossed from the game. As Bennie exited the field he looked up at the storm and gestured angrily at it as if to say “Whaddya got against me?”
The batter limped back into the box, milking it for all it was worth, and watched the next pitch sail over for strike three. The next hitter didn’t wait around and popped the first pitch sky-high in the infield. As the ball landed into Hamilton’s glove for the third out the heaven’s opened up and the deluge began. The crowd cheered as they scrambled for the exits. The umpires quickly convened and halted the game. Doug the groundskeeper and his assistant Barry appeared in rain gear, and with the help of some of the players began rolling out the tarp. The P.A. Announcer cleared his throat and said:
The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as gentle rain from heaven
Shake laughed and waved up to the announcer’s booth as the song “Love, Reign o’er Me” by The Who blasted out over the loudspeakers. He knew that the rain delay was only a formality. In an hour they’d call it, and with five innings on the books it was an official game and a win for the Kingsmen.
Shake sat in his office with Burton and Kalecki shooting the bull and waiting on official word from the umps. Doug and Barry came by in their muddy boots to give them a situational report.
“What’s the word?” asked Burton.
“Doesn’t look good,” answered Doug. “Raining cats and hogs. The tarp’s been appealed but the rest of the field is getting
drenched, plus it’s wet. The umps are gonna call it, I’m sorely certain.”
“Cats and hogs, huh?” said Kalecki with a wink at Shake.
“Buckets,” added Doug.
“Buckets,” agreed Barry.
Shake had never heard Barry speak before. “Wow, sounds like a whopper,” he said. “Looks like you got your work cut out for you tomorrow getting the field ready. But couldn’t be in better hands. You guys do great work. Thanks.”
“Your pleasure,” replied Doug with a grin, nudging his partner. “Condiments are always welcome. Hopefully tonight we’ll get good drainature and tomorrow we’ll put the absorbine down and rake away the potty spots. We got big squeegees if need be and we can sqounge the outfield grass to get the standup water. We’ll have her ready for you, boss, come rain or shine but hopefully shine.”
“I’m sure you will. Thanks for the report.”
Doug and Barry nodded in appreciation and tramped off down the hall. Shake gave Burton and Kalecki a “such-is-life” shrug and they shrugged back. “I just hope they sqounge out those hogs,” added Burton.
Ten minutes later word came that the game was called at four and a half innings. Kingsmen one, Admirals nothing. Speed appeared at the door with a note in his hand.
Shake
What you got?
Speed
A note.
Shake
What kind of note?
Speed
What kind would you like? C sharp or a D flat? If you’re a person of note I can give it to you a cappella.
Shake
Just give me the straight do-re-mi.
Speed
Suit yourself
(Hands him the note.)
Burton
What’s it say?
Shake
It’s from Bennie… It says ‘Lucky bastard’… Here, take this back to him.