He turned off the interstate at the Kentwood exit. Check cashing offices and condemned houses lining the main road. Few signs of progress. Fewer signs of effort. He saw the lights of the ball fields shining over to the right and he drove toward them and turned into the parking lot that sat behind the outfield fence. He circled around the lot and when he couldn’t find a space he hopped the curb and parked in the grass. He poured another shot into the cup and then he got out of the truck and he followed the walkway that led to the concession stand and bleachers.
Little brothers and little sisters ran up and down the walkway, faces pink and knees dirty and wet hair matted to their heads. Teenage girls stood along the fence lines with their shorts high and backs arched and they talked to the boys in the field or in the dugout. Mothers sat in the bleachers with magazines or with their hands folded on top of bare knees and fathers and grandfathers stood around the concession stand smoking cigarettes and griping at the umps. He checked the bleachers for Dana and when he didn’t see her he sat down and sipped at his drink and tried to remember if his boy was thirteen or fourteen.
After an inning his drink was low and he hadn’t seen the boy but he had noticed two more teams warming up behind the outfield fence. The scoreboard said it was the bottom of the sixth. So there was another chance. He figured he had time to mix a drink so he stopped at the concession stand and bought a Coke and then he walked back out to the truck. He poured the ballpark Coke into the big cup and then he poured in what was left of the bourbon and he made his way back toward the bleachers.
He drank. Not paying much attention to the game. Convinced that if his boy was there he would be in the next game. It was hot and the drink made it hotter and he began to look around at the mothers and the teenage girls. Couldn’t decide which he liked better. And then he heard someone yell come on Cody. And then somebody else yelled let’s go Cody. Start it off Cody. And he looked back to the field and a lanky kid waltzed toward the plate, the tip of the bat dragging on the ground until the third base coach yelled for him to get his ass in gear and the kid put the bat on his shoulder and he stepped into the batter’s box.
He took a fastball right down the middle and the ump yelled strike.
The voices said come on Cody. That’s all right. Ready now. Get your pitch.
He took the second pitch right down the middle. Another fastball. This time the ump didn’t yell and only gave the strike sign.
“Swing the bat for Chrissake,” Larry whispered.
He swung awkwardly at a curveball and when he walked back to the dugout he threw his bat against the fence and the kid on deck had to jump out of the way. The third base coach ran over to the dugout and let him hear about it and made him come out of the dugout and pick up the bat. Cody came out leisurely and picked up the bat and set it in the rack and then he walked into the dugout and sat down. The women in the stands shook their heads. Larry heard a man standing next to the bleachers say something about attitude.
Larry turned up his drink.
After the third out Cody’s team trotted onto the field for the last inning and Larry watched him cross the pitcher’s mound and end up at first base. She was right. He was getting tall. He tossed grounders to the infielders as the pitcher warmed up and when the pitcher was done he lobbed the ball toward the dugout, missing the coach who had made him pick up the bat by only a couple of feet.
Larry turned up his drink again. And then he walked down the bleachers and around behind the first base dugout and he leaned against the fence. The first pitch was a grounder and the shortstop picked it up and threw it over to first. Cody tossed the ball to the pitcher and held up one finger and then as he walked back to his position he looked at the man leaning on the fence with the big cup.
“Hey,” Larry said.
The boy didn’t reply and didn’t look at him long. He turned and faced the plate and waited on the pitch.
“Hey,” Larry said again. Louder.
The kids in the first base dugout looked at the man. So did the first base coach.
“I’m playing,” the boy said with his eyes toward home.
Larry sipped on his drink. Watched a few pitches go by.
“You swing at fastballs,” he said. The boy ignored him.
“I said you don’t stand there and stare at fastballs.”
Cody reached down and picked up some dirt and rubbed it between his fingers.
“Come on up one day and we’ll work on it.”
“I don’t need no help.”
“That ain’t what it looks like to me.”
The first base coach was some college kid home for the summer and he turned to Larry and said give the kid a break.
“You mind your own goddamn business.”
The kids in the dugout mumbled to one another.
He drank some more. The heat and the liquor getting to him. He wiped at his damp face. Said something to himself.
“Where’s your momma?” he asked.
The umpire in the field moved a few steps closer to first base.
“Where’s your damn momma?”
“I ain’t talking to you.”
“I bet you are.”
“No I ain’t.”
“Shit,” Larry said to the dugout. “Boy won’t talk to his own daddy. That’s some bullshit.” Half the kids nodded. The other half shied away to the other end of the dugout. And then Larry set his cup on the ground and he opened his wallet and he took out a twenty and he told the dugout that the first one to bring him a bat could have it. The first base coach told them not to move but when he turned again to the game a longhaired kid grabbed a bat and brought it over to the end of the dugout and handed it to him through a space between the roof and fence. Larry stuck the twenty through to him.
He walked back to his drink. Picked it up and finished it and it burned and burned. And then he slammed the bat across the top of the chainlink fence, sending a ping across the ballpark and the umpire and the coaches and the kids in the field and the kids in the dugout and the people in the stands and the men smoking all looked down the right field line at the man with the bat. He raised the bat and hit the fence again and then he yelled I bet you’ll talk to me now goddamn it.
Everyone stood still. Then the field umpire began to walk across the infield toward Larry and Larry waved the bat at him and said come on over here and see. He brought the bat down again across the top of the fence and he called out for any of them to come on over here and see. Come on and take it from me if you want it. Come on over here and fucking find out. Play fucking ball. The pitcher looked at the umpire and the umpire told him to go ahead and they started again.
When the cops arrived five minutes later he was standing in the same place. The game had gone on and he hadn’t made another sound but he held the bat in his sweaty hands. Ready. He felt their eyes heavy on him and the kids had kept to the far end of the dugout. Away from the man with the bat. The longhaired kid had split with his twenty bucks before the coach could get his hands on him. They arrived in two cars and there were three of them and they approached in the way that one approaches a wild animal. Hands at their sides. On the tips of their feet. Larry had seen them pull into the parking lot and he thought about what he would do when they got to him. Thought about Cody’s momma and what she would say when she heard about this. Two of the cops looked like they might have lived in a weight room. Short but stout as anvils and they didn’t look like they were going to take any shit.
“Swing at fastballs,” he yelled across the infield to his son who was sitting in the dugout. And then he turned and swung at the three of them and on the second swing and miss he staggered and one of the stout cops charged before he could gather himself to swing again and then they were on him and they shoved his face in the dirt and their knees in his back as they pulled his arms behind and cuffed him. They yanked him up and his lip was busted and the blood and the dirt and the spit and the sweat ran down his chin and neck. They took him along the walkway with little
kids standing off to the side as if they were watching some grotesque parade and when they shoved him into the back of the police car he fell over on his side and he didn’t even bother to try to sit up.
45
WALT SAT AT ONE END OF THE BAR AND MADE DAMN SURE TO TALK with Earl enough so that Earl would remember him being there. He wanted somebody to see him because later on when he told Larry that he had been out and that’s why he didn’t get the message and that’s why it had taken him so long to get down there he wanted there to be others to back him up. He wanted to stay on the right side of the fight for as long as he could.
He kept one eye on the clock above the bar, trying to decide when it would be safe to go and get Larry.
Not yet.
He hadn’t liked the way it felt with the shotgun on him. And he had been shaken by the way Larry talked as they drove away from Russell’s house that first night. Point a fucking gun at me, he said. Go ahead and point a fucking gun at me and see what happens. When are they gonna learn? When? You tell me. When are they gonna learn you do not fuck with me? Go ahead and point it. Put it right on my head. Right here. Right here on this spot between my eyes. I swear to God somebody’s gonna learn. Point a fucking gun at me. He was all over the road as he went on. Spit coming out of his mouth. Finger pointing at the windshield then at Walt then back at the windshield. Think that shit scares me? That shit don’t scare me. Point a fucking gun at me. Go ahead and keep on fucking with me and see what happens. Goddamn everybody thinks they got something. Don’t they? Think they got something they just got to do. Got to do or it’s gonna goddamn kill them. Got to go fucking drive around fucked up and top a hill and kill somebody. Got to go do it. Ain’t worried about what might happen ’til it happens. Got to. Got to fuck around. Don’t matter it makes me look like a dumbass. Got to. World might stop spinning if I don’t go fuck around. Got to have it oh please God yes right there got to have it. Don’t think about shit else but keep on fucking with me. Everybody. Please keep on. You’ll find out. Hell yeah you’ll find out. I bet he thinks it’s funny right now but hell no it ain’t gonna be funny next time. Next time I take that gun out of his goddamn hands and shove it down his goddamn throat. Son of a bitch points a fucking gun at me like he rode into town on a white fucking horse. He owes me and you and Jason and he knows it. Goddamn it keep on.
Walt had always been on board with his brother. The bullying. The drinking. He liked the fights. Liked them as a kid. As a teenager. As a younger man. As a man. Particularly liked them when they had the odds like they did most of the time. He had been on board when Larry started talking up Russell’s homecoming. About how he’d killed Jason and didn’t deserve to be walking around and we’ll get even for our little brother who can’t get even for himself. Had looked forward to it. Had liked getting his hands on Russell at the bus station. Liked thinking about the next time they would get to drinking and go after him.
But he didn’t like that shotgun being pointed at him. Didn’t like the stakes that high. Didn’t like being scared. Like he’d found himself when he walked into the room and Russell was standing there with the gun. He’d played tough but something inside him had skipped. Never had a gun pointed at him before. All the bar fights and all the parking lot fights and there had never been a gun. And he had seen the look in the man’s eye who held it on them and Walt believed he was capable of shooting. He would knock somebody’s head against the wall and he missed Jason like any man would miss his brother but he wasn’t going to get shot. And he had to figure out how to tell Larry that.
He asked Earl for another one and he lit a cigarette. He had listened to his brother’s message four times. I need you down here, Walt. Down at the Kentwood jail. Come on and get me. Don’t fuck around. Get on down here. Where the hell you at anyway? Walt knew that if Larry was calling from the Kentwood jail he probably deserved to be there but that didn’t stifle the guilt he felt in ignoring his brother.
Earl brought the beer and set it down and then the door opened. Walt looked and there was Heather. Earl said hey to her and she smiled back and then she asked Walt if he had any rules about what she was allowed to drink while sitting there next to him.
“I don’t give a shit,” he said.
She asked Earl for a glass of wine and while he poured it she reached over and took a cigarette from Walt’s pack that was sitting on the bar.
“Where’s your brother?” she asked.
He took a long drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke out his nose. “Where’s your husband?”
“Same place your brother is.”
He nodded. Wondered if she knew what he knew.
Walt kept his eyes ahead on the shelves of liquor bottles. Heather sat sideways and looked around at the empty tables. He drank and then said you are a wonder.
“A wonder? Like how?”
“I’d just as soon not say,” he said. He thought about the conversations he and Larry had about her when Larry was getting ready to marry her. About how leopards don’t change their spots and all that shit and hell I know she’s fine but something fine walks in the door every night and you don’t have to marry it and worry about it like you’re gonna worry about her.
“Tell me,” she said and she bumped his leg with her leg. “How am I a wonder?”
“Not like Wonder Woman. A wonder like goddamn she makes you wonder.”
Heather laughed. She couldn’t help but laugh.
“See what I mean?” he said.
“No. Hell no, I don’t see what you mean. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Does to me. Does to Larry.”
“Larry doesn’t think about me.”
“You don’t know what he thinks about,” he said.
“You don’t either.”
“I know better than you.”
“You want to call me a wonder and then sit here and tell me you know what Larry thinks about. Nobody knows what Larry thinks about. He don’t even know.”
“All I know is you’re a wonder.”
She laughed some more. Tossed her head back and tossed her hair around. Smiled at herself in the mirror behind the bar. “You don’t even know what that word means,” she said.
“I’ll tell you what it means,” he said. He met her smile with a serious stare and his brow had the same bend of Larry’s brow when he meant business. He shifted on his seat. Took a drink from his beer. Looked back to her and said it means that I wonder why the hell you just can’t give him a break. I wonder why you gotta do the things you do. Why you gotta shove it in his face. Why you gotta make him a big joke. I wonder why. That’s what it means. I wonder why you can’t give him a break every now and then. And I’m getting the hell out of here and you can pay Earl. You got Larry’s money in your pocket. You got everything. And I’m a son of a bitch for sitting here talking to you when I should be somewhere else.
They had stuck Larry in the holding cell with the rest of the Monday night roundup. There were ten of them. No window and a bench on each wall. The floor slick and stained. The smell of beer and worse. Larry sat with his arms folded, furious that no one had answered his calls. Furious that it was damn near midnight and he was still sitting there. Three guys in the corner across from him had begun to watch him. Everyone else kept to themselves. Cigarettes and anxious feet tapping and faces in hands.
There were two big ones and one little one. The little guy did the talking and pointed at Larry while the two big ones nodded and grinned. Larry sat with his elbows on his knees but when the two big men walked over to him he sat up straight. There was more girth than muscle on the two men and one of them had his head shaved while the other wore pigtails and it looked as if he might have been wearing a soft shade of lipstick. They both wore overalls. Shirtless underneath. The little guy stayed across the room with his legs crossed and his hands folded on top of his knee as if he were posing for a portrait.
“My friend over there likes your boots,” said the big one with the shaved head. The one with the p
igtails pointed at Larry’s feet as if to clarify.
Larry leaned around the men and looked at the little man. Eye shadow and mascara and his jeans were rolled to his knees and he wore sandals.
“Good for her,” Larry said.
“What size are they?”
“They’re my size.”
The man with the pigtails began to rub his hands together.
“Maybe you could let him try them on.”
Larry looked around the cell. Thought that some of the others might come over and even the odds but he was on his own.
“How about twenty bucks instead?” Larry said.
The big man with the pigtails sat down next to Larry and put his arm around him and said how about I give you a big juicy kiss right on that pretty mouth of yours. Then the other man sat down on his other side and Larry tried to hop up but they pulled him back down. He wondered if it’d matter if he yelled for someone. They squeezed him like he was their favorite doll.
“You want me to take them off for you or you want to do it?” said the shaved head.
“Let me go and I’ll take them off.”
“Take them off and we’ll let you go.”
“Let’s take him home,” said the pigtails and he blew into Larry’s ear. “I been thinking we need a cowboy around.”
Larry kicked off the boots.
“Socks, too.”
Larry pulled off his socks and tucked them into the boots.
“That’s some ugly ass feet,” said the shaved head.
“They ain’t that bad,” the other one said.
“Let me fucking go,” Larry said.
“You better be nice now,” said the pigtails. “We might end up spending the whole night together.”
The big one with the shaved head stood up and took the boots and told the other one to come on. They left Larry and went over to their friend and their friend gave a playful wave to Larry and then he sat still while they put the socks and boots on his feet.
Desperation Road Page 21