The Sportswriter

by Richard Ford

  Above us, in the fitful activity of the house, someone has begun to play the bass intro to “What’d I Say” on the electric organ, the four low minor-note sex-and-anticipation vamp before ole Ray starts his moan. The hum sinks through the rafters and fills the basement with an unavoidable new atmosphere. Despair.

  Wade glances at the ceiling, happy as a man could have any right to be. It is as if he knew this very thing would happen and hears it as a signal that his house is in superb working order and ready for him to find his place in it once again. He is a man completely without a subtext, a literalist of the first order.

  “I feel, Frank, like I’ve seen your face before. It’s familiar to me. Isn’t that strange?”

  “You must see a lot of faces, Wade, wouldn’t you guess?”

  “Everybody in New Jersey’s at least once.” Wade flashes the patented toll-taker’s grin. “But I don’t remember many. Yours is just a face I remember. I thought it the moment I saw you.”

  I can’t bear to tell Wade that he has taken my $1.05 four hundred times, smiled and told me to have myself “a super day,” as I whirled off into the rough scrimmage of Route 1-South. That would be too ordinary an answer for his special kind of question, and for this charged moment. Wade is after mystery here, and I am not about to deny him. It would be as if Mr. Smallwood from Detroit had turned out to be a former grease jockey at Frenchy Montreux’s Gulf, who had changed my oil and given me lubes, only I hadn’t noticed, but suddenly did and pointed it out: mystery, first winded, then ruined by fact. I would rather stay on the side of good omens, be part of the inexplicable, an unexpected bellwether for whatever is ahead. Discretion, oddly enough, is the best response for a man of stalled responses.

  Behind me the kitchen door opens, and I turn to see Lynette’s cute cheerleader’s face peering down at both of us, looking amused—a palpable relief, though I read in her look that this whole man-talk-below-decks business has been scheduled in advance and that she’s been minding the kitchen clock for a prearranged moment to call us topside. I’m the lucky subject (but not the victim) of other people’s scheming, and that is never bad. It is, in fact, a cozy feeling, even if it can be put to no good use.

  The brooding, churchy Ray Charles chords come down louder now. This is Vicki’s work. “You men can talk old cars all day if you want to, but there’s folks ready to sit down.” Lynette’s eyes twinkle with impatient good humor. She can tell everything’s A-Okay down here. And she’s right. If we are not great friends, we soon will be.

  “How ’bout let’s eat a piece of dead sheep, Frank?” Wade laughs, giving his belly a rub. “Agnus dei,” he chortles up toward Lynette.

  “That is not what it is,” Lynette says, and rolls her eyes in the (I see now) Arcenault manner. “What’ll he say next, Frank? Agnus Dei is what you are, Wade, not what we’re eatin. Heavens.”

  “I’m sure too tough to chew, Frank, I’ll tell you that right now. Haw.” And up out of the shadowy basement we come—all hands on deck—into the warm and sunlit kitchen, the whole Arcenault crew arrived and ready for ritual Sunday grub.

  Dinner is a more ceremonial business than I would’ve guessed. Lynette has transformed her dining room into a hot little jewel box, crystal-candle chandelier, best silver and linens laid. The instant we’re seated she has us all join hands around the obloid so that I end up uneasily grabbing both Wade’s and Cade’s (no resistance from Cade) while Vicki holds Wade’s and Lynette’s. And I can’t help thinking—eyes stitched shut, peering soundlessly down into the familiar death-ball of liquid crimson flame behind which waits an infinity of black soul’s abyss from which nothing but Wade and Cade’s cumbersome hands can keep me from tumbling—what strange, good luck to be reckoned among these people like a relative welcome from Peoria. Though I can’t keep from wondering where my own children are at this moment, and where X is—my hope being that they are not sharing a fatherless, prix fixe Easter brunch at some deserted seaside Ramada in Asbury Park with Barksdale, back on the sneak from Memphis, taking my place. That news I could’ve passed a happy day without, though we can never stop what comes to us by right. I am overdue, in fact, for a comeuppance, and lucky not to be spending the day cruising some mall for an Easter takeout—the way poor Walter Luckett no doubt is, lost in the savage wilderness of civil life.

  Lynette’s blessing is amiably brief and upbeat-ecumenical in its particulars—I assume for my benefit—taking into account the day and the troubled world we live in but leaving out Vatican II and any saintly references unquestionably on her mind—where they count—and winding up with a mention of her son, Beany, in a soldier’s grave at Fort Dix but present in everyone’s mind, including mine. (Molten flames, in fact, give way at the end to reveal Beany’s knifey mug leering at me out from oblivion’s sanctum.)

  Wade and Cade have both put on garish flower ties and sports jackets, and look like vaudevillians. Vicki gives double cross-eyes at me when I smile at her and attempt to act comfortable among the family. Talk is of the weather as we dig into the lamb, then a brief pass into state politics; then Cade’s chances of an early call-up at the police academy and speculation about whether uniforms will be assigned the first morning, or if more tests will need to be passed, which Cade seems to view as a grim possibility. He leads a discussion on the effect of driving fifty-five, noting that it’s all right for everybody else but not him. Then Lynette’s work on the Catholic crisis-line, then Vicki’s work at the hospital, which everyone agrees is both as difficult and rewarding a service to mankind as can be—more, by implication, than Lynette’s. No one mentions our weekend in the faraway Motor City, though I have the feeling Lynette is trying to find a place for the word Detroit in practically every sentence, to let us all know she wasn’t born yesterday and isn’t making a stink since Vicki, like all other divorced gals, can take care of her own beeswax.

  Cade cracks a baiting smile and asks me who I like in the AL East, to which I answer Boston (my least favorite team). I, of course, am behind Detroit all the way, and know in fact that certain crucial trades and a new pitching coach will make them virtually unstoppable come September.

  “Boston. Hnuhn.” Cade leers into his plate. “Never see it.”

  “Wait and see,” I say with absolute assuredness. “There’re a hundred and sixty-two games. They could make one smart trade by the deadline and pretty much have it their way.”

  “It’d have to be for Ty Cobb.” Cade guffaws and eyes his father slavishly, his mouth full of a dinner roll.

  I laugh the loudest while Vicki crosses her eyes again, since she knows I’ve led Cade to the joke like a trained donkey.

  Lynette smiles attentively and maneuvers her lamb hunk, English peas and mint jelly all nearer one another on her plate. She is an understanding listener, but she is a straightforward questioner too, someone who wouldn’t let you off easy if you called up the crisis-line with a silly crisis. It seems she has me fixed in her mind. “Now were you in the service, Frank?” she says pleasantly.

  “The Marines, but I got sick and was discharged.”

  Lynette’s face portrays real concern. “What happened?”

  “I had a blood syndrome that made a doctor think I was dying of cancer. I wasn’t, but nobody figured it out for a while.”

  “You were lucky, then, weren’t you?” Lynette is thinking of poor dead Beany again, cold in the Catholic section of the Fort Dix cemetery. Life is never fair.

  “I was headed over in six more months, so I guess so. Yes ma’am.”

  “You don’t have to ma’am me, Frank,” Lynette says and bats her eyes all around. She smiles dreamily down the table at Wade, who smiles back at her in his best old southern gent manner. “My former husband was in Vietnam in the Coast Guard,” Lynette says. “Not many knew the Guard was even there. But I have letters postmarked the Mekong Delta and Saigon.”

  “Where’ve you got ’em hid?” Vicki smirks at everyone.

  “Past is past, sweetheart.
I threw them out when I met that man right there.” Lynette nods and smiles at Wade. “We don’t need to pretend, do we. Everybody’s been married here except Cade.”

  Cade blinks his dark eyes like a puzzled bull.

  “Those guys saw some real tough action,” Wade says. “Stan told me, Lynette’s ex-husband, that he probably killed two hundred people he never saw, just riding along shooting the jungle day after day, night after night.” Wade shakes his head.

  “That’s really something,” I say.

  “Right,” Cade grunts sarcastically.

  “Are you sorry not to have seen real action,” Lynette says, turning to me.

  “He sees enough,” Vicki says and smirks again. “That’s my department.”

  Lynette smiles dimly at her. “Be nice, sweetheart. Try to be, anyway.”

  “I’m perfect,” Vicki says. “Don’t I look perfect?”

  “I’d have some more of that lamb,” I say. “Cade, can I pass some your way?” Cade gives me a devious look as I catch a slab of gray lamb and pass him the platter. For some reason, my mind cannot come up with a good sports topic, though it’s trying like a computer. All I can think is facts. Batting averages. Dates. Seating capacities. Third-down ratios of last year’s Super Bowl opponents (though I can’t remember which teams actually played). Sometimes sports are no help.

  “Frank, I’d be interested to hear you out on this one,” Wade says, swallowing a big wedge of lamb. “Just in your journalist’s opinion, are we, would you say, in a prewar or a postwar situation in this country right now?” Wade shakes his head in earnest dismay. “I guess I get sour about things sometimes. I wish I didn’t.”

  “I haven’t paid much attention to politics the last few years, to tell the truth, Wade. My opinion never seemed worth much.”

  “I hope there’s a world war before I’m too old to be in it. That’s all I know,” Cade says.

  “That’s what Beany thought, Cade.” Lynette frowns at Cade.

  “Well,” he says to his plate after a moment’s numbed silence.

  “Now seriously, Frank,” Wade says. “How can you stay isolated from events on a grand scale, is my question.” Wade isn’t badgering me. It is just the earnest way of his mind.

  “I write sports, Wade. If I can write a piece for the magazine on, say, what’s happening to the team concept here in America, and do a good job there, I feel pretty good about things. Pretty patriotic, like I’m not isolating myself.”

  “That makes sense.” Wade nods at me thoughtfully. He is leaning on his elbows, over his plate, hands clasped. “I can buy that.”

  “What has happened to the team concept,” Lynette asks, and looks at everyone by turns. “I’m not sure I know even what that is.”

  “That’s pretty complicated,” Wade says, “wouldn’t you say so, Frank?”

  “If you talk to athletes and coaches the way I do, that’s all you hear, from the pros especially. Baseball, football. The line is, everybody has a role to play, and if anybody isn’t willing to play his role, then he doesn’t fit into the team’s plans.”

  “It sounds all right to me, Frank,” Lynette says.

  “It’s all a crocka shit’s what it is.” Cade scowls miserably at his own two hands, which are on the table. “They’re just all assholes. They wouldn’t know a team if it bit ’em on the ass. They’re all prima donnas. Half of ’em are queers, too.”

  “That’s certainly intelligent, Cade,” Vicki says. “Thanks very much for your brilliant comment. Why don’t you tell us some more of your philosophies.”

  “That wasn’t too nice, Cade,” Lynette says. “Frank had the floor then.”

  “Ppptttt,” Cade gives a Bronx cheer and rolls his eyes.

  “Is that some new language you learned working on boats?” Vicki says.

  “Okay, seriously, Frank.” Wade is still leaning up on his elbows like a jurist. He’s hit a subject with some meat on its bones, and he’s ready to saw right in. “I think Lynette’s got a pretty valid point in what she says here.” (Forgetting for the moment Cade’s opinion.) “I mean, what’s the matter with following your assignment on the team? When I was working oil rigs, that’s exactly how we did it. And I’ll tell you, too, it worked.”

  “Well, maybe it’s too small a point. Only the way these guys use team concept is too much like a machine to me, Wade. Too much like one of those oil wells. It leaves out the player’s part—to play or not play; to play well or not so well. To give his all. What all these guys mean by team concept is just cogs in the machine. It forgets a guy has to decide to do it again every day, and that men don’t work like machines. I don’t think that’s a crazy point, Wade. It’s just the nineteenth-century idea—dynamos and all that baloney—and I don’t much like it.”

  “But in the end, the result’s the same, isn’t it?” Wade says seriously. “Our team wins.” He blinks hard at me.

  “If everybody decides that’s what they want, it is. If they can perform well enough and long enough. It’s just the if I’m concerned about, Wade. I worry about the decide part, too, I guess. We take too much for granted. What if I just don’t want to win that bad, or can’t?”

  “Then you shouldn’t be on the team.” Wade seems utterly puzzled (and I can’t blame him). “Maybe we agree and I don’t know it, Frank?”

  “It’s all niggers with big salaries shootin dope, if you ask me,” Cade says. “I think if everybody carried a gun, everything’d work a lot better.”

  “Oh, Christ.” Vicki throws down her napkin and stares away into the living room.

  “Who’s he?” Cade gapes.

  “You can just be excused, Cade Arcenault,” Lynette says crisply, with utter certainty. “You can leave and live with the other cavemen. Tell Cade, Wade. He can leave the table.”

  “Cade.” Wade beams an unmistakable look of unmentionable violence Cade’s way. “Put the lock on that, mister.” But Cade cannot stop smirking and lurks back in his chair like a criminal, folding his big arms and balling his fists in hatred. Wade balls his own fists and butts them together softly in front of him, while his eyes return to a point two inches out onto the white field of linen tablecloth. He is cogitating about teams still, about what makes one and what doesn’t. I could jawbone about this till it’s time to start home again, though I admit the whole subject has begun to make me vaguely uneasy.

  “What you’re telling me then, Frank, and I may have this all bum-fuzzled up. But it seems to me you’re saying this idea—” Wade arches his eyebrows and smiles up at me in a beatific way “—leaves out our human element. Am I right?”

  “That says it well, Wade.” I nod in complete agreement. Wade has got this in terms he likes now (and a pretty versatile sports cliché at that). And I am pleased as a good son to go along with him. “A team is really intriguing to me, Wade. It’s an event, not a thing. It’s time but not a watch. You can’t reduce it to mechanics and roles.”

  Wade nods, holding his chin between his thumbs and index fingers. “All right, all right, I guess I understand.”

  “The way the guys are talking about it now, Wade, leaves out the whole idea of the hero, something I’m personally not willing to give up on yet. Ty Cobb wouldn’t have been a role-player.” I give Cade a hopeful look, but his eyes are drowsy and suffused with loathing. My knee begins to twitch under the table.

  “I’m not either,” Lynette says, her eyes alarmed.

  “It also leaves out why the greatest players, Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth, sometimes don’t perform as greatly as they should. And why the best teams lose, and teams that shouldn’t win, do. That’s team play of another kind, I think, Wade. It’s not role-playing and machines like a lot of these guy s’ll tell you.”

  “I think I understand, Wade,” Lynette says, nodding. “He’s saying athletes and all these sports people are just not too smart.”

  “I guess it’s giving a good accounting, sweetheart, is what it comes down to,” Wade says s
omberly. “Sometimes it’ll be enough. Some times it isn’t going to be.” He purses his lips and stares at my idea like a crystal vase suspended in his mind’s rare ether.

  I stare at my own plateful of second helping I haven’t touched and won’t, the pallid lamb congealed and hard as a wood chip, and the untouched peas and brocoli flower alongside it cold as Christmas. “When I can make that point in one of our Our Editors Think’ columns, Wade, that half a million people’ll read, then I figure I’ve addressed the big picture. What you said: events on a grand scale. I don’t know what else I really can do after that.”

  “That’s everything in life right there, is my belief,” Lynette says, though she’s thinking of another subject, and her bright green eyes scout the table for anyone who hasn’t finished his or hers yet.

  In the kitchen an electric coffeemaker clicks, then spurts, then sighs like an iron lung, and I get an unexpected whiff of Cade who smells of lube jobs and postadolescent fury. He cannot help himself here. His short life—Dallas to Barnegat Pines—has not been especially wonderful up to now, and he knows it. Though to my small regret, there’s nothing on God’s green earth I can do to make it better for him. My future letter-of-recommendation and fishing excursions with just the three men cut no ice with him. Perhaps one day he will stop me for speeding, and we can have the talk we can’t have now, see eye-to-eye on crucial issues—patriotism and the final rankings in the American League East, subjects that would bring us to blows in a second this afternoon. Life will work out better for Cade once he buttons on a uniform and gets comfortable in his black-and-white machine. He is an enforcer, natural born, and it’s possible he has a good heart. If there are better things in the world to be, there are worse, too. Far worse.