Boonville

by Anderson, Robert Mailer

  But it was “Revolution” as he hit Manchester Road, centering each step heel-to-toe so he wouldn’t twist an ankle running down the incline. Getting back up the hill was going to be a bitch. But he had resigned himself to health, at least for the next half hour. If Sarah could go a week without food, he could jog four miles. He steadied his pace. Surrounded by foliage, he could almost see the greenery giving off oxygen in return for his sickly breath. A gang of deer, one with antlers, bounded from the shoulder of the road into the trees. John quickened his stride, unsure if they attacked. A flock of wild turkeys gobbled at him from a turn near a culvert. A chill shuddered through him as he stepped past a dead raccoon. This wasn’t the track at University of Miami where you could run round and round, only worrying about the number of women who lapped you. This was nature’s obstacle course, shoddily paved.

  The unfamiliar terrain gave him a shot of adrenaline. He passed more obliterated animals; frogs, birds, lizards. Squirrels. Flattened and overcooked, sun-dried guts spilled out their sides. A flash in the weeds caught his eye, one of the Datsun’s headlights was resting alongside a piece of the front end. Neither appeared to be in good enough shape to warrant further investigation, the headlight broken, metal framing crumpled. John wasn’t mechanically inclined anyway. Christina had been in charge of the tool box. John could barely pump gas, and that had come after years of practice. Besides, a blue-bellied lizard had claimed the salvage. They might bite. He jogged on, passing more crushed critters. Despite the lizard’s victory, nature was losing about 30–1.

  When John came out of the last curve, the slope of the hill leveled and he could see the high school in the distance. The sun had finished its daily arc. He was covered in sweat. He would chug back when he reached the intersection of 128. He wondered if he would make it without stopping. John was accustomed to finishing what he started, bad meals, boring novels, stabs at fitness. Not finishing something felt worse than never having broken ground. It wasn’t that difficult to take one more bite, turn another page, take another step. Closure. Replay the song in his head one more time: You say you want a revolution?

  John spied a pickup turning off 128, coming toward him in the opposite lane. For all the animal carcasses, this was the first vehicle he had seen. It passed, blowing debris into his face. Forty yards beyond him, the driver hit the brakes and the truck spun out of control, fishtailing, smashing into a fence separating a field of horses from the road. It skidded into the pasture, trailing a path of churned-up dirt. Ponies bucked and bolted. John wiped grit from his eyes. He couldn’t see who was inside the vehicle. The truck’s motor fired up again and it peeled out back toward the road, bouncing over the crumpled fence and up the slope, onto the asphalt and into John’s lane. John started to jog again. Gears shifted. The driver leaned on the horn. John began to run, really run. The truck gained ground fast. John couldn’t bring himself to stop or face the headlights. He smelled gas. Somebody whooped a cattle call. Just when he thought he was going to take a tour of the tail pipe, the truck zipped past with a squeal of brakes and slid into a half-donut in front of him. John tried to stop, but inertia vaulted him onto the hood, rolling him to the windshield.

  With his face pressed to tempered glass, John saw two men smiling as if they were at a drive-in, watching a movie in which cars routinely spun out of control with the hero on the hood.

  “That’s the biggest bug I ever seen!” the driver said.

  Kurts.

  John forgot which one was which, but remembered Billy Chuck had told him it didn’t matter, they were all called Kurts, whether one or the whole family was standing in front of you, every half-brother and kissing cousin. These were John’s drinking buddies, two of the surviving triplet brothers Wayne, Dwayne, and Blaine. Billy Chuck had also told John that one of the triplets had died in a logging accident while setting chokers. The triplets had made a pact to drink a case of Coors in hell together and the surviving Kurtses were looking forward to the reunion the way most people anticipated their twenty-first birthday. Heaven was for pussies. Hell was an amusement park full of everything they enjoyed, family, friends, loose women, consistent work. Place like that, what did it matter if the beer was warm?

  “When you’re done with the windshield,” Wayne, Dwayne, or Blaine said, “You wanna check the oil?”

  The wipers flipped on and cleaning fluid streamed into John’s face. He climbed off the truck unable to identify new bruises from old ones. A career as a stuntman had to be considered. His wrist was jammed, but he shook it to life as he retrieved his hat. It was a relief Kurts and not Daryl had been behind the wheel, otherwise the truck would have hit him, not the other way around.

  “Squirrel Boy, we need one at Cal’s Palace,” Kurts said. “You play softball as good as you do speed bump?”

  “I haven’t played in a while,” John said, disoriented by the overload of adrenaline, but not enough to think any interaction with the Kurtses wouldn’t be dangerous.

  “Get in,” said the Kurts in the passenger seat.

  “I don’t have a glove or cleats,” John protested. “And I have things to do.”

  “I bet it would be tough to do them,” the driving Kurts observed, “if you were run over.”

  John saw that he was directly in front of the truck. Open space surrounded him. Even if he hopped a couple of fences, he wouldn’t be safe. The truck engine revved, helping him make his decision. Passenger-seat Kurts stepped out of the cab to let John in, claiming he rode shotgun, not bitch. On the bench seat, John noticed the driver was wearing a baseball uniform. Not exactly a uniform, because it didn’t match the other Kurts’s outfit, but baseball gear: pants, stirrups, cleats, a cap with the brim shaved to a nub that read “Mustache rides 5.” The other Kurts wore pinstriped pants, no stirrups, metal cleats, and a hat advertising Loomix. They both wore green T-shirts with the words “Spotted Owl Eaters” across the chest.

  “Shouldn’t you fix that fence before we go?” John asked.

  “Why?” driving Kurts answered, gunning the pickup. “It ain’t mine.”

  John was thrown back against the seat. Shotgun Kurts twisted the knob of the radio, and both brothers joined in a song about guitars, Cadillacs, and hillbilly music. They took the intersection of 128, ignoring the stop sign and swerving into a dirt path near a chain-link fence, cutting onto the highway in front of a sports car. Kurts leaned into John with more pressure than the g-forces made necessary, squishing him into the other Kurts, who squished back. They slowed to a crawl. Kurts flipped off the sports car behind them and waved to the girls outside the drive-in. They drove the rest of the strip at erratic speeds, honking to familiar faces, raising fists to enemies, slapping the sides of the vehicle to the music, until they turned into a stadium parking lot with a grandstand that had a painting of an apple riding a bucking horse and the words “Mendocino County Apple Fair.” Driving beyond the grandstand, they came to a Little League field with floodlights and a sign that read “Cal’s Palace,” in the same lettering that usually warned, “Beware of Dog!”

  This must be the place, John told himself. Boonville’s cultural center.

  Kurts tossed John a glove that hung off his hand like a jai alai cesta. The fingers were a foot long with Day-Glo green splashed on their tips and a palm the size of a salad bowl. There was writing embossed on the interior to explain the construction, and an explanation seemed necessary: “double-lock webbing,” “grab-tite pocket,” “snap action.” The only thing it lacked was rack and pinion steering. Wearing it, John felt like a third-rate superhero who had a weak gimmick instead of an actual power.

  Faces in the stands turned as the three men approached the field; most of the faces belonged to overweight women consuming snacks, gossiping, and trying to gain the attention of the men strutting on the miniature diamond. Periodically, they nursed babies and wiped the snot-clogged noses of children. They didn’t seem interested in John or his prosthetic.

  “Ain’t gonna be no forfeit!” someone shouted.r />
  “The Squirrel Boy ain’t on your roster!” a player from the other team objected.

  “The hell he ain’t,” Kurts said. “We recruited him.”

  John followed the Kurtses to a dugout with a partially caved-in roof. The players sat spitting sunflower seeds and gobs of tobacco juice, drinking beer, and using the collapsed end to store equipment. There was a hole in the far wall where men leered at the women in the bleachers. The first teammate to greet John was Hap, wearing a St. Louis Cardinals hat and what might have been Dizzy Dean’s glove, a museum piece that gave balance to John’s futuristic fly-catcher.

  “Glad to have you aboard, Squirrel Boy,” Hap said. “Didn’t know you pleeble.”

  “I didn’t either,” John said, figuring Hap meant “play ball.”

  Hap introduced him to the rest of the Spotted Owl Eaters. Each player wore a different outfit depending on their enthusiasm for the game: batting gloves, sliding pants, half-shirts, tube-socks, jeans. The other side had matching uniforms and enough men to fill two teams. John’s squad looked ready to drink beer and watch them go at it. In fact, the manager, Big Jack, after telling John he would be playing right field and batting ninth, pointed to a cooler at the end of the bench, saying, “There’s the beer.” Game plan revealed. When they took the field, most of the Spotted Owl Eaters had a cold one by their side, which they pulled from between pitches.

  “Hey batter, batter, swig, batter,” John heard their second baseman chatter.

  Hap explained they were playing “moon-ball,” so named because each pitch had to reach the height of six feet, not to exceed twelve, and then land on home plate, or the rug stretching a foot behind it, to be called a strike. Flat pitches were balls. Fouls were strikes. Ten players per team, but you could play with nine, which was what the Spotted Owl Eaters were doing. An umpire stood behind the catcher to keep score, deciding balls, strikes, and close plays at the bases. There were seven innings, but if either team got ahead by ten runs after five innings, it was declared the winner.

  It seemed to John more of a social event than a sport. Then he got a better look at his opponents: Cal, Billy Chuck, and Daryl were pointing fingers at him with a group that had to be the local all-stars, men who had been high-school heroes, played college ball, maybe a cup of coffee in the minors. After attending an athletic factory like University of Miami, John could tell real jocks from weekend warriors, and the athletes on the cusp who had the talent but would never refine it. That’s who they were playing today, the boys who might have been. In contrast, John was suiting up for the alkies who couldn’t have cared less.

  John spit in his glove, pounded it twice, and braced himself for another beating. It was a good day for two.

  The first batter, smelling weakness, lashed a line drive to right. John charged it but the ball didn’t bounce as high as he had expected and sailed beneath his glove, impossible as that seemed, caroming off his shin and rolling to the fence. He tracked it down with a limp, firing it back to the infield. Without any warm-ups and not having thrown a ball of any kind in a while, he put too much oomph into it and not enough accuracy. The ball flew over the cut-off man’s head, past Hap who was backing up the play, and into the opposing team’s bat-rack. Stand-up triple. E-9.

  “Hell of an arm, Squirrel Boy!” Hap yelled, repositioning himself on the pitcher’s mound. “But if you can’t aim, don’t aim at all!”

  The next batter drilled a seed off Kurts’ chest at third, which he gathered, looked the runner back to third base, and threw the batter out at first. Kurts was the perfect third baseman, cheating down the line, daring grown men with aluminum bats to hit the ball through him at a distance of less than sixty feet. There would be seam marks embedded into Kurts’s skin by the end of the inning. John was glad he was far away in right field.

  The other Kurts in left, but probably equally capable of playing third, caught the next out, a lazy fly that carried to the warning track. The runner at third scored after tagging up. The clean-up man made his way to the plate. The only lefty so far in the line-up, and the only one to land that left to John’s chin.

  “Move back!” the center fielder warned.

  Seeing the swollen nose of his teammate in center, John recognized him as the man Daryl had punched in the parking lot of the Lodge before getting to him. He had every right to respect Daryl’s power. He knew how hard he hit too.

  Daryl swaggered into the batter’s box. The women in the crowd cheered as he called for time out, holding up his hand while he made himself comfortable, wiggling his ass, tapping the plate with his bat. The Kurtses chanted, “DAR-ryl, DAR-ryl” in high-pitched voices. Nobody else joined in. Most were taking the opportunity to finish off this inning’s beer.

  Daryl finally coiled into his batting stance. Hap’s first offering tumbled in a spinless drift. As soon as it was struck, John knew it was gone. A child was released from the stands to hunt it down. The ball landed in the weeds fifty feet beyond the right field fence. Hap’s head drooped while Daryl circled the bases, meeting his teammates at home plate. John walked to the fence to help the gofer find the ball, not wanting to watch the celebration.

  “I think it’s more to your right,” John said, trying to steer the boy to the spot.

  The boy ignored John’s directions, stamping into a thicket of foxtail and vanishing from sight. When he reappeared, he held the oversized pearl, barely able to grip it in one hand. The boy used both hands to heave the ball back over the fence. Confused by the kid’s throwing style, John got a bad jump and the ball hit the ground after grazing his outstretched glove.

  “Mister,” the boy called out, “you suck!”

  John did his best Ted Williams, extending his middle finger.

  “Same to you,” the boy said, replicating the gesture. “But more of it!”

  John retrieved the ball, noticing there were black pellets stuck to it. He wondered if it had landed in something in the weeds. Then he saw the outfield grass was covered with the same orblets. Removing one from the ball, he squished it between his thumb and index finger and brought it to his nose.

  “Any day now, Squirrel Boy!” Big Jack called, from first base. “You can play with the sheep shit later!”

  The infield tittered as John tried to flick the turd away, the clump clinging to his fingers. He couldn’t wipe it off in the grass either because that would only compound the problem. Not knowing what else to do, John rubbed clean on the ball. He tossed it to the second baseman who whipped it to Hap who threw another knuckler. This one dipped fiercely. The batter grounded out to short.

  “Shit beats spit every time,” Hap told John, back on the bench. “Ask Gaylord Perry. The great ones never went to their caps, they go to their grundies.”

  Hap also explained that sheep were the groundskeepers, mowing and fertilizing the field for free, and in the off-season making a hell of a stew. John apologized for his miscue in the field. Big Jack, who was braving the substandard section of the dugout for a trip to the cooler, told him the run would have scored anyway. A beer landed in John’s lap. The sound of cans opening filled the cave, rounding off the competitive edge.

  “It ain’t whether you win or lose,” Big Jack informed him, peering out not at the playing field but at the women in the stands. “It’s who you fuck after the game.”

  “Lord have mercy on that woman’s ass,” Bo, the second baseman, said, grimacing as he stood next to Big Jack, taking in the same view.

  “I’d fuck her sober,” Big Jack confided.

  “Out of what?” the second baseman said. “You’d need a bakery truck to haul those buns.”

  “Speaking of which, Squirrel Boy,” someone called from down the bench, not loud enough for the other team to hear. “You get any from Sarah?”

  Everyone, including the on-deck batter, waited for John’s answer. But John didn’t kiss and tell. He also knew whatever he said would get back to Daryl.

  “We’re just friends,” John said, but might as well have told
them he screwed Sarah twelve ways ’til midnight.

  “I’d be her friend, too,” the center fielder said, amid his teammates’ snickering. “I’d be her butt buddy.”

  “I thought you was Bobby Dee’s butt buddy, Hank,” said Bo.

  “Fuck you, Bo,” Hank replied.

  “You making offers or insults?” Bo asked. “Seems these days you want to be everyone’s butt buddy.”

  “At least I stick it somewhere,” Hank said. “You ain’t had pussy since pussy had you.”

  The bench encouraged their insults, asking, “You gonna let him get away with that?” or “Did you hear what he said?” Meanwhile, the game proceeded; someone hit a single, someone flied out to left. The slow approach of ball to batsman inspired little attention. The jousting on the bench was more entertaining and good-natured, until the topic of mothers was introduced.

  John understood by Hank’s jokes that Bo’s mother, Night Train Elaine, was a drunk who dated men for the price of a bottle. She also had the misfortune of accidentally shifting gears in a truck while engaging in oral sex in the parking lot of Cal’s Palace. She and her partner had been too loaded to realize the truck’s motor was running, too into the moment to notice the truck was moving, and then amazed to find themselves climaxing in the visitor’s dugout. The incident had occurred between games so nobody had been hurt, but that was why the roof of the dugout was caved in. Hank retold the story, making puns out of “stick-shift,” “softballs,” and “double headers.”

  “Let’s get off mamas, because I’ve been on yours all night,” Hank finished. “I had a cold and I guess she smelled the Ny-Quil.”

  Bo took a swing at the center fielder. John slid down the bench, certain Bo was going to rebreak Hank’s nose. But Big Jack was between them before the punch could land. Big Jack was about six-four, two-forty, with a burly chest and biceps that rippled from his jersey. In another era, he would have worked for the circus bending bars of steel. In this age, he was probably a local legend performing feats of strength like kicking two morons’ asses without putting down his can of beer.