The Pitcher 2

by William Hazelgrove

  Mom’s eyes have gone berserk, and her curly brown hair is up in arms.

  “And why do you think she wants to go out with you?”

  I stare at Mom and break into a smile.

  “Because I am the man.”

  Mom’s eyes dull, and she shakes her head.

  “Really, Ricky? The man? You’re the man?”

  “Yes. I am,” I say not at all sure that I am the man.

  Mom shakes her head, wagging her finger.

  “You are the not the man, and this Christine will dump you, and you will be less than the man.”

  I shake my head.

  “You just don’t get it Mom.”

  “Uh-huh.” She goes back to the couch. “I do get it, and you better take a hard look at your actions. That Esmeralda is three times the girl Christine is.”

  “You don’t even know Christine, Mom.”

  Mom nods.

  “I know enough. I know that when something better comes along, she won’t remember your name.”

  I hoist up my bat bag and shake my head.

  “Nothing better is coming along, Mom.”

  “Tell that to Bailey Hutchinson,” she says coolly.

  Wow. Knockout punch. Slam. I stop and turn slowly.

  “Low blow, Mom.”

  “Really? You should know all about that,” she says.

  10

  JOE DIMAGGIO MARRIED MARILYN Monroe, and everyone thought he was the luckiest guy in the world. Even after they had been divorced for years, he said she was the only woman who ever broke his heart. I get that. I mean, Marilyn was the most beautiful woman in the world. And to me, Christine is the most beautiful girl in the world. Mom never says anything, but whenever I bring her up, she gets a funny look in her eyes. And I know what she is thinking, because I had dinner at Christine’s with her father and mother in their big house in the rich section of Jacksonville. Their house was like a mansion with all these old things and paintings. Even their dog was expensive.

  We sat at this big long table, and her parents stared at me.

  “Christine tells me you are quite a pitcher,” her dad says in his red tie and white shirt.

  I guess he is some kind of big lawyer dude who knows a lot of people, because there are all these pictures of him shaking hands with famous people.

  “Yes, sir,” I say eating, but I wasn’t hungry at all.

  “She says there are professional scouts looking at you.”

  “Yes, sir,” I say nodding, watching the Mexicans working outside on their lawn.

  Christine’s mother looks like some kind of lady from television. All this blond hair piled up, and red lips. She looks down the table at me. The whole house looks like something from that old show Rich and Famous.

  “Is it a Mexican team?”

  Where do you go with that? But I just play along and laugh.

  “Mother!” Christine says.

  Her mother turns and says in this voice that is like china or something.

  “Well, I don’t know, dear.”

  “No, ma’am. It’s the Cubs,” I say

  Her dad leans back and puts these big hands on the table with gold cufflinks.

  “Maybe you will do for pitching what Roberto Clemente did for right field.” He was just throwing out a Mexican ball player.

  “Yes, sir. I’ll take that,” I say smiling like the happy Mexican still watching the guys outside on their riding mowers with weed-whackers strapped to their backs. And I wonder what the difference is between them and me right then. I mean, why am I not out there, and why are they? Is it because I’m still in high school or because I pitch so well?

  Christine’s parents stare at my old minivan a long time and keep looking in the living room where we sit after dinner. Her father asks me to take a walk with him. We walk down his driveway, and he really looks like those dudes on the news with perfect hair and blue eyes.

  “My daughter is going to college,” he says like he’s talking about the weather.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He pauses then and turns with his eyes like two bullets. I mean, it was like a dark cloud appeared, and the Mexican glare rolled in with the rain. .

  “And I know to her you’re exotic.”

  Exotic? Like an animal? So now my heart is thumping like crazy, just bamming away, and I want to get back in my van and drive away because this is not good.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I say.

  He smiles, staring at his cigar.

  “I mean you are not the type of boy we usually see Christine dating. You are the first Mexican-American she has dated for one thing.”

  “That is a good thing, right, sir?”

  He keeps this strange smile on his face.

  “Well, things usually go better when people of the same background stay together. I am sure you have girls that are similar in background, and you are very comfortable with them.”

  Now my face is like red ,man. I mean bright red, and my heart is pounding.

  “I am comfortable with Christine.”

  He laughs lightly. “I am sure you are. But I am not concerned with whether or not you are comfortable with her Ricky. I am concerned with her future. When you have children, you will understand this.”

  I swallow and frown and speak through my teeth that are clenched.

  “I don’t think I understand what you are saying, sir.”

  He loses the smile and looks at me again like I have a gun.

  “Then let me put it to you plainly. Like should stay with like.”

  “You mean because I am Mexican?”

  He then puffs his cigar with his eyes smoking as well.

  “I hope things work out for you, Ricky. You people have a hard time of it, I know, and baseball might be your opportunity to get out of your…circumstances.” And then he pulls the cigar out of his mouth and stares at me. “But if you don’t behave yourself with my daughter, I will hunt you down. You will not escape me, so don’t even think about it.”

  I cannot speak. I cannot move. It’s like if I do, I will start screaming.

  “Do we understand each other, Ricky Hernandez?”

  I look at him then and nod.

  “Yeah…I get you,” I say.

  “Good.”

  He puts the cigar back in his mouth and walks back up the driveway.

  Christine asked me about a hundred times what he said, but I just said he wanted to talk about baseball. So I get why Mom is suspicious. She can smell somebody who has it in for Mexicans and probably figures Christine is not my type. And maybe she isn’t, but I got to find that out myself, because when I’m with her, I feel like a million bucks.

  11

  SHOELESS JOE JACKSON COULD neither read nor write, but he could hit. He came from a mill and became one of the biggest hitters of all time. He hit with a bat called Black Betsy made from a Northern Hickory tree coated with coat after coat of Jackson’s tobacco juice. He learned to bat from an old Confederate who learned baseball in a Union prison camp. He was called Shoeless Joe Jackson after he was spotted playing in the Minors barefoot because his new shoes were too tight. He was banished forever after the White Sox Scandal.

  The way I am feeling banished when I see Esmeralda sitting with Mom three days later. She is sitting at the kitchen table and I can hear Mom and her talking, and I consider just walking out the front door. Mom and Es have always hung together. Her parents are pretty lame, so she was always over at our house telling Mom her problems. And I know her play now. It’s only been a week since I broke up with her, and the whole prom thing and all, and I know she is telling Mom what an asshole I am. So I turn around and figure I will hang in the garage.

  “Ricky?”

  “Yeah,” I say with this sinking feeling.

  “Esmeralda is here, Ricky.”

  Big deal is what I want to say, but I just mutter.

  “Oh, great.”

  “Come in and say hello, Ricky.”

  I groan. I am so toast now,
man. Esmeralda knows how to play people, and she is playing my mom against me all the way. So I go into the hall and then into the kitchen.

  “Hey, Es,” I mutter.

  She smiles.

  “Hi, Ricky,” she says, like she just happened to stop by or something.

  Her hair is still pinned up McDonald’s style and her gum is rolling between her teeth. She even looks like Mom with this curly black hair and the same fiery dark eyes. She can go ghetto faster than even Mom when she gets mad. They are drinking coffee, and both look at me like I am some kind of zoo animal.

  “Who gave you a ride, Ricky?” Mom asks setting down her cup.

  “Joey,” I answer.

  “Joey, huh,” Es says, her eyes flashing. “I hear he is a gangbanger now. “

  “Nah…he just plays it up,” I say, shaking my head.

  Mom is on fire now.

  “Don’t you go near him if he is in a gang, Ricky!”

  Esmeralda is watching me, and her eyes have gone smug.

  “You don’t take any more rides with him, do you hear me?”

  I stare at Es, who is trying to look all innocent.

  “I just heard he was in a gang now. Maybe I’m wrong,” she says, shrugging.

  “You are wrong,” I say giving her the glare.

  “You stay away from him, Ricky. He is headed for prison or heaven.”

  “He’s my best friend, Mom,” I point out.

  Mom’s head is going side to side.

  “Not any more. You want to end up shot?”

  I breathe tiredly. Old girlfriend trap. That is what I just walked into. And she is using my mom to spring it, which really pisses me off.

  “I’m not going to end up shot, Mom,” I mumble.

  “You will if you let him drive you around. Ever since he dropped out of high school, I knew he would end up in the gangs.”

  Mom then narrows in on me.

  “And you better be working on your biology!”

  “I’m working on it,” I mutter.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Esmeralda looks like one of those people at a ball game just enjoying the show. This is total payback for dumping her and not taking her to prom.

  “If you don’t pass biology, then you won’t go to college,” Mom declares. The truth is Mom is right, and a bigger truth is I would not even be in school if it wasn’t for her. She didn’t homeschool me, but she might as well have because she is the one who taught me, not the teachers.

  “Maybe I’m not going to college then.”

  Mom is now sitting back, and her chin is starting to bob.

  “Oh, you are going to the Major Leagues? I haven’t heard anyone waving a contract in your face. “

  “Yeah, Ricky, you want to go to college,” Esmeralda say with a chin bob that matches her.

  “He has this crazy notion of going to play for a team and not going to these schools offering him all this money.”

  Esmeralda turns and looks at me with her bright red lipstick and her ponytail swishing.

  “You mean they are giving you money, and you won’t go? What kind of thing is that?” She says with her head bobbing and weaving. Mom follows, gesturing to me like I am not even there.

  “I told him that. He is crazy! I told him you need an education.”

  “Of course, he does.”

  They are both bobbing and weaving, and it is like I am have left the room or something.

  “These boys are all nuts, you know. “

  “Oh, I know, Mrs. H. I know. Look at what we girls have to put with.”

  “I wouldn’t do it. I would find yourself a nice white boy and leave these crazy Mexican boys alone.”

  Chin bob. Weave. Chin bob. Crazy eyes. They are like trying to outdo each other in ghetto anger.

  “I have thought about it. Some of them even ask you to prom and then back out at the last minute, Mrs. H.”

  Mom shakes her head.

  “That is horrible. What kind of boy would do that?”

  Esmeralda turns and stares at me.

  “A bad one, Mrs. H. A bad one.”

  So now they have forgotten about me, and I am like tiptoeing down the hall to the garage. I open the door and slip into the garage. Now I know how Shoeless Joe felt when he ended up running a liquor store in South Carolina. Some kind of mix between shame and remorse.

  12

  HONUS WAGNER PLAYED FOR the Boston Pirates and was probably the best player there ever was. He could hit and field like no tomorrow, and nobody could stop him. He had long arms and a barrel chest, and they said he threw so hard that when he threw a ball to first base, the pebbles he scooped with the ball got there first. That’s what Bailey was like to me, and those pebbles were hitting me everywhere.

  The Pitcher is having a smoke and coughing up a lung. Lately, I have noticed he has a hell of a smoker’s hack. Mom is all over him to quit and he does, but then he goes right back to it. Just like his beers. He falls on and off the wagon all the time. But it’s not like he gets drunk anymore, he just has enough, he says, to take the edge off.

  “So you walked into the trap?” he asks without looking up.

  He is wearing the same old canvas shorts and a golf shirt. Mom says he would wear the same clothes every day if she didn’t put out his clothes on the bed. I get that. I would do that, too. Pitchers don’t care what they wear, the same way they don’t really care about money or what other people think of them. You just care about the ball, man.

  “Yeah,” I say flopping down in the other chair.

  The Pitcher ashes his cigarette and gestures to the television.

  “Your team is getting stomped by the Yankees.”

  I shrug.

  “So what’s new?”

  The Pitcher frowns and shakes his head.

  “Yeah, the Cubs don’t win…but they always fill Wrigley Field.”

  “That’s because it’s one of the last great parks,” I point out.

  “That and Fenway,” he says.

  I get up and get a Coke out of the refrigerator. We watch the ballgame for a few minutes.

  “So your mother says you aren’t taking Esmeralda to the prom,” he says not taking his eyes off the game.

  I turn with the Coke in my mouth. This surprises the hell out of me. The Pitcher never really talks about stuff like girls or anything except pitching or the car or keeping my room clean.

  “Uh-huh,” I murmur.

  He tilts his head and cocks his right eyebrow.

  “She’s a nice girl.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I don’t say anything, and see the bucket of rocks in the corner of the garage. Sometimes, I’ll go out to the garage and just pick up the rocks just to see how they feel. It’s almost like they are holy or something. I wish I was throwing them now. Ever since Bailey, I feel like I am floating on very thin air.

  “I hear you are taking someone else,” the Pitcher continues.

  “Uh-huh.”

  The Pitcher nods slowly and puckers his lips..

  “I ain’t much in this department, but all I got to say is, don’t drink your own Kool-Aid.”

  I frown.

  “What do you mean?’”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I shake my head.

  “No, I don’t.”

  The Pitcher swigs his Good Times.

  “Think about it.”

  “Ricky!”

  It’s Mom.

  “Yeah!” I shout.

  “Will you walk Esmeralda home?”

  I groan and get out of the chair.

  “Why do I gotta do this?” I mutter.

  The Pitcher has this thin smile and leans back.

  “Everyone gets what they deserve in the end,” he says.

  13

  CHECK THIS OUT. THEY used to leave their baseball gloves in the outfield in the twenties. The opposing team would not trip over them either. They just left them there. Imagine that. Of course, this was about the time they banished the eight W
hite Sox players for life after they put the fix in on the game. Joe Jackson ended up in Greenville, South Carolina, running a liquor store, and nobody even knew who he was after a few years.

  Like I don’t want Es to know who I am anymore. But she is waiting to pounce. It’s been like a week since I told her I wasn’t taking her to prom, and she is still pissed. I can tell with her fast walk and her gum moving fast and her eyes that keep rolling my way and then off like she has nothing better to do than walk down the street with me. Her house is only like a couple blocks away, so the whole walk her home thing is just so she can go to town on me.

  But I know her play, and I figure on not saying anything t until I reach her porch, and then it will be Good night, Es, and then I will turn and walk back home. But she looks at me and knows my game and lets me have it anyway.

  “So you dumped me for that stuck-up rich bitch,” she says out of the blue.

  I do a couple shrugs.

  “Yeah.”

  Es shakes her head.

  “She is the kind of bitch we hated all our lives, and now that you the big pitcher, you are going to take her over me?”

  I’m rolling my head because, I don’t have any response except that in school, news travels fast and once it got around that MLB scouts were calling me, than, yeah, man, I became the dude and suddenly this blond-haired, blue-eyed cheerleader is like talking to me and asking me if I will give her a ride home, and if was I going to prom, and then, I dunno, we were like dating and I just asked her to go to prom and conveniently forget I had asked Es. And the truth is, man, I like Es and always have, and we like grew up together, and I know what I did was shitty, but still, man, you all of a sudden are like given some candy and, what, you don’t eat it?

  But none of this is helping me right now, because Es is on a roll.

  “You just turning into an asshole, Ricky Hernandez. I never thought you would do something like this, but I see now you just going to leave all the people who helped you and go off with some fake stuck-up rich bitch. I don’t who you are anymore. I thought you and I had something, and now you break off with me a week before prom, and my dad said he was going to kick your ass, but I told him not to bother because you ain’t worth it.”