“You will not graduate, Ricky, if you don’t do this,” Mom screams.
“I don’t care,” I scream back. “I’m screwed anyway.”
“What do you mean?” she screams.
“I mean I can’t play baseball, and I can’t graduate, and I am screwed!” I yell.
Mom’s eyes go crazy.
“Don’t say that!” She yells back.
“Why not? It’s true,” I shout back.
“You are just lazy, Ricky.” She shouts.
“I AM NOT LAZY!” I scream.
Mom whips out her finger and points down at me.
“Yes, you are! It’s why you quit the team. You would have to work to get your starting position back, and you are too lazy to even do that!”
So now I am bleeding. Mom knows just where to put the knife.
“Don’t even go there,” I say.
Mom shrugs.
“Why not? It’s true!”
So I throw one right at her head. Not a brush back. A beanball.
“Yeah, and it’s true they are going to kick your sorry ass out of the country. At least I know where I was born.”
Mom’s eyes get real big, and she comes at me.
“Don’t you talk that way to me, you little shit!”
My turn to shrug.
“Why not? You lied your way in here and are probably going to screw it up for me!”
And then Mom tries to slap me, and I duck and run outside. I jump in the van, and Mom comes outside and screams to open the door.
I point to my ears and put it in reverse and leave her in the drive. I drive around until it is late and then come back and go to sleep until the Pitcher wakes me up and we go to the ball field and throw rocks. This is my life now.
“I’m tired of throwing these rocks.”
“Why…you got something better to do?”
“Yeah, plenty.”
“Well, I know you ain’t doing your homework.”
I stare at the Pitcher.
“So you talked to Mom.”
“Yeah, we’re married. Married people talk.”
“And so what did she say?”
The Pitcher shrugged and coughed and spat in the grass.
“Just that you won’t do your work, and all her work and time with you is a waste because you won’t even help yourself. Other than that, not much.”
I squint.
“She said that?”
“No. I did.”
I scowled.
“Oh, listen to the guy who keeps smoking even though he has cancer.”
The Pitcher looks down at me.
“Nobody said that, but even if I do, it’s my business—and by the way, we ain’t talking about me; we are talking about you. I already climbed the mountain. I pitched twenty-five years in the Majors and won a World Series. What have you done?”
“And you didn’t have to graduate high school to do it,” I point out.
“Those were different times then, rock head.”
I shrug and look around the ball field to where some guy is walking his dog on the far side.
“So what. I can do the same thing.”
“No. Just one small problem. You quit the team, remember?”
I shake my head. ‘They know I’m good.”
“Bull. All they know is that you are a quitter.”
Man, did that sting. So I take the bucket of rocks and throw it across the field. The Pitcher calmly pulls on his cigarette
“Oh, good. Now you can go get the rocks, rock-head.”
“NO! Screw this! I’m done.”
The Pitcher stares at me and nods slowly
‘Yeah, I think you are done, too, quitter.”
Everything is backing up on me now. Being suspended. Quitting the team. Christine dumping me. And now the Pitcher riding me.
“Screw you. I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody,” I shout marching across the field.
I reach the far end of the field and realize I couldn’t go home because Mom is waiting with my homework. I stand around and kick the grass and cuss and then walk back across the field. The Pitcher is sitting down on the bench, watching me.
“Oh, the quitter is back.”
I don’t say anything. The Pitcher leans back and hacks out something in the grass, then nods to me.
“What are you waiting for?’
I look at him. He gestures to the bucket laying on its side.
“Go get the rocks, rock-head.”
So I do.
33
Dasi Vance was a Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher. He literally had a trick up his sleeve. He bleached his sleeve to fake out the batter and confuse it with the ball. It worked, but the Dodgers rarely rose up above sixth place. Even their diehard fans called them Damn Bums in the beginning. Then they began to win, and they were just the Bums. I can relate because I am that damn bum now.
Mom and I have it out again. I’m crashed out in the basement, and she goes ballistic because I left a Panda Express bowl on the lawn. I hear this voice above me from the sanctuary of my covers.
“Is this yours, Ricky?”
I groan.
“What?”
“Is this yours?”
I look up and see angry Mom eyes. You don’t want to see those when you first wake up. She is holding a black bowl like she’s going to throw it at me or something.
“I dunno,” I mumble.
Mom’s eyes are doing double time, and she holds the bowl over my head.
“This was on the lawn. Is that what you think of our house? A garbage dump!”
“Chill out, Mom. It’s just a bowl.”
Mom does not chill out. She goes more nuts and throws the bowl against the wall. Now I’m awake.
“It’s bad enough you quit the team and are suspended for fighting, but you won’t even do your homework so you can graduate, and this is how you treat me!”
I can’t even wake up anymore without somebody riding me.
“What are you talking about? It’s a bowl,” I shout.
“I’m talking about you, Ricky! You are a jerk!”
I’m up now. I’m really up.
“Hey, you want me to move out, then say the word!”
Mom stares at me like I just swore at her.
“Where are you going to move, Ricky?”
“Anywhere but this shithole,” I shout.
Really, I have no idea where I will move, but I have to fight with something, and Mom holds all the cards.
“Fine! Get out then! Fine, move out with no high school diploma; you will get real far!”
“It worked for your dumbass,” I say, and then Mom comes at me.
I go under the covers and can feel her hands trying to find me. I fall off the couch and scramble away.
“I don t need a diploma,” I shout going upstairs and grabbing my keys and my wallet.
I mean, I ‘m still in my pajamas, but you can’t pick your battles, you know. Mom is in the doorway when I come down.
She crosses her arms.
“Don’t you take my car.”
“Fine!”
I throw the keys and stomp out the door. I’m on foot. Could things get any worse? Oh, yeah. Es is walking toward me. She is not someone I want to see right now, but she has drawn a bead and is walking me down. And like I said, I am in my pajamas outside.
“Oh, so it’s Mr. Asshole,” she says.
“Hey, Es.”
Her bright red lips start moving, and her head starts going like a parrot.
“So I heard you quit the team.”
“Yeah.”
“And that stuck-up rich bitch dumped your sorry ass.”
“Yeah.”
“And I heard you might not even graduate.”
“That’s right.”
The parrot head goes back and forth and then sideways.
“You know what your problem is, Ricky?”
“No.”
Es taps my head.
“Your head is too big. You
think you are the hot shit guy, and now look what happened to you. You are nothing.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“You shit all over people, and now you are getting shit on.”
“Yeah.”
I pause, thinking now is a good time as any to ask her to prom again. I mean, I’m really nuts when you get down to it. I just do things, and I don’t know why. Would you ask a girl to prom who you dumped and you are now standing outside in front of in your pajamas while she is ripping on you? No. But I would.
“Hey, Es, you want to go to prom?”
The parrots head goes berserk. Her eyes start jumping, and her head goes back and forth.
”I wouldn’t go with you if you were the last guy on earth!”
And then Es pushes me off the sidewalk and keeps going in her spiky heels. I turn back home. I mean really. Where was I going to go anyway?
34
IN THE BLACK LEAGUES pitchers were expected to go nine innings and would often hide a bottle cap in their glove to scuff up the ball to make it break more sharply. Spitballs, shine balls, nobody knew what the ball would do. Like nobody knows what I am going to do. I don’t even know what I am going to do. Just like a spitball, I am off balance now, and it’s anybody’s guess where I will end up.
So I have this dream. Mom and I are back in the street, playing ball. It is before the Pitcher, and we are about to lose our home, and Mom is sick, and everything basically sucks. And Mom is trying to show me how to pitch again, and I’m throwing it all over the place. But here is the weird thing. I’m happy. I mean, I still haven’t made the team, and you would think with everything against me that I would be depressed or something. But Mom is telling me again I can do whatever I want. And I believe her then, but somehow I have forgotten what she said. I don’t really believe I can do whatever I want.
I just don’t. Not the way things are now.
The rocks. The rocks are in the bucket. I throw the rocks. I pick up the rocks one at a time. I hate the rocks. It’s like I am a prisoner and all there are are the rocks. The Pitcher just watches and smokes and drinks. I ask him if Mom knows how much he smokes and drinks. My game, he says. That’s true. We work on the forkball then. I really can’t get it to drop. The worst thing is I can’t focus on what I’m doing.
“So what’s the problem?”
That’s the Pitcher, and I am throwing all over the place. The problem is Facebook and a letter of intent. Bailey put all over Facebook he is going to sign with the Cubs. I mean, that is my dream, not his, and he stole it, man. Just stole it from right under my nose.
“That’s bull,” the Pitcher says shaking his head
“It’s on Facebook,” I tell him.
“Well, that proves it’s bull then.”
Then Mom drops the big one. She says it doesn’t matter if I go back to school since I won’t try anyway, and it is a waste of time. So I might as well start looking for a job. So I call her bluff and end up at McDonald’s the next day with a headset. Mom says I might as well get used to minimum wage jobs, because that is all I will have. I count the change and take the orders. Es comes through a bunch of times and makes a point of ordering a Diet Coke and acting like she doesn’t know me.
It’s busy at McDonald’s, and I’m working the drive through. It’s not so bad, but you have to do a lot of things at once like take the order and count change and sometimes give out the food. But tonight the cars are backed up, and I have one eye on the monitor, where you can see who is ordering. And I see this jacked-up F150 pickup round the curb, and this dude with a cowboy hat lean out, and I feel my brain pop and I am hot all over.
“Yeah, man. Give me three chipotle wraps with barbeque sauce on the side and a large Coke.”
It is the Texas Bailey voice right in my ear ,and I give the next guy the wrong change. I mean I cannot concentrate, and my hands are shaking.
“Any ketchup?” I ask, keeping an eye on the screen.
“No, man. Just barbecue sauce,” Bailey says with this stupid country music playing in the background.
“Yes, sir. That’ll be six fifty,” I say, disguising my voice.
And then I see myself in my hat and my McDonald’s shirt, and I want to be anywhere but where I am. The F150 comes around the corner, and the Country Western is blaring from the cab as Bailey pulls up and he is like all hat. It is a big black hat that is low on two glimmering pieces of coal. That’s what his eyes look like to me. Black coal.
“Six-fifty, sir,” I mutter, keeping my head down.
He hands me a twenty, and I make change, and I can feel his eyes crawling over me. Then the grin. That grin says he has placed me somehow, but I ‘m not surprised. All pitchers know about each other. It’s like a club, and you always hear about who is good or who is fast. I hand him his change.
“Well, I wondered what happened to you. Guess you ended up where you belong, huh?”
I don’t say anything but keep my head down.
“Well, thanks, Mex. Come around sometime, and I’ll get you some tickets to the game. “
I look up at him then, and he just grins, then guns the truck away. I am totally off now and not hearing the guy over the headset, who is ordering about ten things. I am staring at the last order, and I consider grabbing Bailey’s Coke and taking a piss in it or throwing his chipotle wraps in the trash. Thanks, Mex. It’s Eric Payne all over again, and I cannot focus. Thanks, Mex.
“Hey, Ricky, man, the cars are all messed up. Here, go to the order window, man,” Alfonso my manager says, taking the headset.
I give it to him, and he’s right. My brain is fried. I cannot focus in on what anyone is saying. It’s like I am all the way back four years before and Eric is calling me a beano and taking my cupcake.
“Hey, Ricky, take these Chipotle wraps and the Coke to the dude in the pickup truck,” Julie my other manager says, handing me the bag.
“I really don’t want to do that,” I say.
She stares at me as if I have lost my mind. I mean, we are backed up, and in McDonald’s, man, you never say no to a request.
“Just do it, Ricky,” she says jamming the bag in my hands.
And now I have Bailey’s two Chipotle wraps with extra barbecue sauce, and I am walking out the door. The black F150 is pumping out exhaust and country music, and I can see the DON’T TREAD ON ME sticker and the Confederate flag on the bumper. I can see Bailey’s arm on the door, and a cigarette flicks into the dusk light. I think about just throwing his food away and going back in. But I know that will get me fired, and I need the job.
So I walk up to the window, and Bailey turns with that shit-eating grin.
“They got you doing everything, huh, Mex?”’
“Si, Senor,” I say handing him the chipotle wraps.
And then just as I am handing him the Coke, I know what I am going to do. It’s like the most natural thing in the world. I take the large Coke and pop the lid off and hand it to him. Just as he goes to take it, I turn it upside down and pour all that Coke in his lap.
He screams.
“You little bastard!”
“Oh, I am so sorry, Senor,” I say, shaking my head. “My bad, Senor. I will get you another.”
Bailey is out of his truck in his cowboy boots, trying to get that large coke off his pants, but it looks like he pissed down his leg. Then he is trying to get the Coke out of his truck, then whips around and grabs me by the shirt.
“You did that on purpose!”
I am praying he will take a punch, and I’ll get him arrested then.
“Oh, no, Senor. It was an accident. I assure you.”
“What’s going on here?’
Alfonso is out in the drive with his headset.
“This fricking Mexican just dumped Coke inside my truck and all over me!”
Alfonso is a big dude, and he sees the truck and the stickers.
“There is no need for racial slurs, sir. I am sure it was an accident.”
I am smiling at Bailey like the ha
ppy Mexican. He looks at Alfonso, then me and nods slowly.
“I get it. Screw the gringo. I’m just glad I wiped your ass off that mound, Mex, and I’ll do it again.”
And then he gets back in his truck and roars away.
Alfonso stares at him with the headset winking angrily on his head.
“You know that dude?”
I shrug.
“No. Never saw him before.”
35
DIZZY DEAN WAS A cocky right-handed Pitcher for the Cardinals. A farm boy who had dropped out of school in the second grade. He was a cotton picker when Branch Ricky discovered him. He would often ask a batter, son, what kind of pitch would you like to miss? In the World Series he was hit in the head by a throw from the shortstop and knocked out. Headlines the next day said X-rays of Dean’s head showed nothing. Lately, I could have had that same X-ray.
Joey picks me up after work, and we go cruising in his low-riding Chevy. He dropped out of school a while ago and has worked all over the place, but he has a lot of cash and I figure he is dealing, because he’s started hanging with some gangbangers. He is slouched way down and pulls on some beer in a paper bag that doesn’t taste so bad because it is a hot night, and after the thing with Bailey, I wouldn’t mind getting a little fuzzed out, you know. I don’t smoke weed because it slows me down, but I have had a few beers with the Pitcher in the garage, and so I hand Joey back the bag after taking a couple heavy pulls.
“Yeah, I know about your homeboy, Bailey,” he says rubbing his goatee.
I look at him. “Yeah.’
“Yeah, man.” He nods. “Don’t you know, bro? He is all roided up. Got it from some dudes who supply him and who I supply.’
“No shit.”
“Yeah, man.” Joey drives cocked down with his hat on backward, wheeling the car around the parking lot. “You think he can pitch like that without some heavy-duty chemicals? Shit. I did some checking, you know. It’s why they moved from Texas, man. He got kicked out of his school. He likes his blow, and he is heavy with cash. My man says he always has like a thousand bucks on him, which makes me think he is dealing
I look at him
“How’s he know that?”
The Pitcher 2 Page 11