Wicked and Weird

by Rich Terfry

  I awoke the next morning to a sound that filled me with dread: the drumming of fat raindrops against the orange nylon of the tent. I packed up and walked over to the rec centre next to the park. A table had been set up to receive and register campers as they arrived. Two of the young coaching assistants were stationed there, equipped with pens and clipboards.

  “Think we’ll play ball today?” I asked.

  “It’s not looking good. Forecast is calling for rain all day.”

  “Stan’s not going to like this.” My statement was punctuated with a couple of nervous stabs of fake laughter. Both the young coaches looked up at me with expressions of rueful surprise.

  “You didn’t hear?”

  My heart squeezed into a fist.

  “Stan passed away.”

  I gasped for air as the sky fell. My childhood was over.

  THE INTERROGATION II

  “What is your occupation?”

  When I was a kid growing up in Mount Uniacke, I had been ashamed to admit my interest in music. I was afraid I’d be beaten up. Now, confessing my passion to the interrogator, I felt that shame again. I imagined him thinking I was wasting my life, so why shouldn’t I spend the rest of my days in jail?

  “Musician,” I said.

  I wanted so badly to say, “baseball player.” For so long I had felt my destiny was to play baseball. To make it to the Big Leagues is a heroic thing. At that very moment, I should have been standing on the grass of an open field. I should have been rounding third base and heading for home. Instead, I was in a cage.

  As I had expected, the interrogator gave me a disgusted look and shook his head.

  I couldn’t look him or the interpreter in the eye. I hung my head and studied the strange sight of my lace-less shoes.

  •

  AFTER BEING LEFT at the altar of baseball, I couldn’t show my face back in Mount Uniacke. I had promised everyone that the next time they saw me I would be in a Yankees uniform. So instead of going home, I went to the city—to Halifax. No one, including my family, knew where I was. Or seemed to care.

  In Halifax, I squatted in an abandoned four-storey office building. Between eight and twelve other people lived there at any given time. The building was barely fit for habitation. No one stayed on the ground floor because it was always under a foot of water—a result of the building’s rot, cracks and breaches, and the city’s almost non-stop rain. There were disgusting ad hoc kitchens and bathrooms on each floor. The place was lousy with mould, cats and criminals, but the price was right and I wasn’t fussy.

  I desperately needed to keep playing baseball. So that summer I tried out for a team in a community named Ecum Secum (pronounced eek ’em-seek ’em) outside Halifax. The team was called the Pony Boys and they were terrible. The whole league was terrible. Most of the players didn’t give a shit, and neither did the coaches and umpires. The games were played on the worst fields in the county—slanted, pitted lots polluted with puddles, beer bottles and dandelions.

  I became the Pony Boys’ starting shortstop, and I played with sadistic intensity. I struck out only twice that entire season. For a week in late July, my batting average was over .800. I collected as many doubles as I did base hits. I was playing for the gods—Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Rogers Hornsby—and for the devil—Ty Cobb. I played with anger, fear and self-loathing. Nothing got past me. I broke hands with throws across the diamond. I tore the cover off the ball with my bat.

  I carried the team on my back and gave everyone nicknames. Our catcher became “Walrus” (his name was Russ and he had buck teeth). “Compass” played first (he was often late showing up for games because he always got lost). “Manute” played second (he was short and fat). At the hot corner was “Rhombus” (he always looked like he was about to fall over; I think he had an inner-ear problem but was too embarrassed to tell anyone). Out in left was “Fudge” (he was Mormon and never swore). “Quasar” played centre field (he was passionate about science and spoke about baseball solely in terms of physics and complex analytics). “Lagerfeld” patrolled right field (he prided himself on his fashion sense and bragged about having his clothes Martinized).

  The team started to become successful halfway through the summer. And once my coaches got a taste of blood, they became ruthless in their desire to win. Of all the players, they pushed me especially hard. I was never a pitcher, but they sent me to the mound regularly because I could throw hard. All I really had was a fastball and I was overthrowing, so after five or six innings my arm would be dead. But I never complained—and because we were winning, the coaches never pulled me. We were stubborn and greedy, and slowly but surely my shoulder was being destroyed. Muscles ruptured. Tendons tore away from bone. I’d wake up the morning after games in so much pain I couldn’t lift the bedsheets off my body. With rest, proper diagnosis and treatment, my shoulder should have lasted another twenty years. But we kept pounding it day after day, and by the end of the season it was wrecked. I could barely lift my right arm. The damage was irreparable. To this day, if I fall asleep with my right arm above my head, my body is paralyzed with pain when I wake up.

  My knee was badly injured that summer, too. In one of the last games of the season, I was playing shortstop. I turned a double play at second base and released my throw to first. As I did so, I planted my left leg so that it supported all my weight. I didn’t have time to jump over the charging baserunner, who barrelled into me at full speed, severely hyperextending my knee. The pain was so intense my body went into shock and I passed out. I was told that my knee was a gruesome sight to behold.

  When I came around, I felt like I had been shot. I’ve barely been able to run or climb stairs since.

  •

  After my knee injury, I cried myself to sleep every night for a year. I continued to play baseball as much as possible, but I couldn’t ignore the shadows now stretching across my field of dreams. For the first time, I had to consider the dreadful notion of a Plan B. This was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. To consider pursuing something other than baseball felt like an insult. Worse! I was stabbing my past self in the chest. I was throwing my childhood on a fire. I was conceding that my suffering was in vain—all the hours in the backyard, easily ten thousand! Probably twice that. The devotion to the foundation wall. The avalanches of snowballs. The galaxy of rocks. The hell of my body. Beyond that, I’d endured abuses at home, the terrors of Mount Uniacke and torture in the woods—all because baseball had promised deliverance. Baseball was supposed to be my salvation from the horrors.

  Step One of my surrender was to go to school. I resolved that if I couldn’t make it to the major leagues as a player, I’d get there some other way, maybe as a team doctor. I applied for programs at a few different colleges and universities (there are eight post-secondary schools to choose from in Halifax). I’d had excellent grades in high school, so I was accepted everywhere I applied. After consulting with a few advisers, I decided to pursue a bachelor of science degree with a major in biology. Along with the requisite courses in biology, chemistry and mathematics, I rounded out my schedule with English and philosophy classes.

  Step Two was to get a job. Across the street from the squat was a newsstand called the Paper Chase. It was my dumb luck that I asked for a job the same day that someone else quit. I was hired on the spot and was paid minimum wage to mind the till and mop the floor. My boss was a humongous, cigar-smoking Greek named George. His fights with his wife were the stuff of legend around the neighbourhood. The shop was their gladiatorial arena. On any given day during business hours, they’d wreck the place as they waged their warfare. Mostly they screamed and threw stuff at each other—reading materials, refreshments, rolls of quarters … Customers would come and go in the midst of the ruckus and pretend it wasn’t happening, ducking as necessary. When it was over, my job was to sweep up.

  Many of our regular customers were the homeless who panhandled in the area. They’d scrape together a few bucks in change and come in to buy
smokes and candy. One evening during my shift, a guy named Gord shuffled in. He had no teeth and was almost completely blind. In manner and speaking voice, he resembled the Pete Martell character from the early 1990s television series Twin Peaks. Gord’s moods were unpredictable. I remember one particular evening when he was especially sullen. He squinted and felt his way to a rack stocked with bags of potato chips. Then he grabbed a bag at random and held it to his face to read the label.

  “Need a hand there, Gord?”

  “Nope.”

  After a solid twenty minutes of inspection and consideration, Gord reported to the counter, ready to make his purchase. “Says here there’s 50 per cent more chips inside,” he said, pointing to his selection, “but they still fill half the bag with fuckin’ WIND!” Step Three toward becoming a real person (not just a would-be baseball player) was to turn to music for a creative and emotional outlet. Hip hop music had been my passion for almost as long as baseball had, and I decided that now was the time to try my hand at it. There was a vibrant scene in Halifax, but my paralyzing fear of people stood in the way of my willingness to ingratiate. Instead, I spent some of my Toledo savings on second-hand equipment (four-track recorder, sampler, drum machine, turntable) and pulled my hair out teaching myself how to operate it.

  Step Four was to fall in love at first sight with a girl named Rose. This happened at the neighbourhood greasy spoon where I ate three or four times a week (other days I would crash art openings and eat free). She floated in to pick up a take-out order, looking like a quasi-gypsy version of Italian actress Virna Lisi, circa 1965. First time I saw Rose I felt as if I was going insane. Her beauty was terrifying. It made her seem immortal. But it was more than her beauty that struck me. She looked like she had secrets or answers or had seen things I couldn’t imagine.

  After that first sighting, I’d catch a glimpse of her once every two weeks or so and would always experience the same confused, excited, almost panicked response. I dreamed about her every night, but never imagined she’d be mine in a million years. Even if I’d known how to find her, I would have never spoken to her. I was too afraid. I was satisfied with the agony of admiring her in secret.

  Step Five was to start my own radio program at the university’s campus station. I had amassed a decent record collection over the years, and wanted to share it. The station already had one show on its schedule that played hip hop music, but I thought it was lousy—with a lousy time slot and a lousy host who had a lousy record collection. I managed to convince the station manager that I was the man to rectify the situation.

  The station’s program director was a loud, proud lesbian named Patti. I’d never encountered anyone like her before. She was completely alien to me. She took a shine to me right away. Maybe she saw in my eyes that I was a wounded, frightened animal. Or maybe she saw that I was a clueless hick in desperate need of some guidance and enlightenment. Whatever the case, she took me under her wing. She made time to talk to me, to ask me questions and to be my friend. Her interest and openness went a long way toward me pulling my head out of my ignorant ass.

  Although this hadn’t been my intention, the radio show had the effect of bringing the local hip hop community to me, for better and for worse. Soon every rapper in the city (and sometimes beyond) was calling or showing up at the studio, wanting me to play their tapes. I made some friends whom I would later learn from and work with, and I made some enemies too.

  •

  Having taken these five important steps, my life was now on a new track. I just didn’t know it yet.

  I still considered baseball my top priority, despite my debilitating injuries. I had no idea what to do other than to stay in shape and play hard every day. I was motivated, but with Stan gone I also felt lost and scared. I was, in other words, desperate for direction. And that is precisely when I had a defining experience with the paranormal.

  The Amazing Kreskin is a mentalist, or thought reader, from New Jersey. He had a TV show I’d watched and loved when I was a kid. On that show he would demonstrate his abilities with a vaudevillian’s flair. He was warm and charming and funny. He had a dorky haircut and wore beige suits and big glasses. His smiling eyes made him the most likeable person in the world. When I heard all those years later that he was coming to Halifax for a performance, I was beside myself. But my terrible excitement turned quickly to disappointment when I realized I would be unable to afford admission.

  The morning after Kreskin’s show, I was working a shift at the newsstand. A few customers who had seen the show tormented me with their reports. During a lull in business, I was daydreaming at my station behind the counter, when I noticed a man standing with his back turned to me over in the literary section at the rear of the store. The counter was positioned to the immediate right of the entrance, so no one came in or went out without me noticing. But this customer had materialized out of nowhere. I studied the figure for a moment, and it occurred to me that I recognized the shoulders, the haircut and protruding corners of the eyeglasses.

  KRESKIN!

  The very instant the name flashed in my mind, he spun to face me with a startled expression, as if he had just heard a gunshot. He stared into my eyes. We each held our ground for a few seconds, locked in each other’s gazes. Then, without breaking eye contact, he began to move slowly across the store toward me. I stepped from behind the counter to meet him and he wrapped his arms around me. He held me for a moment, perhaps to read me. Finally, he spoke:

  “You’re a ball player. A good one, too. Isn’t that right?”

  I began to cry uncontrollably and struggled to speak.

  “Kreskin. I …”

  “Shh …”

  He stepped out of our embrace but kept his hands on my shoulders and again looked deep into my eyes. Then he unloaded:

  “You grew up on a mountain … not far from here … Mount … Is it … Unique?”

  “Uniacke.”

  “Uniacke. Yes … You have two sisters … A brother you don’t know … You’re not close with your family, are you?”

  “No.”

  “No … There’s a gas station …”

  Then, after a longer pause, a troubled expression came over his face.

  “The woods … Something hurt you in the woods.”

  My crying intensified.

  “You’re strong … The Yankees … Baseball … Is your name Buck?”

  “Yes.”

  “Buck … Okay … You’re hurt … Are you hurt?”

  “Kreskin, do you know what’s going to happen?”

  I could see his concentration deepen.

  “You’ll travel … You’re going to see the world … There’s something else for you … Music? Does that make sense?”

  I didn’t say anything. I was waiting to hear him say something about baseball.

  “Love … Somebody is going to come into your life soon … I see a very beautiful girl …”

  Another longer pause, and then:

  “Buck, your mother is sick.”

  “What?”

  “Your mother is sick … I can’t say any more. I’m sorry.”

  His hands were still on my shoulders and he was still looking into me. His expression became unreadable.

  “Buck, please be careful. You’re going to have a very interesting life, but please be careful … There’s—”

  That’s where he stopped himself. He removed his hands from my shoulders, tilted his head to the side and smiled his famous smile.

  “I should be going. It was very good to meet you, Buck. We’ll meet again. We will. Maybe next time you’ll be able to make it out to the show.”

  He shook my hand. His hands were so beautiful. So warm and soft. His handshake was famously vigorous. I was excited to be experiencing it.

  “I gotta run.”

  I don’t remember him walking out of the shop. He seemed to vanish the same way he appeared—into thin air. Poof.

  My mind reeled as I wiped the tears from my face. Over
the next few hours, I reviewed what had happened a hundred times, trying to make sense of it. I struggled to convince myself I wasn’t dreaming. Even today it is hard to believe. Being around other people, especially strangers, made me nervous enough. Having someone else inside my head—not having my thoughts to myself—was a terrifying notion. But Kreskin’s trespass across my most sacrosanct frontier was somehow not scary at all. Despite my tears I had felt completely calm. Blank. Those few minutes with him are the only ones in my life when I’ve known complete serenity.

  I didn’t sleep much over the next week. I couldn’t get what Kreskin had said out of my head. But thinking about it got me nowhere. What about my career with the Yankees (about which he had, confusingly, said nothing)? What was this about music? What was wrong with my mother? Should I come out of hiding and tell her what he had said? Why had he warned me to be careful? How could I possibly be more careful with my life than I already was? What was he about to say when he stopped himself? How could I put that out of my head? And who was about to come into my life?

  The answers to some of those questions arrived quickly.

  Almost exactly a week after my encounter with Kreskin, a grungy girl who looked like a cartoon mouse walked into the newsstand, presented herself before me at the counter and made an announcement: