Nobody Bats a Thousand

by Steve Schmale

  “No, no, he wasn’t blaming anybody for anything. It’s just something that comes up every so often.”

  “It’s nobody’s fault I guess. I think about your daddy a lot. I just never get around to calling him. Maybe it just never seems like the right time.” Del paused and looked out into space. “It’s just with the life I lead. I got a little house in Texas just outside Austin. It’s about the only thing I got to keep after my last divorce. I bet I’m there five weeks a year tops. This life, down deep I love it, but you always seem rushed and busy, even though half the time it seems you’re doing nothing but wasting time. Like today, you showing up saved me from a long boring afternoon.” He walked three feet to the edge of the hill. “You ready for a little adventure, nephew? Looks like a bit of a hike but right out there,” he said as he pointed, “it looks like a bit of a path worn through the sage brush to the mesa. Ready to get your sneakers a little dusty?”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Bring the water.”

  They carefully negotiated the face of the hill with slow steps to keep from sliding then started on the path twisting through the dry gnarled sage. For several minutes they did not seem to be gaining on the mesa still waiting in the distance. Another few minute’s travel through taller sage that hampered their view, and suddenly the trail ended, and they were there at the base of the hill, looking up at a cliff stopping them like a huge wall.

  “I don’t know about this,” Jimmy said as he turned to his uncle.

  Del studied the area left and right. He started off to the left, “Come on.” They moved along a wash at the base of the cliff for about seventy yards until they came upon the rudiments of a path worked into the hillside.

  “See. It’s easy. Just watch out for loose rocks.” Del looked at Jimmy. “And snakes.” He turned away, grinned, and pushed his hat down. The pathway worked upward gradually, wrapping back and forth across the hill until it ended on a large, flat, shaded spot just in front a huge round concave worn into the side of the butte.

  Del, catching his breath, stood out away from the shade in a lane of sunshine. He lifted off his sunglasses and hung them on the collar of his T-shirt as he adjusted to the fresh spectacle before him. Ludlow, the buildings tiny but seemingly within reach of a good rock toss, was in full view. All around it, spreading out in the sunshine, miles and miles of yellow or green grass, wild flowers, and sage. Straight beyond that, resting more than a hundred miles away, the layers of mountains, purple-gray, cone-shaped backdrops still topped with snow.

  “This is it. This is the Caves.” Jimmy kicked at a dirty beer bottle. “Not really a whole lot to look at.”

  “Freshest air I’ve tasted in a while.” Del contemplated the full horizon for another full minute before turning to walk back into the shade of the tall shallow cave. “The book said you could actually see Indian drawings on the walls here.” With Jimmy next to him Del walked fifty feet until he was flush with the back wall of the indenture. “I guess you really can’t call this a cave, but it’s deep enough to protect you from the wind and rain and high up enough for defense,” he said as he walked along the wall, studying it. “I doubt that’s one of the drawings the book was talking about.” Del pointed up to a portrayal in black spray paint of two stick people standing and having sex, and, not far from the drawing, the words ‘OZZY RULES’ painted in gold. “That book of mine is from the nineteen thirties. I guess we got here a little too late.”

  They kicked around through the dirt and rocks and dead fire pits littered with crusty beer cans and bottles until Del stopped to pick something up.

  “Hey, I guess you could call this a genuine artifact.” He held up a ring with a pear-shaped attachment, a disposable pop-top from an aluminum can. “When’s the last time you saw one of these?”

  Jimmy shook his head.

  Del smiled as he looked at his discovery. “You ever heard of the guitar player Elmer Bloom?”

  “I think my brother Bob had one of his albums.”

  “The last time I saw one of these things, just a few years ago, we were playing a gig with old Elmer, and he had one of these, all shiny and new-looking, hanging on a gold chain around his neck.” Del looked at it then stuffed it into his back pocket. “I was curious, but I never got around to asking him what that was all about.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Elmer? Oh, he’s just a good old boy from Texas, a good old boy with a college degree. Smarter than he puts on and mostly fun to be around, but he’s just like the rest of us I guess. He’s happy as hell and ready for a few cold ones if the show goes well but only ready for a club soda and a long bus ride to the next town when nobody shows.”

  “Seems like it’d be fun to travel around and get paid to play music.”

  “It has its ups and downs like anything else.” Del kicked an empty Coors bottle into a pile of others. “Don’t get me wrong. I know I’m a fortunate man. Hell, I haven’t had a record on the charts for nearly twenty years, but thank god there’s still enough people still out there willing to pay to see us do our thing.”

  “But you keep at it. You must like it.”

  “Hell, I’m an entertainer. That’s what I’m all about, son. That’s just about all I know how to do. But these one-niters.” Del shook his head. “I don’t care if you’re traveling by bus or private plane, or even if you were flying from town to town in a damn spaceship, living like this just wears you down,” he said before he paused and shook his head again. “I ain’t saying it’s all bad, but there’s too many times you pull into a strange town, tired and hungry, and a Big Mac looks as good to ya as a steak dinner at the Fairmont. It’s times like that ya stop and wonder if it’s all worth it.” He stuck his hands into his pockets, looked down, then looked up and smiled. The smile building until he was beaming, the deep lines in his face swelling with dignity and joy. “But then you’re up on stage and everything is working, and all those thoughts of doubt and gloom are a million miles away when you got the whole place rocking, and everybody is in to it and having fun, man, it’s like a damn revival sometimes. Hey, you want to talk about painters or writers, hell, I dig art and books, but you’ll never see anybody who’s touring an art museum or reading a book up and boogying like at the shows we did in Portland and Seattle last week. Without the people digging your sound, without the magic of nights like that, I doubt anybody could do this for long.”

  Del walked from the shade into the sunshine near the verge of the mesa, Jimmy following.

  “Maybe there ain’t much to see up here, but I’m glad we came,” Del said. “Being up here helps you get the feeling of the people who lived here, not really that long ago, what a couple of hundred years ago? That’s nothing if you think about it.” He dusted off the top of a large flat rock and sat, staring out at the vista. Jimmy sat next to Del.

  “The natives here, they knew something,” Del said. “They didn’t have cell phones or the Stock Market or cable TV or any of all that other crap that makes us feel so civilized, but they knew there was more to life than just what meets the eye. They knew as sure as the sun came up in the morning that there was something deeper to this existence, something subtle and pure, but with spirits and different dimensions and shit, something that could never be rationally explained. They might have called it the Great Spirit, but they didn’t need to build the Vatican to convince ‘em they were right. They just didn’t hassle about it or fret about it, and they didn’t have to have everything explained to them in black and white. They just accepted it, appreciated what they were given and knew everything would work out if they just lived right and didn’t worry about it all. That’s pretty cool.”

  A red-tailed hawk swooped in huge circles across the breath of their vision, diving then rising with the thermals. Below them, miles away, two kids looking as small as bugs played basketball on the blacktop of a small school. Del and Jimmy passed the water until the canteen was dry while an easy breeze as light as silk brushed across them.

  D
el took his sunglasses from his shirt and again covered his eyes. “You know, the thing is.” He sucked in a full breath and blew it out. “The thing is, I’m afraid to call your daddy.”

  “Afraid?”

  “I guess that would be the best way to describe it.” Del leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his fists again his chin. “It’s because, because…well, I think I’ve lost his respect.”

  “Dad never mentions your name ‘cept to say something good.”

  “Carl never ran anybody down. That’s not his style. But this goes way back I think.” Del rubbed his neck with his left hand.

  “Uncle Del ”

  “No, no, let me explain. You see ever since the time I was barely a teenager I used to hitch to Lincoln or Omaha or Kansas City and somehow sneak in to see all the bands I loved, like Eddie Adams and his band. And get my butt whipped every time I came home.” He smiled at Jimmy then again looked straight ahead. “I was a brash kid. A couple of times I snuck backstage and played my harp for Eddie, told him I was a singer and the best harp player in the state of Nebraska or some such nonsense. Well, as strange as it still seems, one year he was in a bind, and after I convinced him I was eighteen he hired me. I became part of the band.”

  “Wow, how did that feel, being so young and all.”

  “I was too damn young to know how it felt. I wasn’t even sixteen. But I do remember sitting in the backseat of one of those damn ugly green station wagons he used, my first night on the road, sitting there being both wildly excited and scared shitless at the same time.”

  “But it worked out for you. My daddy’s proud of you uncle Del. He’s not the type to say it out loud, but I know he is.”

  “It’s not that, it’s, well, part of it is the way I left. I just flat stole Papa’s truck, drove it to Denver to catch up with the band and left it parked there in Denver without a second thought. Worst, most thoughtless thing I’ve ever done…I’ve learned to not live with a lot of guilt, stuff happens, but when I think about doing that...man oh man.” Del’s attention drifted out into the distance. He started again, “Hell, I’ve sung for the Queen of England. I’ve been on stage in front of fifty thousand people without blinking, but that man, that man,” Del said as he shook his head, “I swear I tried, but I couldn’t ever muster enough courage to go home and look him in the eye.” Del glanced at his nephew. “Oh, I’d stop back if I was in that part of the country. I’d stay in town, see your dad and old friends. I’d go out to the farm and visit Ma if I knew the old man wasn’t around.” He straightened his posture and smiled. “Shoot, I remember once I took your daddy with me to Denver just before he married your mom.” He turned to Jimmy. “I bet he never told you about that weekend.”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, anyway, when the old man got sick I was in Europe. By the time I got home to see him, he’d already been buried for ten days.”

  Del raised his hat and brushed back his hair. He went on, talking louder, the words quicker and shorter than before, “I finally got the mud to see him, to face up, to straighten things out, but,” his speech slowed, “it was too late, he was already cold in his grave. I never even got the chance to apologize or to say good-bye.” Del used his thumb to slowly wipe the corner of each eye under his dark glasses. “That was the last time I saw you, or your daddy or any of the family, ‘cause…’cause your daddy seemed to act different towards me. Like he held it all against me. Like he knew I could have been there two weeks earlier if I’d really tried.” Del stared out at the sky. “And, like always, your daddy was probably right.”

  Jimmy did not know what to say. He could not think of anything that did not seem hollow and stupid, so the two sat quietly, watching the traffic moving slowly through Ludlow, and the graceful hawk still gliding in broad circles above it all.

  Finally Del stood and stretched his arms above his head. “This place is so peaceful and beautiful I could probably sit here forever. But I got to get back and get some rest so I can put it out tonight.”

  They carefully moved down the trail off the mesa to the valley and quickly covered the route back to the truck with Jimmy racing up the hill then reaching back to help his uncle make the last few feet.

  In the truck, slowly moving down the dirt road, Del opened the glove box to examine the truck’s hidden stereo receiver. “Jesus nephew, how many speakers this thing have? This system is worth more than the truck.”

  “Eight speakers total in the cab. That’s what I do on the side, installation.” Jimmy had both hands on the wheel, fighting the ruts, the truck rocking side to side. “I put a system into dad’s big tractor with the enclosed cab. He’s only got eight or nine CD’s, mostly Dolly Parton and a bunch of hillbilly crap, but three of his them are CD’s of yours.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He bought ‘em his self.”

  “I guess that’s really something.”

  “You bet.”

  About a quarter of a mile later the truck hit a deep rut and bucked hard. Jimmy came off the seat. Del grabbed his hat and pressed down with the palm of his hand.

  “MAN!” Jimmy was suddenly exasperated.

  “Pretty rough.”

  “No, I could have missed that hole. I hit it ‘cause I was spacing. I was thinking about you knowing John Lennon. That just freaks me out.”

  “Oh, gosh, nephew, he was just a guy, just like you or me. A neat guy, a talented guy, but just a guy,” Del said. He squeezed the brim of his hat as he stared out the side window, quietly, until just before they came to paved road when he turned to his nephew. “All this adulation for entertainers—singers, athletes, actors—it’s crazy. It’s really nuts all the money some of these people make.” He and Jimmy simultaneously looked both ways before Jimmy turned onto Miles road. “I think of people like my daddy and your daddy, wheat farmers all their lives. They’re what America is supposed to be all about. They made a decent, honest living, but they never got rich, and they had to work hard and be smart and kind of lucky to get what they’ve got. It’s really crazy, but people in this country will pay more to be entertained than they will to be fed.” He looked at Jimmy. “Ain’t this a crazy world?”

  They turned onto Hwy. 40 and drove without speaking. Soon they were back on bumpy dirt parking lot of Charlie’s. Jimmy slowly drove behind the building, parking parallel to the windshield of Del’s bus.

  They shook hands.

  “Here.” Del leaned forward to pull out his wallet. “Take this for carting me around.” He offered Jimmy a twenty.

  “I don’t need gas. I’m still almost full.”

  Del put the bill into the glove box, slamming it shut. “Well, buy yourself some supper.” Del got out and stood next to the truck, his hands on the door. “Great to see you nephew. Track me down again sometime. Someplace you can see the show. We play more than just bars.”

  “I will.”

  “Well then, I’ll see ya when I see ya.” Del lightly beat on the truck, turned and started to walk away.

  “Uncle Del.”

  Del stopped and moved back toward the truck. “Yeah?”

  “Call my dad, would ya?”

  Del took off his glasses to show his dark eyes. “I will, Jimmy, I will.” He looked down, kicked at the dirt, and then focused directly into his nephew’s eyes. “Hooking up with you today has to mean something, something more than just chance,” Del said. He stood and stared for several seconds until Jimmy nodded his head. “When the time is right to call Carl, I’ll know it. I’ll feel it and I’ll call. I promise.” Del smiled, winked and waved; then stepped away and disappeared into the bus.

  Twenty minutes later, Jimmy was at a drive-in with carports and carhops, waiting for his order. He pushed in a CD of his uncle Del and his band playing their roadhouse rhythm and blues, live, somewhere in Germany; Del singing and playing his harp, the band cooking, the crowd going wild after each song.

  After his food came, with the music surrounding him as he bit into his burger and stuffed his mouth
with fries, he could picture his uncle playing to a full house at Charlie’s. The crowd up, clapping and smiling, dancing and sweating; a room of people forgetting their problems and pains, not worrying about work or money or raising kids. A group of friends and strangers sharing the night, sharing the consequence of the music, magic and joy before fanning out in different directions with an ardent memory they could hold forever.

  Jimmy, chewing slowly and rhythmically while he continued to imagine the occasion inspired by his blood kin, felt both calmed and spirited by his vision of the whole scene; the stirring of emotions, the heartening of souls. He pondered that connection and thought it quite a thing.

  The End

  VICTIMS OF CIRCUMSTANCE

  She lingered more than usual, making sure she’d taken it all, then lifted her head from my lap and checked her make-up and hair in the small side mirror outside the passenger door, though the light that reached us from her front porch was very dim.