Nobody Bats a Thousand

by Steve Schmale

  The light of morning found more suffering. My head pounded and was covered with sweat. No matter how I positioned myself I couldn’t get comfortable enough to go back to sleep, so I finally got out of bed and went into the kitchen, feeling the strength of gravity pulling on me like never before.

  My mother was standing in front of the kitchen sink, looking out the window. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table.

  “So what time did you boys get in last night?”

  “Not sure.” I tried the coffee. It tasted bitter and offensive. “Is the old man up?”

  “Not so you’d notice.”

  I sat there acting like I was trying to read the morning paper, but though the words physically came into focus my mind was in no state to bind them together to make any sense. Still I kept at it, forcing myself to drink the coffee, staring down at the paper, trying to avoid any more questions from my mother, fearing a self-righteous lecture about me and the old man being a couple of irresponsible drunk fuck-ups. But the lecture never came. She just stood in the same place, drinking her coffee, looking out at the morning, seemingly oblivious to my current weakness and pain.

  A few minutes later, I could hear the old man stirring. I left the kitchen, went down the hall, and caught my old man just before he got to the bathroom. Sometime during the night he had taken off his clothes, and now he was down to his pale body covered only by a pair of striped boxer shorts.

  “Morning,” I said. He didn’t say anything. He just stopped and looked at me with tired dark eyes. For some reason I had a strong urge to communicate, right then and there, so I continued, “I’m glad we talked last night. It really helps me to know that you’re on my side about bucking the tide.”

  “‘Bout what?”

  “You know, about turning down this job. About following my heart even if everybody else thinks it’s nuts.”

  “Billy,” he paused and seemed to strain to talk, “you got to learn that nights like last night, things said in that frame of mind are forgotten the next day.”

  “But…”

  “Look Billy, use your head. Don’t let decisions you make while you’re in a bad frame of mind screw up your whole life. Don’t be hasty.” His lips tighten, his whole body seemed to be straining to hold them together. “Excuse me,” he mumbled just before he rushed into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. I could hear him throwing up, the sound only lightly muffled by the hollow door.

  When I was a kid, before I hit my teens, I used to do a lot of reading in my bedroom before I got my own TV, mostly history and biographies. The reason I bring it up is once, while I was messing with my old man’s stuff in the basement, I found a beat-up copy of a book. The only book of fiction he had among all the hundreds of books he had about gambling and sports betting. The book was On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I thumbed through it, became interested, secretly took it to my room, and I was enthralled. I read it straight through, and I wanted to be that guy hitching across the country in the sun, the rain or snow; riding buses down the great San Joaquin Valley; letting life just deal the cards, living spontaneous and free. Later, I found out that the book and the writer were famous. He was the first beatnik or something, the precursor to the hippies of the sixties. I remember being very disappointed when I learned that. I’d thought in Kerouac I had my own little special secret but discovering this wasn’t true the book suddenly became less thrilling, and the freedom I’d felt while reading it became less free. But then I thought at least my old man had the book. I thought maybe he was a lot more hip than I’d ever pictured him, and that was great, feeling this stoic mailman had thoughts and feelings well beyond what it appeared. I remember asking him about the book. At first he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about then he said he might have read, he really didn’t remember, but that the book belonged to his friend Chipper, and that’s why he kept it around.

  I remember the way I had felt that day, probably about ten years before, and that was exactly the way I felt standing outside that bathroom listening to my near naked old man on the other side of the door puking. It was a feeling midway between disappointment and betrayal, a feeling of weakness from being thoroughly let down. I went into the kitchen, sat down and looked at my mother who was now wandering around the room watering her houseplants.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  “Did dad change? Was he different when he came back from Vietnam?”

  “Oh, god yes.”

  “Like how?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” she looked up from her watering, trying to think.

  “Did he like lose ambition?”

  “Yes!” the word sprang from her as if I’d put into words what had been on the tip of her tongue for twenty years. “When he first went to work at the Post Office he didn’t seem to care about anything, and he was a mess, drinking too much, missing too much work or going there with terrible hangovers. He almost got fired.” She shifted her attention to a different hanging plant. “I’m glad he finally got over all of that.” She stopped and looked at me. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Gina called while you were asleep. I told her you’d call her back.”

  I guess I just sort of grunted.

  “What’s wrong? Is something the matter between you two?”

  “Nothing she knows about. I don’t know, but sometimes I actually hate being around her. I guess it’s because she talks so damn much. She talks just to talk, like she hates silence.”

  “You’re just like your father. You both like your peace and quiet.”

  “That’s probably why he’s down in the basement so much. He’s not just trying to figure out the perfect system, he’s trying to get away from the human race.”

  “Among other things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, I’ve found where he hides his bottles, and I’ve found his empties in the garage. I don’t mind if he drinks as long as he never gets like he was just before you were born. But having a drink down there in his room, acting like nobody knows. Who does he think he’s fooling?”

  The morning, in fact the whole day was shot as my hangover took over. I called Gina, but made the conversation as brief as possible. The rest of the day I just hung around, watching TV and trying to recover. My old man and I managed to avoid each other just like before, cordial strangers living in the same house. Everything was back to normal.

  Monday I forced myself out of the house, and, needing the exercise, I walked the two miles to the public library to do some research on sexually transmitted diseases since I was still incessantly bothered with my recent bout with aberrant sex.

  My research increased both my awareness and my concern. While studying the details about the well-known things you could catch from the dirty deed, I found out about all sorts of other horrible sounding things you could get. Things like Chlamydia or hepatitis B and C, more things to worry about I could have done without. Sitting there in the library and during the walk home, over and over I tried to calculate my chances of having and spreading a disease. Even though my chances of having had caught something were very slim, even if that tall gorgeous blonde was infected with something, I knew the long odds proved only one thing— there was a chance, no matter how slim that I was carrying something terrible that I could pass on to Gina, the girl I was suppose to love until death do us part.

  For two days I turned all of this over, again and again inside my head, looking for a solution, looking for an out. But no matter how hard I searched, in the end I realized I had a choice of doing one of two things. Either I could just roll the dice, keep my mouth shut, and let the notions of destiny and coincidence take their turn while I hoped for the best, or I could face up to my mistake and do the right thing by being honest with Gina, no matter how painful the task. One road seemed easy, the other terribly difficult, but instinctively I knew things could never be that simple. I somehow knew both paths held some sort of pain and suffering, and possibly some joyous hidden reward. I
t was only then when I finally felt at peace with all that had gone on. I remember the moment distinctly. It was the moment when I finally realized life was all about making sacrifices, that there was no easy way out and fully accepted that was the way it should be.

  The End

  THESE DAYS

  The traffic was light but still echoed in a mild roar bouncing between the flat faces of the deep concrete and glass canyon with one row of the sheer cliffs casting a long cold shadow, which covered the sidewalk, the street, and inched up the curb of the opposite sidewalk.

  Bob was waiting at a bus stop in the crisp shade. He wore a white shirt with a black clip-on tie and had his hands in the pockets of his black work-slacks. His grim expression was fueled by thoughts he was trying to shake, and, knowing his bus was more than ten minutes away, he was searching for a diversion, killing time and aimlessly looking around when he first noticed him—tall and lanky, pushing a metal shopping cart—walking in a wide strip of sunshine down and across the street.

  The contents of his cart, indiscernible odds and ends, were packed, braced, crammed, and stacked higher than his head. He wore several shirts layered under a red USC letterman’s jacket, a full ankle-length denim skirt, dirty white socks and worn blue jogging shoes. His brown, sun-bleached beard reached the middle of his chest, his wild mustache spread out from his face, his hair was captured in two long braids, which lightly bounced against his back, and his head was topped with a fur-lined leather cap, the two earflaps standing straight out like miniature wings.

  Pushing his cart at a leisurely, unpredictable gait, oblivious to the steady-paced, orderly parade of mostly well-dressed pedestrians conniving to pass him on either side, he seemed engrossed, stopping to note selected complexities of man or nature. Giving equal time to selected patches of the sidewalk or gutter or the sky as a whole, sometimes stopping to reach down to welcome a human discard, or to engulf himself in an intense investigation, reaching out to feel the texture of a potted tree or the granite face of the nearest building.

  Bob, viewing the show with mild fascination, watched the strange stranger now directly across the street at the opposite bus stop. Hands on hips, elbows out, the stranger gave a dignified appraisal to a trash can before he pinched his shoulders together to use his long arms to dig down into the narrow blue receptacle, the back of his dirty jacket facing Bob.

  Suddenly, the scavenger stopped digging. Slowly he turned, and abruptly, grinning a shaggy grin, he locked eyes with Bob across the street, like he had sensed Bob’s stare and the heat from the look had pulled him from his rummaging to propel him into a radiant awaking. The scavenger’s eyes were light bright blue, and their intensity seemed to grow as his smile grew until Bob looked away, first checking his watch, and then turning to idly examine another piece of the neighborhood.

  Exactly ninety seconds later, Bob again checked his watch, involuntarily turned his head to check his bus’ arrival, and a vision from the side forced him to flinch and then freeze  the stacked shopping cart, the blue-eyed stranger three feet away.

  “Hi. Tell me you hate me.” The stranger smiled, large white teeth framed with frazzled coarse brown hair.

  “What?” Bob backed up a step.

  “Tell me you hate me. I can’t talk to you unless you tell me you hate me.”

  “Good, keep on moving.”

  “Don’t you think we should talk? We don’t have to be alike to communicate. If you tell me you hate me, I know you accept me even though we’re different, maybe complete opposites. Tell me you hate me, and we can take it from there.”

  “Take what from where?” Bob again checked his watch.

  “Don’t worry about time, we have all the time in the world. Come on, brother, three little words, I hate you. It’s easy if you just give it a try.”

  “ Look, buddy, I’m just not in the mood.” Bob dug into his pants pocket. “Here, forty-five, no, fifty-five cents, it’s all the change I got, okay? So just leave me alone, okay?”

  “Your last coins, that’s mighty generous, brother, and I sure could use ‘em, but I can’t take anything from you until you tell me you hate me.”

  Bob was frustrated. He somehow felt trapped; but then a thought blossomed, and he actually smiled as he absently shook his index finger at the stranger. “I know where I’ve seen you. It was in Lou’s.” Bob pointed to a gray brick building, a cocktail lounge, thirty feet away. “You weren’t wearing a skirt, but you had on a, ah, bonnet, a big white bonnet with plastic flowers.”

  “That was me.” He smiled. “Hey, you like that bonnet? It’s yours.” He pulled his cart toward him and began to dig into his confusion of belongings. “I’ve got it here somewhere.” He began to sort in six different directions.

  “And Lou kicked you out as soon as you walked in the door.”

  “Oh, that’s for sure. I still try to make a connection, but I’m persona non gratis in that place.” He stopped and turned to look at Bob. “But old Lou did tell me he hated me. At least we got that out of the way.”

  “So you’re still eighty-sixed from the place, right?”

  “Definitely.” He was again digging into his cart.

  “Well then, it’s good-bye.” Bob checked his watch, looked up the street, walked ten yards to, then into Lou’s bar, a narrow room which was dark and quiet with just a few old, retired regulars seated at the bar talking, drinking and half-heartedly watching the Monster Truck mud-bog races on ESPN. Lou, his fat face with the melancholy droop, was behind the bar.

  “Lou, can I get a Stoli over.” Bob pulled out a stool, sat and looked up at the ridiculous truck race.

  “So how’s it going, Coach?” Lou, delivering the drink with his left hand used his right to reinsert the short, thick stub of an unlit cigar into the corner of his mouth.

  “To be honest, since you asked, the last week has been about the worst week of my entire life.” Bob took a big sip of his vodka.

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, first my dog gets run over and killed. Then two days later my old lady leaves me or rather throws me out without a word. She just puts all my stuff into plastic garbage bags, sets ‘em outside and changes the lock on the apartment door. Then that very same night I go to work at the Ramada and find out I’ve been replaced by a karaoke machine.” He took another drink. “Damn corporate lounge jobs, damn assholes, if they make a dime less than the year before they start cutting, and the musicians are always the first to go.”

  “Cheer up, so life is lousy, so what else is new? You still at the Food-Mart, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Union job, steady check, you should find solace in that. But I am sorry to hear about your dog. Me, I tend to find solace in animals. My old dachshund, Sam, I swear when he goes they’ll probably have to take me with him.”

  “And my songwriting, it’s hard to get the energy up to be creative. Every day it gets harder not to be discouraged.”

  “Of course you got to force yourself to be stern with animals. You can’t let ‘em get to you with those sad eyes. Like when they’re begging for food, no matter how hard it is, you got to be tough.” Lou picked up Bob’s glass, shook it then set it back down on the bar. “You ready for another?”

  “Nay.” Bob drained his drink. “Got to go to work. We’ll see ya.” He got up, walked to the door, slowly opened it and stealthy exited, quickly scouting both sides of the street to his left and his right. A few steps more he stopped and expanded his survey of the street, slower with more concentration. There was the steady mild flow of pedestrians. A short, white-haired man in a long, black coat was now at the bus stop, but Bob’s new seedy acquaintance was nowhere to be seen.

  Bob took his place at the stop beside the old man, who turned and smiled a smile too big for his face, his teeth too perfect to be real.

  About a half a minute or so later the old man again turned to Bob. “How’s by you?”

  “I’m all right, thanks.”

  “Dressed for work?”r />
  “Yep, off to the salt mines.”

  “A good job?”

  “It pays the rent.”

  “All work is worthy.” The short old man smiled once again. “When I was a young man.” He coughed weakly twice. “Hau boy.” His eyes glowed then narrowed and dimmed. He released another short cough, which ended as a gurgle, then he began to teeter, his eyelids fluttered, and he began to fall backward. Bob grabbed him by the sleeves of his coat, propped and held him; then Bob used his left arm to cradle the frail little man, slowly lowering with him until Bob was kneeling on the sidewalk, holding the old man in a sitting position.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’ve felt better.” The old man’s eyes were half open; his voice was weak but clear.

  “Well just, just, be calm.” Bob turned to the parade of anonymous legs moving past at great speed. “Hey! Would somebody help? Would somebody call an ambulance?” All passing eyes avoided Bob and the old man. Bob looked around wildly. “Oh crap, oh crap,” he struggled to keep the words under his breath.