Nobody Bats a Thousand

by Steve Schmale

  But no voices came, at least not on that morning. There was nothing spectacular at all, just the sets of waves, calm and consistent, endlessly coming ashore.

  He went back inside, fell down on the couch and hit the remote control several times, but all he could get was Full House and One Day at a Time. There was not enough pot in the entire hemisphere to numb him enough to be able to handle either show for even a few minutes. He suddenly felt alone, dejected, abandoned. What woeful torture. Was it too much to ask for a little entertainment? At that moment he was willing to give up twenty years of his life, liberty and pursuit of whatever for something good to watch, something moving, something with a little depth and purpose, something like maybe an old Mannix or a Cannon rerun. Nothing could get Decker excited quicker than watching three-hundred pound Frank Cannon chase some skinny hoodlum down an alley and tackle the poor punk before he could make a hundred yards. What an athlete Frank was, forget nose-guard or fullback, just get the fat bastard to drop fifty pounds to pick up just a bit of speed, and they could enter him in the feature race at Santa Anita.

  Decker had another beer. He rolled another smoke. Channel 7 from San Jose came in with an Anthony Quinn movie, and Decker sat back to enjoy until, five minutes later, the TV Gods decided to intervene causing a snowy, faded kaleidoscopic cancer to grow and thicken, their whimsy weakening, melting and pulling apart poor Anthony as channel 7 from Santa Barbara fought to supersede and finally took over. Now the shadowy outline of Quinn’s face was filled with the bodies of Lucy, Lucy Arnaz and Wayne Newton, all in tuxedos, singing and dancing at full torque while they strummed fake miniature banjos, the spectacle lasted a full two minutes before both signals simultaneously drifted away, the screen becoming a noisy mixture of colored fuzz. Decker sat motionless, staring in amazement. When he finally pulled out of it he noticed that the morning had slipped away, the sun was beginning its descent to the sea, and the TV room began to slowly darken as the kitchen pulled in the light, bringing life to the flowered wallpaper, the yellow Formica counters and the matching table and chairs.

  Decker, knowing from experience that the television reception promised to be dire for the next few hours, put on his sneakers, got his ball and trotted down the hill to play basketball to try to sweat out some of the poison from the previous night’s indulgence.

  The court down on the beach paralleled the short main street. A soft breeze came up from the ocean. Decker’s legs felt strong. He shot alone for about an hour then bought a cold beer and sat on the sidewalk outside of Frank’s Liquors, watching the people, watching the waves.

  The winter sun was in full bloom but not intense enough to be a burden, and the air was fresh and cool. Three nineteen-year-old surfers hung around the sidewalk at the head of the wide concrete stairs that lead down to the bench. Two of them in shocking bright shorts were arguing while their friend, a wide-shouldered blonde wearing a two-inch ponytail and cheap dark glasses, sat near them on the short cement wall that bordered the sidewalk.

  “All sports are contests, challenges. You either measure up or you don’t. Somebody wins. Somebody gets fucked,” said a skinny kid with short, straight black hair parted on the side.

  “Oh bullshit,” said his friend, a tall, skinny blonde, his T-shirt off and hanging from the waist of his bulky jams decorated with loud vertical stripes. “What’s wrong with just enjoying the game? Surfers ain’t gladiators, and neither are shortstops. You don’t need to want to stab somebody in the chest to beat ‘em at a game of ping-pong.”

  “You’re totally fuckin’ wrong. Somebody has to win and get the glory, and somebody has to lose and get kicked in the balls. It’s the American Way.”

  “Bullshit, but you’re just trying to change the subject ‘cause you know you’re wrong about the dinosaurs. It was the Ice Age that got ‘em, it’s cut and dry.”

  “No way is it cut and dry, Homer. It’s still a big question mark, man. Nobody knows for sure.”

  “Would you two assholes please shut up,” the third kid piped up in a slow, deep voice. “I have been hearing about those fucking dinosaurs for three fucking weeks.”

  But the question did remain, and the debate went on and on as, with the January afternoon warming to seventy degrees, a few sunbathers, hardly enough to matter were spread across the beach, and a few scattered groups of tourists were scanning whatever gift shops remained open. Undoubtedly searching for more flowered shirts or rubber sandals to take back to Bakersfield or Loma Linda.

  Decker went across the street to Iggy’s bar, got a beer, and found a table in back. Iggy’s bordered on sleazy. It was a post Korean War structure, square and simple, a dark cave congruent to the sunny sidewalk, which had seen a lot of action and very little renovation. Both pool tables were being used, and a few relaxed patrons were dispersed along the bar.

  A thin, fair Okie with slicked back hair and a pointed face punched three Elvis songs on the jukebox before returning to sit and drink with his three hundred pound girlfriend. That was just about the time Decker first came to realize that he had gambled on sobriety and lost.

  He had another beer, and as Elvis sang, Decker had visions of a tall lovely redhead with long legs slithering up right next to him. A treacherous beauty who would whisper crude stories into his ear and buy him drinks. In reality an alternative guest, short, portly Winston Stearns, pulled up a chair.

  “My god, they’re all totally crazy. Dealing with those people is completely absurd,” Winston said. “They have no dignity or sympathy…It’s all ‘me, me, me, and screw everyone else’. I swear that we are all doomed. The human race is doomed. We do not stand a chance.”

  Decker did not say a word. He stood up, walked over to the bar, and returned cradling two shots and two beers.

  “Been out on the freeway again, huh? I told you to stay away from L.A,” Decker said. “About the closest you could come to Hell is if you died and came back as an L.A. transit employee.”

  “As I have always pictured it, the supreme torture would be to be strapped down in a chair and forced to listen to a perpetual tape loop of Bobby Vinton, or Barry Manilow, or that Prince fellow. But your bus driver theory does have merit.”

  A short time later, Decker again walked to the bar, returning with two more shots and two more beers. He sat down.

  “Let’s drink this one up, and go up to my place. We can catch El Sol’s final action and have a few drinks. Maybe that’ll mellow you out, waddaya say?”

  Stearns, looking down, shook his head with disgust. He looked across the table at Decker. “No reason not to drink more whiskey, we are all doomed anyway.”

  After a slow, arduous march up the hill, the pair sat in cloth-backed director chairs on Decker’s back porch. Decker, feet up on the railing, sat holding a thick, burning stick of Yerba Buena in his right hand and a splash of Jack Daniels over in his left. He seemed relaxed and in high spirits while Stearns, sitting upright, slightly hunched over from the waist, was stern and serious.

  “To place oneself in the slightest jeopardy in order to assist another human being, why the idea seems as passé as black and white television and all-rubber tires. The new American creed, ‘Look out for number one’. It should be engraved on our currency, embroidered on the flag, tacked on to the end of the flag salute. Let’s make the vulture our National bird, so our youth will be able to grow and flower with the proper disgust and indignation,” Winston said. The porch was his podium; the earth and sky were his disciples.

  “So anyway, why did you go down to L.A.?”

  “An old and valued customer, way down in Monterey Park. I tell him that I’m basically retired, but he won’t take no for an answer…anyway, about thirty years ago I carved a large frontal overhead sign for him. I fashioned it from fine hardwood, meticulously chiseling out the lettering, a beautiful job, no big deal but a novel approach at the time, and ever since then he has commissioned and overpaid me for all of his work, no matter how trite or trivial,” as Winston spoke, his eyes and mouth ap
peared animated, his black beret was slanted across the top of his large round head, and he used his hands to cut sharp paths through the air. “Imagine ‘Hot Dogs Three for a Dollar’ in magnificent Gothic script or ‘No ID No Beer’ in a fine freehand cosmopolitan style…hardly worth the trip, but he does insist…I suppose genius does have its price.”

  As Decker listened his mind wandered in and out of control as he watched the giant fireball dip into the sea. After awhile he went into the kitchen, refilled their glasses, then returned to his chair and enriched himself with the sobriety of the waves.

  He imagined himself standing far off in the distance, balanced on the smooth part of the beach, cutting a six-iron shot across a hundred yards of sand, over the wall and the street; nailing Iggy’s front door like a rifle shot at close range. He looked at Winston who was now a silent statue resting his glass of whiskey on the arm of his chair as he stared up and out into space.

  “Hey, old buddy, I’ve got a question for ya.”

  “Proceed.”

  Decker lightly rubbed his fingers across the stubble on his chin. “I’m just curious why a nosy old fart like you isn’t curious. I mean I’ve been staying here at grandpa’s, living like a drunk psychopathic hermit for over two months, and you’ve never bothered to ask why. Why?”

  Winston took a small sip of whiskey. He then extended his arm, and held his glass out to allow himself to view the liquid against the light of the sun. “It seemed the same as last year when you came here after your trials. I saw no need to bring it up. I figured you would talk about it if you wanted to.”

  “Not trials, it’s not a track meet, it’s a qualifying school, and last year it was different that was my first try. I was in way over my head, and I knew it…but I learned a lot, and when I came here it was just to take a little vacation, to relax.” Decker shook his head from side to side as he stared at his feet. “SHIT!” He jumped up, stalked across the porch, pounded twice on one of the four-by-fours supporting the overhang, and then rested his forehead against the post.

  “But this year, Winston, I was really kicking ass. I really was.” Decker looked at his friend, and then out at the ocean. “I was actually leading by two strokes going into the third round, then, I don’t know. I just couldn’t get it together. I just fell apart. It was like I forgot everything about the game I’d ever learned…like in one quick moment I was robbed of all the confidence it took me twenty years to build. I felt so uncertain, so unsure…and it just compounded and got worse. Every time I hit a bad shot or lipped a putt I couldn’t get over it. I couldn’t shake the negative thoughts. I couldn’t get them out of my head. It was like I’d programmed myself to fail…and two long miserable days later that was that. I was history. I was just another member of a pack of pitiful, half-assed losers bitching about what could have been.” Decker wrapped his arms around the post and hugged it like it was his only friend.

  “And I was so close, man…I was three descent rounds away, three descent days away from the major leagues.”

  “Not to worry, there’s always next year. Why I’ve read ”

  “That’s just it. I don’t know if there will be a next year.” Decker shook his head as his right hand tapped out a beat on the porch railing.

  “I mean nothing feels sweeter than just nailing a drive with everything you have…and what can match the high of hitting a solid, smooth five-iron right at the pin or stroking a twenty-foot putt just right and knowing for sure that it’s gonna drop before it has even rolled halfway? But all those moments of intoxication are there and gone in the wink of an eye. But a fuck-up, a fuck-up is a different story…a fuck-up could probably stay with you just about forever.”

  “I see.” Winston slightly shook his head as he pondered the conversation. “I suppose you mean like being arrested for your third DUI.”

  “Well, not really,” Decker said as he walked into the kitchen.

  Two minutes later, he came back outside.

  “You know, I came here right from the tournament,” Decker said. “My parents don’t know I’m here. Or maybe they do, maybe they’re afraid to come up here and find out I’m nuts.” He sucked the last inch of whiskey from his pint, then threw the empty into space and watched the earth’s spin and gravity combine to pull it down for a burial at sea. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. How can somebody change, just like that? I’ve always been such a competitive son of a bitch, but now I’ve just lost it. Just six months ago, I was always going, always busy, playing, practicing, giving lessons to rich kids whose parents thought I was a big deal. Now I can’t get off the couch. Maybe I’ve got Epstein-Barr or AIDS, I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Shit, who am I trying to fool? I’ve been drunk and stoned for two months. I hadn’t smoked dope since high school, but now I’m buying a bag or two a week from the kid working in the liquor store. Then all I do is sit around watching any crappy TV show that’ll come in. A lot of times, nothing will come in, and I just sit there, bonging it up, listening to the stereo and staring at the colored fuzz on the screen.” He looked at Winston. “Is that a full-blown TV junkie or what?” He looked back out at the ocean. “Every day I tell myself, come on, let’s get going. Let’s get on with life, but then a rerun of Dallas or Gilligan’s Island comes on, and I grab another beer and end up lying on the couch being lazy and contented as a dog with a new bone . But I guess it doesn’t matter, it’s just, well, when I came here I thought I’d hole up and sort of straighten things out, and it hasn’t really worked out that way.”

  “What is there to straighten out? You know good from evil. You know right from wrong, don’t you?”

  “I dunno, Winston, maybe I am nuts, or maybe I’m just not happy with my station in life.”

  “Well son, I didn’t want to have to bring it up, but let’s face it, all life is pain and sorrow my friend. Dreams and depression, yearning and disappointment are all we have to look forward to from the time we are yanked from the womb until the day they lay our decaying carcasses down into the damp earth. Everything is totally amiss, our educational systems, our religious systems, our government, interpersonal relationships. We have a fifty per cent divorce rate. Half of all of those who choose to take on the sacred responsibility later berate the eternally binding contract. Then they go out on the freeways everyday and play death-defying, true-life, human video games just to get to and from work.” Stearns took a deep breath of cool air. “But, like an old coach of mine once said.” Winston took a short dignified pause. “‘That’s the way things is’.”

  Decker looked at Winston but didn’t say a word. Again he went into the kitchen, and again returned shortly.

  “Well, thanks for cheering me up,” Decker said without a smile. “Here, let me buy you another beer.” He handed a can to Winston then stood on the exact center of the porch, watching the sun setting, throwing a broad rough half-circle of light on the Pacific. The small, mystical waves caught flashes of the dying light and carried them toward the shore. A single gull sailed across the sky, gliding, floating, and soaring high above the sand and water while Decker washed down two Darvons and a vitamin B-12 with a can of Coors.

  The depth of the cove was the only unanswered physical question and, even at worst, that could be overcome with a shallow dive. Sufficient leg drive, pushing away from the two-by-fours that constricted the porch would be needed to propel him outward, perhaps six feet—that was important. After that the inevitable, a swift dive which he pictured as a graceful swoop; the penetration abruptly halted, the entrance and exit molded together by him popping up the exact moment his upper body began to submerge. Decker watched the short, white-capped waves breaking in the small horseshoe cove over one hundred feet below him. It could be done. An inspirational, teeming flight; outward, then downward; cool air, cold water, the basics of life. In reality an easy dive not a suicidal musing but a test of courage; a true test of mental discipline of the will’s strength. Of course the dive seemed easier on this, the landward side of the guardrail,
much easier. Maybe a few beers and a couple of shots of tequila could help things along, but would that be wise? Would the cumbersome chemical effects throw him off just enough to do him harm? Would the unnatural, impure state poison the victory with the slight dint of inebriation soiling an otherwise virtuous effort? Or then again, would his selective purposeful use of the drug be subjugating the alcohol into the proper sacred light for which it was originally conceived? A religious plunge, a holy flight, Decker wondered if Hemingway might have been a little crocked when his definition of courage came to mind.