Shoeless Joe

by W. P. Kinsella

  “It may be,” I reply, trying to picture the world through his eyes.

  “You’re all crazy,” he says with my voice. But we don’t pay much attention to him. Annie is talking to Shoeless Joe, Karin has returned with a hot dog and a Coke. After the national anthem, I watch as Moonlight Graham trots to right field. If he is nervous he does not show it, for his stride is solid and his shoulders confident. He turns to face the infield and pounds his fist into his glove.

  “Crazy,” says Richard.

  Salinger leans toward me. “And I thought I had a good imagination,” he says. “I could never dream up a plot as bizarre as this.”

  “I’m going back into town,” says Richard. “I was going to take the night off, but I’m darned if I’m going to sit around here with you people and watch the grass grow.”

  “Take the car,” I say, tossing him the keys to the Datsun. I suddenly feel very benevolent toward Richard. “It will save you taxi fare.”

  “Ray’s always been weird,” Richard says in Annie’s general direction. “He used to have imaginary friends when he was a kid. I don’t know if they were people or animals, but he called them Rags and Sigs, and he used to have conversations with them and play games with them. I thought he’d outgrown it.” Annie looks his way and smiles disarmingly. “I thought you were all right,” he says to Annie.

  “I am,” says Annie. Her conversation with Shoeless Joe over, she steps back and sits down beside me, resting her head on my shoulder.

  “And I thought the kid was okay,” Richard persists. “I thought when she talked about games and baseballs and things, she just had an imagination like her dad when he was a kid.”

  “Kid?” says Eddie Scissons, suddenly attentive.

  “Not you, Kid,” says Richard in exasperation. Then to Karin he asks, “What do you see down there?”

  “I see the baseball game,” says Karin, taking a bite of her hot dog.

  “Rags and Sigs?” Annie whispers into my ear. “Rags and Sigs?” She giggles prettily.

  Richard glowers at Karin. I guess he thought he had an ally. When he is around Karin follows him as if she were a puppy and he had a pork chop tied to his ankle. He has taught her his carnival spiel, and she has learned it well.

  “I thought I’d met some freaks with the carnival,” says Richard, “but, but…” Words desert him momentarily. “A guy who’s gonna be buried in a Chicago Cub uniform, somebody else who wears a baseball uniform day and night—where did he go anyway? Somebody who claims he’s J. D. Salinger. And my own brother, who’s too busy building a baseball field in the middle of nowhere and driving around the country collecting weirdos, to notice that his farm is being sold out from under him.” He stops for breath.

  “Go to town, Richard,” I say. “I’ll wait up for you and we’ll have a talk. Sell lots of whatever it is you sell.”

  “The world’s strangest babies are here. See the famous Siamese twins. The gorilla baby. The baby born to a twelve-year-old mother,” Karin singsongs as Richard stomps down the green painted bleacher muttering.

  “And I swear I saw Archie, Moonlight, whatever, walk down these steps and disappear, quick as if somebody switched off a light,” he says.

  “Stay as long as you like. Come out when you’re ready. This is a family show. Mothers bring your daughters. Fathers bring your sons …”

  “Shhh, honey,” says Annie, and Karin goes back to watching the game.

  “Oh, lord,” says Salinger from behind me. “I was still in my crib when all this happened. These are the White Sox. After the scandal.” When I turn to look at him, he is staring at me, his face rapturous.

  “There are racing cars spinning gravel all around my ribs,” he says, and rubs his chest. “It’s like the day I held my newborn son for the first time.”

  I only smile.

  “This is too wonderful to keep to ourselves. You have to share.”

  “With whom?” I say. “How many? How do we select? And first, how do we make people believe?”

  “I’ll vouch for you.”

  “With the rumors there are about you! I think not.”

  “You’re difficult to convince.”

  “The pot calling the kettle names. But don’t you see, we have little to do with this. We aren’t the ones who decide who can see and who can’t. Wouldn’t I let my own twin brother see my miracle if I could? But more important than that, the way you feel now is the way people feel who react to your work. If I share, then so must you.”

  Salinger flops back on his seat.

  The Sox go down in order in the first two innings. Moonlight Graham leads off the third. He has been swinging two bats in the on-deck circle. As the loudspeaker booms out his name, he drops the weighted black bat and advances on the plate, slashing the air with a brand-new white-ash bat the color of vanilla ice cream. He jigs a little in the batter’s box, then cocks the bat, the top end of it trembling as if he were stirring something, and waits, tense.

  The pitcher fires and Moonlight takes a curve ball for a strike. As he throws again, Moonlight snaps the bat forward and the ball sails in a high arc to right center. The center fielder backs up a couple of steps, lopes a few strides to his left, and makes the catch. Moonlight runs it out, and as he curls across the diamond from second base toward the dugout, I’m quite certain he gives us the high sign. I think of my visit with Doc Graham and our conversation about a baseball wish. And I feel as if there is a hot-water bottle pushed against my heart as I watch Moonlight Graham take his seat in the dugout.

  I phone my mother to tell her of Richard’s return. I’ve made sure to do it while he is away in town, in case he might bolt at the thought of any more lead being inserted in his boot soles.

  She is very happy to hear the news. We talk for a long time, begin reminiscing about my childhood. I feel closer to her than I have in years.

  “Remember the sparrow?” I say to her. And I don’t give her a chance to reply, but rush on. I retell the story. “Mom, you’ve got to come and see what I have here. What I’ve brought to life.” And I charge on, telling her the story of the baseball park—everything except about my father. But I hint, oh how I hint. I can only imagine her excitement.

  When I stop for breath, though, she says, “I’m almost sure it was Richard with the gun that day. In fact I’m certain of it. You must be mistaken, dear.”

  I turn away and hand the phone to Annie. She is very good at talking with my mother.

  I prance out into the yard and bay at the moon, as if I am possessed, until Jerry appears at the back door; and eventually Eddie Scissons hobbles around the corner of the house to see what is going on.

  Moonlight is no longer with us. The moment he walked around the corner of the outfield fence and shook hands with Shoeless Joe Jackson he ceased to be one of us, if he ever had been, and became one of them. When the game was over, he laughed and joked with us and accepted our congratulations on making the line-up, on making his first hit. But then he drifted to the gate in center field with the other players, his duffel bag miraculously transported from the house to his hands.

  Late that night, as I sit at the table looking at my bank books and bills, Jerry comes padding downstairs. His hair is disheveled and he is wearing a white shirt with the tail hanging out over his jeans. He is barefooted.

  Without a word, he pulls up a chair and sits across from me.

  “I don’t want to offend you, Ray,” he begins, “but as you may know, I’m not exactly poor.”

  “Okay, you can put in twenty dollars toward the groceries,” I say.

  “That’s not exactly what I had in mind.”

  “I know. And I thank you, but I’ve got to wait this out. If I let you help, I’ll feel like the rich kid who owns the ball and bat and makes people pay to be on the team. Anyway, I like to think I’m being put to a test of some kind.”

  “Maybe the reason you came and got me was so I could help you out of your financial jam.”

  “Maybe. But to use
one of my mother-in-law’s favorite terms, this seems like such a worldly problem. Surely there was a more important reason.”

  “What if you’re wrong? Your brother-in-law and his friend will have the ballpark plowed under in a matter of minutes, after they get control of the farm. They’ll bulldoze the house, sell off the equipment…”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Just let me bring the mortgage up to date. That will hold them at bay for a while.” “No.”

  “Why be so damn stubborn? Everybody needs assistance once in a while. I’d consider it a privilege to help.”

  “Promise to publish, and I’ll let you.”

  Salinger’s friendly but persuasive expression suddenly turns to one of indignation.

  “One has nothing to do with the other,” he shouts.

  “I know.” And for some reason I cannot fathom, I am smiling.

  “You’re not only ungrateful, you’re stupid too,” says Jerry.

  “I know.”

  “What do you think you are, some kind of mystic?” He digs in his jeans and flings a quarter down on the table. “In God We Trust, and all others pay cash.”

  “Hang in with me, for a few weeks.”

  “Stick with you, and I’ll end up in irons,” says Jerry, the anger gone from his voice. He even half smiles as he adds, “I’ll help you and Annie look for an apartment after you get evicted.”

  Then he rises wearily and makes his way toward the stairs.

  “There really is something out there, isn’t there?” are Richard’s first words as he comes through the door. There is a faint odor of popcorn and sawdust about him.

  I nod.

  “I know you’re not really crazy, Ray. I wouldn’t put it past you to put me on, though.” He smiles my most charming smile, the one I use on my mother-in-law on holidays and her birthday. “But why can’t I see?”

  “Very few can. None of Annie’s relatives, or anyone who just drops in casually, can see anything more than what I’ve built. I chose Jerry, Moonlight, and Eddie. But it wasn’t exactly my own doing. It was like walking out in front of a full grandstand, the breath of thirty thousand faces on me, the throng clapping, cheering, stomping, whistling, reaching out to be chosen; but it was also like having my hand guided to pick out the right ones.”

  “But I didn’t come here by accident. I didn’t start reading phone books as if they were manifestoes, for no reason. Something guided me to you. Something made me move in here to be near you. You should hear me explaining that to my lady.”

  “As unsatisfactory as it may sound, we’ll just have to wait and see,” I say, thinking that I sound like Shoeless Joe Jackson sounded over the long months I waited for my catcher to appear. But earlier tonight, when my catcher was out there on the field whistling the ball to second, calling out which infielder should take charge of an infield fly, I sat as tightly in my seat as if I were glued there. I made no effort to go down to the field after the game to talk to the players, as I often do, until he was safely on his way to the center-field exit.

  I was scared. There is no other word for it. How can I walk up to this man who will one day be my father, and treat him like any other ballplayer?

  Perhaps Richard has been drawn here by something other than curiosity about a long-lost brother.

  The next afternoon I go into Iowa City and stop by the change booth at the midway. It is just large enough to hold two women, sitting back-to-back on high stools and dealing out quarters, dimes, and nickels to the sparse afternoon crowd.

  I stop and look up at the one I know must be Gypsy.

  “My God. He told me he had a twin, but I didn’t really believe him,” she says. “Thought maybe he’d latched on to some local fluff and was taking a vacation from me these nights.”

  “How did you know it wasn’t Richard in a change of clothes?” I ask.

  “The eyes. The eyes. Richard’s are harder than yours: His look is like jade that might crack at any second. Yours are warmer, wittier. You’ve probably loved somebody very much.”

  “And are you a fortuneteller, too?”

  “I have been. You do whatever you have to do in this business. I want to look you over. Hey, Molly, I’m taking a break,” she says to the woman behind her, who nods the back of her blond wig to acknowledge the statement.

  “I’m Gypsy,” she says, sticking out a small brown hand. She is tiny and wiry with straight black hair that looks like an untidy pile of shingles. She is wearing a black T-shirt with a silver picture of an unfamiliar rock singer on the front, blue jeans, and black cowboy boots. She has a small tattoo on her left forearm. Her mouth is thin, her smile ironic.

  “You haven’t seen the show,” she says, waving her hand toward a twenty-foot trailer partially hidden behind canvas banners, splashed wtih garish pictures and lettering. “We have a truck with a camper that we live in and use to pull the trailer from town to town.” In the background, Richard’s voice emanates from a chipped black speaker wired to the rod holding up the canvas banners: “Stay as long as you like. Come out when you’re ready. You owe it to yourself to see these strange babies. You’ve read about them. Heard about them. Now come in and see them …”

  “Can I?” I nod toward the trailer. Gypsy takes a pack of Winstons from her T-shirt pocket, shakes out a cigarette, and lights it. She grins up at me, smoke leaking through her teeth.

  “Why not? Richard and me bought it from the grandson of the owner. Old man died two years ago while we were wintering in Florida.”

  We climb a ramp that leads to the door of the trailer, where a sad-looking black man in a greasy jacket and baggy overalls sits on a backless chair.

  “Hey Owen,” Gypsy says to the man, “going on a cooks’ tour.” She parts the faded blue-velvet drapes, which are decorated by amber watermarks. The man, Owen, scarcely nods. If he sees me, he assumes I am Richard.

  Inside, Richard’s voice, my voice, becomes indistinct and mixes with the midway sounds. The trailer smells of dust and rose-scented room freshener. The floor is covered by cheap brown-brindle tiles, and one or two have their corners sticking up like marked playing cards. The walls are draped with faded blue velvet, and about a dozen glass containers, like built-in fish tanks, are inset at intervals. Each one contains a photograph of a deformed fetus and a small typed card describing the origins of the photo, with a few clinical details. The photos are black and white, faded, curled around the edges. Some of the explanatory cards have fallen face down or lay at odd angles. The bottom of each container was at one time covered in fuchsia-colored velvet, but in places it has faded to a pale pink. Dust, grit, and dead insects cover the bottom of most of the containers.

  “Is this all?” I ask.

  “What did you expect, live babies?” says Gypsy, blowing smoke. “This is a seventh-rate carnival. The posts are bigger than the rings you toss at them. There’s lead in the milk bottles. The darts are made of bamboo, so if you breathe as you throw, they drift a foot. This is a carnival. People pay to be disappointed.”

  “I guess from hearing the pitch I expected more. At least a specimen floating in alcohol.”

  “You’ve lived in the country too long, Ray,” she says with a good-natured smile. She closes one eye when she smiles.

  “How much does it cost?”

  “Seventy-five cents. Best moneymaker on the midway. No overhead.”

  “If it’s profitable, why not clean it up?”

  “What do you want, a science lab? People expect scruffy stuff. They don’t go in there because of scientific curiosity. They go because they want to be shocked. They want to come out and say how awful it was, how scummy and sickening—something they can talk about to all their friends, and when the friends think nobody is looking, they’ll sneak in and see if it was as bad as they heard.”

  “Would you tell me something, Gypsy?”

  “I might.”

  “Your first name.”

  “Want to get one up on your double?”

  “It wi
ll be our secret, I promise.”

  “But why? What does it matter?”

  “Can’t tell you.”

  She looks at me, figuring the angles and the odds, the tiny lines around her eyes and mouth fanning out as she flexes her facial muscles without smiling. “Our secret,” she says, holding out her small dark hand for me to clasp.

  “Our secret.”

  “Annie,” she says, smiling through her teeth.

  On the drive back to the farm, I recall our childhood, and, as I do, I realize that it was I and not Richard who was fascinated by carnivals and midways. I believe it was the Laughlin Midway that used to come to Great Falls for a week each summer. When we were little, Dad used to take us on the rides and feed us outrageous amounts of ice cream, hot dogs, burgers, and cotton candy. We would tour the midway and listen to the spiels of the pitchmen. He would take us to see the freak show, the dancing waters, and even the girlie show—“Harlem in Havana,” it was billed—which, in retrospect, seems as tame as a dancing class.

  The year we were nine, my father decided we were capable of traveling the grounds alone, and gifted us with enough money to make our usual tour. Richard, however, chose to accompany my father to the horse races, while I ambled off to explore the midway on my own. The carnival was set up in an open field at the edge of town, and the ground had been generously covered in sawdust, and iced with cedar shavings. It had rained during the night, and the shavings and sawdust had mixed into the ground to form a firm and pungent base. By midafternoon I was walking along game row, which consisted of two dozen booths where you threw balsa-wood darts at half-inflated balloons, or tried to knock three plaster bottles off a milking stool, using balls soft as rolled-up socks.

  I stopped to listen to the spiel of the barker at the milk-bottle booth. He had a crooked arm that he used to attract attention and wave people in, and I followed the arm as if it were hooked around my neck and gently easing me forward. There were a dozen or so people around the booth, and the carny and his assistant, a brush-cut youth with eyes tiny as black peas, gently baited the customers and kept them trying again and again to not only knock the bottles over but clear them from the top of the stool. The carny, his hair tufted, face square and scruffy-looking as a tomcat, would set up the bottles, take a ball, bend over, and fire it between his legs, and the bottles would fly off in different directions. Then he would taunt his audience.