Shoeless Joe

by W. P. Kinsella

  “Look at that! If an old one-armed side-hill gouger like me can do it backwards, you big strong fellows should be able to do it frontwards! And you get three tries to do it! Only three for a quarter!” And the big farm boys and squinty-eyed cowboys in denim would step forward, plunk their money down, and fire wildly at the bottles.

  I worked my way forward, mouth hanging open in fascination as I listened to the carny and watched the balls smacking into the canvas behind the target or hitting the bench and ricocheting about the tent like trapped birds. There was a row of trunks across the mouth of the booth. The white balls rested on the battered green-and-brown surfaces. As I watched, I imagined the carny and his assistant packing the trunks full of green-and-vermilion-feathered monkeys-on-sticks, which were the prizes, and heading out for a new town.

  I moved in until, pressed forward by the crowd, I sat down on one of the old, mistreated trunks at the far right of the booth. I must have been there a half-hour when the crowd thinned out, the big-shouldered farm boys walking stiffly away, ignoring the carny’s entreaty to “Try it one more time there, Sonny. You almost won last time. Look! I’ll show you how it’s done.” There was one man in a dirty suit coat playing, and two or three gawkers, when the carny noticed me.

  “What are you doin’ there, kid?” he said loudly, moving toward my corner of the booth. I was startled and jumped down from where I had been sitting. He could see I was scared, and pressed his advantage. “Look what you done to my trunk!” he shouted. “Look at the dents you put in it.” I looked at the battered metal. It was difficult to see where one dent started and another finished.

  “You’re gonna have to pay for it, kid,” he said, and I could feel my eyes getting larger. I shuffled my feet nervously in the dry shavings at the base of the trunk.

  “How much money have you got?” the carny asked, moving over in front of me. I dutifully reached in my pocket and pulled out a dollar and a few coins. I counted it carefully. There was $1.80.

  “Kid, you done twenty dollars’ worth of damage to that trunk. You’re gonna have to make it up some way.” He was close to me. His face was scarred and craggy, like a map of Montana, all mountains, lakes, and plains. He smelled of sweat and cigars. He had a black canvas apron tied around his waist, and his good left arm was brown as an Indian’s. I could imagine him calling my father and making him pay for the damage I had done—and then the long, silent ride back to Deer Lodge in the pickup truck, my father furious, my brother nudging me in the ribs and laughing.

  “A dollar eighty,” he said scornfully. “Is that all you’ve got?”

  I looked at him wide-eyed and nodded.

  “Okay, kid. Listen. I tell you what I’m gonna do. You can work it off.” I felt like a car had just been lifted off my chest. I stood eager as a dog waiting for a stick to be thrown.

  “You know where the freak show is?” I nodded that I did. “Well, I want you to run down there and tell the barker that I sent you to get the left-handed glass stretcher. Then you bring it back to me and I’ll let you off the hook.” He smiled, showing short yellow-stained teeth.

  I sprinted off across the sawdust, the shavings crinkling around my ankles. At the freak show, the barker was in the middle of a spiel. A beautiful girl in a bathing suit with a red-satin cape over her shoulders stood to his right, looking tired and bored, while behind them, just inside the flimsy brown curtain, stood a man in formal outfit complete with top hat and white gloves, holding a black-handled handsaw that was at least four feet long. The barker was telling the crowd that in just a few moments, the Great Mancini—who was making a special appearance with the Laughlin Midway, direct from performing before all the crowned heads of Europe and Asia—would dazzle and mystify them by sawing this very-alive young lady in half before their unbelieving eyes. Mancini bowed slightly and raised his hat, revealing slick black brilliantined hair. The girl ran a hand languidly across her belly, to show where the wicked-looking saw was going to do its work, and the barker began his pitch to sell tickets. I snaked my way through the crowd until I was at the stage, which came up to the middle of my chest. I stood on tiptoe, reached forward, and tapped the barker on the toe of his run-down black loafers. He glanced down and continued with the spiel. The Great Mancini and the caped girl stood like wax dummies. I stretched up and tapped again, harder, like knocking at a door after receiving no answer. The air smelled strongly of cedar shavings, and as I glanced down I saw that I was buried ankle deep in the red-and-white curlicues. The carny swung his microphone away from his body and hissed down at me, “What do you want, kid?”

  “The guy down there”—and I waved vaguely in the direction of the game booths—“wants the left-handed glass stretcher.”

  There was a long pause as he at first looked puzzled. Then, as a light began to shine in his eyes, he smiled. “Just a minute, kid,” he said, and parked his microphone on its stand. He walked back past the catatonic figures of Mancini and the girl, and dug into a wooden chest that was painted a pale battleship-gray. The people up close who had been listening to the carny’s spiel were now looking at me.

  “You old enough to be working?” a man said to me.

  “Should be in school,” grumbled another.

  “His parents are probably show people, and you know what they’re like,” said a bulky woman wearing a blue print dress and a matching bonnet.

  The barker returned and thrust into my hands as wondrous an object as I have ever seen: shiny as a hubcap, small as a can opener, able to turn in my hand like a chrome frog. I have never seen anything like it. Perhaps it was indeed a left-handed glass stretcher. The barker bent down and spoke into my face. “Run this right back to the guy who sent ya,” the barker said, but to his shoulder, as if he still had his mike under his chin. “This is the only left-handed one in the whole carnival, so tell him to guard it with his life. Ya sure ya know where you’re goin’, kid?”

  I nodded dumbly.

  Clutching the wonderful silver-jointed object in my hand, I whipped through the crowd and back down the midway to the bottle booth. I sat my treasure delicately on top of the very trunk I had damaged, and looked up into the face of the carny, who seemed genuinely surprised to see me.

  “What have you got there?” he said, and lifted up the object as he might pull a hair from his breakfast cereal.

  “It’s what you sent me for,” I said. “The guy at the freak show gave it to me. He says to tell you it’s the only …”

  “Kid, you just can’t do nothin’ right, can you?” he said scornfully. I could feel my mouth drop open.

  “Kid, I sent you for a left-handed glass stretcher. Any fool can see this is a right-handed one.” He held the object up as he might hold a dead mouse by its tail. Then he dropped it in the side pocket of his stained plaid jacket. “Now you go back down there and get me a left-handed one like I sent you for, and hurry up about it.” I pushed through the crowd and began running again, but about halfway to the freak show a strange feeling, like bees buzzing, began low in my body and gradually moved up to my stomach and chest, leaving me feeling empty and foolish. It began to dawn on me that I had been the butt of a joke. I stopped and looked around. The carnival buzzed all about me. But what if I was wrong? What if the man from the bottle booth came after me, made my father pay for the damage to his trunk? I looked down at myself and cursed my choice of clothing. I was wearing a bright green T-shirt with horizontal white stripes. I stood out like a large green apple. Looking over my shoulder all the way, I skulked to the exit and made my way to the parking lot, making certain I was not followed. When my father and Richard returned from the races, they found me asleep in the truck box, my T-shirt carefully covered by a sheet of canvas.

  Later, while the game is on, while Moonlight Graham patrols the right-field grass as Salinger watches contentedly, while my catcher, whom I haven’t been able to approach, crouches behind the plate, while Eddie Scissons sits alone in voluntary exile about five seats from Karin and me, I hear a car cros
s the cattle guard and head up the gravel lane to the house. Moments later, Mark and Bluestein appear at the corner of the grandstand. Mark waves his arms animatedly to attract my attention, Bluestein holds a clipboard on which he is making notes.

  The game stops. The players politely move out of the way as the interlopers move toward left field.

  “I thought I made it clear that you weren’t welcome here,” I holler down.

  “Can you come down here? We want to talk to you.”

  “Do you like it here?” asks Bluestein, his eyes glittering amber like a dog’s. I can feel the cold winds of winter peeking over the horizon as I stare around at this piece of land that I love more than anyplace else on earth—this place where I have been happy.

  “Yes, I like it here,” I reply, “but I won’t grovel for you. You blackmailed Eddie into selling me out. I want to enjoy what time I have left here without you snooping around and gloating.”

  “We want to make a deal,” says Mark.

  “So you can stay on the land,” adds Bluestein.

  “We’ll leave the house. You and Annie can live in it free for as long as you like. No rent. It will make your responsibilities lighter while you find a new job.”

  “And the baseball field?”

  “This?” says Mark, waving his arm around to take in the whole field. “You have to leave it, too.”

  Mark nods to Bluestein, who scribbles on the clipboard.

  “Do you realize what this land is worth?” says Mark.

  “Over twenty-two-hundred dollars an acre,” I reply.

  “Isn’t it about time you grew up?” Mark explodes. “You sit up there,” and he points toward the bleacher, “like the world can’t get at you. You build this whole stupid …” His face reddens as he struggles for words. “You’re virtually bankrupt, and we’re offering you a way out—because I love my sister.”

  “Because you’re afraid of your sister.”

  “You’re totally ungrateful,” booms Mark. “No. This monstrosity will be the first thing to go, and I’ll drive the bulldozer that levels it myself.”

  Behind him Bluestein draws a large X over the calculations he has made on the clipboard.

  “Then we have nothing more to say,” says Mark, and I feel cold, as if I have just pronounced my own eviction notice, which indeed I probably have. I also feel the wind from the cornfield pushing against my back. I stand up, and, with a fanning motion of my arm, spray my orange drink out in an arc that the wind carries over Mark’s and Bluestein’s heads, stippling their $300 suits. They both yell in anguish. Then Karin, who has been sitting silently beside me, rises and tosses her own drink in their direction; but her arm is not strong enough, and the drink pours directly over the fence. Bluestein partially fends off the deluge with his clipboard.

  “You’ll be sorry,” he shouts up at us.

  Karin hugs my leg and I tousle her red curls. I laugh to think that I have just about reached my maximum level of violence by pouring orangeade on an accountant.

  Then Mark’s voice roars up at us. “And he’s a fraud.” He points at Eddie Scissons like a tent-meeting evangelist pointing at the devil. His mustache curls as he speaks.

  Eddie has been sitting, leaning on his cane, his chin resting on his hands, which are cupped over the serpent head.

  “He never played in the major leagues. Not only that, but he hardly played in the minors—one year, part-time, for a Class D team in Montana, over sixty years ago. And he’s been passing himself off around here for forty years as a Chicago Cub, the oldest living Chicago Cub.

  “You’re supposed to know all about baseball,” Mark yells, turning his wet wrath toward me again. “I don’t even follow the game, but ten minutes in the U of I Library and I found out all about him.” He points accusingly at Eddie again.

  Eddie is shrinking before our eyes, as if he were an inflatable toy and Mark’s words were pins. I can almost hear the air escaping.

  “You promised you wouldn’t tell,” says Eddie, in a bland, defeated voice. “You said if I sold you the mortgage you’d never tell Ray, or anyone.”

  “You’re a joke,” Mark rages. “Everyone knows about you, except Ray here. They humor you because it would be too embarrassing to call you a liar to your face. ‘Crazy old Eddie,’ they say, ‘he likes to think he played baseball for the Cubs.’ “

  Eddie turns his face away.

  “It’s all right, Eddie,” I say. “I knew. I’ve known all along, and it doesn’t matter to me. It doesn’t matter to your friends.” I wave my hand to take in Jerry and Karin, and then, with a more expansive motion, I take in the whole ballpark.

  “You promised,” Eddie says hollowly.

  I remember my own indignation after I discovered Eddie’s secret. After I’d talked to him on the street in Iowa City that windy March afternoon, I had hustled off to the nearby Iowa City Public Library to find a copy of the Baseball Encyclopedia and check out Eddie’s statistics. I’d had an uneasy feeling that something was not right, for he had spoken of playing in Wrigley Field in 1908, ‘09, and ‘10, and I knew without looking it up that that was at least five years before Wrigley Field was built, and that in those years the Cubs would have played in West Side Park. It seemed like a natural-enough mistake, though, if Eddie was indeed as old as he said he was.

  But I marveled at the idea of the oldest living Chicago Cub. It was like finding a mummified baseball in an attic, yellow as if varnished, hard with age, but with a long-dead star’s signature staring out, bright and real as the day the player signed it. I felt as if I’d stumbled onto a priceless autograph, something I could cherish, hold on to, hold back from other baseball fanatics as if it were a 1932 Smead Jolley baseball card with an advertisement for Turret Cigarettes on the back. Something as elusive as the perfect game, or a .400 lifetime hitter. A collector’s dream.

  At the library, I took the Baseball Encyclopedia from the shelf and turned to the Pitcher Register, and I remember the disappointment and then the anger I felt as I found that no one named Scissons had ever pitched in the major leagues. I tried the Player Register, in case I had misunderstood about his being a pitcher. But I also drew a blank there. For whatever reason, Eddie Scissons had been lying to me. I closed the book sadly and headed for home.

  I told Annie about him, but mentioned only that he had a farm for rent, not that he was a fraud when it came to playing for the Cubs.

  But I understand Eddie Scissons. I know that some of us, and for some reason I am one of them, get to reach out and touch our heart’s desire, like a child who gets to pet the nose of an old horse, soft as satin, safe as a grandfather’s lap. And I know, too, that when most people reach for that heart’s desire, it appears not as a horse but as a tiger, and they are rewarded with snarls, frustration, and disillusionment.

  I imagine Eddie Scissons has decided, “If I can’t have what I want most in life, then I’ll pretend I had it in the past, and talk about it and live it and relive it until it is real and solid and I can hold it to my heart like a precious child. Once I’ve experienced it so completely, no one can ever take it away from me.”

  “How can you let him get away with it?” Mark shouts up at me, his fists clenched like a politician making a damning point. “You claim to know so much about baseball, claim it’s so pure and wonderful. How can you let him worm his way into your game? How can you tell him it’s all right? How can you forgive him for all he’s done?”

  And I wonder how I can. But I know I can. Fact and fantasy swirl together. “Worse men than Eddie have been forgiven by better men than me,” I reply.

  Much later I hold Annie in my arms, loving her, experiencing a whole separate world that makes me think of the thrilling isolation I feel when I walk through our cornfield between the high whispering rows.

  “Whatever happens, I’m with you, Champ,” she says, and erases my anxiety with her soft, sweet love.

  The days pass, and each evening, as if time is controlled by a computer, perhaps in some
distant dimension, the phantom baseball park superimposes itself on my labor of love as the sun dissolves into the horizon, tinting the clouds flamingo pink.

  We watch the games, our usual group. Not one of us has said a word to Eddie about what happened. It is as if we don’t mention it because to do so will make it real. Eddie is paler and more silent, his hands tremble noticeably even when clutched tightly on the head of his cane. Some evenings Richard sits with us a while—“Like watching a TV screen full of shadows and static,” he says—and eventually walks away, a perplexed expression on his face, like that of a pagan watching, but not comprehending, a religious ceremony.

  The catcher has been on a hitting rampage the last few games. He is more than adequate behind the plate. “He’ll be with us for a while,” says Joe, grinning happily. “You have good judgment when it comes to catchers.”

  But I still can’t bring myself to face him. As with most of life, anticipation has been nine-tenths of the actual event. I sense that the catcher has some reservations about me, because after each game he exits through the gate in center field almost before the stands begin emptying. Breathing a sigh of relief each time the confrontation has been delayed, I walk across the field with Joe Jackson, Happy Felsch, and Swede Risberg, and a number of us end up squatting, or sitting Indian style, on the magic grass of left field.

  Salinger tells the ballplayers the story of how I am soon going to lose the farm. “What would happen to all of you if this ballpark is razed, leveled, planted in corn?” he asks.

  They exchange knowing glances, but remain silent.

  “Some of us waited a long time for this chance,” says Shoeless Joe.