by L. L. Enger
Gun let the silence swell up, then said, “Tell me. What’s in it for you down here? Not the money, I wouldn’t think.” Rott’s playing career had ended prematurely, bad back, and because of a smart agent, the Phillies had been forced to eat his big contract. At least a couple million, if Gun had it right. “A summer job up north?” Gun asked.
Rott smiled. “Could be. Tell you what—I’ve got this little place west of here not too far. Come on out for dinner tonight, we can talk. Catch up on the old days, sample the bullshit. How about it?”
Out the corner of his eye Gun saw Moses
Gates walking onto the field, shoulders all hunched up. “I might do that,” he said.
Rott followed Gun’s eyes to the field. “Hell, bring old Moses along.”
From the infield grass Moses waved at Gun, then motioned toward the batting cage. A pitcher Gun recognized was standing on the mound back of the safety net, rubbing down baseballs. “We’ll talk later, then,” Gun said to Rott. “I think somebody wants me to try out the wood.”
“Gun. I admire you, coming down to hold Mo’s hand in his time of tribulation, but you want to use your head. God, I hate to see friends get hurt.”
“Me, too.” Gun left him and walked down onto the field. He saw Moses coming toward him talking and grinning at the same time and then over Moses’s left shoulder another face he knew. Harold Ibbins, sitting just over the first-base dugout, a Patriarchs’ hat on his head. Gripping a plastic-cup of beer, tapping it on his knee. Harold was scanning the field, and when his eyes got to Gun they held for a moment and passed on, though Gun raised a hand.
Gun needed to talk to Harold. Billy had, after all.
“So then,” Moses was saying, “I take it you’re gonna show me if you still got anything left in those wrists.”
“Mmm.”
“Go on now, I been waiting for this. Move your ass.” Gates aimed toward home with a finger as big around as a bratwurst. Too many years catching heat.
In the dugout Gun chose a thirty-five-inch Hillerich and Bradsby with a narrow handle, same kind of tool he used against the pitching machine in his own backyard. He felt conspicuous, a little silly in his street clothes, like a Sunday fan pretending, but the bat was a natural presence in his hands and he walked with it to the batting cage and watched the boys—men, he reminded himself, old men—take their cuts. Thirty-five was the minimum age in the new league.
Throwing was Hector Valdez, former Yankee relief man, late innings mostly. He was a few years younger than Gun, early to mid-forties now, and growing a good paunch, but every time he let go of the ball it round the strike zone. Hector was throwing easy, of course, helping hitters find their eyes and rhythm, and they slapped the ball to all fields: line drives, lazy flies, wicked grounders. Fifteen minutes of this, hitters taking their turns and Gun watching, then Moses walked over from a pepper game and said, “Gun’s up now.” The guy who was digging in stepped out of the way.
On the mound, Hector went for the rosin bag. He’d been eyeing Gun all along, showing nothing with his face, but touching the long drooping points of his mustache and every few minutes giving the smallest flash of tooth. A couple times during Gun’s years with the Tigers he and Hector had squared off for real stakes. Once with two gone in the ninth, an American League championship at stake. Once during an All-Star game. Gun beat him the first time, pulling a double down the line and sending the game to extra innings. The second time it was Hector’s turn. Three pitches, three whiffs.
He’d never been a finesse man, Hector. He leaned back and threw smoke, nothing on the ball but Latin emotion and a hell of a tail that came up and in on a right-handed hitter. Hector’s weakness had been control. Some days he was the pitching god, carving corners like a chef carves a hundred-dollar rump. Other days he couldn’t find his own face in a mirror. But good day or not, batters feared for their lives.
Gun wore a cotton T-shirt that gave him room to swing, but stepping up to the plate he cursed his trousers. They were too snug through the crotch and waist, made him feel stiff and old. He knew of a few pounds he didn’t need, exactly where they were and where he’d gotten them, and now he vowed to himself to be down to his playing weight—240 pounds—by the time he flew back home.
He filled his lungs and tapped the plate with the end of the bat. It didn’t feel unnatural. With his Pony runners he dug notches in the packed dirt to support his wide stance. He cocked the bat behind his right ear and established his grip on the handle, not too tight He did a small knee bend, snapped his right elbow against his rib cage. Lifted it, slowly. He was ready.
From the small dry smile on Hector’s face Gun knew this was not going to be batting practice. He didn’t smile back. Okay, then, Hector, bring it. He felt a wonderfully light, cool presence in the upper region of his gut, a buoyancy he’d never gotten past missing since his retirement ten years ago. Then Hector was into his motion.
The first pitch came so fast Gun could only pretend he had meant to take it. He tapped the plate again, nonchalant, let his eyes say, Try that again. The next one sailed two feet above his head. He stepped out of the box and took a swing to loosen his shoulders, then reached up and tapped his batting helmet, just to be sure it was there. He stepped back up to the plate.
He was ready for the third pitch, even had it timed right, but he swung through it, above or below he couldn’t say. The count was one and two. No room for any more mistakes, and Gun liked it that way. He’d always done well, being forced to come from behind, and sometimes he wondered if he put himself there on purpose.
Hector stepped off the mound and picked up the rosin again from the rust-colored clay. He bounced it on his hand then tossed it down and hitched his pants up tight beneath his belly. Gun let the bat rest on his shoulder for a second and watched himself, on the screen inside his head, drive the next pitch over the left field wall. Instant replay in reverse. Hector, back on the rubber, let a full smile widen his face. Gun lifted the bat from his shoulder, prepared himself. Hector moved into his windup.
The pitch came in knee-high on the outside corner, perfect placement, and Gun felt his wrists snap at the instant of contact and the sudden release of compressed force, a shotgun minus the kick. Then Hector Valdez was on the ground, flat on his back, and the baseball whining into center field.
“You want a job, Gun? Free-lance Designated Hitter, whaddayou say?” Rott was standing behind the cage, pinching into a can of Red Man. “You look mean up there. Make the rest of these guys look over-the-hill.”
“I don’t need a job, Rott, and if I did it wouldn’t be this. Not anymore. But thanks.”
He tossed his bat toward the elderly batboy, who lifted a small fist and said, “Yeah!” then ran up and slapped Gun’s back like he’d just busted up a game.
“He’s not a baseball man,” apologized Moses. “Lots of folks involved down here that aren’t. Truth is, we’re a sorry-ass league. Wait’ll you see the game, you’ll cry.”
Gun didn’t cry but felt like it. He went up behind first base thinking he’d talk to Harold during the game, but a fan told him the old utility man had left before his beer was even finished. Then play started and Gun went down to the Patriarchs’ bench.
The level of skill wasn’t the problem, though of course most of the players were a couple steps slower than they’d been. And the pitching wasn’t bad, either, class double A, maybe. The problem had to do with soul. Nobody seemed to care a whole lot. They didn’t
run out their ground balls. Didn’t bother to back up plays. They argued calls for show, laughing, Gun noticed, in the dugout afterward. It made him wonder why they’d come down here. The money wasn’t much good, according to Moses, and most of the players were past big-league speed, without a prayer of showing the scouts what they wanted to see. But of course, it was still a show. Live crowd, kids wanting autographs, pretty girls in sports cars. Everything on a miniature scale, but all of it here nonetheless.
“What’d I tell you about Gates�
�s team? They’re finished.” Gun was standing in the shade of a palm tree outside the rear entrance of the locker room, and Rott had come up behind him. He was sucking a beer and grinning. His team had won by a wide margin.
“Dull performance all around, if you ask me.”
“It’s not the bigs. Nobody said it was. But give my guys some credit; they knocked the shit out of the ball. You take ’em forty years old and give ’em a tenth of what they’re used to making and what can a man expect?” Rott dropped to one knee and polished with his fingers the silver metal tips of his black cowboy boots. “Are you coming out tonight?” he asked.
Gun didn’t know of any old times they had in common, but he’d decided a visit with Rott couldn’t hurt, considering the man’s strong opinions about Moses. “I think I will, thanks,” he said.
Rott stood up and his eyes moved from Gun to the door of the locker room. “One thing, though. Maybe it’s better you don’t bring Moses along. He doesn’t much like me. I make him nervous. You can imagine why.”
Ten minutes later, as Gun and Moses left the park, the little autograph man was blocking the exit gate with his wheelchair. His narrow face was bright with cynical pleasure and his small hands, shuffling cards, looked as nimble as a monkey’s. Gun and Moses left
the sidewalk and vaulted the six-foot chain-link fence and ran to Moses’s car. As they drove off, Gun took a peek backward and saw the Autograph Man waving his fist.
9
“Don’t listen if you don’t want to. I’m only telling you what I think, and I could be wrong. But let’s face it, I probably know a little more about your friend than you do. I was on the man’s team, remember, and I saw how it was between those two. People can think whatever they want about Ferdie getting himself offed, but to me it’s not a real big mystery.”
Rott was leaning forward, elbows propped on the marble lawn table, a long index finger cutting off every possibility of disagreement Beyond a wide pasture of white horses was a tiny lake, bordered on one side by a dutch of mangroves.
Gun shrugged. When a man wanted to talk this bad you might as well let him talk.
“It’s not a matter of having it out for anybody, Gun, or trying to prove myself right. But for the love of Judas, look at the facts. And then you got this alibi of his. You met that woman yet? I can’t believe anybody’s listening to her. And now you’re down here, to set things right Take it from an old friend, Gun. All you’re doing is setting yourself up. I mean, open your eyes. What happens once you learn the stuff that other poor devil learned, that Billy what’s-his-name. Hey, then you might swing.”
“Other people don’t see it that way. Other people that knew him then.”
“Other people that knew him like I did? We roomed together, Gates and me. And I roomed with Ferdie, too. What other people? Let me tell you something about Moses. Something good. He’s a guy that knows what loyalty means. Loyal like a dog, they say, and that’s no putdown. There’s another side to it though. When Ferdie comes along and leaks stuff to that Faust guy who writes for the paper, hey, Moses is never gonna forgive him for it. You understand? You don’t go talking about your teammates behind their backs like Ferdie did. You just don’t let him get by with that if your name is Moses Gates.”
Gun finished his glass of orange juice, freshly squeezed and fortified, on ice. He stood up and turned a full circle, admiring the grounds.
Rott took the hint and stopped his tirade. “You like my little farm?” he asked.
“I like it very much. How many acres, did you say?”
“I’ve got three hundred here and another thirty along the ocean.” He pointed to the east. “See that line of palmettos there? If you walk along it to the top of that rise you’d be able to see past the next guy’s place to the water.”
“And you say you built it yourself?” Gun nodded at the house, a southern plantation style with high front pillars and a wide double door of carved oak.
“Had it built, yeah.”
“What year?”
Rott’s eyes touched Gun’s and moved away before answering. “Eighty-one. That’s the year I moved down here.”
“I didn’t realize you got into that kind of money so young, Rott. You weren’t more than what, twenty-six, twenty-seven then? Hadn’t been in the majors for more than a couple years.”
Rott motioned toward the house and followed Gun
inside. The room they entered was expansive, dark-stained wood flooring with light green Oriental rugs, furniture of Victorian design in natural tones, a wide marble fireplace on the far wall.
“Of course, the truth is, I didn’t buy the place myself, or not all of it. You see, both my parents died in ’80, and they left some money. Quite a bit.” Rott led Gun across the room to the fireplace, on both sides of which hung large portraits of fierce-looking men in gray beards. One wore a Confederate officer’s uniform, the other a black suit and hat.
“The soldier there’s my great-grandfather. No, great-great. Dad’s side. The other one, he’s my mom’s old man. Both Missourians. Serious bastards, you can tell. They’d be disappointed in me. Playing a stupid game, hanging their faces in Florida.” Rott laughed, apparently pleased with himself, and pointed at the soldier. “He was a major and far as we can tell never did anything during the war to immortalize our name. Though he did show up at the Wilderness and get his ass shot up good. I’m supposed to resemble him, but never did see it myself. Probably the beard.”
More than the beard, Gun thought. Try the eyes, the nose, and the shape of the head. “What about the businessman?” he asked.
“Oh, he did lots of things. Made lots of dough. Lost some, too. Mostly what he did was get lucky, though. He got into insurance in the late forties, sold a lot of it, then dumped it all into computers. So my folks had it pretty good, but died before they had a chance to enjoy it too much. My dad sold insurance, too, and just couldn’t get around to retiring. Could have, but didn’t. Had the work ethic of his old man. Not me though. Them things skip generations sometimes, is what they say.”
“You said it, not me.” Gun remembered the stories that circulated when Rott left the Phillies. Not a bad back so much as too little conditioning and too much food.
“A guy gets tired. You know about that” Rott shrugged and led Gun into the kitchen. “All maple, see? Old stuff, too. Had this guy buy it for me out of a house in Virginia, old plantation.” He cleared his throat, frowning, and tossed his head toward tide room they’d just left, backing up the conversation. “But I’ve had a little rest now and I’m ready to go again. Let me tell you about the deal I made. Beer?”
One more door and they were standing in the rear porch. It ran the length of the house, screened in, and looking around it struck Gun that this room, more than any of the others he’d seen, was Rott-like. The inside wall was painted a violent shade of yellow and bore shelves holding a huge collection of beer bottles. Every label, color, and shape. And smack in the middle of the porch was a string hammock hanging from the ceiling, and above it a twisting fan.
“You spend some time out here, I bet,” said Gun, accepting a beer Rott had taken from the refrigerator against the inside wall. Some brand he’d never seen, orange and blue label with a picture of a porpoise.
“My favorite place.”
Gun was looking again at the hammock, which was pushing an old memory button—he could feel it— but nothing was coming to him yet. He nodded toward it. “Nice. A guy could do some serious sleeping.”
“Did this room myself. The rest of the house, I can thank this fag decorator that charged about twenty-nine times what his own hide’s worth on the queer market. That’s how it is down here, though. Weather makes up for it. Hey, let’s sit ourselves down and drink these up.”
They walked into the back lawn and sat beside a palm-shrouded swimming pool and didn’t speak for a
minute or two, watching the leaves floating on the pool’s surface. Gun’s mind was still at work on the hammock, still coming up bl
ank, when a man appeared from inside the garage and walked toward them. He was tall, and his shoulders were so heavily muscled you couldn’t tell if he had a neck at all. He walked like a pigeon-toed cat, light on his feet, gliding almost. He carried a mess of netting attached to a rope, and he stopped at the edge of the pool and tossed the netting skillfully over the water and drew it back toward himself, pulling in the floating leaves and debris and leaving the pool clean.
“Louis,” said Rott. “This here’s Gun Pedersen, former Tiger, future Hall-of-Famer. Aren’t you gonna say hi?”
Louis turned his head and nodded quickly, not smiling, then went back to his netting. Rott tapped a finger to his own temple and said, “He works hard, though. I appreciate people that work hard.”
“Are you going to tell me about this deal you mentioned?”
Rott finished his beer and walked up to the porch for another. He looked an offer at Gun.
“No, thanks.”
“It’s pretty simple, actually. Remember Flax Bundy?”
Gun nodded. A mediocre shortstop in the sixties, journeyman coach in the seventies and eighties, now the Brewers’ general manager.
“We got along pretty good when he was coaching at Minnesota. Talked strategy all the time. He taught me a lot. Then last fall we run into each other at the Series. I told him I wanted to come back, and figured I had the head for managing. Well, it turns out they’re gonna be clearing house on the big club and bringing in guys that can get along with the new skipper Sirkon. Which means the farm teams get all shook up, too. Some moving up and some down and some dumped altogether. He said he’d think real hard about giving me the triple-A club.” Rott sat down with his fresh beer, put his feet up on the table and talked on.