Andre Dubus: Selected Stories

by Andre Dubus

  That is when I saw what he was staring at, when I told him to come on and put down that shoe and let’s go get some dinner, it was on me, and all the drinks too, for turning that double-play in the seventh; and Bruce said And the bunt, and Jesse said Perfect fucking bunt, and I saw that Joaquin was not staring at Bobby or Terry, but at nothing at all, as if he saw something we couldn’t, but it was as clear to him as a picture hanging in the air right in front of his face.

  I lowered myself off the bench and worked my way through the guys, most of them growing quiet while some still tried to break Joaquin out of it. A few were saying their favorite curse, to themselves, shaking their heads or looking at the floor. Everyone I touched was standing tense and solid, but they were easy to part from each other, like pushing aside branches that smelled of sweat. I stepped between Bobby and Terry. They were still dressed, Bobby in his uniform and cap, Terry in his red slacks and white tee shirt.

  “Quintana,” I said. “Joaquin: it’s me, old buddy. It’s Billy.” I stared into his eyes but they were not looking back at me; they were looking at something, and they chilled the backs of my knees. I had to stop my hands from going up and feeling the air between us, grabbing for it, pushing it away.

  There is something about being naked. Duke Simpson and Tommy Lutring got in a fight last year, in front of Duke’s locker, when they had just got out of the shower, and it was not like seeing a fight on the field when the guys are dressed and rolling in the dirt. It seemed worse. Once in a hotel in Chicago a girl and I started fighting in bed and quick enough we were out of bed and putting on our underpants; the madder we got the more clothes we put on, and when she ended the fight by walking out, I was wearing everything but my socks and shoes. I wished Joaquin was dressed.

  “Joaquin,” I said. “Joaquin, I’m going to take the shoe.”

  Some of the guys told him to give Billy the shoe. I put my hand on it and he didn’t move; then I tried to lift it, and his arm swung a few degrees, but that was all. His bicep was swollen and showing veins.

  “Come on, Joaquin. Let it go now. That’s a boy.”

  I put my other hand on it and jerked, and his arm swung and his body swayed and my hands slipped off the shoe. He was staring.

  I looked at Bobby and Terry, then at the guys on both sides; my eyes met Bruce’s, so I said to him: “He doesn’t even know I’m here.”

  “Poor bastard,” Bobby said.

  Somebody said we ought to carry him to Bobby’s couch, and Terry said we couldn’t because he was stiff as iron, and lightly, with his fingertips, he jabbed Joaquin’s thighs and belly and arms and shoulders, and put his palms on Joaquin’s cheeks. Terry said we had to wait for Doc Segura, and Bobby told old Will Hammersley, the clubhouse man, to go tell the press he was sorry but they couldn’t come in tonight.

  Then we stood waiting. I smelled Joaquin’s sweat and listened to his breathing, and looked up and down his good body, and at the medal hanging from his neck, and past his eyes, into his locker: the shaving kit and underwear and socks on the top shelf, with his wallet and gold-banded wristwatch and box of cigars. A couple of his silk shirts hung in the locker, one aqua and one maroon, and a sport coat that was pale yellow, near the color of cream; under it some black pants were folded over the hanger. I wondered what it was like being him all the time. I don’t know where the Dominican Republic is. I know it’s in the Caribbean, but not where. Over the voices around me, Tommy Lutring said: “Why the fuck did we trade Manuel?” Then he said: “Sorry, Jesse.”

  “I wish he was here,” Jesse said.

  The guys near Jesse patted him on the shoulders and back. Lutring is the second baseman and he loves working with Joaquin. They are something to see, and I like watching them take infield practice. In a game it happens very fast, and you feel the excitement in the moments it takes Joaquin and Tommy to turn a double-play, and before you can absorb it, the pitcher’s ready to throw again. In practice you get to anticipate, and watch them poised for the groundball, then they’re moving, one to the bag, one to the ball, and they always know where the other guy is and where his glove is too, because whoever’s taking the throw knows it’s coming at his chest, leading him across the bag. It’s like the movies I used to watch in San Antonio, with one of those dances that start with a chorus of pretty girls, then they move back for the man and woman: he is in a tuxedo and she wears a long white dress that rises from her legs when she whirls. The lights go down on the chorus, and one light moves with the man and woman dancing together and apart but always together. Light sparkles on her dress, and their shadows dance on the polished floor. I was a kid sitting in the dark, and I wanted to dance like that, and felt if I could just step into the music like into a river, the drums and horns would take me, and I would know how to move.

  That is why Tommy said what he did. And Jesse said he wished Manuel was here too, which he probably did but not really, not at the price of him being back with the Yankees where he was the back-up catcher, while here he is the regular and also has our short left field wall to pull for. Because we couldn’t do anything and we started to feel like Spanish was the answer, or the problem, and if just somebody could speak it to Joaquin he’d be all right and he’d put down that shoe and use his eyes again, and take off his jockstrap and socks, and head for the showers, so if only Manuel was with us or one of us had learned Spanish in school.

  But the truth is the president or dictator of the Dominican Republic couldn’t have talked Joaquin into the showers. Doc Segura gave him three shots before his muscles went limp and he dropped the shoe and collapsed like pants you step out of. We caught him before he hit the floor. The two guys with the ambulance got there after the first shot, and stood on either side of him, behind him so they were out of Doc’s way; around the end, before the last shot, they held Joaquin’s arms, and when he fell Bobby and I grabbed him too. His eyes were closed. We put him on the stretcher and they covered him up and carried him out and we haven’t seen him since, though we get reports on how he’s doing in the hospital. He sleeps and they feed him. That was three weeks ago.

  Doc Segura had to wait thirty minutes between shots, so the smokers had their cigarettes and cigars going, and guys were passing beers and pizza up from the back, where I had stood with Bruce. He was still on the bench, drinking a beer, with smoke rising past him to the ceiling. I didn’t feel right, drinking a beer in front of Joaquin, and I don’t think Bobby did either. Terry is an alcoholic who doesn’t drink anymore and goes to meetings, so he didn’t count. Finally when someone held a can toward Bobby he didn’t shake his head, but got it to his mouth fast while he watched Doc getting the second needle ready, so I reached for one too. Doc swabbed the vein inside Joaquin’s left elbow. This time I looked at Joaquin’s eyes instead of the needle: he didn’t feel it. All my sweat was long since dried, and I had my jacket off except the right sleeve on my arm.

  I know Manuel couldn’t have helped Joaquin. The guys keep saying it was because he was lonesome. But I think they say that because Joaquin was black and spoke Spanish. And maybe for the same reason an alcoholic who doesn’t drink anymore may blame other people’s troubles on booze: he’s got scary memories of blackouts and sick hangovers and d.t.’s, and he always knows he’s just a barstool away from it. I lost a wife in my first year in professional ball, when I was eighteen years old and as dumb about women as I am now. Her name was Leslie. She left me for a married dentist, a guy with kids, in Lafayette, Louisiana, where I was playing my rookie year in the Evangeline League, an old class C league that isn’t there anymore. She is back in San Antonio, married to the manager of a department store; she has four kids, and I hardly ever see her, but when I do there are no hard feelings. Leslie said she felt like she was chasing the team bus all season long, down there in Louisiana. I have had girlfriends since, but not the kind you marry.

  By the time Joaquin fell I’d had a few beers and some pizza gone cold, and I was very tired. It was after one in the morning and I did not feel like
I had pitched a game, and won it too. I felt like I had been working all day on the beef-cattle ranch my daddy is building up for us with the money I send him every payday. That’s where I’m going when my arm gives out. He has built a house on it, and I’ll live there with him and my mom. In the showers people were quiet. They talked, but you know what I mean. I dressed then told Hammersley I wanted to go into the park for a minute. He said Sure, Billy, and opened the door.

  I went up the tunnel to the dugout and stepped onto the grass. It was already damp. I had never seen the park empty at night, and with no lights, and all those empty seats and shadows under the roof over the grandstand, and under the sky the dark seats out in the bleachers in right and centerfield. Boston lit the sky over the screen in left and beyond the bleachers, but it was a dull light, and above the playing field there was no light at all, so I could see stars. For a long time, until I figured everybody was dressed and gone or leaving and Hammersley was waiting to lock up, I stood on the grass by the batting circle and looked up at the stars, thinking of drums and cymbals and horns, and a man and woman dancing.

  CADENCE

  to Tommie

  HE STOOD IN the summer Virginia twilight, an officer candidate, nineteen years old, wearing Marine utilities and helmet, an Ml rifle in one hand, its butt resting on the earth, a pack high on his back, the straps buckled too tightly around his shoulders; because he was short he was the last man in the rank. He stood in the front rank and watched Gunnery Sergeant Hathaway and Lieutenant Swenson in front of the platoon, talking quietly to each other, the lieutenant tall and confident, the sergeant short, squat, with a beer gut; at night, he had told them, he went home and drank beer with his old lady. He could walk the entire platoon into the ground. Or so he made them believe. He had small, brown, murderous eyes; he scowled when he was quiet or thinking; and, at rest, his narrow lips tended downward at the corners. Now he turned from the lieutenant and faced the platoon. They stood on the crest of a low hill; beyond Hathaway the earth sloped down to a darkened meadow and then rose again, a wooded hill whose black trees touched the grey sky.

  ‘We’re going back over the Hill Trail,’ he said, and someone groaned and at first Paul fixed on that sound as a source of strength: someone else dreaded the hills as much as he did. Around him he could sense a fearful gathering of resolve, and now the groan he had first clung to became something else: a harbinger of his own failure. He knew that, except for Hugh Munson standing beside him, he was the least durable of all; and since these men, a good half of them varsity athletes, were afraid, his own fear became nearly unbearable. It became physical: it took a penetrating fall into his legs and weakened his knees so he felt he was not supported by muscle and bone but by faint nerves alone.

  ‘We’ll put the little men up front,’ Hathaway said, ‘so you long-legged pacesetters’ll know what it’s like to bring up the rear.’

  They moved in two files, down a sloping trail flanked by black trees. Hugh was directly behind him. To his left, leading the other file, was Whalen; he was also short, five-eight or five-seven; but he was wide as a door. He was a wrestler from Purdue. They moved down past trees and thick underbrush into the dark of the woods, and behind him he heard the sounds of blindness: a thumping body and clattering rifle as someone tripped and fell; there were curses, and voices warned those coming behind them, told of a branch reaching across the trail; from the rear Hathaway called: ‘Close it up close it up, don’t lose sight of the man in front of you.’ Paul walked step for step beside Whalen and watched tall Lieutenant Swenson setting the pace, watched his pack and helmet as he started to climb and, looking up and past the lieutenant, up the wide corridor between the trees, he saw against the sky the crest of the first hill.

  Then he was climbing, his legs and lungs already screaming at him that they could not, and he saw himself at home in his room last winter and spring, getting ready for this: push-ups and sit-ups, leg lifts and squat jumps and deep kneebends, exercises which made his body feel good but did little for it, and as he climbed and the muscles of his thighs bulged and tightened and his lungs demanded more and more of the humid air, he despised that memory of himself, despised himself for being so far removed from the world of men that he had believed in calisthenics, had not even considered running, though he had six months to get in condition after signing the contract with the Marine captain who had come one day like salvation into the student union, wearing the blue uniform and the manly beauty that would fulfill Paul’s dreams. Now those dreams were an illusion: he was close to the top of the first hill, his calf and thigh muscles burning, his lungs gasping, and his face, near sobbing, was fixed in pain. His one desire that he felt with each breath, each step up the hard face of the hill, was not endurance: it was deliverance. He wanted to go home, and to have this done for him in some magical or lucky way that would give him honor in his father’s eyes. So as he moved over the top of the hill, Whalen panting beside . him, and followed Lieutenant Swenson steeply down, he wished and then prayed that he would break his leg.

  He descended: away from the moonlight, down into the shadows and toward the black at the foot of the hill. His strides were short now and quick, his body leaned backward so he wouldn’t fall, and once again his instincts and his wishes were at odds: wanting a broken leg, he did not want to fall and break it; wanting to go home, he did not want to quit and pack his seabag and suitcase, and go. For there was that too: they would let him quit. That was the provision which had seemed harmless enough, even congenial, as he lifted his pen in the student union. He could stop and sit or lean against a tree and wait for the platoon to pass and Sergeant Hathaway’s bulk to appear like an apparition of fortitude and conscience out of the dark, strong and harsh and hoarse, and he could then say: ‘Sir, I want to go home.’ It would be over then, he would drift onto the train tomorrow and then to the airport and fly home in a nimbus of shame to face his father’s blue and humiliated eyes, which he had last seen beaming at him before the embrace that, four and a half weeks ago, sent him crossing the asphalt to the plane.

  It was a Sunday. Sergeants met the planes in Washington and put the men on buses that were green and waxed, and drove them through the last of the warm setting sun to Quantico. The conversations aboard the bus were apprehensive and friendly. They all wore civilian clothes except Paul. At home he had joined the reserve and his captain had told him to wear his uniform and he had: starched cotton khaki, and it was wrinkled from his flight. The sergeants did not look at the uniform or at him either; or, if they did, they had a way of looking that was not looking at him. By the time he reached the barracks he felt that he existed solely in his own interior voice. Then he started up the stairs, carrying seabag and suitcase, guided up by the press of his companions, and as he went down a corridor toward the squad bay he passed an open office and Sergeant Hathaway entered his life: not a voice but a roar, and he turned and stood at attention, seabag and suitcase heavy in each hand, seeing now with vision narrowed and dimmed by fear the raging face, the pointing finger; and he tried for the voice to say Me, sir? but already Hathaway was coming toward him and with both fists struck his chest one short hard blow, the fists then opening to grip his shirt and jerk him forward into the office; he heard the shirt tear; somewhere outside the door he dropped his luggage; perhaps they hit the door-jamb as he was going through, and he stood at attention in the office; other men were there, his eyes were aware of them but he was not, for in the cascade of curses from that red and raging face he could feel and know only his fear: his body was trembling, he knew as though he could see it that his face was drained white, and now he had to form answers because the curses were changing to questions, Hathaway’s voice still at a roar, his dark loathing eyes close to Paul’s and at the same height; Paul told him his name.

  ‘Where did it happen?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Where did she do it. Where the fuck were you born.’

  ‘Lake Charles, Louisiana, sir.’

  ‘Well n
o shit Lake Charles Louisiana sir, you college idiot, you think I know where that is? Where is it?’

  ‘South of New Orleans sir.’

  ‘South of New Orleans. How far south.’

  ‘About two hundred miles sir.’

  ‘Well no shit. Are you a fucking fish? Answer me, candidate shitbird. Are you a fucking fish?’

  ‘No sir.’

  ‘No sir. Why aren’t you a fish?’

  ‘I don’t know sir.’

  ‘You don’t know. Well you better be a Goddamn fish because two hundred miles south of New Orleans is in the Gulf of fucking Mexico.’

  ‘West sir.’

  ‘You said south. Are you calling me a liar, fartbreath? I’ll break your jaw. You know that? Do you know that?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Do you know I can break your Goddamn jaw?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Do you want me to?’

  ‘No sir.’

  ‘Why not? You can’t use it. You can’t Goddamn talk. If I had a piece of gear that wasn’t worth a shit and I didn’t know how to use it anyway I wouldn’t give a good rat’s ass if somebody broke it. Stop shaking. Who told you to wear that uniform? I said stop shaking.’

  ‘My captain sir.’

  ‘My captain. Who the fuck is your captain.’

  ‘My reserve captain sir.’

  ‘Is he a ragpicker?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Is he a ragpicker. How does he eat.’

  ‘He has a hardware store, sir.’

  ‘He’s a ragpicker. Say it.’

  ‘He’s a ragpicker, sir.’