“And they want to open Bill’s position up to other candidates.”
Ah, the ax slipped down and paused a hair’s breadth from the back of his neck, hovering there and shuddering with its own weight.
“I understand,” he said. And he did. You don’t go from Billy Wells, the most respected and glorious coach in the entire collegiate system, to that nobody, Ben McDunnough, without making sure first that’s all you’ve got. And of course, with the school as big as it was, as popular as it was, as successful and wealthy as it was... they would be booting him out within the week – as soon as a new coach could be found and courted and toasted and given a car.
“You know that if it were up to me...” she said suddenly and then stopped, because they both knew if it were up to her, he’d have been out long ago. Sandy Miller needed to attract big name talent. That was her job.
“That’s all right,” he told her gently. “This isn’t exactly unexpected.”
“No,” she agreed, smoothing out some imaginary wrinkle in her chinos, “I imagine it’s not. For now, Ben, we’d all like you to consider acting as interim coach, for the sake of the team. The boys need to know there’s continuity, you understand. And you know, that if it does come down to it, you can count on a sterling reference from the school.”
“Thanks,” he said and rose to shake her hand, which was being offered as if it were a consolation prize. How anyone whose entire job was hiring and firing people could be so uncomfortable with the whole thing, he didn’t know.
“We’ll let you know,” she told him, and left him alone again. He looked around the small office, now missing a few posters, Bill’s coffee cup, the bowling trophies he had won with Edie when she was still alive. Nothing much had changed, really, in the last three days, nor would it change much when he had gone. Picking up the cactus and tucking it into the corner of the window sill, he gathered his coat and turned out the light.
Deliverance
1972
There was only one time in Ben’s youth where Billy had made anything beyond a cursory attempt to treat Ben like the proverbial son he’d never had. They had both agreed, somehow, early on, that this was a friendship, maybe even a mentorship. Neither ever said a word about his father, but Ben knew that this was not going to be a case of assistant parenting, and he was happy enough with that. His experience with a man in the role of father never seemed worth the effort required on his part, anyway.
In late September, after the Atlantics had been eliminated from the Pennant race, Billy had driven out to the house to ask Ben’s mother if Ben could drive up with him to Chicago and see Dick Allen and his White Sox play ball. At that point, Ben had never even been on a real road trip, much less to see the Sox play at Comiskey. His mother was no match for the quiet intensity of his desire and gave in before Billy had even made it down the drive. Ben chased after the silver Corvette and barely caught it, thumping his knuckles against the trunk as Billy was about to turn onto the road. The older man rolled down his window and leaned out, grinning as Ben caught his breath in the sweltering heat.
Billy was going through one of his periodic mustache jags, and looked a bit like Burt Reynolds in “Deliverance,” which Ben’s mother had expressly forbidden him to see, though he and a few buddies had snuck out one night and seen it anyway at the drive-in. One of them had brought along a few beers and a half-smoked joint stolen from a parent’s nightstand, and Ben had viewed the entire movie through a weakened haze of alcohol and second-hand pot. He’d had nightmares afterward, but would never have admitted his mistake.
“She says it’s okay, but only for a couple days,” he panted.
“It’s baseball,” Billy said. “How much time do we need? It’s not like we’re sightseeing.”
“What should I bring?” Ben asked. “Is it hot in Chicago? Like here?” He had this vague picture of the place as frigid and wind-blown, the locals dressed in parkas like Eskimos. He knew this had to be wrong, but it was North, and he had never been further north than Charlotte.
Billy shrugged. “Bring your glove,” was all he said.
His mother told him to bring shorts and t-shirts, but only after she’d commented on the pathetic state of geographic instruction at Florida high schools. He packed in a delirium, folding and refolding his clothes, then rolling them so he could cram more into the late-Fifties marbled plastic suitcase his mother had given him for the trip. He was vaguely embarrassed by this suitcase, with its pale green satin interior, but they never traveled, so this was the best she had. His mother stood in the doorway as he sat on the suitcase to latch it closed. She was muffling laughter.
“How long do you expect to be gone?”
Billy had said they would drive straight there, check-in to a hotel, sleep, go to the game, sleep, and drive straight back. Somehow in Ben’s mind, that had transformed itself into days and days on the road. He reduced the volume, and finally contented himself with a few t-shirts, a change of jeans and shorts, and some underwear and socks. His mother made him put a jacket into the now-empty second side. He insisted on packing his razor.
On the morning of the trip, Ben rose early. He wasn’t much for sleeping in, but this morning he awoke with a nervous energy that wouldn’t dissipate. Through breakfast, his foot tapped beneath the table, he clicked his watch against the cereal bowl, and finally, drummed the tips of his fingers against the window next to the front door for nearly half an hour before his mother made him stop. Fortunately, Billy was on time. He had clearly taken the Corvette in for a wash and wax before the journey. The car glowered in the driveway like a shadow and Ben’s mother eyed it warily, prepared to do battle, if necessary, with the beast.
“He’s not to drive that car, Bill. If you two get tired, pull over.”
“For God’s sake, LouAnn, you think I’d let the boy drive the Stinger? I’ve done this drive a hundred times. I never get tired.”
“I understand that. I’m just saying. There’s no harm in staying an extra day or two if you need to. I don’t know why you men always insist on driving straight through.”
Ben settled into the passenger seat and cranked down the window. Billy had unclipped the t-top panels and removed the rear window, and the car was hotter than a griddle, sizzling against Ben’s skin if the seat touched any part of his bare lower thigh.
“We’ll be fine. We’ll call if anything comes up,” Billy soothed as he slid in beside Ben. “Goddamn women,” he muttered. “They all worry too much.” Then he popped the car into gear and blew a cloud of dirt and gravel out behind him, leaving two dark streaks of rubber at the entrance to the drive.
The road north was straight and lined with trees; Billy floored the car until they were racing through a private bubble of noise and wind. Ben stuck his hand out and let the air lift it like a wave. The windshield seemed to function mostly in name only at this point. With his hair rising in wild swirls around his scalp, Ben was in teen-age boy heaven. He felt macho, pumped-up like a rooster; he preened in the warm wind. Billy was casual beyond the point of cool: one hand on the wheel, the other on the gear shift, as if at any point he might find a fifth speed and rocket them off into space.
Though he would have enjoyed the drive if the entire thing had been in a tunnel, Ben had to admit that the scenery left much to be desired. The occasional small out-cropping of houses, set back behind thin pines, popped up to relieve the green monotony, and the rare glimpse of water through the trees beckoned with its cool shimmer. Otherwise, he was staring at not much of anything. He let his mind drift, to college the next year – he was considering signing up for the general science program at the JC, mostly because they had a good ball team – and he pondered this slight gain in independence with a mixture of fear and delight that sometimes electrified his body and made his breath evaporate from his lungs as if sucked into a vortex. This happened even when he wasn’t literally hurtling through a wind-tunnel. He wasn’t really thinking about the Pros, yet. Billy had hinted at Ben’s being called up fair
ly quickly, and had suggested he skip college and go straight into the Minors, but so far Ben hadn’t received any offers. That meant, he knew, nothing much. He still had one year left of high school, and though the scouts had been around, no one was biting, yet. His arm was good, better than even he had expected, thanks to Billy’s training, but he didn’t want to jinx himself by wanting it too much, or thinking about it with any confidence.
When he’d first started throwing, back in junior high, it had been mostly because the usual pitcher was sick, or injured. Hitting had been his chief pleasure, then, along with playing right field. He liked the glamour of a good solid hit, as most kids do, and the way it felt to race back after a hard-hit ball, to feel it slip almost softly into the webbing of his glove, and then to hurl it, arm muscles releasing in a burst of power as the ball sailed dead-on to the second baseman. He hadn’t been as big, then, and his growth had waited until his freshman year of high school. Once he’d begun to shoot up and fill out, his coaches had taken notice of the one thing he’d always had: accuracy and control. They placed him on the mound with increasing frequency. He was in his element on the mound, though he wouldn’t have said that was true until he’d been there, day after day, and finally understood the reasoning behind each pitch. In a pinch, when the team was struggling, was when his ability to place the ball became almost uncanny. Billy said it was Ben’s inner stillness, “your fucking Zen nature,” as he put it. “Like one of those fucking rock stars with their Yogis and their gurus and shit. Except you aren’t trying to blow peace out of your asshole.”
Ben had no idea, particularly at sixteen, what any of that meant. He only knew that his body knew how to throw, and how to get the ball to go where he wanted it. The coaches may have worked hard to align his mental with his physical, but he knew it had nothing to do with his brain. The ability happened, somehow, between his eyes and his hands, without his conscious mind telling him anything. In fact, the more he thought about where to throw the ball, the more wild he became. So he didn’t think: he moved. And if that made him Zen like a rock star, he could deal with that. And if, someday, it got him a car like this one, he’d meditate each morning in the low-slung black-leather seats like a child in its mother’s arms.
The Stingray had no glove compartment, but instead a series of pockets that seemed to be designed to hold as little as possible: the manly equivalent of a wallet, Ben supposed, rather than a purse. Billy had tucked a clearly never-opened map of the entire US, a packet of beef jerky and three packets of Fruit Stripe gum into the pockets. Ben’s feet rested over a small cooler filled with cans of Coke. Around noon, it occurred to him to wonder if this was considered lunch, or if they would stop somewhere. He didn’t dare ask Billy, who hadn’t said a word to him in four hours, beyond, “Buckle your goddamn seat-belt, kid. I don’t plan on explaining to your mother how you vaulted out of my car and I had to scrape your brains off of the pavement because I had to brake for a fucking squirrel or something.” Apparently, one of the more important aspects of enhanced machismo was to speak very rarely to other men, and when speech was necessary, to use as many gratuitous expletives as possible. Ben wondered if this was another of Billy’s “lessons” about life, or if the man just didn’t want to shout over the engine noise and rushing air. In the meantime, Ben gazed longingly at side-roads and waited to see what Billy would do.
At one o’clock, Billy shifted slightly and said, “Gotta take a piss. We’ll grab some grub at the local whatever and head back out again.” Ben nodded, unsure what a “local whatever” was, but unwilling to ask. He felt that if he questioned any of this too much, the entire trip would evaporate, and he’d be home mowing the lawn, upper arms sticky and covered in bits of grass, which was how he normally spent his weekends.
The “local whatever” turned out to be a greasy Mexican restaurant run by people who, even to Ben’s relatively untrained eye, appeared to be Chinese. He ordered a tostada, and wasn’t really surprised to get a rock-hard tortilla covered in barely-melted cheese and still slightly frozen mixed vegetables, which included lima beans. It wasn’t really edible, so he picked at it and ate copious amounts of the free chips and salsa, which were cold, but at least tasted like they had been purchased at the local grocery store. He eyed Billy’s chicken tacos, which looked both somehow greasy and undercooked, but which Billy claimed tasted “authentic,” and wondered if they wouldn’t have been better off with the beef jerky. At least the Cokes were icy cold and straight from the can, which for once was reassuring.
The rest of the afternoon was spent in miserable flatulence, easing his butt off the seat, fearing he would somehow destroy the leather. Next to Ben, Billy’s face was puffy and green. Somewhere across the border into Georgia, Billy pulled violently to the side of the 2-lane highway, and staggered off into the underbrush. He returned a few moments later, looking considerably perkier, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Throw me a Coke, kid, I gotta get the taste of puke outta my mouth.” Ben tossed him a Coke from the cooler and watched as Billy downed the entire thing in one, protracted swallow, his eyes clamped shut in concentration. “Okay,” he called, “now the Fruit Stripe.” Ben threw an entire pack at him.
When it was his turn to get sick, Ben made it to a gas-station restroom and locked himself in, hands trembling. His gut roiled and bucked like a monster lurking within. He emerged a good while later, aware from a quick glance at the polished sheet of metal that served as a mirror in the bathroom, that his face was white and lightly slicked with sweat. He rejected the Fruit Stripe and nursed a Coke as they moved north more slowly, taking the gentle curves of the back road Billy had selected with one hand on the door handle and his eyes locked to a steady point on the horizon.
They stopped for dinner at McDonalds, which at least felt more predictable, and both poked half-heartedly at their cheeseburgers and nibbled at fries like dieting women, their bravado laid-low by bad Mexican and the universal humility of vomit.
The evening stars were bright in a clear sky, and they ground forward with a comforting stability beneath the dome of deep, resonant blue. Ben’s eyes drifted closed somewhere around midnight, and the rich purr of the engine eased him into sleep. It wasn’t until the engine began to make noises like someone firing a shotgun beneath the hood, that he woke with a start to hear Billy cursing and shouting.
“Goddamnit!” Billy hit the steering wheel with his fist and pulled the car to a shuddering stop in the grass at the side of the road. “I think we threw a fucking rod. How could we throw a rod? This is a fucking new car, Goddamnit.” And then he emitted something that sounded like a high-pitched shriek. Ben scrambled free of the car into the grass and sat heavily a few feet from his smoking mentor.
Billy spent the next few minutes with his head under the hood, poking at things and pulling out dipsticks and swearing. Then he lowered the hood with a tremendous crash and stood still, staring past the car at the empty road as if waiting for inspiration. After a pause, the cursing resumed, and he stormed around the car to the trunk, jerking it open and tossing luggage to the side of the road so that Ben had to jump out of the way or get beaned by a wild suitcase.
“Come on, kid. We’re hitching,” Billy said, stomping over to retrieve his cases. Ben was suddenly very glad he had cut down on what he had brought. Then he looked around, at the dark shadows of the trees, at the black ribbon of road, at the fussing silhouette of his friend.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Ben squeaked. “I mean, at night? In Georgia?”
Billy looked at him, clearly perplexed. “What the hell does that mean?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Ben said, hugging his suitcase to his chest. “Forget I said it.”
“Uh huh,” Billy said. The night was thick with the sound of cicadas. Warmth rose from the damp soil of the shoulder and wove around Ben’s ankles in waves.
In the distance, a set of headlights appeared, mirage-like through the quivering heat.
Billy began to whistle “Dueli
ng Banjos,” quietly, without looking in Ben’s direction. After a moment, he said, “If they’re gonna ass-rape anyone, it’ll be the young, cute-lookin’ one, I would think. But don’t worry, while they’re doing it, I’ll try to get help.” He sounded philosophical, as if he’d been pondering this.
“Shut up,” Ben said.
“Ungrateful little shit,” Billy said, and stuck out his thumb.
The car pulled slowly past them, then eased over to the side and stopped. Ben was relieved to see that it was a dark brown Ford LTD station wagon, not a beat-up pick-up truck as he had secretly feared. He doubted that butt-rapists drove Ford LTD’s. The man who stepped out from the driver’s side further assuaged Ben’s fears, as the man was short, skinny, and wearing the uniform of an office worker: a pair of black polyester pants, a white button-down and a garishly-printed polyester tie. He pulled nervously at the waistband of the pants, which had no belt loops.
“You folks in some trouble?”
Billy, who was wearing a sleeveless black muscle shirt and tight black jeans, not to mention the mustache, probably looked more threatening than anyone from Georgia, Ben surmised.
“We surely are, friend. The boy here and I are on our way up to Chicago to see the White Sox and wouldn’t you know it, the damned car threw a rod out here in the middle of nowhere. We’d certainly appreciate a lift into the next town, if you’re able.”
“Well, I don’t know…” The man eyed them nervously, then stepped forward and peered at Billy as if he’d suddenly developed near-sightedness. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” he asked.
Billy puffed up his chest and grinned widely.
“Are you a baseball fan, yourself, perhaps?”
The man nodded, and then comprehension dawned across his face and he smiled, clearly delighted.
“Well I’ll be,” he said, and stepped forward with his hand outstretched. “Wild Bill himself!”
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