The Schooling of Claybird Catts
Page 28
I returned to the base and stood posed there, waiting for the next hit, sweat pouring down my nose, my heart beating like a bass drum, not having long to wait. For Coach Bates is the kind of old-school coach who likes to keep things simple, lining his batting order up best to worst (me being worst). So we were right back at the top of the order, our best hitter right behind me, a guy named Ricky Vaughn, who worked in the wood shop at Sanger and was a heck of a ballplayer. He didn’t bother humiliating the relief guy or offering any false hope, just reached back on the first pitch and whacked that ball six hundred miles in the air, though no one in the stands paid him any mind.
They must have figured he knew his way around the bases just fine and focused their roaring attention on me, a hundred hands pointing to second, then third, then home plate in a way that would have been doggoned funny if I hadn’t been so worried about tripping or falling down or otherwise making a fool out of myself. I just kept my face down and my legs pumping, crossed home to a great thunder of applause from the Sanger people who all worked for Daddy and had watched me grow up, knew I was the family gimp.
Even Coach Bates was all smiles and love, meeting me at the plate and escorting me back to the dugout, his fat old arm draped around my shoulder as if I were an erring sinner, he a kindly old preacher who’d finally talked me back into the fold. But I had paid little mind to any of it, my eyes on the outfield, on the quietly shining Mercedes that was still parked there, voiceless and dim, though I could make out a small, fluttered movement behind the wheel, one that I could identify even from fifty feet away: the sight of my strange old vampire mother, clapping.
At moments like that, I could understand why Daddy loved baseball so much: because it was neat and simple in its way: clear-cut rules, clear-cut goals, nothing gray or uncertain, no mixed motives or heart-wrenching betrayals or tortured might-have-beens. Something I might one day actually enjoy, or at least wanted to learn a little better before the regular season came to an end, not long now, maybe two more weeks.
To that end, I begged Missy to interrupt her last-minute cramming for finals and help me practice my catching game, and after a lot of excuses and whining, she came by yesterday afternoon and took me to the church around six, the May afternoon already full of the sights and smells of summer: sweat and cut grass and a long, lingering sunset. We spent a good two hours out there, her effortlessly popping flies, me running around the slippery grass like a blind beetle, tripping over my feet and almost killing myself while I tried to learn the elusive art of Keeping Your Eye on the Ball.
I finally got to where I could snag a few, and as the brilliant sunset washed out to a flat, dull pearl, we left our cleats and gloves on the hood of her car and wandered down the street to Grannie’s for leftovers, burnt out on McDonald’s and wanting some real food. We found the house dark, the front door locked, though we didn’t let that slow us down, just went around back and let ourselves in with the spare key, were poking around in her refrigerator when there was a noise in the drive, the unmistakable diesel hum of the Mercedes pulling up.
I jerked upright immediately, stood there paralyzed like a possum in a headlight, though Missy kept her head, just turned and hissed at me: “Run hide to the laundry room, hurry—”
For some reason, she ran along side me, as if we were escaping from prison, just around the corner to the little folding doors that open into a tiny little room that used to be a corner of the back porch before Grannie made it into an indoor laundry room. I jumped up on the dryer while Missy paused at the folding doors, listening as the back door opened with a clang, the quiet house suddenly besieged with raised voices, apparently an argument-in-progress, one Grannie’s and one unmistakably Gabe’s.
“—well, I personally don’t give a damn what Candace thinks,” he was saying in a voice of great exasperation. “Since when did she become the Protector of All Souls, the Last Word in this family? Who died and made her queen?”
It was the first time I’d heard his voice in nine months and I was struck afresh with how much he sounded like Daddy, his voice stripped of every trace of New York and fully returned to its mill-town origins, quick and hick and aggrieved, so close that I could make out every word.
“Shut the door,” I hissed at Missy, who answered with a quick little nod of her head.
“I’ll go get the car,” she whispered, “sit tight.”
She quietly shut the folding doors, then must have slid across the hall into Grannie’s bedroom and tiptoed through the spare bedroom and out through the front door. For no one in the kitchen seemed to detect her presence, the close, hot little discussion rolling on undisturbed, Grannie chiding Gabe about his language, telling him that Simon was cursing like a sailor the other night, and she sho knew where he’d picked it up.
“At Sanger?” he countered in a needling little voice, trying to get her goat.
“Nosir,” she countered stoutly, “a mite closer to home.”
He must have come by to take her to the grocery store, was helping her put up groceries, for their ongoing little snipping war was punctuated by creaking cabinet doors and remarks like “When did you start buying instant coffee?” And “Where’d you keep your peanut butter?”
But these were mere counterpoints to the main argument, which was all about Simon and his Secret Life in Waycross, and whether it should remain secret.
“—youngun thinks he knows what he’s doing, but he don’t,” Grannie complained at one point, and later, to a muffled statement of Gabe’s: “Well, to hear some people talk, you wouldn’t thank there was any such thang as sin anymore—”
“That ain’t what I said,” Gabe countered solidly, clearly on Sim’s side, though he didn’t try to defend his actions or make any excuses. He mostly just fended off Grannie’s sincere moral outrage, on and on, a steady stream of reason that began to lose its tolerance as Grannie continued to insist that Mama should be told, Gabe finally losing his temper, telling her: “No, Mama! No, we don’t need to tell Myra or anybody else! Sim ain’t a child—you cain’t just lay down the law, set thet boy straight. It’s out of your hands—it’s out of Myra’s hands, and by God, it’s never been any of Candace’s business at all! It’s up to Sim! The ball’s in his court! He chooses! He chooses! HE CHOOSES!”
Which doesn’t sound as nutty as it did at the time, because by then, Gabe had worked himself into a frenzy, his voice steadily rising, so it sounded like: He chooses! (in a normal voice); then: HE CHOOSES! (a little louder); then HE CHOOSES! lifted to an actual shriek, so loud the folding doors to the laundry room actually trembled as he added: “And he’d better make damn sure he chooses right, ’cause whatever he chooses, he’ll by God live with it, the rest of his life!”
None of this was new to me, of course, just a rehash of the old empowerment lecture he used to give us losers at LPM. It wasn’t something Grannie could really argue with, for it had a scriptural basis, a variation of what Joshua told the Israelites when they crossed to the Promised Land (choose this day, whom will you serve), though Gabe somewhat diminished the righteousness of his instruction by backsliding and slipping in the f-word (“…the rest of his f-ing life”), which pretty much canceled out the whole point of his message. Just like that, Grannie was on him like white on rice, the whole argument deteriorating into this fevered little murmur of accusation and excuse that I found mighty annoying, for I could tell it was good and juicy gossip, just pitched so low that I couldn’t quite make it out.
I finally realized that Gabe was leaving, and they’d moved their argument to the back porch as he headed for the car. With hardly a stir of noise, I slipped quietly to the floor and wiggled between the washer and dryer to the little four-by-four vent that opened outside. Peering out at grasshopper level, I could see Gabe a few feet in front of me, though his back was turned, one hand rubbing his neck, one cradled protectively to his side in a way I’d never seen him do before, as if he’d just gotten it out of the cast and it still hurt him.
I immed
iately realized there was something very different about him, though I couldn’t figure exactly what, maybe his hair, that was cropped off close to his head, so short it was no longer visibly blond, but mostly gray, as gray as Daddy’s was that last month before he died. He even stood like Daddy, leaning there in the doorjamb on one shoulder, listening without comment to Grannie, who was standing beyond the screen, still fighting hard for the Soul of Simon Catts, not angry now, but querulous, asking Gabe what if that girl got pregnant? What would Sim do then?
Gabe just rubbed his neck, told her in a tired, spent voice: “Well, Mama, I think I can safely say that at this point in life, Simon knows what birth control is. But I’ll take him down to Walgreen’s and buy him a pack of condoms if it’ll make you feel any better.”
“Oh, law,” Grannie cried, “don’t you be doing no such thang.”
The very idea seemed to shock her to silence, for she just stood there a moment, shaking her head, offered in a gloomy voice: “It just seems like it was yesterday that li’l ol’ Sim was running around here barefoot, building forts and hunting snakes.”
“It was yesterday,” Gabe answered wearily as he straightened up. “Children have a way of growing up on you, or so they tell me.”
He was backing up when he said it, about to turn and head down the steps when Grannie asked him how he was feeling; said something about him losing weight. That’s when it hit me, the difference I’d noticed the moment I laid eyes on him: he’d lost maybe twenty, twenty-five pounds, his khaki pants bagging on him, his belt nipped in to the first notch.
Gabe didn’t seem too concerned, just brushed Grannie off and asked from out of the blue: “Well, did you hear about Clay? Myra says he hit a grand slam the other night, won the game.”
This was certainly news to me, though Grannie stood there in her cloak of Baptist righteousness and lied like a dog: “Yessir, he sho did,” she said with a proud little lift of her chin. “Him and Missy come down after the game, told me all about it. He’s got real good, might play professional ball one day.”
I wished to God I could see Gabe’s expression on that, but couldn’t, his back still turned, his good hand rubbing his neck wearily. “Yeah, that’s what I hear. That’s what I hear.” Then, as he started down the steps: “Well, I gotta go write a final, Mama. Tell Candace to kiss my ass when you see her, tell her if I want her opinion, I’ll be sure and call and ask.”
“—no such thang!” Grannie called after him, though he didn’t answer, just lifted a hand in farewell, then went around to the car without once turning in my direction, which really annoyed me, because I was wanting to see what he looked like; wanted to see his face. But he never turned and it was funny, because Grannie just kept standing there at the screen after he left, her face worried and introspective, an expression I remembered from years ago, back when she used to get onto Daddy for working so hard, for not taking off enough vacation days; for not going to the doctor often enough for annual checkups.
It made me a little nervous, that look of hers, though I just wiggled out from behind the dryer and sneaked out of the folding doors, was making my way through the house when I came upon her in the living room, looking for her reading glasses. I pretended to be dropping by for leftovers (which, now that I think of it, I was) and she was glad to oblige me, went to the kitchen and was warming me up whatever she could lay hands on when Missy came back with the car and offered me a ride home.
Grannie was none the wiser, just fed us and sent us on our way, and when Missy pulled up in Aunt Candace’s drive to drop me off, I didn’t get out right away. I just gathered my cleats and my glove, thanked her for helping me practice, then, after an awkward little pause, burst out in this goofy little voice: “What’s wrong with him?”
To her credit, Missy didn’t toy with me or tease me this time, didn’t ask who I meant by him. She knew I was talking about Gabe and just shrugged, said: “I don’t know. He’s been losing weight a couple of months now, since Christmas. Doesn’t like to talk about it.”
I digested this in silence, just sat there a moment, chewing my lip, before I got to the heart of the matter, the thing I’d thought of the moment I laid eyes on him: “Does he have cancer?”
Missy looked a little exasperated at the question. “Gosh, Clay, I don’t know,” she said with a little roll of the eyes. “If he does, he doesn’t know it. At least not yet. He thinks it’s an old ulcer acting up.”
But I’d never heard of an ulcer making someone’s hair turn gray, or lose weight that quickly. Cancer was the reason for that kind of weight loss, that kind of color, me and Missy both knew it, though there was nothing you could do about it. God, we knew that, too.
For a moment, we just sat there idling in the drive, till I finally told her: “Well, tell him he can come to my game next week, if he wants to.” Which was the nicest thing I could think of offering him, though Missy just looked at me dryly across the seat.
“You’re too kind, sir,” she said with her old Missy-sarcasm that, for some reason, just infuriated me; made me madder than hell.
“Just shut up, Missy!” I shouted at her across the seat, grabbing my cleats and slamming open the door. “God, I get sick of your mouth!” Oddly enough, she didn’t leap back at me like she usually did, but tried to reach over and grab my shoulder, to apologize, though I shook her off. “This isn’t easy for me, either, you know?” I told her in this furious, shaking little voice, appalled when my voice broke, it made me sound like such a child.
But Missy seemed curiously moved by my outburst, not going after me, but telling me in this mild little voice: “I know, Clay. I know. I’m sorry. I’ll tell him, okay? About the baseball.” When she saw I was calming down, she added with a return of her sly Missy-humor: “If you’re sure about that. I mean, we’re talking two Tierneys out there in the stands—him and Aunt Candace. There’s always the chance they’ll rush the umpire on a bad call, get in a big ol’ redneck fistfight.”
I appreciated her try at humor, had to clear my throat a little before I could speak. “Just tell him,” I managed to creak out. “Okay?”
She assured me that she would, though I’m not sure he ever got the message. For the next thing I heard about our nutty old uncle Gabe was that he was in the hospital, had woken up the next morning bleeding from the mouth, lying in a puddle of blood.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
TEN AT NIGHT; LAST DAY OF SCHOOL
Aunt Candace was the one who told me, came to my bedroom while I was dressing for school the next morning and knocked softly on the door. I thought she was stopping by to tell me to hurry and called for her to come in, was pulling a T-shirt over my head when I realized she was standing there in the doorway, looking at me with an expression that was stunned and quiet.
Just like that, I knew something was wrong, and for some reason, thought it was Mama. I thought that she’d found out about Sim and the stress had gotten to her and she’d gone nuts again, maybe killed herself. I actually sat down on the bed, was waiting for the confirmation, the tears, the meeting with Brother Sloan and Carlym and maybe Pastor Jim, all of them speaking in kind, hushed voices, telling me the same stuff they told me when Daddy died (“—in my Father’s house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you that where I am, you may be also—”). It was like my life passed before my eyes the way it’s supposed to do the instant before you die, till Aunt Candace finally got it out, told me in this shaken little voice: “Mama just called. Said Myra had to take Gabe to the hospital this morning.”
“Why?” I managed in a small, dried-up voice.
“Well, he’s been having a little trouble with his stomach,” she explained in that distracted little voice. “Started bleeding last night, thinks it’s just an old ulcer kicking up. I thought I’d run by and see him before I clock in, but I’ll need to leave early, right now. If you hurry, I’ll drop you off at school, save Missy the trip. You’re still going over to Mama’s this afternoon, aren’t you? To work in her yard?�
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That was the plan, made last week when I was still trying to comfort Grannie over Sim’s loss of innocence—that I’d go over and cut back the kudzu and move some azaleas and a couple of camellias that were growing too close to her house. She was paying me five dollars, though I wasn’t sure if that was by the hour or by the afternoon, and really didn’t care, because I loved the old girl, for one thing, and she was cooking me supper, for another.
When I nodded, Aunt Candace tried to smile, was turning to go back to the phone when I stopped her to ask: “How’s Mama?”
“I don’t know, baby,” she said. “I’m calling Simon in Waycross. He’ll come by and get you at school if anything—you know—happens. ’Kay?”
I quickly finished dressing, got to school early, and tried to study for my Latin exam, but it was hard to do, with this new medical emergency hanging over our heads. The whole time I was taking my exam, whenever anyone passed in the hallway or came to the door, I’d look up sharply, thinking it might be Brother Sloan or maybe Carlym, standing there in one of their dark funeral suits, beckoning me to the hall, asking if they could speak to me in private.
But the morning passed with no interruptions, no messages, and when the bell rang for early dismissal, instead of going down to the gym with Kenneth for the end-of-the-year dance to see if Rachel had possibly dropped by, I hotfooted it across town to Grannie’s. I hurried along, running the last block up the Hill and bursting in her front door, found her in the kitchen, standing at the stove in a housedress and apron, already working on supper in the middle of the afternoon. She held a finger to her mouth as soon as she saw me, whispered: “Shhh. Yo mama’s asleep in the front bedroom—you’ll wake her up.”
I stopped dead at that, glanced around wildly. “Why? Is it Gabe? Is he—?”