How We Play the Game in Salt Lake and Other Stories

by M. Shayne Bell

  I shot the lagarto in the head. The light shaved off its forehead and snout, cauterizing the wound so there was no blood. It slumped down in the water, dead, but still holding Sam with its tongue. I pulled the light through the water to cut the tongue, sending up clouds of steam. The tongue snapped loose. Sam and I fell back.

  I pulled Sam to the muddy shore, part of the tongue still wrapped around his leg. Sam sat up and tried to pull off the tongue, but I grabbed his hands. “Don’t touch it!” I yelled. I wound a scrap of burlap around my right hand, tore off the tongue, and threw it in the water. Lagarto needles had punctured Sam sixteen times. Four had broken off in his skin. Red streaks ran up his leg already. I knelt in the mud, wrapped burlap around my fingers, and pulled out the four needles, then took Sam’s pocketknife, cut his leg, and started sucking and spitting out blood and venom, fast, trying not to swallow anything. “Help us!” I called to the help, but not one would come near Sam and me.

  Sam started hallucinating, pointing, mumbling something about a woman in white with a red sash around her waist and a leaking can of oil. I looked where he pointed and saw such a woman standing back in the huddle of help, but she wasn’t holding an oilcan — she was holding a dog, and she wore red slippers, not a red sash. “You’re wrong, Sam,” I said. “She’s got red slippers and a little dog, too.” As soon as I said that, I realized what was happening, and I slapped my face and stumbled to the raft. I was hallucinating now; I’d swallowed some of the poison. But lagarto poison in my stomach would only make me sick and crazy, not kill me. I had to give Sam a shot of antibiotic and antivenin before I went out of it. By the time I found our medkit, Sam had crawled partway to the raft, knowing what he needed. I ripped open the kit and spilled the syringes and vials in the mud. My eyes weren’t focusing. Our vials of medicine were held in a padded metal case, and I had to open it and look closely at each vial before I found one that read Instituto de Butantã, the antivenin center back in São Paulo that developed our medicines. I tore the plastic cap from a syringe, shoved the needle in the antivenin, and filled the syringe. I grabbed Sam’s arm and stuck the needle in it — but my own arm stung and I realized I’d shot my own arm, so I pulled out the needle and pinched Sam’s arm; mine didn’t hurt so I knew I had Sam’s. I gave him the shot. I wanted to give him another since I didn’t know how much I’d shot in my arm, but I couldn’t find the right vial again, and then the woman put down her dog and started walking toward me, smiling, holding out her hand —

  I came to my senses just after dawn when I threw up. I could see it wasn’t the first time Sam and I had vomited. I was holding Sam’s head in my lap, patting his cheek as if I were one of the help.

  The help were gone, off to the shadows. Why had they run from the lagarto? I wondered. They’d seen Sam and me kill twenty lagarto. And why had they given no warning?

  Sam’s leg was swollen and red. He was sleeping deeply, sweating. I put down his head and staggered back to the raft after the medkit, thinking I had to make some kind of bandage for Sam’s leg. I remembered where the girl had stood, and I couldn’t help looking for tracks. There were none. There were no dog tracks. But I looked at the mud flat where the water had been the night before and saw the carcass of the lagarto, partially eaten. Who knows what had crawled around Sam and me, feeding on that thing in the night.

  When I found the medkit and started back for Sam, I heard a rustling in the tree above me and looked up. The help were all there, in the shadows. Help-with-the-hurt-hand climbed down the branches toward me, shading his eyes from the light.

  “Sam die?” he asked.

  “No. Sam’s alive, barely.”

  I started off for Sam, but the help started cooing sadly, as if they were disappointed. I looked up again.

  “You not get insur-nance then, Jake? You not go home?”

  It took a minute for that to sink in. The help had all been in the freeze-shack when Raimundo talked to Sam and me about our insurance, and they must have understood that I’d get to go home if Sam died. Then I remembered Help-with-the-hurt-hand waking me up in the night to ask what I wanted most — and what I’d answered. “You bastards!” I yelled. I picked up a stick and threw it at them. They clambered higher in the branches, chittering confusedly. I kept throwing sticks, and they finally climbed into other trees and hid in the shadows.

  I dumped alcohol over Sam’s leg, and that woke him up. He swung his arm over his eyes to keep off the light. “Where is she?” he asked.

  “In Kansas,” I said. I smeared an antibacterial cream over Sam’s leg and bandaged it. I’d have to keep changing the bandage and the cream, and I hoped I’d have enough of each to keep Sam going till I got him to a doctor. I picked our syringes and vials out of the mud, washed them off, gave Sam a shot of antibiotic, and put the medkit back on the raft. I dragged the raft down to the water and tied it to a tree, went back for our bags of nicoji and dumped them on the raft. When I went back for Sam, the help had crawled into the tree above him, chittering.

  “Where you go?” one called.

  “You go to hell!” I shouted. But I thought about that and changed my mind. “No,” I said. “Go back to the old company. You deserve it.”

  I knew they couldn’t understand the irony of what I said, that they’d never understand my actions, but I didn’t care. They’d slop across the mudflats to get off the hummock, then wander back to wherever it was they lived. When they got hungry enough they’d find some Brazi team to work for. The Brazis could have them. I dragged Sam onto the raft, untied it, and poled us out on the bayou, heading south. Tomorrow we’d cut out the locators, and if we didn’t bleed to death we’d find Raimundo. Otherwise, we’d join Dorothy and Toto in Oz.

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  HOW WE PLAY THE GAME IN SALT LAKE

  The people in my section of the baseball stadium were all missing teeth. I noticed that right away. Everybody, except for the eleven people I’d come with, could have starred in one of those dental hygiene movies they show in health classes.

  A little Mexican girl turned around and smiled at me when I sat down. Her front teeth were gone. She was a kid, so I didn’t think it strange for her to be missing teeth. I smiled back and wondered whether Mexicans teach their kids to believe in the Tooth Fairy. The Tooth Fairy had been busy, if the people around me were any indication. The girl’s mother spoke to her in stern Spanish and made her turn around. The mother’s side teeth were gone.

  Some chubby, stubbly faced guy sat down next to me on my right and spilled popcorn into his lap and on the floor. He stuffed the pieces on his pants into his mouth and started gumming and sucking on them, making watery noises. “Going to be a great game,” he said, sucking in after the last word. I just stared at him. He held out his hand. “Dave,” he said.

  I shook his hand. “Mike,” I told him. Dave had no teeth that I could see.

  “You come here often, Mike?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Didn’t think so,” he said. “Never seen you before.”

  This was going to be my first baseball game since high school. After graduation I’d sworn never to sit through another ball game, but here I was. I hadn’t even had to pay for my ticket, which seemed right considering how much I’d hated team sports as a kid — always the last one picked, a handicap to my team no matter what we’d played, sidelined with thick glasses.

  “I wouldn’t miss a game,” Dave said.

  I nodded and stared straight ahead. I hoped he wasn’t going to try to talk to me through the whole game. I pretended to be interested in our team, the Salt Lake Buzz, warming up in front of their dugout, and I started to get interested, really, which continued to surprise me. I’d been manning the Utah AIDS Foundation hot line the afternoon some guy from the Buzz had called, and not to ask about safe sex. “Hey, would you guys like a few tickets to our next game?” he’d said. “It’s division playoffs, Vancouver in town. The Twins general manager will be here to watch, maybe tap Cordova for major
league play next season.”

  The Minnesota Twins sponsored our minor league team in the Pacific Coast Northern Division. They took our best players east and paid them big salaries. Cordova was evidently our best player.

  I’d told him we’d love tickets, but what I hadn’t told him was that the minute he’d asked I’d wanted tickets for my partner Ryan and me. It had surprised me, but I’d wanted them. It would be something out of the ordinary that we could do, something I could give Ryan. The guy from the Buzz had asked how many, and I’d asked how many could he send, thinking people might get into this, a lot of dying people on social security and tight budgets might like to watch a baseball game if the tickets were free. There were a lot of us with AIDS in town, a lot of people like me failing therapy with partners sick of taking care of us. He’d said he could send twelve. I’d passed the information to Carla, the activities director, and put Ryan’s and my names on the sign-up sheet before I’d left from my shift.

  But Ryan wouldn’t come with me. I was sitting in cheap seats at the far end of right field with Carla and ten guys I didn’t even know.

  I felt the top of my head burning in the late afternoon sun. I pulled my cap out of my back pocket and put it on — not much hair left.

  “You’re cute,” the guy to my left said, one of us with Foundation tickets.

  I just looked at him. We’d never met. I wasn’t sure where he was headed with that comment.

  “I’m down from minimum security,” he said, completely open about his situation. “They let me out for Thursday support group, but group got canceled this week since most guys signed up to come here. I have to meet the prison van as soon as the game ends.”

  “I’m sorry you have to go back there,” I said. I wondered what he’d done. It bothered me at first that he talked about coming from prison like he’d have talked about getting off work early. No big deal. But then I thought maybe nonchalance was the only way he could face telling somebody he was in prison. Maybe nonchalance was a wall against how people must react to him. It started to remind me a little of the times I’d had to tell someone I have AIDS.

  “Are you new to the group?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.“I don’t go to a support group anymore.” I’d attended a support group for three years. Fourteen of the twenty-one people had died, and after the social worker who led it died, the rest of us disbanded. I hadn’t been able to join a group after that and face getting close again to people who were all going to die.

  He sucked Pepsi through the straw in his drink, kept looking at me. It was strange and flattering. It felt odd to have somebody think I was worth looking at. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I didn’t see that anymore. All I could see was a man with that starved, prisoner-of-war look people with AIDS get toward the end. The guy slouched in his seat and put his leg tight against mine. I didn’t move my leg.

  The players were doing something down below, the two teams huddling around their coaches, the Salt Lake Buzz in black and white striped uniforms on this side of the field, the Vancouver Canadians across the field in robin’s egg blue. Salsa music blared from the loudspeakers. People were hurrying to their seats, spreading blankets to sit on because the metal seats were hot in the sun. About two-thirds of the people in this section were Hispanic, and I wondered if they were related to guys on our team, guys with last names like Brito, De la Rosa, Jimenez. I watched everybody around me laughing, smiling, calling to each other in Spanish and a little English, waving. All of these people — Hispanic,Anglo, young, old, middle-aged, teenagers — were missing teeth. I turned around to look at the people behind me. Same thing.

  “Get a load of this,” the guy to my left said.

  Three rows below us, one of the fattest guys I’d ever seen was trying to fit into a seat. He had to tuck himself down. His wife tried to help, pulling on his shirt and pants. When he’d finally squeezed all the way in he turned around, happy to be here and not embarrassed. I was glad he managed that. He smiled to no one in particular. Some of his teeth were missing.

  Was it poverty? Were these people not able to afford dental care? I felt sorry for them, but glad they could at least find a few dollars for something like this ball game to take their minds off toothaches.

  The music changed to something orchestral and grandiose, the introduction to the National Anthem. At that moment, the guy from prison touched my hand, down at my side. People probably couldn’t see. I didn’t want to lead him on, but I didn’t move my hand. It wasn’t right to touch like this since I was in a committed relationship, never mind what that relationship had become, so I had to let him know. But it had been a long time since anybody had wanted to touch my hand. “What’s your name?” I asked him.

  “Ned,” he said.

  I told him my name, then leaned over to him. “I have a partner,” I whispered.

  He moved his hand, looked away, sucked more of his Pepsi.

  “I wonder why sometimes,” I said.

  He smiled, a little pride saved. I wished he hadn’t moved his hand. Ned was a handsome guy. It didn’t hurt to admit that. If things had been different, if I weren’t committed and if he weren’t in prison, I’d probably have gone with him for a beer after the game, maybe on a date Saturday night.

  The National Anthem began. Everybody stood. A tenor with the Utah Opera Company belted out the song. I was impressed. Most people put their hands over their hearts. Everybody pulled off their hats.

  And the game began, Vancouver first up to bat. They soon had a guy on every base, then one Canadian struck out. Another walked to the plate, tapped it with his bat, stood ready for the pitch. The people around me sat absolutely still, absolutely intent on the game. Even Dave quit sucking on his popcorn. “Tucker’s one of their best batters,” he whispered to me.

  Tucker swung. The ball cracked against his bat, arched up high, landed in left field. Brito scooped it up, a Canadian touched home plate, one point for their team, Brito slammed the ball to third base, but the Canadian there was safe, Tucker already on first. The bases were loaded again. Another Canadian stepped up to bat.

  “Men’s room call,” Ned said. Dave and I moved our knees so he could get by. Ned’s shoes crunched the popcorn Dave had spilled on the floor.

  The little girl turned around in her seat. She looked down at the crushed popcorn. Dave didn’t say a word. He just held out his popcorn bag. She ate a handful, all smiles. “I’m Maria,” she said to me. She evidently knew Dave. He let her take another handful. “This is my momma, and my sister Lucia is sitting next to me.” Lucia looked back at us. She was maybe sixteen, quite an age difference between these two sisters.

  “How old are you, Maria?” I asked.

  “Five,” she said. “And that’s my brother playing ball. If he does good enough in this game, we’re moving to Minneaxolis.”

  “Cordova’s the brother,” Dave said to me. “Right outfield.”

  It was just like I’d thought: relatives in the stadium. The Canadians scored one more point and were out. It was 2-0, and Salt Lake’s turn at the bat.

  Ned came back. He didn’t say a word. We just watched the game. By the end of the fourth inning it was Vancouver still in the lead, 5-1. “I have a bad feeling about this,” I told Ned, and I wasn’t the only one. Lucia and her mother were fingering rosaries. There was a kind of intent murmur in our section. People in other sections were streaming up and down the aisles, carrying armfuls of hot dogs, nachos, drinks, throwing things around, standing and talking. I wondered why they’d come if they weren’t going to watch the game.

  Cordova hadn’t scored a point yet. He’d struck out twice. An old lady walked up the stairs and spoke with Mrs. Cordova in hushed Spanish. She handed Mrs. Cordova a white envelope and walked down the stairs to her row. Lucia stared at her mother. Her fingers stopped moving across her rosary. The wife of the fat man in the row in front of the Cordovas turned around and handed Mrs. Cordova an envelope. Somebody tapped me on my shoulder and handed me an env
elope, pointed to Mrs. Cordova. I passed it to her. Dave took a folded white envelope out of his shirt pocket and gave it to Mrs. Cordova. He looked at me and shrugged. “Cordova’s game’s about to improve,” he said. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  Lucia suddenly stood, took Maria’s hand, led her past their mother to the stairs. “Candy!” Maria said, waving to us.

  “Did you give them money for candy?” I asked Dave, thinking I could contribute a couple of dimes, maybe a quarter. I’d brought a pocketful of change to buy a Pepsi and a hot dog.

  Dave burst out laughing, slammed his hand over his mouth to keep gummed popcorn from flying into Mrs. Cordova’s hair. “Don’t think so,” he said.

  I tapped Ned. “Let’s get a hot dog,” I said.

  “No money,” he said.

  I knew exactly how much I had in nickels, dimes, and quarters, all I’d been able to scrounge together to bring to the game. “I can spot you,” I said. I couldn’t buy a Pepsi that way, but there were drinking fountains.

  He followed me out. “This is weird,” I said.

  “What, that we’re losing?”

  We passed a little boy hurrying down the stairs with a white envelope in his hands, his momma calling directions to him in Spanish from four rows up.

  “Have you noticed how all these people are missing teeth?”

  Ned looked around. “Now that you mention it.”

  The concourse was crammed with people, the lines for food too long — but how could you go to a baseball game and not eat a hot dog? We waited it out. I bought two hot dogs slathered in green pickle relish, onions, cheese, ketchup, mustard. As we walked back, I could smell the sweet mustard.