How We Play the Game in Salt Lake and Other Stories

by M. Shayne Bell

  We passed Maria, jumping up to look over a banister at people in the costlier seats, and Lucia, not far away, crying behind a pillar in shadows. “Are you all right?” I asked her.

  Lucia looked at Ned and me, then recognized us. “I must be brave, señor,” she said, that was all.

  When we got to our seats, it was Vancouver still in the lead, 6-1. Mrs. Cordova had spread an old white sheet on the narrow metal walkway in front of her daughters’ seats. Mrs. Cordova and the lady who’d been sitting next to Lucia were opening what was now a big stack of white envelopes and emptying the contents — cornmeal, sugar, pepper, dried herbs, dried flowers — into their left hands, spreading everything in geometric patterns on the sheet.

  “We won’t lose,” Dave said.

  I took a bite of my hot dog. Lucia came back, leading Maria by the hand. When their mother and the other lady had emptied all the envelopes, Mrs. Cordova stepped into the aisle and Lucia and Maria crawled across her seat into theirs, Maria first. They knelt in their seats so their legs wouldn’t hang down and disturb the patterns on the sheet. Lucia now sat next to her mother.

  One Salt Lake player had struck out, a second had walked to first base. Cordova stepped up to the plate. “Lucia,” Mrs. Cordova said, then she took a pair of needle-nose pliers out of her dress pocket. Maria covered her eyes. Lucia leaned forward. Mrs. Cordova reached into Lucia’s mouth with the pliers. I heard a crack, and the bloody pliers came out with a tooth. Mrs. Cordova dropped the tooth onto the sheet. The ball cracked against Cordova’s bat, and he ran. Our man on first base ran. Lucia let her tears and blood spatter the sheet.

  I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen. Lucia was spitting blood onto different parts of the sheet. But something was happening in the other sections of the stadium. People were standing and throwing their arms in the air, then people next to them would stand and throw up their arms. I looked at them, then at Lucia, who was coughing now, then at them, then at Cordova running around the bases. The people in the section next to ours stood and threw up their arms, then waited for us. We just stared at them. Our man who’d been on first base touched home plate. The other people in the stadium realized no one in our section was going to throw his or her arms in the air, so they skipped us. People across the field started doing it again.

  “The wave,” Ned said.

  Cordova touched home plate. He’d hit a home run. Then people in our section stood and applauded and cheered. We were the only ones in the stadium who’d seen what had happened. The wave stopped. Everybody in the other sections was trying to figure out why people in our section were standing and applauding, out of turn with their wave. Lucia and Mrs. Cordova didn’t stand. Few of us around them did. Mrs. Cordova pressed a strip of thin cloth into Lucia’s mouth and Lucia bit down hard.

  I sat there with a half-eaten hot dog in my hands. Dave had quit gumming his popcorn. “Why?” I asked him.

  “Cordova hit the ball, didn’t he? Got a home run, didn’t he?”

  What were the Cordovas involved in — Santeria? Espiritualismo? Macúmba?

  “You watch,” Dave said. “Cordova’s good. He hits plenty of balls on his own. But when the chips are down, when a lot rides on a critical play with no room for error —” He paused. He didn’t need to finish his sentence. But I wasn’t sure I could accept his explanation.

  “Just Cordova?” I asked.

  “Haven’t you looked around? Of course not. I’ve been coming here for years. I’ve helped these people once in a while, but I don’t have much left to give them.”

  He’d never had money, so he’d given them his teeth.

  “There’s more than just good ball riding on this,” Dave said. “There’s Lucia’s college, the mother’s gallbladder surgery, glasses for Maria. Cordova out there is responsible for this family. He can’t lose his job, and if he gets good enough, if he makes it to Minnesota, he’ll have money to buy them artificial teeth and anything else they might need. The whole family will have made it and moved away.” Part of me wanted to leave.

  Part of me wanted to get up right then and carry my hot dog to the trash can at the top of the stairs and drive home to an empty apartment. Ryan wouldn’t be there. When he came home he wouldn’t care about what I’d seen, probably wouldn’t even ask. Another part of me thought that what the Cordovas were doing should be true, that sacrifice and pain should result in something good. I wanted to live in a world where you could change outcomes if you sacrificed. I looked down the row at everybody else from the AIDS Foundation. They all looked sick.

  Lucia leaned back. She’d wiped her face clean.

  “Sounds weird,” Ned said. “But I sort of understand this. I’ve seen old guys in prison save their cornbread from supper, grind it up after it’s dried, and sprinkle it on their windowsills, thinking it will help them get out. But they’re all still in prison. Maybe they need to add blood.”

  I kept thinking about what I’d seen, and about glasses, the Minnesota Twins, old men in prison. “Does it always work?” I asked Dave. He shook his head no. The game went on. Vancouver stayed ahead, and at the bottom of the eighth it was 7-4. At one point, Dave stuffed what was left of Ned’s and my hot dogs into his popcorn bag and carried them to the trash can. No one had moved the sheet. Vancouver didn’t score during their ninth turn at bat. It was the bottom of the ninth inning, and we had to make four points to win.

  We got men on first and second bases, and Brito hit them in though he was tagged out on second.

  Two points to go. I looked around to see whether anyone else were spreading a sheet, but Mrs. Cordova’s was the only one.

  De la Rosa made it to second base. Cordova stepped up to the plate, tapped it with his bat. A lot of people were looking at Lucia, Maria, Mrs. Cordova. A hush fell over our section.

  Cordova swung and missed. The catcher threw the ball back to the Canadian pitcher.

  Lucia leaned forward. Her mother took out her pliers, then put them back. “No, hija,” she said. “No, Lucia.” Cordova swung and missed a second time. Lucia reached for the pliers.

  “Take one of mine,” I said.

  The Cordovas, Dave, and a lot of other people looked at me. What they didn’t know was that I wouldn’t need my teeth much longer. Like Dave, I couldn’t give them money, but I could give them this.

  Cordova swung and tipped the ball, but the umpire called it a foul ball.

  “Move,” Dave told the Cordovas. He got them out of their seats. Mrs. Cordova handed me the pliers. I hurried into her seat. “I don’t think I can do it myself,” I said.

  “I’ll help,” Ned said. He climbed into Lucia’s seat and crouched there. “Take a back one,” I told him. He was quick. He cracked out a tooth, dropped it on the sheet, and Cordova hit the ball. I leaned over the sheet to let my blood spatter it. I was surprised at how much blood there was. I was surprised at how bad it hurt. I was trying not to cry.

  “Hijo bendito,” Mrs. Cordova said softly. “Hijo bendito.” She handed me a strip of white cloth, and I shoved it where my tooth had been. Carla was there, and she helped me wipe my face. Somebody else from the Foundation wadded up the sheet and hurried it to the trash can, since nobody else should touch the blood on it.

  People started standing, clapping, cheering. Others were rushing out to their cars. Dave slapped me on my back. “We won!” he shouted over the noise. We’d won. Cordova was at the fence, and Lucia was there. He reached through the wire to touch her fingers.

  Dave handed me a can of Pepsi. “Here,” he said. “Get the taste out of your mouth.”

  “Where did this come from?” I asked.

  “Somebody behind us.”

  I took a drink, but still tasted blood.

  “I have to go,” Ned said. “I can’t be late to the van. I hope I didn’t hurt you too much.”

  We followed him out. I was shaking, but I could walk. It felt better to walk than to sit. I dropped the Pepsi in the trash can at the top of the stairs. I
had blood on my pants. People were touching me, saying things to me in Spanish as they passed by.

  “Why did you do that?” Carla asked.

  “We won, didn’t we?” Dave said. He was still with us.

  Mrs. Cordova hurried up to me, carrying Maria. “Gracias, hijo,” she said to me. “Gracias.”

  Lucia was biting down hard. There were tears in her eyes. I knew what she was feeling. She tried to smile at me.

  It was slow going. The rich got out first. But in the sunset were hints of green, low on the mountains in the east. There is a magic in the world, I thought. I was still part of it for a time.

  Ned waved and ran to his van. I wondered if I’d see him again. Maybe I could get his address and write, I thought. Maybe that, at least.

  Carla told me good-bye. “Come to the support group next Thursday,” she said. “I’m sure people want to talk to you after what you did today.”

  “No,” I said. I wasn’t ready for that. But as I watched her walk away, I thought of my dead friends. They’d have joined another group if they’d have lived. They’d have kept trying. Maybe I should too, I thought.

  “Good luck to you, Mike,” Dave said. He held out his hand. “We play the game pretty well, when all is said and done.”

  I shook his hand. “It’s not what I expected,” I said.

  “It never is,” he said.

  | Go to Contents |

  HOMELESS, WITH ALIENS

  No. 1: If you become homeless, find ways to stay warm.

  The morning the aliens flew into Salt Lake City, I became homeless. It was my choice. Most middle-aged women probably wouldn’t have made that choice, but I did. I hadn’t known what I would do till then, but in the news from other cities I’d seen what the aliens would likely do. When the sirens and bells went off it suddenly occurred to me that if I left practically everything — my books, furniture, clothes, food, condo, pickup — and went to live on the streets the aliens might leave me alone, might pass me by, might not think I was trying to stop them from taking whatever of mine they could possibly want because it would look like I didn’t have anything to want and I might not get one of their sharp little hands shoved between my ribs and my heart torn out and my breasts and tongue slashed off and eaten.

  I was wrong, of course, at least about being left alone.

  I kept my gear organized on shelves, and it didn’t take me long to shove what I’d need into a backpack and two shopping bags and head out the door — which I locked behind me, not wanting to make it too easy for them if they wanted in. The street was wild with traffic, people heading any way they could out of town. Other people stood at open windows in their apartments and condos in the fall cool looking out over the valley or staring up, not knowing what else to do, and I thought: I’ve at least got a plan.

  But it wasn’t much of one. I didn’t know what to do next. I’d never asked myself what a homeless person did after locking the front door for the last time, except find food and stay warm.

  I started downtown, which is where most homeless people ended up, but as I walked along I watched twenty silver, oval ships settle into position above the skyscrapers. By the time I’d reached the bottom of Second Avenue, I’d decided I wasn’t taking another step in that direction. The mouth of City Creek Canyon is right there, ending in a new little park with stone bridges and manicured trees. I started up City Creek toward the Watershed Protection Area in the hills north of town. I’d feel better with rock at my back at night anyway, not cement or brick. People had called me crazy, but I truly lived for my days and nights hunting fossilized insects on the Mongolian steppes or in the Utah backcountry. I wished I was out there now, either place, away from this city and the aliens —

  And right then three aliens rushed out of the white and peach gingerbread Victorian on Canyon Road, hands dripping blood and mouths chewing and arms full of dolls and cooking pans and an unopened twelve-roll family pack of toilet paper. There was screaming coming from that house. I stepped off onto the grass while the aliens ran down the sidewalk. One stopped to stare up at me, the one with an undressed brunette baby doll crying in his arms and Nurse Barbie and Malibu Barbie. I dropped my bags at his feet and started to take off my backpack. I was shaking so badly I could hardly pull the straps over my shoulders, but he turned to run after the others. People made a wide path for them all.

  Someone actually fired a gun — some fool on the seventh floor of Canyon Road Towers started shooting at those three aliens and maybe hit one: the gray-green little bastard with the toilet paper dropped to his knees, then got up and kept hold of the toilet paper and started running again as if nothing had happened. I grabbed my bags and ran in the opposite direction.

  I was no doctor. I could not help in the gingerbread Victorian. They needed medical help there, not a paleontologist. Other people were running into that house who maybe could help if there was anything to be done, and I heard sirens — the phones were still working to call 911. People would probably let an ambulance through, panicked though they were.

  But what was heading this way once shooting started was anybody’s guess. We all knew from the news, at least we all should have known after what happened to every army in the world, that the last thing you wanted to do was shoot at them.

  I headed straight up City Creek through Memory Grove, but once past the city I cut up to the ridge-line trail and took the high ground. I did not want to be down in the canyon for anybody, including aliens, to see coming. I wanted to see things coming my way first.

  By nightfall, I was twelve miles out of town. I’d tied my shopping bags to the back of the backpack, and I walked along across a little plateau fragrant with fall wildflowers — and one of their ships settled onto the flowers and grass ahead of me, scorching them and sending up a smell of burning.

  I thought I was too tired to run, but run I did. A bright light followed me, and aliens followed, running fast, closing the distance. What did I have that they wanted, I wondered, and I hoped it wasn’t my sweaty breasts. I dropped my pack and ran on about twenty feet, the light trained on my every step. It was no use. I sank down in exhaustion and shaded my eyes. Seven aliens swarmed across the grass and tore open my pack and threw my gear around and strapped my clean bras on their heads and chittered and ripped and tore and scattered and one of them came up to me and said “Got rocks?” I picked up pebbles from the ground and tossed them at his feet. He kicked them back, stepped closer to stare me in the face, and took hold of my breasts. “Got bug rocks, Missy?”

  “Not here!” I said, shoving his hands away.

  He kicked my legs, hard. I tried to stand but the others swarmed up and held my shoulders down, bras waving back and forth on top of their pointy little heads. One of them noticed the ants. I’d sat down maybe three steps from an anthill, and we’d stirred them up in the night. The first alien cooed and put his hands down near the ants and let them crawl over his skin. He held up his arms in the moonlight, and all the aliens cooed and went to touch his arms and pass ants onto their hands and fingers. They stared at them, transfixed.

  I crawled away, then stood and walked back toward the city. They didn’t follow. When they were out of sight, I ran — down into the canyon, into the brush, into the trees along City Creek. What had they meant about bug rocks, I wondered — and had they meant fossils? Did they somehow know I studied fossils — and how would they have known that? How would they have known I was a paleontologist? I had no way of knowing the answers, and I ran and ran, and walked, and ran.

  And sometime around dawn I thought I hadn’t done too badly my first night as a homeless woman. I’d run and walked all night, and because I’d never stopped moving I’d stayed warm.

  No. 2: If you become homeless, look a little crazy.

  The shelter was not deserted, and when I went there for food the next night they had food to give me: an apple, half a Swiss cheese and mayonnaise sandwich. I couldn’t go home — if there was any chance the aliens knew about my work and wan
ted something from me, I could not go back to my condo. They’d look for me there. They might be waiting there. I could not go to my friends. If the aliens could find me in the hills, they could find me in the city. Staying with friends might put them in more danger than they already were. I had no money or credit cards since I’d left my wallet in the backpack, so I was truly homeless — me and half the city now after all the burning. I looked like I’d been homeless for years: I was dirty; my clothes were dirty; and I had nothing, not even a shopping bag.

  “They’re sleeping three to a bed upstairs and all over the floors,” the lady at the shelter told me, “but I’m sure we can find you a space.”

  “I don’t want a space,” I told her. I took my food outside and ate it standing on the sidewalk, hands unwashed, smoke rising from the City County Building, the State Capitol, Primary Children’s Hospital, ZCMI Mall, the old Mormon Assembly Hall, Canyon Road Towers, countless homes. The streets were deserted of cars: the aliens had started blasting cars from their ships — the highways were choked with wreckage — so I was stuck in the city with everybody else still alive.

  I went back into the shelter for a blanket. “Why are you here?” I asked the lady at the desk. “Why did you come to work?”

  “What else was I supposed to do?” she said.

  I had no answer to that.

  “Be careful out there,” the lady told me.

  “You be careful in here,” I said. I walked away through the smoke, the screams, the sudden silences, sticking to shadow to avoid the little gray-green forms darting in and out of buildings. I eventually camped underneath the bed of an overturned pickup without bodies in it, but the night was so cold I couldn’t sleep. I lay shivering in my blanket, hungry and miserable, thinking of nights like this I’d spent in the San Rafael when despite the snow I’d stayed there digging fossils so delicately preserved you could study the antennae of the termites, the multifaceted eyes of the beetles, the patterns in the wings of the giant dragonflies.