Switch Pitchers

by Norman German

  “No. To live. Marlene got a job at the phone company and told her there were plenty of switchboard positions open. Irene doesn’t know you’re pitching here.”

  Bobby nodded. He had his hand in his pocket, trying to look casual. He felt the almost-bald rabbit’s foot that had been keeping company with his lucky buckeye seed for half a decade.

  “And Bobby.” Louis looked at Bobby. “She’s married.”

  Bobby looked at his drink. “I figured as much. Who did she end up marrying?”

  “Earl Self.”

  PART FOUR

  Goodnight Irene

  Chapter 12

  AT sunset Bobby drove his Bel Air to the foot of the Calcasieu River Bridge. After moving a barricade, he eased his car through the gap, returned the sawhorse to its original position, then drove to the top of the bridge to take in the view. The storage tanks, flare stacks, and distillation towers of the petrochemical industries populated the west bank downriver for two miles. The village of Westlake sat upstream like a straw-hatted old woman with a cane pole, waiting patiently for something big to come her way. Bobby turned and saw downtown Lake Charles hugging the shoreline and off to the northeast swamps of primeval cypress brought to their knees by turn-of-the-century timber barons from the North.

  Bobby lit a cigarette and looked south. A few blackbirds were already heading for their roosts in the dense forests north of the city. Bobby smoked and watched the birds form flocks of fifty and a hundred that joined in a few minutes to thousands. As darkness approached, the flocks merged, forming skeins a hundred feet wide and a quarter-mile long. They passed over, wave after wave, the lines connecting into black ribbons that stretched east and west as far as Bobby could see. And still they kept rolling in, wave after undulating wave, millions of birds with a sure sense of home and how to get there.

  Bobby leaned over the black-and-white striped barricade at the edge of the bridge and looked at the water below, red and green lights marking the channel and cement columns of the bridge. He took a last pull on his cigarette and reached over to drop it into the river. He paused and turned his face up, then pinched the butt between his thumb and middle finger and flicked it skyward. The red ashes burst like a firework blossom and the birds flared, forming a break in their line. Then they healed together and moved on, disappearing against the black treeline.

  Bobby walked to his car and opened the passenger door. Three baseballs lay nestled in his glove on the front seat. With his left hand, he held the three balls in the pocket as he worked his right into the glove. He returned to the top of the bridge near the edge and looked over. He had been thinking about this for some time and wanted to do it before the bridge was finished. If Chozen were on the opposite side of the gap, a hundred feet away, he could easily throw him a strike. Bobby whirled his throwing arm around like a windmill, five revolutions forward, five backward. Then he waved both arms back and forth in front of him like a man trying to get warm. He bent over and touched his toes, bouncing to stretch his leg muscles.

  At the top of the bridge, Bobby went into the stance he used with a runner on first. He raised the glove, his pitching hand inside on the ball, then lowered it to the set position near his heart. He looked east down the bridge’s sharp decline, imagining himself on top of a huge pitching mound with a steep slope. He lifted the knee of his stride leg, let his body fall toward town, planted, swiveled his hips, and whipped his arm at a fluid warm-up speed. His down-bridge momentum carried him into fielding position and he watched the white ball disappear in the night.

  * * *

  “Meet me at the Ferris wheel.” That’s what Irene had said to Bobby after he chased her down the streets of El Dorado and asked her to the fair.

  Bobby waited by the Ferris wheel, but Irene was nowhere in sight.

  He lit up another Lucky and watched the smallest Chihuahua he had ever seen prancing down the midway escorting a clown on stilts in red-and-white polka dot pants. The scorched-sugar odor of cotton candy, mingled with the aroma of buttered popcorn, beckoned to Bobby’s stomach. He finally gave in and crossed the midway to a small booth to buy a bag of peanuts.

  Bobby walked and ate the peanuts, dropping spent shells on the hay-strewn ground. A jukebox song by Hank Williams kept ringing in his head.

  Well, you’re just in time to be too late.

  I tried to, but I couldn’t wait—

  And now I’ve got another date,

  So I won’t be home no more.

  He remembered only the one stanza and wished it would go away. He noticed he was chewing in rhythm to the song, which annoyed him further, so he tried an experiment. In his mind, he sang the first line a few times,

  “You’re just in time to be too late,”

  then tried to exit the song by repeating the last line, ending on a note of finality:

  “I won’t be home no more, oh, I won’t be home no more.”

  Bobby passed down a row of skill booths, watching children try their luck shooting basketballs through a too-small hoop, tossing wooden rings at rows of bottles, throwing dull darts at under-inflated balloons.

  “Hey, Big League!”

  Bobby turned with a smile, expecting to see one of his friends. Instead, it was a ratty-looking carny with faded blue tattoos crawling up both arms. In each hand, he gripped three baseballs.

  “Try your luck with the baseballs. Knock a pickaninny over the edge, win a kewpie doll. Knock down all three, get a big stuffed animal.”

  Bobby waved off the carny and continued walking. When he came full circle to the Ferris wheel, he saw Irene with a small group.

  She spoke with her fists on her hips. “I thought you had stood me up.”

  “Hey,” Bobby said, “I’ve been here since you abandoned me this morning.”

  Irene slapped his arm. When the kidding was over, Irene introduced Bobby to her brother and his date, Louis and Marlene, then to her sister.

  “Hey, big tipper,” Fay said.

  “That’s me.”

  “Oh,” Irene said, “you two know each other?”

  Thumbing at Irene, Bobby said to Fay, “You could have saved me some trouble by telling me y’all were both Mr. Martin’s daughters.”

  After a few minutes of small talk, Louis said, “Bobby, my daddy”—he pronounced it deddy—“my deddy asked me to chaperone Irene, but I’m guessing y’all don’t want us hanging on like cockleburs, so y’all head that way and we’ll go this.” Louis crossed his chest, pointing right with his left hand and left with his right.

  When Fay pouted, Bobby said, “What about little kewpie doll here?”

  “Don’t worry about Fay,” Louis said. “She’ll be all right. In fact, I’ll bet you two bits by the end of the night she’ll be dangling her legs off the Salt Creek trestle with a green-toothed carny.”

  As they started their stroll, Bobby offered to buy Irene a coke.

  “No, thank you. I’m fine. Maybe later.”

  “Well, I’m about to choke on these dry peanuts, so you can buy me one.”

  Waiting in line for the coke, Bobby said to Irene, “Listen, there’s a baseball throw down the way. But of course it’s rigged, like all the games are.”

  “No,” Irene said. “Are they really?”

  Bobby had not known her long enough to tell if she was being facetious.

  “Yes,” he said. “But we can beat this one if we work together. The harder you throw, the less likely you are to knock the pins over the edge. There’s a lip on the back of the board that makes them bounce forward.”

  When they strolled past the booth, the carny called out.

  “Say, Big League, why’nt you knock over the pickaninnies and win your lady a stuffed dog?”

  Bobby waved him off.

  “Come on, Big League. Just a nickel. Your date’ll think you’re a cheapskate if you don’t try at least once.”

  They turned and the carny jumped over the half-wall into his booth. He rolled a triangular rack of baseballs toward Bobby, then s
at on an upright bale of hay in the corner. Bobby windmilled his arm a few times, then touched his toes.

  At the back of the booth, three groups of figurines were arranged on a red shelf. Each figure was a wooden pin in the shape of a quart milk bottle. Painted to look like pickaninny dolls—black faces, red lips, white eyes—they were set up in pyramids, two at the base, one balanced on top.

  “Knock a single pickaninny over the back of the shelf in any of the groups,” the carny chanted, “and you get a ceramic kewpie doll. Knock two over, you get an ashtray. Knock over three at once in any grouping, and you’ll win your pretty a fluffy pink dog.”

  Bobby went into a half-hearted windup and threw at the first group. The baseball hit the center of the three pins and scattered them. Only the top pin fell behind the platform.

  The carny encouraged his mark. “Good throw, Big League! You kick that leg up a bit higher, you might get all three next time.”

  Bobby wound up more aggressively and hurled at the second set of pins. Again only the top pin fell behind the board.

  “Whoa!” the carny said. “You really knocked the paint off them little niggahs that time. Last throw, now. A little harder and you got your sweetheart a cuddly dog, sho’ nuff.”

  Bobby wound up and threw as fast as he dared without a warm-up. A bottom pin ricocheted and hit the carny in the chest.

  “Holy Jesus, Big League, what you doing at a penny-ante carnival? You oughta be throwing at those real pickaninnies invadin’ the Big Leagues.”

  Bobby knew the carny wasn’t feeding him a line of false flattery. He tried to suppress a smile but a small one squeezed through. Bobby used the opportunity to grab Irene’s hand and pull her away from the booth. He felt encouraged when she did not let go.

  “Say,” the carny called, setting up the pins. “Don’t you wanna try again, Big League? You almost had it. I been all over these United States, and I ain’t never seen a arm like yours.”

  The couple turned around. Bobby pitched a nickel on the plank laid across the front of the booth. The carny rolled a rack of baseballs in his direction. Bobby picked up a ball and the carny moved back, wedging himself behind the hay bale for protection.

  Bobby handed the ball to Irene.

  The carny laughed and relaxed, stepping forward to his usual place. As Irene prepared to throw, he plucked a kewpie doll from a box and handed it to Bobby. “Your prize for the lady from that last round.”

  Irene imitated Bobby going through his warm-up. She windmilled and stretched and twisted. Then she went into her mock windup, the one she used earlier that day outside the window of the Randolph Hotel.

  The carny backed away again, thinking she might be wild.

  Irene double-pumped with her arms and reared back to throw, then eased down and tossed the ball underhand. Two pins fell backwards over the lip of the board. The third wobbled in a circle, then reluctantly fell and spun slowly on top of the lip. Bobby blew hard at the pin and it slipped over the edge.

  Irene walked down the midway, cradling the stuffed dog in her left arm while crooking her right around Bobby’s throwing arm.

  “Say, I thought you said pitching deadens your arm for a few days.”

  “It does,” Bobby said.

  “Well, I’d sure hate to be one of those batters facing you when it comes back from the dead. I’ve never seen anyone throw like that before.”

  Bobby smiled. “Yeah, and look what it got me.” He pulled the ceramic kewpie doll from his slacks and handed it to a passing boy.

  “Hey,” the little boy called. “Thanks, Mister.”

  “Tonight,” Bobby said, looking into Irene’s eyes, “the best pitcher won.”

  “Only with your coaching.”

  Irene pointed up the midway. Bobby looked and saw Louis and Marlene in front of the Fat Lady booth. Pulling even with them, they heard an instrumental version of The Pied Pipers’ “Candy” coming from behind a curtain. A fat lady in a dainty pink negligee was painted on the curtain, her name scrolled above her head in a delicate script: Candy.

  When Louis noticed Bobby and Irene, he held Marlene at arm’s length and crooned to her in Johnny Mercer’s voice.

  Candy, I call my sugar Candy,

  Because I’m sweet on Candy,

  And Candy’s sweet on me.

  I wish that there were four of her

  So I could love much more of her.

  Bobby placed his hands on Irene’s shoulders and finished the chorus with Louis:

  Candy, it’s gonna be just dandy,

  The day I take my Candy

  And make her mine, aaaall mine.

  * * *

  Bobby did not see or hear the first baseball land and he wondered how far he could throw from the giant mound of the bridge before the ball touched down. He knew from newspaper articles that each span of the bridge measured half a mile. He performed some quick calculations. A quarter mile is 440 yards. Three feet to a yard, round down to 400, times 3, equals twelve hundred feet. Double that. Twenty-four hundred feet. Bobby windmilled his left arm around a few times, stretched it behind his back, then over his shoulder. He touched his toes and put the palm of his left hand flat on the cement. He got into position at the top of the bridge, then leaned over and squinted down the dark alley of his strike zone.

  He shook off the first signal, the second, nodded yes to the third, raised glove and ball over his head, and came to his set position. He checked his target, raised his lead leg, let his body fall, planted and swiveled, driving his torso down to inject more speed into the ball, and whipped his arm around. Before his trail leg followed through and brought him into fielding position, the ball had disappeared in the blackness.

  * * *

  As Bobby and Irene stepped into a wobbly bench of the Ferris wheel, Kay Starr sang her song from a scratchy speaker.

  The Wheel of Fortune goes spinning around.

  Will the arrow point my way? Will this be my day?

  The wheel rotated and Louis and Marlene climbed into the next bucket, singing along.

  Oh, Wheel of Fortune, please don’t pass me by.

  Let me know the magic of . . . a kiss and a sigh.

  Bobby held Irene’s hand while the passengers loaded.

  “Do you believe in Fortune?” Irene asked.

  Bobby was not comfortable with deep questions. His views always made him feel ignorant or embarrassed when he heard them coming out of his mouth, so he usually kept his peace when people were offering up their opinions. “I think with talent and work you can carve your own way in the world. But some people don’t have talent,” he said, “and that doesn’t seem fair.” He looked at Irene smiling at him. “Why? What do you believe?”

  “Now, if I knew, would I be asking you?” She laughed.

  Bobby said, “It doesn’t seem right, some people born with everything and others with nothing.”

  While the Wheel is spinning, spinning, spinning,

  I’ll not dream of winning . . . fortune or fame.

  “And you?” Irene asked. “What kind of family were you born into?”

  Bobby smiled. He had spent most of his childhood in the Depression. In addition to the four children, family members from both sides were constantly moving in and out of the rented frame house on Greenway in Shreveport. He always smiled when he thought of those years because the first thing that came to his mind was an aunt they called Heavy. When she walked, the entire house shook. Times were hard and food was scarce, but Heavy never lost a pound.

  “Rich people rear their children,” Bobby said. “Regular folks raise them. We weren’t reared or raised. We were set loose like free-range cattle to do the best we could on our own.”

  Irene laughed. Pleased his joke made her happy, he continued. “We had a cup of cornmeal for breakfast, a cup of water for lunch, and swole up for supper.”

  The wheel started turning. Bobby and Irene looked at the colorful lights below and the small people wandering about. Each time their bucket approached the
top, Louis and Marlene tossed popcorn and peanuts at them.

  When Louis disappeared from view, Bobby pointed to the southwest. “The ballpark,” he said in Irene’s ear. She nodded at the halo of lights in the distance. Bobby kissed her on the cheek and she accepted it shyly.

  After a few rounds, the Ferris wheel stopped to let off and load more passengers.

  Bobby pulled his Luckies from his shirt pocket and took one from the pack with his lips. He reached into his slacks and retrieved the Zippo while Irene watched the ritual.