Butterfly Winter

by W. P. Kinsella

  The elder Boatly was expecting a soccer game. He had played rather well in the old country, if his accounts could be believed.

  “What is this?” he kept repeating in Hungarian.

  By then Sandor knew the word baseball. He had been exposed to childish versions of the game played on the streets, playgrounds, and school yards of Providence. He had seen American boys trouping off after school, tossing a small, hard ball in the air, wooden staves perched on their shoulders like rifles. But he had never seen a professional contest, never dreamed that grown men engaged in the game, playing it with deadly seriousness.

  Sandor Boatly had never guessed that, properly played, baseball consisted of mathematics, geometry, art, philosophy, ballet, and carnival, all intertwined like the mystical ribbons of color in a rainbow.

  It was years before Sandor Boatly encountered a magician, but the thrill of seeing an orange turned into an endless string of bright silken scarves was nothing compared to what he experienced that afternoon.

  There was a river to the left, the outfield sloped gently upward. There was no outfield fence. The game was unenclosed, the foul lines forever diverging.

  “Bah!” said Sandor’s father, settling on his haunches, chewing on a blade of grass. “A stick and a rock. What kind of game is this?”

  But Sandor understood instantly. He intuited that baseball was somehow akin to the faded picture on the wall of the Boatly living room where two ballerinas twirled on toes as stiff as inverted fence pickets. It was only a semiprofessional baseball game they were witnessing, two local athletic clubs, one sponsored by the Sons of Erin, the other by the Christopher Columbus Society.

  Sandor, transfixed, studied the pitcher and catcher, connected inexplicably by the rope of leather they tossed back and forth. He watched the infielders scurrying after ground balls, leaping like cats to take a grounder on a high bounce and brace themselves in midmotion to throw out the sprinting runner at first base.

  Somehow, as if by divine revelation, Sandor Boatly was filled with baseball expertise; he understood the aesthetics of the game and explained each play to his father and sister, who after an inning or two had taken to cheering for the Sons of Erin, while, like the rest of the crowd, deriding the single umpire who wore a tall silk hat, and stood like an undertaker behind the pitcher, from where he made all decisions concerning the game.

  In the space of a few moments, Sandor had not only become enchanted by the magic of baseball, but came to understand it instinctively. But, miracle of miracles, he was able to communicate his newfound love to his father and sister.

  “Look! Look!” he kept saying. “The field is not enclosed. The possibilities are endless. There is no whistle to suspend play, there is no clock to signal an ending.”

  “Look! Look!” he must have repeated the words a thousand times that fateful afternoon. And when the game ended, the little family drifted dreamily away from the ballpark, the odor of fresh cut grass still in their nostrils, gauzy memories of plays that were and plays that might have been mingling in their minds.

  It was Sandor’s father who, as they walked toward home on the gritty streets of Providence, Rhode Island, articulated the essence of baseball.

  “When,” he asked his son, “may we return to this land of dreamy dreams?”

  While his father remained a lifelong fan, Sandor Boatly dedicated his life to baseball. Instead of becoming a priest, as many of his boyhood friends did, Sandor Boatly became an evangelist of baseball, a Johnny Appleseed, who instead of flinging apple seeds in rainbow-like arcs as he walked the fields and backwoods of America, carried a strange and wondrous canvas sack across his shoulders so that at times he looked as though he was bearing a cross. The sack was filled with baseball bats, hand-carved from hickory, crafted with love to last forever, by men who knew and appreciated the feel of a smooth and sleek weapon, which like a gun, became an extension of the holder. The sack also contained baseballs, horsehide, hand-stitched with catgut, hand-wound by people who knew what they were building.

  The day he turned fourteen, Sandor Boatly refused his father’s offer (it was more of a command) to become an apprentice glazer and contribute to the family finances. Sandor set out on his mission, which was to introduce the magic of baseball to those who did not know of it, or if they did know about baseball, to teach them to regard it with the reverence it deserved.

  On foot, Sandor moved across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and eventually made his way to the plains of Iowa and Nebraska, where like a true evangelist he spread the word of baseball to the scattered multitudes.

  Along the way he abandoned his name, for he found it took too much time to explain his ancestry, his recent history, his roots, for people were forever wondering if his family might have traveled to America with their family, plumbing the depths of their memories for common ground.

  “Call me whatever you like,” Sandor said to his multitudes, which, on the prairies, consisted often of a single farm family, dirt farmers living in soddies, some living in virtual caves built into the sides of hills. Sandor would thump at the gunnysack-reinforced door of a soddy. The pale face that answered would shade its eyes from the sudden glare of the prairie. He was often mistaken for a preacher, for he dressed in black broadcloth, wore a wide-brimmed hat, and, as soon as he was able, grew a bushy black beard.

  After introducing himself, though not always his mission, for the tough pioneer women tended to frown on sport of any kind as frivolity, Sandor would find his way to where the men were working. He would pitch in and work side by side with the farmer and his sons, picking roots, or pulling stumps, perhaps carrying rocks to a homemade stoneboat, or walking behind an ox as it pulled a plow.

  At the end of the day, by the fading rays of a low sun, or as the plains horizon flamed like prairie fire, Sandor would open his magical sack and toss a ball to a burly farm boy in work pants too short and clodhopper boots awkward as wood blocks. The three or four or five of them would lay out a rough diamond, perhaps using a barn wall as a backstop, if the homesteaders were fortunate enough to have built a barn. Sometimes there would be stumps for bases, with stringy trees in the outfield.

  Often the only clear land would take in a slough, full of frog grass and cattails, where inches of water lay hidden under seemingly innocent greenery. But no matter the obstacles, Sandor’s enthusiasm would shine through, and the big, lumbering boys would get word to their neighbors, and by the second evening of his visit there would be almost enough players for a side of baseball.

  Then Sandor would spring the trap. He would mention the last area that he had visited, five, or ten, or fifteen miles away, and he would mention how they had taken to the game, and how they had formed a team and were waiting only for a challenge.

  When he moved on he would leave behind a precious ball, after painstakingly demonstrating to his converts how to re-cover it. He might also leave behind a bat, or he might simply show them how to hew a bat from a sturdy piece of timber. On rare occasions he would actually see the competition through, choosing a site, scheduling the contest, acting as umpire.

  He learned early on that the main objections to his mission would be on religious grounds. Sandor was quick to realize that pioneers, facing unbelievable hardships, often clinging to life and sanity by the thinnest of threads, needed not only to believe in the supernatural, but to believe the supernatural was on their side. Sandor realized too, that these primitive peoples lacked the sophistication to realize that there were many and various manifestations of the supernatural, Sandor Boatly himself being one.

  Since he was often mistaken, on first contact, for a circuit rider, Sandor took to carrying a heavy, leather-Bound bible. He learned to quote the passages that urged the listeners to make a joyful noise and celebrate life. He never claimed to be a minister, but if his dress and demeanor intimated such, he found no reason to deny it.

  If requested, he could conduct a brief nondenominational service of a Sunday morning, after which he wou
ld bring out his baseball equipment and retire to the nearest meadow with the men and boys. Even the most pinched and pious farm women could find no fault with a hard-working pastor who regarded baseball as a sinless pastime for a sunny summer Sunday afternoon.

  Occasionally, Sandor stumbled into a situation where a minister was clearly needed. He was known to pray with vigor over the terminally ill, preparing them for passage to the next world, easing that passage. When called upon he conducted funerals, baptisms, even an occasional marriage, though he loathed the intolerance of most Christians. “Christianity is the only army that shoots its own wounded,” he said in one of his last letters to his sister, Evita.

  As a boy he had heard or read that it matters not what qualifications one possesses, but only that one look the part, words that would have a profound effect on the many lives of Sandor Boatly. For instead of planting trees as a legacy, he planted the joy of baseball in several thousand hearts, and, as a seed grew into a sapling, then a tree, and eventually into a forest, so his own efforts multiplied over the years until baseball was everywhere in America, like the trees and the rain.

  Sandor worked his way as far west as Wyoming, before heading south, touring Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas, crossing several Southern states before finding himself in Florida—Miami to be specific.

  Though he had never lived in a truly warm climate he always sensed deep in his bones that the natural state of the universe was endless summer, though he had only heard rumors of its existence. He had heard of places where the grass was eternally green, where snow was spoken of with nostalgia by people who had not endured it for years. But Miami, and Florida, that tropical green finger with the angelic aura of white sand, was so perfect, so magical, the possibilities of baseball so endless, that its mere existence almost caused Sandor to acknowledge the possibility of a God.

  What he discovered, something that disappointed him to no end, was that in Florida he was not a pioneer, for baseball was well known, played in every park, school yard, and vacant lot. Only in the farthest backwaters of the Everglades could he practice his calling, and then with only limited success, due to the lack of arable land.

  THREE

  THE WIZARD

  His journey to the island of Hispaniola came about after he became acquainted with a group of Pentecostal missionaries on the Miami docks. They mistook him for a man of the cloth.

  “We are off to spread the word of the Lord to the heathen,” they confided in him.

  “I share your dedication,” he said obliquely.

  Over his shoulder was slung a lumpy sack that might have been full of a many-armed invention. “Where might you be bound?” Sandor asked.

  The Pentecostals explained that they were headed for Courteguay, on the island of Hispaniola, a tiny landlocked country nestled like a snail between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, bordered by both, the shape of the moon of a fingernail, and not much larger.

  “We sent a team of missionaries to Courteguay a few years ago,” one of the tall, pale men explained. “At first they sent back enthusiastic reports, then we didn’t hear from them for a few months. Neither they, nor the follow-up team we sent have ever been heard from at all.”

  “Beyond there be dragons …” said Sandor, quoting from a medieval map he had seen in a museum. The phrase described the unknown, everything beyond the explored world.

  “Haiti is full of dark visions and strange deaths,” said a wiry-looking woman with bony, red-knuckled hands.

  “And the Dominican Republic?” asked Sandor, willing to risk a good deal for baseball, but not anxious to be eaten by savages, or burned alive as a sacrifice to some primitive god.

  “We are led to believe the Dominican is much more civilized than Haiti, though it is said to be heavily Catholic,” a short, rotund man said.

  “And Courteguay?”

  “Unknown territory,” said the leader of the Pentecostals, a red-cheeked man with a perpetual smile. “One of the newest and smallest countries in the world. Reportedly, a piece of useless mountain slope and swampy valley, given to a fierce old soldier, who so terrorized the governments of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, so disrupted their attempts at civilization, that they gave him his own country just to be rid of him. His name—he was given the land some forty years ago and was an old man then, so he must certainly be dead—is said to be Octavio Court, though he was known to one and all as the Old Dictator.”

  “The trouble with an island is that it is the end of the world,” said Sandor. “One cannot run and hide well on an island. People left with only themselves, with nowhere to hide, have to look inward, have to face the reality that they are trapped within their own skins forever. Sometimes they do not like what they see.”

  Sandor Boatly for some reason felt no fear at the idea of setting off for Courteguay. Perhaps they did not play baseball there, he thought, he hoped. He knew the Pentecostals would relish suffering, even death. They were fundamentalists so narrow they could look through a keyhole with both eyes. Martyrs have always been well regarded in religious circles.

  “What do you think of baseball?” he asked the missionaries, tossing an ermine-white ball in the air and catching it in his large, calloused hands.

  “A relatively sinless game,” replied their leader, “as long as it is not played on Sunday.”

  “How little you know,” whispered Sandor Boatly, smiling mysteriously, as he boarded the boat for the island of Hispaniola.

  No one on the mainland ever heard from Sandor Boatly again.

  He has become a legend, of course. You newsmen, journalists, writers, or whatever you call yourselves, must know all about that. By the time he departed America Sandor Boatly was already a folk hero, tales were told, songs were sung about his spreading the gospel of baseball across the continent. But because of his mysterious disappearance the legends grew, multiplied and prospered out of proportion to his actual deeds. Several books were written about him, the most famous, which I am told is still in print, titled The Evangelist and the Ball. In it is recounted how, when he stepped off the train in San Barnabas, the capital of Courteguay, he was met by two hyenas. They had been washed and perfumed and dressed in formal porter’s uniforms. They walked upright and spoke enough Spanish to conduct their business.

  “May we carry your bags, sir?” the tallest hyena said, bowing slightly. Sandor Boatly, stared around. The station was bustling. No one seemed upset by the domesticated, talking hyenas.

  “Certainly,” he replied. One hyena carried his suitcases, the second managed a trunk and his mysterious bag full of bats, balls, and magic.

  “You will have to help us with the station door,” the tallest hyena said, “while we have evolved considerably we still have not mastered the doorknob.”

  As a famous missing person Sandor Boatly was a favorite subject for journalists. His followers organized expeditions to Hispaniola, though for some reason they concentrated on Haiti, where, one persistent rumor had it, he was buried under two baseball bats joined in the shape of a cross, while a dozen vanda orchids danced in a circle on his grave.

  But as you must know, in Haiti they do not play baseball. They speak French in Haiti, a language not conducive to baseball. There they play soccer. I spit! Soccer is slower than watching stagnant water find its own level. A game for those totally devoid of imagination. Next to Ambrose Bierce and Amelia Earhart, Sandor Boatly is America’s most popular and mysterious folk hero.

  How do I know so much about him? I am Courteguayan. That is a sufficient answer.

  LATER THAT DAY, more of the interview finished, if not satisfactorily (at least the Gringo Journalist had extracted enough information to continue to pique his curiosity and was alternately amazed, baffled, and annoyed with the elderly and capricious Wizard), something happened that made the Gringo Journalist a believer. After being given a drink from the hospital water glass with its crimped straw, the Wizard raised his head from the pillow and sniffed like an animal, a scavenger testing the
air for carrion.

  “I need your help,” croaked the Wizard, reaching for the Gringo Journalist with a skeletal hand. “Help me out of bed.” The Gringo Journalist aided the old man, who was light as a kite, from the bed, assisted him into a threadbare hospital robe and terrycloth slippers. The Wizard’s talon hands fastened like intravenous needles to the young reporter’s arm as he led the way down the hall of the hospital to the emergency ward.

  There, even the reporter could smell blood, the coppery, electric odor of liquid death. Doctors were just turning away from, drawing a sheet over the face of an auto accident victim they had been unable to save. The Wizard detached himself from the young reporter, slipped both hands under the sheet and gripped the still warm chest of the deceased. The Wizard stood stock still in that position for several minutes. The reporter expected to be rousted by doctors or nurses or orderlies, but it was as if he and the Wizard were invisible.

  Eventually, the Wizard produced his hands from under the sheet, and as he turned toward him the Gringo Journalist could see an amazing change had taken place. For one thing the Wizard had gained probably ten pounds, his hands that had been the claws of the very old, were younger, healthier looking, as was the Wizard in general. On the way back to his room he walked unaided, keeping up a steady one-sided conversation.

  “A delightful twenty-two years,” said the Wizard, smiling with both warmth and cunning, as he climbed, with a good deal of agility, back into his bed. “I expect I’ll leave this hospital in a day or two. We’ll continue this interview at my home.”

  FOUR

  THE WIZARD

  “You ask too many questions,” says the Wizard to the Gringo Journalist. “Make up your mind. Do you want to hear about the old days politically, or the birth of the twins, or about Milan Garza, or the nefarious Dr. Noir?”

  They are in an ice cream parlor in San Cristobel, the Wizard eating a concoction he has dictated to the wide-eyed boy in a white trough-like hat, who appears to be the only employee. It contains many kinds of ice cream and syrups, but also hibiscus blossoms.