Black Maps

by Jauss, David

  I did not think she would leave, I think only she talk about it. But now I see she mean what she say. After when I get up from the bathroom floor I go back in the kitchen and find what I did not see at first, a note sticked on the refrigerator door with a yellow smiling face magnet. It say in Spanish If you don’t make The Bigs come to home and be a family again. I sit down then and put my big dumb head in my hands and cry. Mr. Sadface.

  I don’t know why I stayed in Little Rock. I should have went to Santo Domingo that same minute. Maybe there is something wrong with inside of me that make me stay. Maybe I don’t love Pilar and Angelita like I think so. Maybe I want to hurt them like they do me. Or maybe I don’t want to be like Antonio and go back to home the same I left, a worthless nothing. When I go back I want to be like Juan Marichal who is a Hall of Fame pitcher with more strikeouts than dogs in Santo Domingo. I want World Series rings on all my fingers and a car so big it have a TV in it and a bar. But I want more my Pilar and Angelita I think. Why I did not go back I am not sure but maybe I should have went before all this happen, before I become this disgrace to my country and my family. Before I have to go back with no choice of my own.

  Jackie she think I stay because of her but that is not right. Jackie mean almost nothing to me. She was Willie Williams’ girl last year and after he dump her still she come around and ask to go for a ride in his car which he call his Love Chariot. But he always say No and Get lost and one night I am so lonely I get mad and say Manny you don’t have to take this shit off of Pilar that bitch you can have some fun too. So when Jackie come around at The Press Box to drink beers and shoot pool after we lose the doubleheader to Tulsa I say Willie that’s no way to hurt a lady and make him say he is sorry so I don’t hit him. After that she have her hands all over me. Now she stay here and sleep on Pilar’s side of the bed but I want her to go because she is not Pilar. She wear a blonde wig and laugh like she is underneath angry. But she love me and go crazy with crying when I say some things like I don’t want you to hang your wig on the doorknob. I can’t say anything mad or she will cry and want to be dead so how can I tell her to get lost. She laugh a lot but she have a scar on both wrists from when Willie first tell her to go away. The scars look like X’s cut so careful and neat, I can see her trying to make them pretty, her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth while she do it, concentrating. I am scared she will kill herself dead so I make sex with her but I wish she would go away. She scare me with her crazy too much of love, like I scare myself.

  Now I don’t know what to do. Each day that pass I wait for a sign. But nothing happen. I want one minute to go home, I want that Pilar will lay on top of me and kiss me so I am lost in the dark cave of her so beautiful black hair. And I want to kiss Angelita for goodnight on her little nose and say to her like before the joke about the bed bugs biting. But another minute I want hard to be a baseball pitcher in The Bigs and hear everybody even the white people cheering my name. I want everybody to know I make the money they don’t. I want a house with chandeliers and shag carpet everywhere and a swimming pool in the backyard with color lights under the water. I want all these things but I don’t want Jackie with her blonde wig and eye makeup and crying. But more than this I don’t want her to bleed to death because I leave her like she always threaten without saying. So I want to go and I want to stay. And that make me not want anything anymore.

  That is why I don’t finish the game tonight. I am pitching the ball so good they swing and grunt at my curve ball which break in the dirt and my slider low and away. It is already inning eight and still I have no hits on me. Only six more outs to a no-hitter which would make Whitey Herzog to see I am ready for The Bigs. My palm it is sweating so I turn to pick up the bag of resin and then I see on the scoreboard all the zeros and somehow it take the breath out of me it all look so perfect. I am so proud because I do it, I make all the zeros. And then I think about Pilar leaving and Jackie’s scars and my dream with Angelita running on the field and my pitch hitting her dead. Why I think these things then I do not know but I think them and it make my heart to beat so hard.

  When I turn back to the plate my legs they are shaking like in my first game for los Azucareros del Este when Pilar was in the stands to cheer for me and I imagine she is out there now watching me and knowing if I do good I will make The Bigs and marry with Jackie because I am scared to find her in my bathtub, the water turning red. So I look down at Gene my catcher and nod and then I throw the ball and it sail over everybody’s head and up the screen, a wild pitch. Gene he signal time and run out to the mound and say Jesus Christ Manny I give you the sign for change-up not fastball what are you thinking of. I can not remember what I say but Gene he go back to behind the plate and thump his mitt and give me another sign. I nod and throw the ball and it hit the batter in the shoulder and he spin around like he want to fight but I stand there only and look at him. Then he go down to first holding his shoulder and swearing at me and Gene he say Don’t worry about it kid. You’ll get ‘em, he say. Just take it easy.

  All this time I am thinking If I throw a no-hitter I will never see my Pilar and Angelita again. Not forever. So when Gene throw the ball back to me I am not watching close and it hit the top of my glove and don’t go in. I look around quick and it isn’t there. Gene he jump up then and yell Second! Second! but by the time when I find the ball and turn around to throw it to Peachy, already the runner he is standing up and brushing the dirt off his uniform. I hear Coach swear loud but somehow I don’t care like I should.

  Settle down, Gene say then and give me a sign. I start to wind up but then I forget what pitch he ask for and I stop, a balk. The runner he walk down to third laughing. I don’t look at him. Gene come out to the mound then. Calm down for Chrissakes, Gene say. If they get a hit they get a hit the main thing is win. So just rare back and hump that ball in there. Okay I say and he go back. Then he give me a sign maybe for fastball or could be slider. But I just stand there and hold the ball. He give me another sign I think for curve but I just stand there. Then Gene come out to the mound again and Coach too this time and Coach he say What’s the problem Manny your arm getting sore again. I shake my head no. Then what gives, he say. What the fuck is going on. I almost can not talk the words are so far down inside of me but somehow I say Nothing but I say it in Spanish—Nada. I never talk on the team in Spanish because in The Bigs they want that you always talk American. But I say Nada. Then he look at me foreign and ask You all right. I say Fine in American and he say Good let’s set ‘em down, then he trot back to the dugout and Gene go behind the plate and give me one more time again the sign and this time too I do nothing. If I do nothing nothing happen because I am the pitcher, I am the one who hold the ball. I want then everything to stop, I want time to stop, I want Jackie to stop, I want being alone and sad to stop, so I hold the ball for one minute. For that one minute the world stand still, nothing change, and I can breathe.

  Then the umpire step before the plate and say Throw the ball Sanchez or it is delay of the game. The batter he step out of the box and shrug his shoulders to the dugout of his team and spit. I stand there more. Then Gene say What the fuck and everybody in the stands start to yell and boo but I don’t do anything.

  Then out of the dugout come Coach’s face looking red. All of a sudden I feel so sorry for him, so sorry for Gene and Peachy and my teammates and for Jackie and Pilar and Angelita and the umpire and the people in the stands who are booing so disappointed. I feel so bad for everybody I want to cry. Then Coach he say What the hell do you think you’re doing Sanchez. I say it again—Nada. And he say Don’t give me any of that I want to know why you aren’t throwing the goddamn ball. His face is close to mine the way he get with a umpire who make a lousy call. I look down and say from somewhere My wife she leave me and my little girl is gone away. Jesus H. Christ he say then and touch his left arm which mean bring in the lefty. Then he say You’re under suspension Sanchez now get your sorry ass out of this park and don’t come back until your hea
d is on straight. I don’t want to see you or hear you or even smell you until then is that clear. I just stand there and listen to him, I can’t even nod. Everything I live for is disappearing into nothing, I am becoming like a zero, and I am sad but somehow all of a sudden I am so much of nothing I am gone away and I’m there but not there too and where I am is so peaceful I want almost to cry. I want to tell Coach about this place, I want to tell everyone, but there are no words there so I only smile at him. He look away then mad and cursing but still I smile so happy.

  And I am still smiling when Parisi come in to take from me my no-hitter and make me a nobody who can not go to home or stay where he is without shame. I am holding the ball and everything have stop and I am so happy and I love everybody even Coach and the fans booing and Whitey Herzog who keep me from being in The Bigs so long and Antonio who steal my wife maybe. I love everybody so much I feel like I am dead and looking down on everybody from heaven, not a man anymore but a angel with no sadness or pain or anything, just love. But then Coach take the ball away from me and give it to Parisi. He take the ball away, he take everything away, and I am standing there waiting and alone and there is no sign.

  BRUTALITY

  It was late on a dark, moonless night, and they were driving home from a party at their friends’ house on the other side of the city. Although they had been married for almost twenty years, Elliot still loved Susan very much and found her attractive. At the party, he’d glanced at her across the room, and the way she crossed her legs when she sat down made him desire her. Now he was anxious to get home so they could make love. He thought she must be feeling the same way, for her hand was resting on his thigh and she was looking at him while they talked.

  They were talking about their friends’ little boy Joey, who had kept running in and out of the living room with a toy machine gun, pretending to shoot everybody. He had laughed like a crazed movie villain while he sprayed the room with bullets, the gun’s plastic muzzle glowing a fiery red. At first, everyone laughed too, but after the fourth or fifth time it stopped being funny. Finally, his father lost his temper, spanked Joey fiercely, and sent him crying to his room. Then his mother apologized to the guests. It was his grandmother’s fault, she said; every time she came to visit, she brought him a gun. He had a half-dozen in his toy box, most of them broken, thank God. But the next time she visited, they were going to tell her they were opposed to children playing with guns. They would have told her earlier but they didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

  Elliot and Susan had married during the Vietnam War and, like many parents then, didn’t buy toy guns for their son. But Elliot had played with guns when he was young, and now he was telling Susan about the rifle his father had carved for him out of an old canoe paddle. “I loved that rifle,” he said, as he drove down the deserted street past the sleeping houses. It had been almost as long as a real rifle, and he had worn it slung over his shoulder wherever he went the summer he was nine. Even when his mother called him in for supper, he wouldn’t put it away; he had to have it propped against the table in case the Russians suddenly attacked. As he thought about the rifle, its glossy varnish and its heft, he moved his hands on the steering wheel and could almost feel it again. A thin shiver of pleasure ran through him. “It was my favorite toy,” he said wistfully. “I wonder what happened to it.”

  “I used to think it was so awful for kids to play war,” Susan said, lifting her long dark hair off her neck and settling it over her shoulders. “But now I don’t know. Look at this generation of kids that were raised without toy guns—they’re all little Oliver Norths. They’re playing with real guns now. And kids like you—you turned out all right. You wouldn’t even think of going hunting, much less killing someone.”

  “At least not anymore,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” she said. “You mean you used to hunt?”

  Susan was a vegan, and she did volunteer work on Saturdays for the Humane Society. Elliot had told her many stories about his childhood—he had grown up in a small town in another state and didn’t meet her until they were in college—but he hadn’t told her he’d been a hunter. It wasn’t that he considered that fact a dark secret; he just knew she’d be upset and didn’t think it was worth telling her. He hadn’t meant to mention it now either—it had just come out. Perhaps he’d drunk too much wine at the party. Or maybe he’d gotten so lost in his memories of the toy rifle that he spoke before he could think. Whatever, he didn’t want an argument. He was in a romantic mood and he didn’t want anything to destroy it.

  “I was a kid,” he explained. “I didn’t know any better.”

  “How old were you?” she asked.

  “What does it matter?” he said. “You know I wouldn’t even kill a spider now.”

  “But you killed something then?”

  He could lie now, he realized, and say he’d gone hunting but never shot anything. He could make up a story or two about his ineptitude as a hunter, and she would laugh and everything would be fine between them. But as he’d gotten older, lies had become harder for him. They had come easily to him in his youth, but now they tasted like rust in his mouth.

  “Yes,” he said.

  She took her hand from his thigh and sat there silently. They passed under a streetlight, and her face flared into view. “Come on, Susan,” he said. “Don’t be mad.”

  Then she said, “How could you do it? Why would you even want to do it?”

  It was a question he had asked himself from time to time. He had enjoyed hunting and trapping animals as a teenager, but now that he was an adult, he had no desire to do either. He thought of his brutality as a phase he had gone through, a period of hormonal confusion, perhaps, like puberty. But he still remembered the pleasure hunting and trapping gave him, and he still understood it.

  “Do we have to talk about this?” he said.

  “I want to know,” she said.

  He sighed. “Okay. If you really want to know, I did it because I wanted to see if I could hit something a long ways off.” It was the simple truth. It was a thrill to shoot at the empty air half a sky in front of a pheasant or duck or goose and see that emptiness explode with the miraculous conjunction of bird and shot. It was a kind of triumph over chance, over the limitations of time and space, and each time it happened, he felt powerful and alive.

  “But you could have shot at targets,” she said.

  “Targets don’t move,” he answered.

  “What about clay pigeons? They move.”

  He wished they hadn’t started this. “Can’t we talk about something else?” he asked. He tried to make his voice as warm as he wished hers would be.

  “First answer my question. Why not shoot at clay pigeons instead?”

  He considered several lies while he turned onto the avenue that led toward the suburb where they lived. Then he sighed and said, “Because they aren’t alive.”

  Susan looked at him. “I can’t believe this,” she said. “My own husband.”

  “Come on,” Elliot said. “You’re overreacting.”

  “Maybe I am. But I feel like I’m seeing something in you that I never saw before.”

  “You’re making me sound like a criminal or something,” he complained.

  “I think killing is a crime,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s an animal or a person, it’s still murder.”

  He’d heard her make this argument many times before, but this was the first time she’d directed it at him personally. He wanted to defend himself, but even more he wanted to regain the romantic mood they were in when they left the party. He drove on in silence. Then she asked, “How did you feel when you killed something?”

  He was glad this question had a more human answer. “I felt bad,” he said. “I felt sorry for it.”

  “But you kept on hunting?”

  “For a while.”

  “If you felt so sorry for the animals, why did you keep on killing them?”

  He looked at her face then and kne
w he would have to tell her everything. If he didn’t, she would never forgive him, and everything between them would be changed. He looked back at the road. “It may sound crazy,” he said, “but the first time I shot something, I did it because I felt sorry for it.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Do you want to?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right then. I’ll tell you the whole story.” He took a breath. “The first real gun I owned was a .22 pistol. I was thirteen. I’d had the pistol for two or three months, and I’d never shot anything with it except Coke bottles and tin cans. I’d tried to shoot squirrels and birds, you understand, but I’d never hit anything. Then I met this boy. He was a couple of years older than me, and I looked up to him. Frank Elkington. He taught me to shoot and trap.”

  “Trap?” she said. “You trapped too? Elliot, I just can’t believe this is you you’re talking about.”

  “It isn’t. Not anymore.”

  “But it’s who you were. And who you were is part of who you are, isn’t it?”

  He didn’t like the way she was cross-examining him like a lawyer, and he thought about making some sarcastic joke about the statute of limitations. But he just stared straight ahead. They were driving through a business district now, and the reflections of neon lights crawled on the windshield. Finally he said, “I don’t have to tell you this. I’m telling it because I love you.”

  “I know you do,” she said. “And you know I love you.”

  He went on. “Frank trapped mink and muskrat and beaver along the Chippewa River and sold the pelts to a fur processing plant in town. I used to tag along with him when he did his paper route, and one day I went with him while he checked his traps. He was talking about trappers and how they lived off the land. They didn’t breed animals just to slaughter them, he said, and they didn’t keep them penned up either; they let the animals live free in the wild and gave them a sporting chance. He made it sound so noble that I told him I wanted to start trapping too. And he gave me my first trap.”