Dark Screams, Volume 8

  “Mr. Sifuentes,” he called.

  “Wasim.”

  “We can have ménage à trois!” Now he was singing the song.

  “Okay, dude. Maybe next Friday night.” I pushed the gate open, and in they all came.

  Wasim was the youngest guy there, by a good ten years. More than a couple of the Blue Shirts players were bald. I recognized the lone gringo, a fireman, from the night the 7-Eleven at the end of my block got torched and the whole neighborhood came out and stood around to watch it go. Perhaps most surprisingly of all, two of the players on Team Yellow turned out to be women, one black-haired, one gray-and-black, both dark and long. Possibly a mother and daughter. Both studiously ignored Wasim, who kept hopping back and forth in his shin pads in their path like one of those exotic birds doing its mating dance.

  Blue Shirt came in last, herding everyone else forward, no longer chortling as he consulted some sort of personal checklist on a clipboard he’d drawn from a custom flap in that new-skin leather bag.

  “Fine-looking bunch of athletes, Blue,” I told him. “Thoroughbreds. Going to be StubHub or bust to get into Inland Empire Pro Cricket.”

  “America’s Rockin’ Professional Cricket,” he murmured distractedly. “Please use the correct name at all times, and especially to the press, for branding purposes. It is an expectation of all who work for me, and of America’s Rockin’ Professional Cricket.”

  So many things I could have had fun with there, I hardly knew where to start. Press? Branding? The fact that I was a one-night contract hire and didn’t work for him or America’s Rockin’ Professional Cricket? I was still mulling my options when the next gust hit; this one brought along a six-foot-long tree branch it had scooped up somewhere, which it smashed against the stadium not fifteen feet over our heads as it roared by. Blue Shirt flinched and ducked, long after either would have done any good.

  “That is a very nasty wind,” he said.

  I nodded. “In this county, even our natural forces do drive-bys.”

  “That is not funny, Mr. Sifuentes. It is disrespectful. And you are behind schedule.”

  “I…” The laughter rose in me like one of those winds, but he paid absolutely no mind.

  “The crowds will be here soon. The festivities must be in full swing. Please get to your booth and get the music playing and make sure the press box is prepared for the reporters I have invited.” Then he did it again, glanced up from his clipboard and down the road toward the buzzing towers and wires of the power plant, as though he expected that place to sizzle him up some paying customers. Or maybe he was praying.

  Instead of laughing, I patted him on the shoulder. “No worries, Blue. Might take a bit. Since we don’t have keys, I’ll probably have to climb up to the booth.”

  Which, of course, wasn’t hard. The Fault has only one tier of sand-colored bleachers wrapping all the way around from foul pole to foul pole, and the “press box”—a bunch of boards nailed together and perched precariously at the lip of the roof like a treehouse—leans out over the top row. Plus, in the Cactus Club Elite section behind home plate, the bleachers have backs, giving even a fifty-something like me a relatively stable foothold from which to jump that extra foot or so, grab the rail, and pull myself over the edge onto the folding table wedged so tightly into the booth that I sometimes think the booth was built around it. Once in, I fired up the stereo, thumbed through the single drawer of CDs I’d left atop the mixing board, decided Blue Shirt had said he wanted “rockin’,” cued “Long Live Rock,” and pushed the volume all the way up to 7, which is as far as it would go before the mounted speakers started shaking out of their cracked casings. There was a squeal, a spasm of sound, then silence, and then drums rumbled over the infield, which really did have grass in it, even if it was roughly the same color as the basepath dirt.

  When I next looked down there, I saw Blue Shirt, plus Wasim and the fireman and most of the other players, milling around just beyond where second base generally got affixed, unrolling a giant artificial turf mat. For the between-innings bikini/sunbathing contest, maybe? I wondered how that thing had got here, because it sure hadn’t hitched a ride in Blue Shirt’s Porsche. There were long wooden tent-peg things scattered at both ends, and the fireman had a stake hammer in his hands. He was brandishing it, playfully, at Wasim, and Wasim was shimmying to the music, screaming along, laughing. For that moment, in that purple-orange, end-of-evening smoglight, they looked like children, all of them, on some Habitat for Humanity junket in Haiti or somewhere. And it was the thought of Haiti, and by extension the West Indies, that finally triggered my understanding: That mat was the pitch. Or maybe the “square”—Wikipedia hadn’t been quite consistent on the name for it. But that was where the players would bat. Even from my prime vantage point, in this tiny stadium, it seemed a long way from the fans.

  The fans. Smiling to myself, but not without a twinge of sadness on Blue Shirt’s behalf, I glanced around the stadium, taking in the row upon row upon row of dusty, empty seats.

  I cued up a few more songs, then clambered back out of the booth and down to the field to see if I could help. But Blue Shirt was already striding past me down the tunnel out of the grounds, cellphone at his ear. Given the limits on the Fault’s speaker system, I heard him fine as he went by.

  “I had been worried,” he was saying, but he was nodding, grinning, practically hopping, Wasim-style. “I’m glad you found him. I’m coming out to meet you.”

  Not that I was invited, and there was definitely still work going on, stumps being erected out in the middle of the field. But Blue Shirt fascinated me. I had visions of his entire extended family showing up, possibly toting coolers full of chutney and baskets of samosas for the rest of us, maybe some hand drums and horns to give the place that charged atmosphere I’d seen in YouTube clips from Eden Gardens and VCA Stadium, the baked, perpetually crumbling cricket palaces where the real India Blue went to war with their hated Pakistani neighbors or their returning British cultural overlords.

  What I saw, instead, was a gray, dented panel van rattling into the lot, honking obliviously as it passed between the clustered packs of not-cricket-fans at the far corners. Those packs, I realized, had swelled considerably, their members huddling more tightly together, eyeing one another across the expanse of pavement, which suddenly seemed way too small. Maybe after the cricket match, I thought, we could all sneak to the edge of the tunnel, stay in the shadows, and take in some more traditional local entertainment: San Bernardino’s Rockin’ Professional Gang War.

  Rattling, swaying on its axles as though doing a hula dance, the van rolled through the lot. Behind and above it, the sky had gone wild, all those particulates flaring white and green and crimson and orange, as though the sun hadn’t set but burst, like a firecracker Blue Shirt had ordered up special. The driver had to have seen the curb dividing the general-admission spaces from the VIP section, but he never even slowed down. The van bumped up on the curb, over the divider, and shuddered to a stop, still swaying. The motor hadn’t even shut down when the side panel door flew open, and out spilled Frankie Violet.

  A spattering of beer cans and three decidedly beautiful women—pulling down sweaters and straightening the barely-there blue skirts of their disheveled cheerleader uniforms—climbed out right behind him. Two of the women were barefoot. All of them were laughing.

  I took in all of that, of course. But my eyes went right back to Frankie. Everyone’s did, the women included. You just couldn’t help it. Blue almost hopped right out of that shirt, nodded like a bobblehead, dropped the clipboard at his feet, and stuck out his hand. “Mr. Violet, it is so good to meet you, thank you for coming.”

  And Frankie—to his credit, and I will never forget this—removed his arm from the nearest woman’s waist (though gently, and with a visible squeeze that somehow seemed more affectionate, or maybe just grateful, than I would have expected), smoothed his cricket whites on his chest and his waist, and stood up straight. He was towering, hi
s skin midnight dark but his eyes bright, his shoulders swelling beneath his shirt like dunes in moonlight. He didn’t just shake Blue Shirt’s hand, he also patted it with his other hand.

  “Thank YOU, boss,” he said, in his deep, Caribbean baritone. Reaching back into the van, he withdrew one of those floppy, red West Indian sun hats only a cricketer would ever put on his head. He donned it, straightened that, too, to the extent that you can straighten something with no shape. Then he grinned. “Where’s my team? Am I yellow or blue tonight?”

  By the time Blue Shirt had drawn a wrapped and crisply folded blue polo out of that bag of his, Frankie was already headed for the Fault. When Blue Shirt tossed him the blue shirt, Frankie caught it, and he hardly swayed at all, as far as I could see. Which meant he probably hadn’t emptied all the cans that had clattered out of the van in his wake, at least not by himself.

  Down the tunnel he went, bobbing and dipping to Survivor thudding from the speakers. “Blue team, come to Frankie!” his voice echoed, and he vanished onto the field.

  “He was—he could have been—one of the greatest cricketers of the new century,” Blue Shirt was gushing. “A Viv Richards for our time.”

  “Well, that is saying something,” I said. Just to goose him.

  “Mr. Sifuentes,” Blue Shirt said and sighed. “Before this night is over, you will say to me, ‘Thank you, Mr. Blue. Thank you for the opportunity to witness Frankie Violet batting.’ ”

  “Mr. Blue. I guess that name’s going to stick.”

  He was gesturing in eight directions at once, issuing instructions to the van driver and the cheerleaders, gesturing toward the field. But he took the time to turn my way once more. That’s another smile I won’t forget.

  “I quite like it,” he said.

  “Frankie Violet. He’s really that good?”

  “If he had not his substance issues…if he had stopped clowning on the field and pantsing teammates and demanding ridiculous contracts and making a mockery of the game…and especially if he had picked different English and Australian players to have sledging matches with and then accuse of racism…”

  “They threw him out?”

  “In cricket, one is not thrown out. One is simply not selected. And then one is too old. But he was a wonderful talent—a wasted talent—and perfect for America’s Rockin’ Professional Cricket. Plus, he lives in the area, and contrary to his reputation, he was willing to come be our marquee attraction for surprisingly low appearance fees. Of course, he has not played professional cricket anywhere in at least ten years…”

  “Did his contract call for free beer and cheerleaders?”

  “I would have provided that anyway.”

  I laughed. “Right. This is rockin’ professional cricket.”

  “Make fun all you like. But mark my words. By the end of this night, you will thank me. And so will all our fans. They will tell their friends and family, and bring them to next week’s match. Now back to your booth. Here are the elevens for both teams. Please look over the lineup list and be sure you can pronounce all names correctly. Do this now. America’s Rockin’ Professional Cricket always, always starts on time.” Off he hustled, leaving me with the women.

  Up close, the cheer team members were older than I’d first thought. Old enough, in fact, to look a little ridiculous crammed into their uniforms, their stomachs slipping out under the bottoms of the sweaters and their post-motherhood breasts riding low. They were eying one another, now, smiling some, a little wistful, a little bashful, as though at the end of a bachelorette party.

  I actually knew one: Mathilde. Mother of three. Long-time librarian at the Feldheym before the budget apocalypse. In her ninth or tenth year of an attempted dual MBA and M.A. in composition at CSUSB. I realized I hadn’t seen her around in a while, had no idea what she was doing to survive.

  “You look beautiful,” I told her, and meant it.

  “Callate, Sifuentes,” she said, “Puto.” Then she kissed me on the cheek.

  “How’d you wind up with this gig?” I asked.

  In a night of memorable smiles, hers barely registered at the time. It was too much like I suspected my own looked. Too skeptical, or maybe just tired. “Same as you, Sifuentes.” That was no answer at all, of course, and all the answer I needed.

  We’d just turned for the stadium when shouting erupted from both corners of the lot. The ladies, wisely, never looked back, just hustled straight into the Fault. But I looked.

  The fact that those guys were shouting at one another…who cared? But I didn’t like all the metallic things waving around. All those knives and gun muzzles not quite aimed anywhere, mostly pointed down, but moving in their owners’ hands, straining and snuffling at the ground like the noses on wolfhounds. I liked the way the cars had multiplied even less.

  What the fuck are they even doing? Contesting territory? Holding a prom?

  One guy from each corner broke loose from his respective pack, started sauntering across the asphalt. Then someone’s gun actually went off. Probably in the air. At least, I didn’t see anyone go down. But I didn’t hang around long enough to make sure. When I hit the tunnel, the wind came in after me, nipping at my heels, shoving at my back. By the time I got up in my booth, I felt like a treed raccoon.

  Lights, I realized. No one had turned on the lights. I did that now, and after a while a couple bulbs in the two barely sufficient towers over first and third base buzzed and spat. In an hour or so, a few of them might actually start glowing some.

  I cued “Friday Night” for Wasim, kept my eyes on the field, risked edging the volume just a little higher. If we couldn’t hear the gunfire, it wasn’t actually happening, right? Hide-and-seek logic. I glanced down, saw Frankie Violet chatting up the younger dark-haired woman and paying no attention to Blue Shirt, who was yammering away to his back. The fireman was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the wicket, watching the sky darken. Near home plate, Mathilde and her team were picking pom-poms from a ripped canvas bin Blue must have scavenged from some local high school. I watched Mathilde give hers a rueful little shake, as though checking fruit for freshness. She glanced up at me. That’s when the loneliness hit, the way it does. Hard as a San Bernardino wind, and only a little less fleeting. Thank God.

  To my amazement, a few actual fans did show. Few, as in less than twenty. But more than zero. If they were Blue Shirt’s friends or family, he didn’t speak to or acknowledge them. But he knew they were there; once they’d come in, he hopped even higher as he skittered about, checked the stumps, talked to Frankie’s back, called the captains of the yellow and blue teams in for a coin toss. As if conjured by the slow-warming lights, an umpire appeared, lumbering out of the tunnel, an older black man in a spotless white suit complete with bow tie and a white, broad-brimmed boater with a red carnation in the band. He didn’t acknowledge the players or Blue. This guy was a performer, savoring his entrance whether anyone was there to see it or not. Head just slightly down, he ambled straight out to his station behind the nearer set of stumps. Blue saw him, waved once, received no acknowledgment, and seemed delighted by that. He signaled me to cut the music. True to his word, we started right on time.

  Ten minutes into the match, the yellow batting side had already lost three wickets. Frankie Violet, in a borrowed blue shirt that barely stretched over his shoulders, kept circling the field. He gave one poor El Salvadoran guy a wedgie, darted between the stumps and the wicket-keeper to snag a bowled ball that had swung way wide, laid down at what I believe cricketers call silly point—because it’s silly to get positioned there, so close to the batsman, where if your hands are too slow you get a ball in your face—and moved his feet in a slow-motion circle, as though they were ducks at a shooting gallery. The batsman promptly skied a pop-up straight into the air, and it practically landed in Frankie’s lap as he took it for an out. In between bowls—and sometimes in the middle of bowls—he would spin from wherever he was and wave and wink at the cheerleaders, who mostly stood near the
sprinkling of fans and waited for someone to cue them to chant something.

  A little later, he was hanging out by the third-base fence, goofing with those same fans, when the whole blue team in the field behind him burst into simultaneous cries of “Heads!” Frankie barely seemed to turn, just glanced back, glided five or six feet to his right, and snagged an actual drive he hadn’t even seen get hit in his giant palm, as though plucking a plum.

  Blue Shirt came up and joined me in the booth. Wasim had just gone in to bat, and he actually poked a few shots along the ground, looking almost like someone who’d played this game before, and then he up and smacked a ball straight out toward center field, right between the deep fielders, and it rolled all the way to the fence.

  “Four,” I said into the stadium mic, and clapped. The sound of my voice startled a few of the fans into actually looking at the field for a second, and then they clapped, too. That triggered the cheerleaders, who dutifully bobbed up and down and yelled something indistinguishable, at least to me.

  “I get that right, Blue?” I asked.

  “Play him a song, play him a song,” Blue prodded, so I played Wasim some Katy. In the middle of the mat, Wasim raised his bat above his head and swiveled his hips around.

  Blue Shirt groaned. “That is enough. Stop.”

  I killed Katy. Had to give it to the Caribbean ump, though. That guy never so much as moved, just stood there like a figure in a cricket pinball game. Didn’t even look up.

  “He’s good,” I said.

  “Wasim is not good.”

  “I meant the ump.”

  “Mr. Seagull? Yes. But sadly, I suspect he will never umpire for America’s Rockin’ Professional Cricket again.” Abruptly, and only for a moment, Blue Shirt dropped his clipboard on my table and put his head in his hands. “They’re not even competent. And where are the reporters? I was promised the reporters would come. They said it would be a ‘rare, positive story for the whole region.’ A positive story.”