by Bill Branger
— The grounds are very alive, Señor. He is used to dead grounds. Dead. The infield, I mean.
So that was it. Raul had just solved a mystery for me there. Sure, the kids were playing on semi-manicured grass with a few crab weeds in it. The ball didn’t have the bounce in Havana it had in the Bigs.
— Raul is hitting well (Riccardo said).
— He might be a spring phenom.
— No, he’s the real thing. I can see Reggie Jackson when I see him swing.
— The second go-round, the pitchers will be seeing him again, figuring out how to pitch to him.
— They can’t pitch to me (Raul said). —- That’s what they all say.
— Another round.
The last came from Riccardo who sprinkled the infield with his index finger and made a circular motion. More beers and I sat still and took it like a man. Raul was waiting for the waitress to leave to have another fight with me. I was ready.
— Raul, I don’t want you to get your hopes up. The season is a hundred and sixty-two games long. You got to pace yourself. Baseball is funny, it’s like life, you got your ups and downs. The best team ever is gonna lose a third of its games, that’s a given. So we still have a lot of losing to do. It’s how you come back from the losing that determines the winning.
— True words, Señor. Very true words (Riccardo said and he burped. His eyes were getting glassy but it was the only sign of intoxication, not counting the burp). I had a case today in which this poor hombre robbed a woman at an ATM machine. He has had bad luck ever since he came to New York two years ago. His wife left him with their baby and she is on welfare in Brooklyn and he has not had a job except in the Roy Rogers on Broadway washing dishes. He has no money and he could not stand any more losing. So he robbed a woman at an ATM on West 88th Street.
I stared at Riccardo. He waved his hand in dismissal and sighed.
—- He was given two years at Attica. This is the end of the season for him. I sat there and didn’t say anything. Raul said:
— It is unjust, all the poverty that drives men to these crimes. “Hey,” I said, getting the words in my personal fog machine, “Poverty
is poverty. Only thing is here that not everyone is poor so it stands oet. I didn’t see a lot of rich people in Havana.”
“You saw people sharing their fate,” Estavar said,
“I don’t have to be poor again to know I was,” I said.
“You’re making a million dollars this year, it says so in the Daily News” Riccardo said. He said it softly.
“Damn right,” I said.
“The American way, reward the Anglo and keep down the Hispanic who does the work,” Estavar said.
“You’re a fucking Communist,” I said.
“No, I am,” Raul said.
We all looked at him.
Riccardo tapped him on the back of his hand. “Raul, little one, you are just a ball player.”
“No, they say I am a Communist”
“That’s just a way of talking,” I explained.
“It is true. We do the bidding of El Supremo. And we do this for Cuba.”
“Where’d you pick up your English?”
“My fiancée is fluent in English,” he said. “She helps me.”
“Then you could talk regular all along?”
“I am not happy with English,” Raul said.
“That’s what the Irish say,” I said. Trying to keep it light and falling on my own joke again. If jokes were sharp, I’d be in bandages.
“You were not born when I volunteered for the Bay of Pigs,” said Riccardo. “They said I was just a boy and they would not let me go. My uncle was killed there and my father was put into prison. He died.”
Raul closed his eyes a moment, as though to absorb the tragedy of what Riccardo said. Then he said to me:
—- You should go home now, Senor. I’m sorry.
I did it with some dignity, I thought. I got up slow and extended my hand to Riccardo and shook it and then to the other Jose who had the limo and then did a wave to Estavar because I wasn’t going to let the snot reject my handshake. Then I rested my hand on Raul’s shoulder.
— I don’t want nothing from you except to make it more comfortable for you. For Tío, Suarez, the others. I know this is just like one long road trip to you, but autumn will come before you know it.
— And we will not win the pennant.
— I didn’t say that. I just said, you got to expect losses along the way. — If you expect to lose, you will lose.
— I didn’t say that. I didn’t say you should expect …
— I know what you said. This is not baseball, Señor. This is a show, some kind of a circus show. This is not baseball. The others on the other teams, they know. They feel they are shamed because we are on the field against them. What are we? Boys from Cuba no one ever heard of.
“Shit and double shit, Raul,” I said. Then, in Spanish:
— I don’t want you to get down.
— I am down. All the time. All I want is to be with my beloved one.
— Maybe that’s all I want, too.
He looked at me. The others looked at me. Damn. I didn’t figure on giving anything away. I took my hand off his shoulder.
— You got a girl, I got a girl. You handle it. You make your living. You’re on the road, you have to do what you have to do.
— You love someone?
— I love someone (I said, thinking to make him feel better). —- And you … “handle” it? How do you handle it?
— You watch westerns on TV and drink beer when you can and when there’s a game, you play the game. That’s what you do.
— And it is not more important than that?
— It’s more important, Raul. You just “handle it.”
Estavar guffawed. He brought up his hand half-clenched and made a frigging movement with it.
“He means like this, Raul.”
But Raul was staring at me.
“You can do that, Señor? Handle it when she is someplace far away, waiting for you?”
“It’s what you have to do.”
Raul shook his head and looked away.
— If you can do that, then I feel sorry for you, Señor.
— Why?
He looked back up at me.
— Because, Señor, then you are not in love at all.
And I had to get out of there, right then, back into the glitter of the shabby street with the shabby cabs humping over the patched up pavement, letting the cool night air slap me around a little.
Lovesick little puppy.
Shit.
I lurched down the sidewalk toward the parking lot.
Handle it! I wanted to scream at him.
But I didn’t make a sound.
24
So where did a twenty-three-year-old punk from Cuba get off taking pity on me, a grown man with years of experience who has won a hundred and sixty games lifetime and spent sixteen seasons in the Bigs?
Charlene Cleaver did not even enter into this equation and there I was, trying to make him feel better, trying to make all of them feel better by getting them out of their rooms and their fucking Spanish language TV shows and their pizzas and showing them the Umpire State Building and all. Where did they get off?
I went across town to the West Side Highway and up to the George Washington Bridge. The Hudson River was the color of ink and there was a light enough rain to make the wipers go thunk-thunk every ten seconds or so. I turned on the radio and listened to some fucking jazz interpretation of country and turned it off and just tapped the wheel with my fingertips, trying to remember when I was young enough not to be able to handle things.
Left El Paso when I was eighteen and went up to Arizona on a baseball scholarship and I just knew I was going to the Bigs someday. I knew everything when I was eighteen. I remembered Daddy driving me to the bus station for the long haul north. I didn’t even have a car at Arizona the first two years. I was poor. Daddy saw me th
e first year in the Bigs and I cherish that, only wish Mama had.
I handled everything.
New Jersey slouched glittering and dark across the oil on the waters of the Hudson. New Jersey is like a midget hitching up its pants to face off the big bully on Manhattan Island,
Part of growing up is handling things, That’s what I was trying to get across to Raul, lovesick pup.
Handled Sue Joan Moffett at Arizona. She wanted to keep house and teach kindergarten and make babies. She was God’s gift to cloudy days, sunny and golden all over with breath like a pine forest. Didn’t have to figure her in my plans, though. I guess I made it plain enough that she and I were just for fucking and not for keeps. She made her babies with someone else. She was a phase of my life.
Of course, you might say my life was becoming just a series of phases. And now Charlene, with Raul putting it in perspective. If I wasn’t a love-starved calf like him, then it wasn’t the real thing, is that it?
I hung a right at Route 4 once over the bridge and then went up the Palisades Parkway to the Clyde exit and back over the Palisades to the other side of Fort Lee. Fort Lee takes getting used to, which is why cab drivers don’t like to drop you off there.
I parked in the Holiday Inn lot and thought about having a nightcap in the bar there but then thought better of it. Just my luck some asshole would want to bend my ear about the team. I lurched on down the walk, which was all coated with rain, and into my apartment building. I had the key out on the way up in the elevator.
Same old home sweet home. I threw the keys on the table and turned on the kitchen light. I punched up the answering machine and rolled back the tape because the red light was blinking.
“Where are you, Ryan Patrick? This is ten o’clock at night and you’re not even home yet and I know you don’t play today, so I’ve had to go take a room at the stupid old Holiday Inn down the street from you. I don’t even know where I am, but I do know it’s costing me $109 a night because you weren’t home. I hope you’re satisfied.” And the receiver slammed.
I shook my head very slowly in case it was loose. Then I tasted some of the beer to get the taste of Wild Turkey tamed down. Then I dialed information and asked for the number of the Holiday Inn.
I must have been drunk because it seemed like a good idea to call Charlene at two in the morning and tell her I was suddenly home. A sober person would reflect on that before taking action, but I was a man of few words and they were getting fewer.
I called the room of Miss Charlene Cleaver and let the phone ring and ring and ring. This also seemed like a good idea. She might be sound asleep and only my patient ringing of the phone sixty or seventy times would be able to rouse her.
“Mfphm?”
“Charlene? It’s me,” I said. I thought I said it cheerfully.
“Mfphm?”
“Charlene, are you sleeping?”
That brought on a witty silence for a moment. And then she said, “No, why would I be sleeping at two in the morning?” I had to laugh then because Charlene is just great when she’s being ironic.
“I just got in.”
“Where were you?”
“With Raul Guevara. We found this great bar on Third Avenue called Tapas. It’s like a Spanish place. Like in Spain, not Mexico. Met some of his friends there, fellow named Riccardo. He’s a court interpreter for people who don’t speak English. And this punk name of Estavar, sort of an asshole. Another guy is a limo driver, I might be able to get him to pick me up at the airport when I get in from road trips.”
“You found this great bar? And you got drunk with one of your wetback ball players talking all night, to some guys about whatever fascinating stuff you men talk about? Oh, yes, and the courthouse interpreter, whatever that means.”
Now, there was something of the ice princess in the tone of her voice but nothing could stop me now because I had passed over the threshold from merely charming to being bullet-proof.
I said, “Why don’t you come over? Just get a cab and come on over and we can have a good talk.”
“I don’t want a good talk, Ryan. I want to go to sleep “
“Well, okay. If you don’t want to come over, okay. But I was just asking you over. I missed you, honey.”
“I flew two thousand miles to see you.”
“You didn’t let me know, I would’ve been here.”
“I got in at five in the afternoon and I took a cab down here from Newark Airport —”
“Actually, it’s up here from Newark. Newark is down there if you read a map rightside up.”
“Shut up!”
I did. It was something in the tone of voice again, but this time I was listening.
“And I waited and waited and waited and then I went to a coffee shop and had a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, which I never eat, never, never, never, and then I waited some more and then I decided about nine o’clock that you were just dead somewhere, lying on a street in New York City, being run over by taxicabs and I came here to this Holiday Inn that I walked six blocks to get to.”
“It’s more like four blocks, Charlene, don’t exaggerate. I keep my car there in the parking lot.”
“Shut up!” she said,
“Why’d you come up here? Is something wrong?”
“Yes, something’s wrong. Why would I come up if there wasn’t something wrong?”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m going home in the morning. This is stupid, I wasted my time off to spend all this money on coming up because I needed to see you and you’re spending all your money and time getting drunk with a greaser in a bar when I thought you were dead in the middle of New York City.”
“I don’t like you to use that language,” I said.
“Well, go fuck yourself!” she said.
Don’t get the wrong idea about Charlene. She is a sensitive and caring person and she does not use slurs in ordinary conversation or use bad language unless extremely provoked. It was probably something about it being two in the morning that set her off, that and spending $109 for the privilege of sleeping in a king-size bed in the middle of northern New Jersey.
Just think of how provoked she would have been if she had been in Manhattan shelling out 300 bucks a night to listen to the serenade of the garbage trucks.
“Charlene, what’s wrong, honey? I didn’t know you were coming so I don’t think you can blame me if I was trying to reach an interpersonal relationship with one of my players. He’s very troubled. He’s got a girl back in Havana and he’s so lovesick that I was worried about him.”
“What about you, Ryan? You had a girl back in Houston. I bet she never came up in the conversation, did she?”
“As a matter of fact, you did, quite often.”
“I won’t have my name tramped through the mud of a New York saloon,” she said.
“It was not tramped. It was brought up, Raul told me how much he loved this little girl named Maria Velasquez and how much he missed her and I told him how much I missed you. He even asked to see your picture.” I made that part up.
“You don’t even have a picture of me,” she said. “You got as much sentiment as wet adobe.”
“I said I didn’t have a picture of you because I didn’t need none. I carried your image in my heart.”
“You said that? Was this before or after you got drunk?”
“Before,” I said.
“You’re a liar. You’d never say that sober.”
“I love you. I think I’ve been sober saying that.”
“They arrested Jack Wade for income tax evasion,” she said.
Plunk. Just like that.
“They arrested? Who arrested?”
“The FBI I think.”
“The FBI arrested Jack Wade?”
“Oh, I was so scared for you, Ryan. I just know he’s gonna rat on you and drag you into this.”
“Rat on me for what? He sold me a car once.”
“He said he gave it to you.”
; “Jack Wade is a car dealer, Charlene. He don’t give away anything he can sell Sort of like being a whore.”
“I was so sure you were in trouble —”
I was getting sober in that painful way that is like sliding down a three-story razor blade on your tongue. I shook my head loose and it hurt. I held the phone very tight against my ear.
“Charlene, I ain’t in no trouble. I never had no deal with Jack Wade.”
“He told me that you and him was thick as thieves.”
“Jack Wade is a liar like all natural born salesmen. Also a thief, apparently, though I don’t hold income tax evasion as a major crime the way the government does.”
“Then you’re not guilty?”
“I ain’t even been accused of anything to feel guilty about. Except by you, honey, and I just told you I loved you.”
“Oh, honey.”
Honey and honey. It made me smile. “Hurry on over.”
“It’s two in the morning, honey. I can’t get no cab.”
“Shit, then stay where you are. I’ll come over.”
“Oh, Ryan. You’re drunk, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am, I am. Took a cab home all the way from Manhattan, driven by a homicidal maniac, cost me fifty bucks.” The lies were coming as thick as … well, thieves. “I saw the Statue of Liberty today for the first time.”
“Why?” Charlene said.
“Took the kids out on an excursion. Went up to the eighty-seventh floor of the Empire State Building, too. Never did that before.”
“Why?” Charlene said.
“Show them the city, try to make the kids feel at home. They’re all so homesick, writing letters all the time they were on the road trip.”
“You never wrote me a letter.”
“I don’t write, we ain’t in Cuba. I can call you just as easy.”
“You didn’t call me all week,” she said.
“I missed you,” I said.
“If you missed me, you’d have called me.”
“Not necessarily.”
“You were too cheap to call.”
“I ain’t cheap. I’m careful.”
“I just spent $413.98 on an airplane and fifty dollars on a cab and $109 plus tax to sleep in a big old bed in this Holiday Inn. I’m on the side facing that big old bridge there. Don’t these people never sleep? Traffic bang bang bang all night long. I can hear it now.”