Double Wide

by Leo W. Banks

  Two hours before sunset on Saturday night, Diaz rolled into Double Wide with two cruisers trailing him. One of them kept going down Main Street behind Charlie’s trailer and parked a few hundred yards up the mountain road.

  He gave a couple of whoops on his siren to signal that he was in position. After conferring with Diaz, the second deputy drove out the entrance road and parked on the county road next to my Double Wide sign. He whooped his siren too.

  That blocked two of the main entry points, and Cash had the wash covered.

  After a final walking tour of the premises, Diaz said, “They’ll stay through the night and I’ll have another crew out here in the morning.”

  “I thought you’d be here a week and a half ago.”

  He bristled. “You think this was easy to get done? Do you know how many deputies we have to cover a nine-thousand-square-mile county? You’re lucky the sheriff’s a baseball fan.”

  “What about tomorrow morning?”

  “I’ll come back and we’ll escort you into town. But I need to be clear, this is a one-time thing. After this game, you’re on your own.”

  The night was full of sounds and sleepless, and in the morning Diaz returned with his relief deputies. Opal watched Channel 7 News on my kitchen TV. The game dominated the coverage. A young reporter did a live standup from outside Hi Corbett at 7:00 a.m., and the place already bustled with activity.

  I couldn’t watch, couldn’t sit still.

  Roxy hadn’t called back with any more news about Melody. Every call I made to Oscar Molina went straight to voice mail. Same with Fausto.

  Why is nobody calling back? Something must’ve happened in Mexico.

  At 8:00 a.m., it was time to go. I loaded my gear into the Bronco. I kept Dr. Melody’s gum in my pocket, in the Dexter tobacco tin. Cash and Charlie went ahead in the Dodge Dart and parked at the top of the mountains. Charlie stood by the car while Cash scouted the slopes sheltering Gates Pass.

  From below, we could see him topping out on one hill, disappearing for a time and emerging on an adjoining one. He waved a red bandana over his head to signal all clear, and Diaz led the caravan out of Double Wide.

  Opal and I followed in the Bronco, and a cruiser trailed us, roof lights spinning. The paved road, one lane each way, twisted through the saguaro and creosote flats. The thick brush on both sides offered good cover. Anyone could’ve stepped out of the desert and riddled us with bullets.

  Diaz drove as fast as he could. But as the road climbed, the turns got tighter and the incline made speed impossible. The higher we went, the closer the mountains came to the road, until the black rock cliffs were hugging the pavement.

  We inched along. There was stillness in the air, an odd calm. I looked out the window.

  Boulder sat atop boulder on the mountain slopes. The saguaros seemed to grow out of the jutting bighorn cliffs. Higher up, amid clusters of prickly pear, the slopes became steeper with more cliffs that split into caves, and then came the peaks, jagged and crazy looking against the sky.

  The danger made no impact on Opal. She sat next to me humming a song and eating jelly beans.

  Another deputy waited at the top. Diaz stopped. The deputy approached Diaz’s window, and the two spoke. Charlie used the break in the procession to join us in the Bronco for the ride to the ballpark.

  I’d ordered Cash to stay behind and watch Angel: “Don’t let him leave your side. If he goes to the bathroom, you go with him.”

  The deputy had stopped five cars coming from the opposite direction. He held them back with one arm and waved Diaz around the last elbow turn with the other, then waved the Bronco through, and there was the city spread out below, looking peaceful under a cover of Sunday-morning clouds.

  That was good. No hot sun to sap my strength. Maybe I could go the full nine, and when it was over, tip my cap to the cheers of a standing crowd. I felt better than I had in a long time, as if some seed from my early days had sprouted again.

  But there was anger, too. At the way my career had gone, how it ended, how the stories of my father’s trial and my cocaine arrest dominated Google. They led the list for anyone who typed in my name.

  Whip Stark, crook.

  That was my legacy in black and white unless I could replace it with a competing story, something better, and that was the promise of the game. If I pitched well, I could banish Mazatlán, at least partially, and fill Google with accounts of the second great game Whip Stark pitched at Hi Corbett Field.

  Life doesn’t offer many chances at redemption, but this was mine, even if it was achieved with an illegal substance. Rolando would’ve loved that part.

  Nearing the ballpark, I felt the old rush, the wicked burn of competition massing at my shoulders and spreading down my arms and legs. I couldn’t wait to get back on the mound.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  The high temperature on Tequila Sunday only reached ninety-three degrees, not enough to cook a grilled cheese sandwich on the hood of your car. Late July is normally reliable grilled cheese weather. A drizzle helped. It fell on and off in the two hours before game time.

  The circus was well underway when we pulled into the parking lot. Reporters rushed me as I stepped from the Bronco, shoving one another and barking out questions.

  The clamor frightened Opal. She stayed behind me, one hand gripping the back of my shirt. Charlie walked ahead as a bulwark. He had on pink shorts, and his shirt sported the usual palm trees, only this version had gorillas on lawn chairs eating Doritos. By their expressions, they were having a wonderful time.

  Charlie’s belly stuck out, the gorillas helping him push through the crowd.

  He said, “Whip Stark here, folks! Let’s not crowd him! Whip Stark coming through!”

  He struck out A-Rod and Jeter in the same inning! Move aside, you mortals!

  As I passed a concession booth by the front gate, the salesman spotted me and held up one of his T-shirts. The front had P-H-E-N-O-M printed on it, above my image.

  I stopped at the locker room door to remind the reporters to stick around for the postgame press conference. “You won’t be disappointed,” I said and ducked inside.

  Danny Wilson came in with a quart of milk and a red Solo cup. A high-dollar talent like me gets to make certain demands, and that was mine, milk in the clubhouse. I felt fine until Danny started in.

  “You’ve got to bring it today, Whip,” he said. “Everything’s riding on El Bailador.”

  “I know that.”

  “Where’s Roxanne?” He smacked his palm with the back of his other hand. ”We need Dr. Melody at this press conference. Where the hell is she?”

  “She said he’d be here.”

  Wilson sat on a bench across from my locker, his hands folded between his knees. ”If you get chased in the second inning, we’ll both look like knuckleheads.”

  “I’m not going to get chased in the second inning.”

  “Third, fourth—that isn’t so good either.”

  My stomach tightened. Messing with a pitcher before his start is like poking a tiger.

  “I need you still throwing into the seventh inning,” he said.

  “Danny?”

  “Yeah? What is it, Whipper? What is it, big guy?”

  Softly, I said, “Get out of my face or I’ll break both your arms.”

  Now I needed milk and plenty of it. I poured myself a tall cool one.

  Two players in shower togs came over and shook my hand and said nice things about my career. They had faces like Little Leaguers. Others made cracks about the old man drinking milk in his underwear. I told them to go take a look at the Wall of Heroes.

  If your teammates ignore you, you’re cooked. If they ride you, you’re in. Locker rooms never change.

  The clubhouse buzzed. Thunder employees came in periodically to describe the wild scene outside, the traffic on Broadway and Twenty-Second Street, the fight for parking, the fight for tickets.

  Whenever the clubhouse door opened, we heard the excited
voices of fans streaming in, the shouts of vendors, and Springsteen wailing over the stadium’s speakers. We also got a heavy whiff of diesel exhaust as charter buses from the foothills and the east side pulled up to unload fans, who promptly bolted for the ticket booths.

  Wilson ordered that every ticket, except for those that season-ticket holders already held, would be a walk-up, with prices roughly doubled. He knew nobody was going to turn around and go home once they got there. The publicity had been consistent and fevered for that entire week, the anticipation just too high.

  The players soaked up the boisterous energy. No one dragged around. No one moaned about a hangover or a nagging injury.

  I got the day’s first sighting of Rod Peña when he bounced out of the shower to the emotional wail of Mexican music. The song was the usual bloodbath, a smashed-up corazon here, another over there, and all of it accompanied by sobbing trumpets.

  He was short, thick, black as coal, and well put together, the muscle all natural. No weight rooms for Rod Peña. He had a rising mound of muscle from his shoulders to his neck and prominent pecs. He wore only a white towel around his middle and shower flip-flops.

  Shaving cream covered his entire head, except for a half-moon razor swipe over his left ear. It looked like the path the first snowplow makes after a storm.

  He danced around with one hand flat to his belly, the other raised to accommodate the imaginary woman he was holding. She must’ve been a beauty, for his eyes were clamped shut and his face scrambled with passion as he gave it every bit of his lungs.

  Several players sang along, and when the song ended, they clapped and hooted.

  Peña somehow disposed of his woman without a scene, took a deep bow complete with a dramatic hand sweep, righted himself and belted out a series of high-pitched cries, like he’d dropped a rock on his foot.

  With his face suddenly severe, he leaned close to me, and in heavily accented English, said, “We go dancing this day, my friend?”

  “Yes, we’re going dancing!”

  “El Bailador!” He screamed the words and danced away.

  SEVENTY-THREE

  The stadium’s capacity is ten thousand, but Wilson had removed the outfield fences and stretched yellow police tape from foul pole to foul pole around the warning track. Fans covered every inch of ground behind the tape. They sat on blankets, captain’s chairs, ice chests, the grass itself, and on each other. There had to be four thousand more people back there.

  On the waist-high wall along the first base line, someone had attached twenty blank cardboard squares. At each of my strikeouts, they’d fill a square with a K, the expectation being that I could reach twenty again.

  I took my warm-up throws, and when it came time for the first pitch, Rod ran out to the mound and pulled off his catcher’s mask and leaned over with his newly shaved head almost in my face.

  The crowd response told me they knew what was going on. But I didn’t. It seemed that Rod’s pregame ritual involved shaving his head to bowling ball purity and letting the starting pitcher give it a public rubbing for good luck. The crowd clapped in rhythm until I caught on and rubbed his head, and they clapped even more.

  The first inning didn’t go well. I walked the second batter on four pitches. In my eagerness to fill up the strike zone, I hung a curve to the cleanup hitter, and he launched it over the tape in centerfield, giving the Stars a 2–0 lead.

  In the second inning, I lost the jitters and threw El Bailador for the first time. With two strikes on a batter, I let it fly. The ball moved like a dream. It would’ve been called a ball if the batter hadn’t gone for it, but he took a lunging swing more suited to a nine iron, and missed by two feet.

  Walking away, he gave me the bitter eye, and in the dugout I saw him making a dive-bomb motion with his hand. That put the hitters on alert.

  Every one of them would be waiting for El Bailador.

  I threw it several more times in the second and third innings, probably more than I should have. But it thrilled me to see the baffled reaction of the batters. After the third inning, Rod told me to slow it down, and he was on to something.

  After the first few pitches of the fourth inning, the Stars’ manager asked the umpire to inspect the ball. He found nothing and threw it back into play. The manager stormed out and demanded the umpire inspect my glove and clothing.

  The manager shouted, “Nobody can make a ball move like that!”

  The umpire ran a finger under the wrist strap on my glove and along the bottom of the pocket. He looked at my pant leg and cap for illegal substances. He felt along my forearms for the same thing.

  I stood on the mound chewing Melody’s gum the whole time. The crowd stomped and screamed through the delay. The umpire declared me clean. Rod smiled with his gold teeth and trotted back to the plate.

  The fourth inning ended with the Thunder still trailing 2–0. But by then I’d fallen into that cocoon of concentration in which sounds disappear, distractions disappear, and the world empties except for the ball and the catcher’s glove.

  We tied the game in the sixth on a two-run homer and went ahead 3–2 on four straight hits in the seventh. We held that lead into the top of the ninth.

  I got the first batter on a called third strike and walked the second batter. The one after that hit a line single to centerfield, the Stars holding the lead runner at third. That put runners on second and third with one out.

  I was at ninety-eight pitches and feeling an energy dump. Rod sprang to his feet and ran to the mound, all the while looking over to see what the manager wanted. The manager stood on the top step of the dugout. He knew it wasn’t his game and wasn’t his call, but he’d pull me if that’s what I wanted. I held my hand up to him. He nodded. I was staying in.

  The strikeout wall showed eight red Ks in eight-and-a-third innings, a long way from twenty, but that was a lifetime ago. Nobody would fault me for letting a relief pitcher try to get the final two outs.

  But I wanted to finish it, for myself and for my father listening from his cell. With the crowd cheering, I wanted him to hear the announcer say that Whip Stark, in his return to baseball, had pitched a complete game.

  I got the first batter on a bit of luck. He went for a pitch out of the zone and rolled a topper back to the mound. I looked the runner back to third and threw the batter out at first.

  One out remained.

  The first pitch I threw split the middle of the plate. I was lucky. The batter was way ahead of it. He fouled off the next pitch, leaving a no-ball-and-two-strikes count. Three times in a row Rod signaled for El Bailador, and I threw it three times into the dirt in front of the plate.

  But the batter wouldn’t bite.

  That left a three-and-two count. Rod came out again to talk to me. "Throw the pitch. Throw it again. I know he'll bite!"

  I threw the dancer one more time, and the batter lunged.

  I had summoned all my reserves to throw that pitch. No muscle in my body went unused. Even my hat had taken part. It went flying just like in the old days. I made no effort to pick it up and couldn’t if I wanted to. I had nothing left. My mind and my body were cold chicken soup.

  Swing and a miss. Game over.

  With the crowd roaring, I bent over and put my hands on my knees. Next thing I knew, Rod had me in his grip as our teammates swarmed us, jumping and screaming in unison.

  In the melee, I glimpsed a woman in a white shirt jumping the wall onto the field. Two cops grabbed for her, but she was a firecracker with the tossed elbows and flying black hair.

  That was all I saw before the throng closed around me again, cameras clicking, players grabbing my hand and leaning in for a shoulder bump.

  Someone smeared my face with a towel full of shaving cream. I was wiping it away when a pair of arms went around my neck and locked there. I felt a soft cheek against mine, smelled sweet perfume.

  “You did it!” Roxy exclaimed. “You did it, Prospero! I’m so proud of you!”

  “You made it b
ack. Is Melody here?”

  “Don’t I always get the story? Isn’t that what I told you?”

  The two cops she’d evaded came to nab their fugitive. When they saw who it was, one of them said, “You’re Roxanne Santa Cruz! The reporter lady!”

  “At your service, officer,” she said, and smiled through the smear of shaving cream.

  “But you’re with the TV,” he said. “You didn’t have to jump the wall.”

  “I was too excited to wait,” she said.

  As they walked away, one of them looked back and said, “Beautiful game, Whip.”

  With her face beaming, Roxy threw her arms around my neck again. “It was a beautiful game, the most beautiful baseball game ever. Now let’s go piss in Max Mayflower’s lunch box.”

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  The press conference was in a small meeting room under the stadium. It held maybe forty folding chairs.

  Danny Wilson waited for me while I showered and got an ice bag taped to my shoulder. He was a wreck. He kept checking his watch and snapping his fingers into his palm. A door in the locker room led to the back of the pressroom, which was packed and smelled like cheese nachos.

  We sat behind a table covered with tape recorders and microphones. I scanned the crowd to find Roxy and Dr. Melody, but the TV lights blurred everything beyond the first few rows.

  Someone shouted, “Tell us, Whip, how were you able to strike out nine batters after a two-year absence from the game?”

  Wilson held his hand up. “We’re not having an ordinary press conference today. If you’ll stay with me, I’d like to make a few remarks about how important it is to play honestly and fairly and, most of all, by the established rules of the game of baseball.”

  He pulled out a piece of paper and made a Cecil B. DeMille scene out of spreading it out on the table, squeaking his chair, coughing, adjusting the microphone, coughing again.

  His voice started uneven but smoothed out as he explained his decision to allow me to pitch the game and how he thought it was the best way to expose a serious threat to the integrity of baseball.