The Essential W. P. Kinsella

by W. P. Kinsella

  We hit St. Louis in the late afternoon of the third day.

  “I’ve never been to St. Louis before and the one thing I’ve got to see is Busch Stadium,” I said.

  “Why bother?” said Brody. “It’s just another ballpark.” I was parking the car on a dingy street across from the stadium. “It’s empty,” Brody went on. “I can’t see sitting out here at dusk, in a drizzle, just to stare at a goddamned empty ballpark.”

  “Sit!” I said. “That’s the bronze of Stan Musial,” and I pointed far across the open area in front of Busch Stadium. “We’ll have to get out in order to have a close look at it.”

  I had this crazy idea that I could still change Brody’s mind. A forlorn hope that if he saw the way the light shone down on Musial’s statue, casting a heavenly aura around his head, it would be like a visit to Lourdes for a dying Catholic, and Brody would say he was kidding, that the last few days had all been a bad joke. I believed there was a chance he’d laugh that deep, crusty laugh of his and say he was cured of his desire to quit baseball.

  Though he accompanied me to inspect the bronze of Stan Musial, Brody didn’t change his mind. We were damp and smelled like wet dogs by the time we got back to the car. We set out to find a cheap motel. The inside of the car was stale and smelled of apple cores and empty beer cans.

  “So the guy could hit a baseball,” Brody said of Musial, and shrugged, as we weaved through an industrial district of St. Louis. No matter how enthusiastic I was about what we’d just seen, Brody’s mood stayed dark. We found an eighteen-dollar motel, where we parked the car close to the door of our unit so we could hear if anyone was tampering with it. The motel was located in a tampering neighbourhood.

  Maybe if the Cardinals had been at home . . . maybe if we’d actually been able to see a game . . .

  In Florida there was a bar called Clancy’s, a place where a gang of us used to go after a game to relax. Clancy’s was a quiet place, too quiet for most of the ballplayers. It had an old oak bar, one wall of booths upholstered in wine-red leather, and a black guy who played the piano, but had the courtesy not to sing.

  There were five or six of us who were regulars; we’d pound a few beers, talk baseball, replay the game two or three times. After the baseball talk was exhausted we’d usually go to a nightclub and hope to meet girls. We were hardly ever successful.

  It was at Clancy’s, though, that we met Sheila-Ann and Mary. They came in together and were about to take stools at the bar, when Sheila-Ann looked our way, grabbed Mary’s arm and pulled her over to our booth.

  “We saw you guys play tonight,” Sheila-Ann said to the group, though her eyes were focused on Brody as she spoke. If anybody had been listening they could have heard my intake of breath when I looked at Sheila-Ann. She wasn’t gorgeous, but she was what my fantasies were all about, slim and blonde, her hair frizzed so that with the lights of the bar behind her she looked like an angel. Her brown eyes were deep-set, wise, ironic; her smile was controlled, almost insolent.

  Brody, uncomfortable under Sheila-Ann’s stare, mumbled his thanks.

  “We’ve been to almost every game,” Sheila-Ann went on. She then introduced herself, and Mary, who had remained silent. We invited them to join us. And though it was awkward, the five of us guys squeezed together so one girl could sit at each end of the semicircular booth. Sheila-Ann sat across from me. Mary sat beside me. And that’s the way it was for the rest of the summer: Sheila-Ann across from me, beside Brody, and Mary beside me.

  Eventually, the other players left so there was just the four of us in the booth, Sheila-Ann close beside Brody, telling him what a great baseball player he was, snuggling against him, talking right into his mouth. Because I was Brody’s friend I stayed, and because some company is better than none, I offered to see Mary home. I hadn’t said a dozen words all evening. I’d spent all my time looking at Sheila-Ann, wishing it was me she’d come on to. Mary was a stocky girl, in a grey skirt and maroon-coloured blouse. She had light brown hair and grey eyes.

  At one point I almost had a vision. I glanced up from my drink to see Sheila-Ann in profile; the orangy light behind her was not kind. As she pulled deeply on her cigarette, her face looked drawn, her eyes hard. For a few seconds I could see how she’d look in twenty years, and I didn’t like what I saw. But the vision didn’t change my being in love with her. Hell, in twenty years I’d be a retired baseball player, probably nursing a gut and combing my hair forward to hide a bald spot.

  We became a steady foursome. Brody and Sheila-Ann, because she chose him. Mary and I became a couple by default, something I should have run from because it was so unfair to her.

  Mary was soft and compliant in my arms in the front seat of the car that first evening. We were parked along the ocean, a row of palms casting moonlight shadows on the white sand, but no matter how she tried to please me I only partially responded. I could sense she felt more strongly about me than I’d ever feel about her.

  I didn’t appreciate Mary, but there was a reserve outfielder named Becker who did. We called him “Beak” because of the size of his nose. He was a pale, gangly kid with shoelaces of black hair flopping across his forehead, who was never gonna advance beyond Rookie League, and who, that first evening, stared at Mary the way I stared at Sheila-Ann. And as the summer progressed, Becker told me a dozen times how he envied me finding a girl like Mary. Wavelengths.

  What I can’t understand is why life can’t work out a little better. I’d sell my soul if I thought it would get me to the Bigs, I would. And I’ll get there, too. Pete Rose was my idol, and like him I’m gonna put out, and put out, and put out. I’ll make up with hustle what I lack in ability, and I’ve got stamina, and I’ll practise twice as hard and twice as long as anybody else. I want to make the Show so badly, and I have only marginal ability, while without putting out any real effort Brody could hit thirty home runs every season, make a million dollars a year and be famous. All Brody wants to do is teach chemistry.

  Sheila-Ann’s deliberately setting out to marry a baseball player isn’t as self-serving as it seems. She wants to improve herself, and for a girl raised by a single mother in the back streets of a small Florida city, there aren’t that many options. Sheila-Ann has the same spark I have. I’m full of a terrible energy and I don’t have any idea how to use it except to play professional baseball. That’s why I can’t consider failing, because if I don’t consider it, it won’t happen.

  “Are you still in love with Sheila-Ann?” Brody asked suddenly, on the second day out. He hadn’t said a word for a hundred miles, just sucked on a Bud and fiddled with the radio. The question surprised me, but I tried not to let on.

  “Was it that obvious?”

  “To me. I don’t think Sheila-Ann noticed. And Mary was so in love with you . . .” he let his voice trail off.

  “Yes. I’m still in love with her.”

  “Don’t you see the kind of woman she is?”

  “Yes.”

  Brody shrugged and the silence folded down around us like a comforter.

  Why couldn’t Sheila-Ann and I have latched onto each other? Instead, I reluctantly ended up with Mary, and aren’t all four of us unhappy. What’s more frightening is when I look five years down the line the only one of us I see being happy is Brody, and that’s because he’s willing to settle for so little.

  I’ll still be walking the blade. If I’m lucky I’ll be in the Bigs, playing first-string for a bad team, or backup for a good one—getting in the lineup once a week, hoping the starter slumps or gets injured. Every time I think of Brody, I think how unfair it is when someone won’t take advantage of the gift he’s been given.

  And Sheila-Ann, maybe now that she’s been so close to fame and fortune, maybe she will, like an old egg-sucking dog that’s had a taste of the forbidden, just keep on prospecting for a big-league ballplayer. But I wonder if she’s a good enough judge of talent? Her odds of latching onto a star twice in a row aren’t very good. The thing I’d hate most wou
ld be seeing her at twenty-five, still sitting in Clancy’s, hustling a nineteenyear-old ballplayer who might have a shot at the big time.

  I spend a lot of my time fantasizing about Sheila-Ann, about how, when I go back to Florida, I’ll go after her, I’ll win her respect, and she’ll take a chance with me because she and I have the same kind of drive and ambition.

  Mary will marry some local who sells insurance, or works with computers, someone who will appreciate her as much as girls like Mary ever get appreciated, and she’ll stagnate, and get mousier-looking as time passes, and she’ll think of me occasionally, and in her imagination what we had will be a lot more than it ever was. And if she really gets out of touch, she’ll name her fourth or fifth kid Charles Jason, after me, and call him C. J. for short.

  Brody will get his degree at Western Washington State, and he’s already mentioned Dorinda Low, a girl he’d dated occasionally in high school, more than once. Dorinda is a girl who makes my skin crawl every time I think of touching her. She has lustreless black hair, big pores, and eyes that bulge just a bit. She has one of the most passionless mouths I’ve ever seen on a woman. She lives with her arms folded across her chest and belongs to one of those freaky churches that don’t allow women to wear makeup.

  At the end of our first month in Florida Brody’s parents flew down and spent their entire two-week holiday with us. They watched us play seven games at home and then went on a seven-game road trip. Florida was the first time either of us had been away from home for any stretch of time.

  “You guys jump up on us harder and are more affectionate than the dogs after we’ve been away a few days,” Brody’s mom said, as we each took a turn hugging her and swinging her off her feet. She was properly horrified at the basement we lived in so she bought us curtains, cleaned the bathroom, and stocked the shelves and refrigerator with a whole summer’s worth of groceries before she left. They treated us both to dinner every night, and at the ballpark we could hear them cheering every time we came to bat or made any kind of a play in the field.

  The two letters I had from my folks both discussed how I could make up my high-school credits with evening classes and start college in January.

  It was Mr. and Mrs. Langston who landed us a sports agent and business manager. I’m sure they had to force him to take me in order to get Brody, but it made me feel good. Brody got a sizable bonus for signing, and I got a small one. Brody was always worrying about how to invest his. I just wanted mine to grow a little.

  “C. J.’s got the right idea,” Mrs. Langston said. “The reason athletes have agents and business managers and contract lawyers is to do your worrying for you. You boys just concentrate on baseball.”

  We should have. We really should have.

  The scariest event of all was the night Brody and Sheila-Ann broke up. It was Brody’s idea for the four of us to go to a fancy restaurant after our final game; we both had interviews with the organization scheduled for the next day. I knew something bad was up because Brody had hinted to me several times that he was unhappier than usual playing baseball, but I really had no idea how unhappy he was. I mean he was an All-Star, the press had honeyed him up all summer. They’d even nicknamed him “Bear” because of the deliberate way he played the outfield, and it looked like the nickname was gonna stick.

  I felt like a monkey, all dressed up in my only suit and tie. There was dance music after dinner, and the first time I took Mary to the dance floor I spent most of my time watching over her shoulder as Brody and Sheila-Ann settled into a serious conversation.

  “Sheila-Ann thinks he’s gonna propose,” Mary whispered as we danced. There was something so obvious in her voice that I pushed her back from me a few inches, hardly realizing I was doing it.

  Brody and Sheila-Ann stopped their conversation and looked uncomfortable when we came back to the table, so as soon as the music started again I steered Mary toward the dance floor.

  “What’s Brody telling her?” Mary asked.

  What I wanted to say was, “He sure as hell ain’t proposing,” but instead I said, “It may be her telling him something.”

  “Sheila-Ann was so happy she could have floated over here tonight,” Mary said. “She’s planning her wedding . . .” Mary looked at me in such a way that if I’d been in love with her, or even thinking about being in love with her, I had an opening a hundred yards wide to tell her I loved her, or to go ahead and pop the question. But I remained silent and the final number in the set seemed to last forever.

  “Oh, don’t apologize. I don’t want to hear it,” Sheila-Ann was saying as we returned to the table. “Just go away and leave me alone. I don’t care what your prospects are outside baseball. I wasted a whole season!”

  Choking with tears she shouted, “I wanted to marry a baseball player! I wanted to get out of this stinking little town! I wanted to be somebody.”

  What she said sounded selfish and bad-tempered, but I sympathized. And I wasn’t entirely unhappy that Brody had done what he’d done, though I didn’t know then exactly how far he’d gone. I was sad for what Brody was doing to Sheila-Ann but I was also elated. I wanted Sheila-Ann almost as much as I wanted to play Major League baseball. Watching the tears splash out of her eyes, watching her face turn blotchy, her mascara run, I had never loved her more. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done for her at that moment.

  Brody got up and walked slowly out of the restaurant.

  I wanted to shout to Sheila-Ann, “Look at me! Look at me!” I thought those words over and over, trying to make them pierce Sheila-Ann’s unhappiness. “Look at me! I’m a baseball player! I’m going to make it!” But Sheila-Ann stared right through me as if I was perfectly clear glass. It never crossed her mind to consider me.

  And that frightened me. Sheila-Ann always had a hungry look about her. I had studied her real close on more than one evening, when she didn’t realize I was watching her. She wasn’t nearly as pretty as she seemed at first glance. She’d studied all about makeup and how to style her hair to her best advantage, and what colours to wear. Mary told me that Sheila-Ann once went all the way to Tampa to take a three-day course on how to smile and what to do with her hands when she walked.

  “You know what she said to me?” Brody asks, fiddling with the radio. The tone of his voice makes it clear that she refers to Sheila-Ann.

  “What?”

  “She said she picked me out because I was not only the best player on the team, but because I was gonna end up a superstar. Her and Mary had watched us play fifteen times before they introduced themselves. They planned the meeting with us at Clancy’s; they’d followed us there before.”

  I was surprised Brody had to be told that. I knew it the first time I saw Sheila-Ann smile. Neither Mary nor I ever mentioned the meeting being planned. What good would it have done?

  “Seems to me that’s the kind of things guys do to girls all the time, follow them around, set up an accidental-on-purpose meeting.”

  “‘What if I’d been a jerk?’ I asked her. ‘Would you have fallen in love with me anyway? A lot of guys who can hit a baseball a long way or throw a strike to the plate from the right-field corner have about the same IQ as their equipment bag, and not only are they stupid, they aren’t even nice. What if I’d turned out to be one of those?’ And you know what she said, C. J.? She looked at me in that insolent way she has, like she was talking to a teacher she didn’t like very much, and she said, ‘I’d be willing to make certain adjustments.’

  “Then she tried to cuddle up to me, tried to move her chair around beside mine, but I wouldn’t let her. ‘Listen!’ she went on. ‘I checked you out pretty thorough—I can tell a lot about a guy by the way his teammates treat him. Mary and I, we came into Clancy’s two nights running and we sat in the booth behind you, and we followed you home once to see what part of town you lived in. We could tell both of you were smart and nice by the way you talked to your friends.’

  “‘But what if the only guy on the squad this year wh
o was going to make it to the big time was mean, and ugly, and dumb as a baseball bat?’

  “‘Then I reckon a man with all those handicaps might need somebody to organize his finances for him,’ she said, smiling every inch of the way.”

  At least Brody had the courage of his convictions. I didn’t exactly break off with Mary. I promised I’d write. I promised I’d phone. I knew I was lying as I made each promise, but I couldn’t cut myself off from the possibility of seeing Sheila-Ann again. The last night in Florida, Mary and I engaged in some of the saddest lovemaking ever imagined. Mary tried to ingest me, her lips were soft, her tongue wild, she opened herself to me in every way possible, and though my body responded, my heart was somewhere else. To be exact, my heart was in the next bedroom where Sheila-Ann was alone, a Willie Nelson tape crying softly through the thin walls.

  Before we left Florida, I had an interview with the manager, the FloridaTexas-Louisiana scout for our organization, and a guy from the head office, an accountant type, called a player development officer.

  “I want to play winter baseball,” I said to them before they could say anything to me. But they didn’t give me a yes or a no.

  “The computer ranks you 38th among second basemen in professional baseball not on a Major League roster, the player development type said to me.

  That was bad. We all knew that.

  “The computer can’t measure desire,” I countered.

  “If we took desire into account,” said the scout, “there’d be a lot of sixty-year-old men with active imaginations in the Bigs.”

  “You know what I mean. I’m willing to work. I’ll hone the skills I have, develop the ones I lack. I’m gonna make it, if not with this organization, then another one.” That raised a couple of eyebrows.

  The scout smiled.

  “What we’d really like to do,” he said, “is give your friend Brody Langston a transfusion of whatever gives you your get-up-and-go.”

  For a minute I considered trying to make a deal. I suspected what Brody was going to do, and I think they did too. If I could convince Brody to keep playing they’d have to carry me with him every step of the way. I’d be like that goat that keeps the high-strung race horses calm.