And he, I’m proud to say, worked. True, the extra finger made him stand out, something that would have been a bad thing in normal circumstances, but when you factor in how it didn’t improve his pitching in the slightest, the superfluous digit, with the help of a fib on my part, became the big reason why Sparky finally glommed onto the Cubs.
“Hey hey, there’s Six-Fingered Second Rate Middle Reliever, Sparks!” I said one day.
Sparks, as it were, said nothing. He was plopped on the couch in front of the television, glowering, probably because he wanted to watch the Yankees game. He also might have been jonesin’ for some Oreos.
All the same, I continued. No quit here.
“Do you know what they call Six-Fingered Second Rate Middle Reliever?” I asked.
Still nothing from the boy. If he were of cleverer, more precocious stock, he might have come up with the idea of thwarting me by smashing his face in the couch cushions while making exaggerated snoring noises. As things stood, not clever, not precocious, he just sat there and kept glaring.
Nevertheless, I forged ahead. I am tenacious. I am implacable.
“They call him, Ol’ Six Fingers,” I said. “Wanna know why?”
No, said the boy’s glare, now searing through my skull.
“Because he has six fingers on his right hand. Isn’t that cool?”
I then thrust Six-Fingered Second Rate Middle Reliever’s jersey into Sparky’s face.
Sloppy, I admit, and it probably should have failed like all the other attempts, but I caught a break this time. The same game I bequeathed his replica uniform to Sparky, Six-Fingered Second Rate pitched, and Ol’ Six Fingers, at the peak of his powers, gave up four runs without recording a single out before exiting the game to thunderous boos.
Boos that just so happened to pique my son’s interest.
“Why are they being so mean?” he asked me.
“Because he’s different than they are, and that scares them,” I replied hastily, forgetting the I Don’t Know rule. (Also, I didn’t want Sparky to realize the obvious, that Six-Fingered Second Rate’s bad pitching had everything to do with the outpouring of abuse.)
“Just ‘cuz he has an extra finger?” Sparky said.
“You got it,” I said.
The boy smiled. You could say it was a chilling smile due to the circumstances, but the way he cocked his head, it was chilling in just how not chilling it was. It was the kind of warm, delighted smile you might give upon bumping into an old friend you haven’t seen in years.
Sparky then said this in regards to all those Cubs fans he thought were hating on Six-Fingered Second Rate for his sixth finger—and cheerfully too I might add:
“Good.”
And there’s a clue. A sign. A portent. An augury. The first one for you, one of many for me.
Just so there’s no confusion on the issue, the wife and I did not raise Sparky to hate people with deformities. Never would we teach him such a thing. We were Christians after all, and not the kind that weasel out of the scriptural admonitions to love all people regardless of whatever reason they might have to be unlovable, in this case extra body parts.
And while we’re on the subject of clues, here’s a second:
The elevator has stopped. As in, between floors. As in, we’re stuck. It would seem this reenactment of Gladys Marie Fenwick’s ascension is experiencing technical difficulties.
That is my first thought anyway. The second is that perhaps someone I know is behind it.
I look at Sparky sitting cross-legged on the floor of the elevator, like Marlon Brando circa Dr. Moreau channeling the Buddha.
“Did you do this, Sparks?” I ask.
No answer.
“Come on, son.” I say, my voice rising. “Pay attention.”
“Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, I like to poop and pee!” Sparky sings.
“No, no singing,” I say. “Answer me. Did you make the elevator stop going?”
Sparky smiles. The smile is chilling. “I dunnooooo,” he says.
Now how do you like that? Taste of my own medicine.
13
After watching Ol’ Six Fingers get booed off the field for what I had said was his polydactylism, Sparky became a Cubs fan.
He never wore the jersey. I found it cut into pieces a week or two later, and when I asked Sparky why he had done this, he said it was because Six-Fingered Second Rate had six fingers.
“He’s a freak!” he happily explained.
I tried to make it clear, one more time, how having an extra finger in no way made you a freak, only different, but Sparky wouldn’t hear of it.
“He’s a monster!” he said with a laugh. Then, good-naturedly, “I hope he gets hurt.”
And that’s where this starts to get a little scary. Sparky would get his wish. Six-Fingered Second Rate Middle Reliever would hurt his arm in late July and not return until early August.
I know, only a week, and certainly, pitchers get hurt all the time. Still, when it happened it made me nervous.
Had I unwittingly made a grievous mistake? Was this another mess of my own making that I would now have to clean up? Was it useless to even try? Was I like Creon with baby Oedipus, or Astyages with baby Cyrus, or Pharaoh with baby Moses, or Herod with baby Jesus, or any ancient Mediterranean potentate, fictional or no, who lost his mind over what some oracle or prophet said about the futures of babies? Was I, like them, helping to bring about the exact thing I was trying so hard to prevent? Could it be? Must it be?
In my calmer moments—which tended to occur after a string of Cubs losses—I found myself pretty pleased with everything and on the whole impressed with my ability to mold a small human to my whims. Because of me, Sparky had forgotten the Yankees entirely and had become obsessed with the Cubs. Without my prodding, he now parked himself in front of the television every afternoon to watch their games, and with that Cubs hat practically glued to his head. So while the prejudice and intolerance were regrettable, I still couldn’t help but be thrilled with how this whole baseball business was looking more and more like one of my greatest triumphs. I firmly believed that once the culture of losing that epitomized Chicago Cubs baseball fully permeated my son’s consciousness, it wouldn’t matter what he thought of people with extra fingers or anything else. He’d end up as another average, narrow-minded bigot, of little value or consequence in the grand scheme of things, and that’s a fine compromise.
I could handle a bigot of little consequence. There are tons of those out there.
*
But then, wouldn’t you know it, the worst happened. And the upside to that hateful horseshit turned out not to be that up of a side at all, as the Cubs, who had been wonderfully below average through the first part of August, as always, suddenly won a bunch of ballgames, thrusting themselves into the middle of the pennant race.
No longer looking bush league and bumbling, the Cubs played good baseball now. They had shutdown pitching and, after acquiring some better hitters via a couple of shrewd trades, they began scoring enough most days to win.
As before, Sparky was being shown excellence, but this time it was excellence of the absolute worst sort. He was being taught that a human being could be worthless, a nobody, good for little other than the condescending amusement of their betters, and yet, through hard work and tenacity rise up to become the antithesis of worthless, a big-time somebody, and that it could happen in the least likely of cases.
Can you imagine a more catastrophic scenario? I couldn’t, and neither could the wife.
And oh, was she ever pissed at me. As the season rolled into September and the chances of the Cubs making the playoffs got closer to reality, in the midst of a feverish prayer-and-dance session, she stopped, turned to me, and said:
“If that ass-fart baseball team is the reason this all goes to shit, I swear to Chr
ist I will fucking kill you.”
Then she went right back to praying and dancing.
14
Hoping reality would reassert itself in time for everything to still turn out as it should, I let Sparky watch the Cubs until the end of the season and I watched right along with him. Together, we saw them clinch the division title on the second-to-last day of the season, and I stared at the TV in disbelief as the team celebrated at Wrigley Field with their fans, Sparky next to me, jumping on the couch, waving his hat in the air.
“Cubs win!” Sparky exclaimed, happy.
“Oh boy,” I said, not happy.
Next, we watched the Cubs upset the World Series-favored Atlanta Braves in a harrowing five games to advance to the National League Championship Series.
“Cubs win!” Sparky yelled, running circles in the yard.
“Oh boy,” I said, not yelling, not running.
Then we watched as these same Cubs crushed their next opponent, the Florida Marlins, through three of the first four games of the National League Championship Series, bringing them within one win of their first World Series appearance since 1945.
One win.
As some hipster Chicago sports-radio host put it: “One more dubya, and all bets are off, Daddy-O.”
A plague of excitement and anticipation spread from Chicago through the state of Indiana, infecting even us backwoods bumpkins in Kokomo County. Cubs jerseys and hats and signs and flags were everywhere, and everyone was aflame with World Series fever. In school and around town, Sparky basked in the glow of the moment, high-fiving and cheering with all the other schlubs in Cubs gear that were now, more than ever, legion.
I, on the other hand, went slouching around Little Hat with a palpable sense of doom, viewing these keyed up, jackbooted fans and the sea of adorable blue bears and big red C’s they created with a fear that in times past would have been reserved for the hammer-and-sickle or the swastika.
The wife, not one to take things lying down, embarked on a series of twenty-four hour prayer vigils. All hours, day and night, I could hear the pitter-pat of dancing feet, croaky, off-key singing, and periodic shouts of hope (“YES, LORD! CUBS LOSE, LORD!”) or anguish (“LORD, PLEASE...PLEASE...OH GOD...PLEASE SMITE THE CUBS IN YOUR RIGHTEOUS ANGER!”). There were also more than a few times where she yelled at the devil, in case he happened to be within earshot (“GET THEE BEHIND ME, SATAN! YOU HAVE NO PLACE IN THIS HOUSE OR AT WRIGLEY FIELD! I BANISH YOU FROM THE PLAYOFFS IN THE NAME OF JESUS!”).
She refused to eat or sleep and would only drink blessed Diet Coke (with lime).
She performed the Pentecostal ritual of the laying on of hands with Sparky, who giggled through it. (“Please—quiet, Sparky!—oh, Father! Let this cup pass from him—STOP LAUGHING, I MEAN IT!—oh, Jesus—STOP IT!”)
She anointed Sparky with holy (canola) oil, something he has never liked (“GREASY HEAD!”). Telling, perhaps.
She prayed over Sparky’s Cubs hat and anointed it with oil too, a move that also brought out no small amount of consternation from the boy (“GREASY HAT!”).
She even tried stitching Six-Fingered Second Rate Middle Reliever’s jersey back together (“Ever since Sparky tore this up they’ve been winning...”).
Granted, in the merciless view of hindsight it is easy to say all this hubbub over a baseball team’s fortunes and what it portended for a young child’s future was much ado about nothing, and yet more proof that that child’s parents were out of their minds, but the screwy things in life have so much to do with momentum, with getting caught up in the current. At the time, it made sense to take leave of one’s senses. Because you never know what matters and what doesn’t, what has cosmic significance and what doesn’t, what matters to God and what doesn’t. Better Safe Than Sorry, right?
So go ahead, ridicule us all the more, but all that dancing, praying, shouting, anointing, and kicking the devil out of the wide world of sports, well, it worked.
I think.
Another miracle! Another coincidence!
Game five rolled around and the Cubs got stomped. The opposing pitcher threw a complete game shutout, and the Marlins won 4-0.
The wife, her confidence soaring as the game progressed, prayed, danced, and made whatever she could find in the house greasy with holy (canola) oil while I quietly gave her updates and offered encouraging thumbs-ups between innings.
With Sparky I had to pretend I was as let down as he was that the Cubs had failed in their first attempt to put the Marlins away, as I wasn’t sure what he was capable of if he decided I was partly to blame for the loss.
There I was, doing Smiley Face-Frowny Face from the wife to the boy and back again. I was busy, busy, busy.
“Booyah! Cubs lose!” I said to the wife in the kitchen, thrusting a fist of solidarity in her direction that she reciprocated by punching her own into a loaf of bread.
“SUCK ON THAT, LUCIFER, SON OF THE MORNING!” she yelled at the now-pummeled Roman Meal before turning to karate kick in the general direction of nothing. “GOD ROCKS THE CASBAH! PRAISE YOU AND GO FISH!”
“Don’t worry, son,” I said to Sparky in the living room with as false a Frowny Face as there’s ever been. “They’ve got two more shots at it, and the chances of the other team coming back are still really small.”
“Yeah, I know,” said my son, not nearly as concerned, in retrospect, as he should have been.
15
Which brings me to the immortal game six.
The wife took up her position in the spare bedroom, a place she had dubbed her “war closet.” Sparky set up camp three feet from the television.
It goes without saying that when two people living under the same roof are determined to see outcomes diametrically opposed to one another, a natural antagonism develops. This would explain why, before taking his post in the living room, Sparky took to the offensive by standing outside the wife’s war closet, scowling and whispering through the door.
The wife, either hearing the whispers herself or informed by some heavenly entity of infernal doings nearby, yelled at Sparky to leave, which, naturally, only succeeded in getting him to kick it up another notch.
To this day, I have no idea what he was saying as I had no intention of getting in his way. From the bottom of the stairs it sounded like tongues, but I would bet everything short of everything that it wasn’t tongues of the church-approved variety. I bet it was something else.
The wife, obviously thinking along the same lines, began shouting in tongues to defend herself against whatever it was he was whispering, and thus was the Horvath household turned into a spiritual battleground between two indecipherable gibberers fifteen minutes before game time.
“Cheeka-peeka-seeka-feeka!” the wife said.
“Creepy whisper, creepy whisper,” Sparky shot back.
“So-la-la-la-cheeka-so-lo-lo-lo-lo-peeka!”
A chortle from the boy, then a growl.
This went on through the National Anthem, and although I couldn’t say for sure—maybe it was the growl—it sure seemed like Sparky was winning.
That, and the wife finally called out, “Frankie, will you get your son away from the door?”
My son. Like this was my fault.
“Yo, Sparks? Buddy?” I called from the living room. “The pregame’s on. I got Oreos and Pringles and Mountain Dew ready.”
A minute went by, no more than two, and Sparky came down the stairs, a smug little smile on his face. “Go Cubbies!” he said.
“Yep. Go Cubbies,” I said.
It didn’t occur to me to check on the wife.
Game six was a cuticle-masher from the start. The Cubs snuck out to a 1-0 lead early and held it as the Marlins mustered nothing the first few innings against the Cubs’ starting pitcher. The Cubs then tacked on another run in their portion of the sixth, before eking out another in the seve
nth to take a 3-0 lead.
As the game advanced and the odds of victory increased, the crowd at Wrigley grew more rapturous. A prominent black comedian even had the chutzpah to prematurely crown the Cubs “the champs” as he led the seventh inning stretch and, instead of gasping in fright at this ill-advised taunting of the baseball gods, everybody cheered their brains out, Sparky along with them.
For my part, I did not cheer or sing along. I was more concerned with trying not to stick my head in the oven.
It then occurred to me that not a peep had been heard from the wife’s war closet since the game had started. No shouts to the Lord, no bursts of song to the Lord, no pitter-pat of dancing feet to the Lord, nothing to the Lord. Nothing, period.
Then I remembered Sparky’s smile when he entered the room, how calm he had seemed when he had sat down, the way he had kept his composure during the game itself (while I had found myself rather gassy with stress).
Fearing the worst, I jumped from the couch and ran up the stairs.
“Babe?” I yelled, banging on the door.
As these things tend to go, I received no answer.
“WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?”
I had found my beloved on the floor, not moving.
After a brief and unsuccessful attempt to rouse her, I had rushed back to the living room, where I was now shaking Sparky, demanding an explanation.
Sparky, to his credit, was trying to answer, but, thanks to me, all he was able to get out were intermittent squeals and sobs. Which brings me to another drawback to having a small child who looks like an old man: when he cries, it scares the shit out of you. And once you have the shit scared out of you, it’s possible to lose focus on what you’re doing and experience a kind of shock where you keep performing the same action over and over.
For example, when I first found out my mother’s headaches might be something that could soon kill her, I was in the kitchen cutting up some cheese for a sandwich. As she was laying out her schedule of endless doctor appointments and tests, I became unaware of what I was doing, and just hacked and hacked at the block until it was nothing but a pile of haphazard chunks, like I had been to the planet Cheddar and had returned with some of its rocks for analysis.
The Antichrist of Kokomo County Page 8