Kill the Ámpaya!

by Dick Cluster

  “I don’t want to play siort,” the boy said quickly and with apparent confidence. “I want to play center like Javier Méndez.”

  “Then you’ve got to practice flais. Can you make one-hand catches like Javier?”

  The boy laughed and let the ball bounce a few times.

  “I sure can. Look, I take off and then camp under the ball, waiting for it, right there, no problem, and when it comes down first I grab it and then I go like this with the glove, like I was trying to catch a bug, but with the ball right in there”—and he swung the glove down with a matador’s grace.

  “Not bad!” he said, smiling. “Who taught you that?”

  The boy sighed in the face of the inevitable question.

  “My cousin Gabriel. He plays in the youth league. He’s going to get me a helmet so I can play for real.”

  “You know, I’d like to see you catch some flais, see whether you’re as good with them as with the grounders.”

  The boy looked both ways, up and down the street, and resumed bouncing the ball up and down.

  “Nobody else is showing up, and you need two for flais.”

  “You’ve got a problem there, I agree. I don’t like to throw flais to myself, either.”

  “You play?” the boy asked, surprised, not bouncing the ball anymore. He studied the man but decided he didn’t look like a ballplayer, not in those clothes, not with that mustache and the pale, soft skin that meant a lot of hours in the office.

  He smiled at the boy’s justifiable doubts.

  “Kid,” he said, “I was quite a player when I was eight or ten like you. And believe it or not, I had a dog just like this one. Well, not quite the same, because he wasn’t black and white, but black and brown, and hardly any tail, and his name was Curripio, Curripio Rodríguez, but he was like this one because he came along with me when I played ball.”

  The boy smiled. He liked the part about the dog.

  “And where’s Curripio now?” he asked, coming closer to where the man was still patting the belly of Nerón Fernández.

  “He died of old age. About ten years ago. But I took good care of him, I gave him baths. You don’t give Nerón baths, do you? Look at my hand.”

  He showed him how his fingertips were turning a greasy black. The boy acted like he saw someone turning the corner.

  “He doesn’t like baths,” he said categorically. “Neither do I.”

  “Well, that’s how things go. I don’t think Curripio liked it much himself.”

  “So why did you do it?”

  He smiled, thinking that he ought to come up with a good answer. But only two occurred to him: because he felt like giving the dog baths, or because dogs needed to be washed.

  “Well, that’s a long story,” he began, to gain time. “The thing is, Curripio was in love, and I told him if he wanted girlfriends he had to be clean, so that’s why he let me give him baths. This guy doesn’t have a girlfriend?” He touched the animal’s belly again.

  “He does,” the boy said with a smile, maybe smiling over the word he was about to say next. “Margarita has a puder that he’s the boyfriend of. I watched him do it. Look, you can see how long and red his thing is.”

  “Some guy, Fernández,” he replied, thinking that everyone was probably happy with this arrangement except Margarita, because the owners of poodles were not much inclined toward mutts like Nerón Fernández, especially dirty ones.

  Then he left the dog alone and stood up. His feet and his hips ached from the length of time he’d been crouching down.

  “Didn’t you go to school today?”

  The boy started bouncing the ball again, probably bored with the new direction of the conversation.

  “This morning, yeah. No classes this afternoon because they’re spraying the school because almost everybody has lice. Not me, though.”

  “Lucky for you. What grade are you in?”

  “Third, and headed for fourth.” He seemed confident about the promotion.

  “What do you plan to study?”

  “I want to be a baseball player and a engineer who designs color TVs,” he said with his accustomed confidence. “As a ballplayer I’ll get to travel abroad, and as a engineer I’ll make a lot of money.”

  At first, he wanted to correct the boy’s grammar, to tell him it was “an” engineer. Then he wanted to say that at that age he had harbored similar dreams, but the way the boy ended the comment was too ingenuous for correction or comment.

  “So, why aren’t you at work, up there?”

  The counterattack surprised him.

  “I don’t know, I came out for some fresh air and to talk with you.”

  “My grandma says I shouldn’t talk with strangers. And you’re pretty strange.”

  “What seems strange about me?”

  The boy stuck a finger in his nose and said, “I don’t know. If I was as old as you I’d be out looking for a woman.”

  He smiled. “Hey, who taught you that?”

  “Nobody,” the boy answered, looking at the end of his finger to see what it had found. “I saw you up there in the window a while ago, and you looked bored. Were you?”

  “I think so, yes. Look, if I play some ball with you maybe I won’t be so bored. Want to practice some flais? I’ll throw them pretty high, and we’ll see if you can catch like Javier Méndez.”

  The boy put the ball in the glove and backed away as he saw him taking off his dress shirt. He gave him another look of some suspicion, because it didn’t make sense, in his experience, that a strange, bored, man in a guayabera should decide to play catch in the street. Meanwhile, the man hung his dress shirt on the trunk of the laurel tree and tried to salvage the situation.

  “When I was in the youth leagues I played center for my team, and they taught me to catch the kind of flais that wanted to take somebody’s head off. Did your cousin teach you to do that?”

  “Gabriel’s a pitcher,” the boy said, wielding his strictest logic.

  “Listen,” he said. “May I wear your cap? You’re not going to wear it, right?”

  The boy looked at him. All the suspicion aroused by that question swam in his eyes. He tried to see himself from outside, wondering whether he would lend his cap to a stranger. Probably not, probably he would have said no, if he’d dared, but then he would have ended up saying yes, as he’d ended up saying yes so many other times in his life.

  “Why do you want it?”

  He dropped his eyes to the cap that he was already holding in his hands. It was made of gray denim with a red visor. It had absorbed the dirt and sweat of many a baseball game. He had once had an almost identical cap, and when playing ball was the most important thing in his life, he had hardly ever taken it off. Really, he wouldn’t have wanted to lend his hat to anyone, and this boy shouldn’t either, he thought.

  “Never mind, you wear it,” and he tossed the cap to the boy, who caught it in the air, gave it a moment’s glance, but didn’t put it on.

  “No, listen, I don’t care.” The boy stepped toward him. “Wear it if you want.” And he proffered it. The man smiled, but decided not to take up the offer.

  “By the way, you haven’t told me your name.”

  “You didn’t ask. Élmer,” the boy said, and bounced the ball twice on the ground.

  “That’s a good name. Isn’t it? Look, Élmer, if you want, I could hold the cap for you while you play against the wall. I’ll stay here with Nerón. You play.”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “No, it’s okay. It’s just that it’s pretty hot out.” He sat on the grass, next to the dog. The boy looked at him as if he’d done something wrong, which he hadn’t. With a nod, he invited the boy to sit down next to him. Élmer smiled a minute and then obeyed. Nerón, without fully getting up, wriggled over to lie next to his owner.

  “You know something, Élmer? I mean, you don’t know it, but you should. I wanted to be a ballplayer and an engineer too. But I’m not either one. When I finished high school
, I didn’t get into the engineering major I applied for, and meanwhile I’d given up baseball to get better grades so I could study engineering. I bet you don’t understand a damn thing I’m saying, and neither do I, I swear. Now I’m an economist, I’m not famous, and I live in a house that will fall down on me any minute. And I haven’t been able to go to Australia, which was what I wanted most in the world after baseball and engineering. Well, they can stick Australia up their asses,” he said, and got up. He took the guayabera off the tree and looked at the boy, who hadn’t stopped looking at him. In Élmer’s eyes he saw fear and confusion. He must be a very, very strange man.

  “Don’t worry, I’m more afraid than you are,” he said while he buttoned up the shirt. “If I weren’t afraid, I’d send everything to hell and I’d go I-don’t-know-where to do I-don’t-know-what. But that’s the thing: I am afraid, and I don’t know where to go or why. But keep practicing. Maybe you’ll be a ballplayer and an engineer, both.”

  Élmer got up too and came over to him.

  “Listen,” he said. “Why did you get so mad? Just because of the cap?”

  “No, forget it,” he said and took the cap which the boy was still holding in his hands. “You don’t have any reason to lend me the cap. But I want to ask you something. Have you read a book by Jules Verne called The Mysterious Continent?”

  The boy smiled and shook his head.

  “It’s an amazing book. It’s about Australia, and when you read it you really want to go there. So listen to me. If you run into the book somewhere, don’t read it, even if your life depends on it. Okay?”

  Élmer lowered his eyes and then said, “You really are strange.”

  “Okay, I’m going. Take your cap. It was a pleasure to talk with you, Élmer.”

  He walked slowly toward the corner while wiping the sweat from his brow. As he entered the building the receptionist made a face at him and turned up the volume on her radio. He returned his time card to the metal slot next to the clock. He climbed the stairs and thought he had never felt so defeated. He opened his office door, went in, and sat behind his desk. Under the glass top of the desk he could see the photograph in which he was smiling in between his wife and his son, Élmer. He also looked at the certificate citing the 120 hours of voluntary work performed by Élmer Santana, but he covered the photo up with the papers, forms, and brochures he took out of his drawer. Then he was sorry to have lied to the other Élmer. He should have told him that he’d studied economics because there was a directive from above that laid out the country’s need for people to study that field, and he hadn’t had the courage to say no, good student that he was; it was his duty as a young communist. He should have told him that he gave up baseball because he was a leader in high school, because he attended all the activities, all the meetings, all the study groups, so he didn’t win a spot among the twenty-five ballplayers from his province to the National Youth League, and he lied to himself that, after all, baseball wasn’t so important. But the fact was, as his father always told him, he had always been conscientious, and he could be proud of that. . . . Proud of what?

  He left the papers on his desk and stood up. Those papers were the result of his conscientiousness. The air conditioning had dried his sweat. From Jiménez’s bottom drawer he grabbed one of the cigarettes his subordinate hid there so as to avoid the requests of coworkers who wanted to bum one. He lit the cigarette and stepped over to the window. Élmer and Nerón Fernández were gone, leaving the street empty in the afternoon heat. The marks made by the ball were still visible on the wall, and by the laurel tree he saw a piece of gray and red cloth and wondered why the boy had left his cap behind. He never would have done such a thing. Without a cap he couldn’t feel like a baseball player. He thought he ought to go down and get it, wait for Élmer to come back, give him the cap, and then tell him the truth. He ground the cigarette out against the floor and went down the steps again, at full speed. He had to recover the cap. Maybe this young Élmer would get a chance to go to Australia someday.

  WINNERS AND LOSERS

  Nan Chevalier

  (Dominican Republic)

  Nan Chevalier was born in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, in 1965. His published works are Las formas que retornan (poems, 1998), Ave de mal agüero (poems, 2003), La segunda señal (stories, 2003), Ciudad de mis ruinas (novel, 2007), Antihéroes onettianos: Habitantes de proyectos fallidos (literary criticism, 2012), El muñeco de trapos (stories, 2012), El hombre que parecía esconderse (novel, 2014), La recámara aislante del tiempo (stories, 2014), El domador de fieras (flash fiction stories, 2014), and Viaje sin retorno desde un puerto fantasma (novel, 2015).

  But all that’s long gone now, all gone in the whirlwind, swept up like litter from the street, and what I’ve got left is the fat, just the fat because my muscles went slack and soft and I’m saddled with this useless reservoir that’s slowly wearing me down.

  —SERGIO RAMÍREZ, “APPARITION IN THE BRICK FACTORY”

  I was trying to find the men’s room in a bar where I’d never been before when, suddenly, a lone man dressed in black caught my eye. This happened on a Monday when I’d gotten my monthly paycheck and had to rush out to watch the game and place my customary bets.

  I’ve loved baseball since I was a kid, though I never really had an aptitude for the game. Now I think I know why: I tend to analyze what’s going on around me too much, while sports (with the exception of chess) depend more on reflexes than reasoning.

  I should make clear that there was a time when I didn’t frequent betting parlors because I thought this violated the principles of sportsmanship, but poverty gradually lay siege to me and turned me from a loyal follower of events of muscle and mind to an inveterate bettor in places of diversion.

  This time, after paying off my month’s debts, I had a small cash surplus. My plan for the evening was to stay home, watch my usual police drama, and then make my bets over the phone while following the one big league game on TV. But just as Inspector Morse was catching the evening’s murderer, the electricity went off, which sent me fleeing from the suddenly dark and stifling apartment.

  It was already 8:02. The game would start in five minutes or less. Too late to get to my usual parlor, quite far from my neighborhood, selected so that no one would know the state of my finances. Instead, I drove just about a mile and parked in front of a little joint whose sign announced it as The Sporting Life. Underneath, a message in cursive letters urged, “Try your luck.” The dark, tinted windows suggested rainy winter nights, while the pulsing sound of merengue and the tattered exterior told me the place would be a dump. “Typical barrio betting bar, full of criminals and delinquents,” my deductive powers said. But I went in anyway and soon discovered my error, because I felt a homey atmosphere among the customers. I guessed that they constituted a sort of family that was more intimate than the crowd at my usual haunt in a much better heeled part of town. This was a family that assembled every night to watch baseball and other sports for the purpose of trying their luck while talking of many things under the magical effect of alcohol.

  The room was larger than I had thought. Eyes on the TV screens, bottles in hand, fans hurried to place their bets. A minority of the customers were seated around some tables.

  Impelled by the detective temperament that has always limited my full enjoyment of the best moments, I studied the furnishings and the staff: six flat screens, a slot machine with burned-out lights, a number of mirrors that multiplied us all into clones, a brunette waitress and a blonde one, and the barman, who also ran the cash register. Inspired by the waitresses’ short-shorts (a rare sight where I live), I ordered myself a vodka.

  That night’s game was a makeup for one suspended fifteen days earlier on account of rain, the St. Louis Cardinals versus the Atlanta Braves. Since St. Louis was nine games up in the standings of the National League’s Central Division, Albert Pujols had the night off. I didn’t waste any time. I placed my bets and got ready to watch the game.

 
; That was when, while searching for the bathroom, I saw a lone man dressed all in black. He was off by himself in a corner of the room. As if he suffered from some nervous tic, every twenty or thirty seconds he leaned over and, with his right hand extended, lifted the cuff of his left pants leg and stroked a metal object that seemed to be tied under his knee. I understood, with some fear, why the two waitresses were treating him with the respect and distance usually accorded to the dangerous or the terminally ill. The dim light in that part of the room (the man had apparently ordered the bulb above him turned off) made it hard to identify the object he was fingering, but you didn’t have to be Kojak to deduce that this character had a weapon with which to protect himself from the probable criminals who visited this place. Or to commit crimes himself—who knew?—because these neighborhoods are unpredictable that way.

  Through the multiple reflections of the mirrors I could see that alongside my table an old man was talking with a young one in a checkered shirt. They had a bottle of whiskey and were signaling the girls to turn down the volume on a thumping hiphop-mambo by Omega.

  The customers applauded or cursed every play of the game. So far, both teams were fielding impeccably, and Tony La Russa was displaying his usual tactical skill.

  I pretended not to be concerned about the man in black in the far corner. I subtly tilted my chair so as to keep his metallic object in view and, with one eye here and the other there, I also kept watch on the two nearby men whom the mirrors displayed deep in conversation.

  At the feet of the old man, resting on a piece of cardboard, lay a small, battered suitcase or briefcase that he was careful to keep always in sight. Why did he need a briefcase in a place like that? Just as Inspector Morse would do, I made an association between the likely contents of the case and the suspicious attitude of the lone man in black with a nervous tic. Surely what was inside the case was money, and what was hidden under the cuff was a firearm or a knife. An assailant was among us, waiting for the moment to carry out his crime. The old man seated near me was going to be attacked by the enigmatic character in the far corner, who now, with some effort, stood up with his back to the room, facing the slot machine. But what if I were going to be the object of his attack, robbed of the few pesos I had left? I considered leaving, but I wanted to see how the game and my bets turned out.