“That was a long time ago, Molly. Besides, he’s outside and I’m here. I won’t let anything happen to you. Go on. Take it. Please. It’s okay. Just one song.”
Molly cradled the instrument with maternal affection, as though she had been reunited with one born from her own being. The carved wood under her fingertips was electrifying and summoned a world long past, one replete with laughter, harmony, and artful deliberations. She smiled a brilliant smile, a smile so radiant, so lustrous, that it illuminated the dreary shadows that hung in every corner of the room—a smile so powerful, so dazzling, that it only ceased to shine when she brought the magic shoot to her lips.
With eyes closed and heart aflutter, she began to play. It was painful at first, as she struggled with the compulsion to yield to the calamity that had stripped her of something she loved so dearly. But Arthur prodded gently, and before long, there was music. Beautiful music.
The notes were soft and weightless. Her spirit took flight and her radiance seemed to wash across the homely little house, bathing the dust and dirt and dark-paneled walls in brilliant fire-lit hues.
Arthur began to sing softly. “ ‘Here I slide again; about to take that ride again; starry eyed again—taking a chance on love.’”
She opened her eyes, and pulled the instrument from her lips. She stood silent, looking at him with childish amazement. “You know Benny Goodman?”
“Are you kidding? I love him.”
The two shared a laugh and continued to play and sing. He marveled at the transformation as Molly’s breath resurrected the exanimate instrument. It was magical—so magical that he even forgot, for the moment, those things that weighed heavily on his mind. Com pelled by the unremitting melodiousness, he stood with eyes closed in joyful silence, swooning in the exactitude of the measured notes. It was all so beautiful.
But, the respite from the outside world was shattered when Clarence, roused by the unfamiliar sounds from his house, came roaring inside.
“What in tarnation are ya doing, woman?” he bellowed. “I thought I was clear about messing with such foolishness. And with a guest in the house?”
Molly withered, shoved back into grim wordlessness. Her head fell, and Arthur could see the light in her eyes surrender to the farmer’s dominion.
“That’s okay, Mr. Tussler,” Arthur interjected. “It’s no big deal. I don’t mind.”
“Well, I sure do!” Clarence roared back. “Listen, Molly, put that stupid thing away and go fetch Mickey and have him meet me by the shed out back in a short while. I got a job for him but I want to talk with Mr. Murphy a spell.”
The two men walked uneasily toward the back of the property. Arthur lamented quietly having to spend even a second with Clarence. A peripheral glance showed the ornery simpleton picking his teeth with a screwdriver he had pulled from the front pouch of his soiled overalls.
Up ahead, just past two overgrown cornfields split by a narrow dirt path, was a fishing hole. The water, still and murky, was steaming in the morning sun. Arthur cringed from the smell.
“Look, maybe we should be getting back to the house,” he suggested. “It’s a might hot out here.”
“Poppycock,” Clarence snorted. “It’s purty as a picture out here.” He scratched his backside, belched loudly, and came to rest with a thunderous sigh on a rotting log. “Best damn fishin’ spot in the county,” he boasted, casting his line into the water. “Have a seat.”
The worm at the end of the line landed gently on the water’s surface, not too far from an old tire that was partially immersed. A perfect circle of ripples unfurled from the spot where the lure landed, forming a halo that framed the favored spot momentarily until both worm and frame vanished beneath the surface.
“You fish, Mr. Murphy?” Clarence pulled ever so slightly on the line.
“No, Mr. Tussler. Can’t say that I do.”
“Well now. That’s a darn shame. Gotta respect a man who fishes. Fishin’ is a real test of smarts.”
Arthur’s eyes rolled, then watched with mild interest as Clarence pulled in his line. “That may be the case, Mr. Tussler, but I’d like to think that despite my lack of fishing experience, I’m still a pretty shrewd fella.”
Clarence cast the line again, this time with greater force. “You seem to have taken a real liking to my family, Mr. Murphy,” he said, squaring his shoulders to the water. “That’s a mighty curious nicety.”
“You’re lucky, Mr. Tussler. You have very special people in your life. It’s easy to like ’em.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t live with ’em, now do ya?” Clarence turned to face Arthur.
Arthur was more than willing to hold Clarence’s gaze and saw no real indication that he was looking to intimidate him.
“Look, exactly what is it that you want to talk to me about, Mr. Tussler? I really need to be heading back.”
Bright, orange reflections of light spattered the water between long, spiking shadows. A faint redolence of manure and wet grass floated on a tired breeze, burning the inside of Arthur’s nose.
“I was thinking, seeing you got my boy down there with you— and I miss him so—that maybe you could see to it that the little woman and I can git a little more money—you know, just to make up fer all the pain and suffering.”
The smell of wet earth drying rose between them.
“Look, Mr. Tussler, Mickey is being looked after first-rate. There’s nothing to worry about. I’ve gone out of my way to see he’s okay—and will continue to do so. But you have to understand this is minor league baseball we’re talking about. And not everyone’s sold on him the way I am. I’m in no position at this point to give you any more money.”
“That’s crap! I know how you city boys work. I ain’t just some big, stupid country bumpkin. I know about things too, like penicillin and that there Marshall Plan they’s always talking about on the radio. So don’t treat me like some yokel from the sticks. You can’t come in here and throw around yer fancy words and ideas about music and whatnot and the way you reckon people should be living out here and expect all of us to jest sit up and holler.” The farmer was bent over his boots, tugging on an errant piece of fishing line tangled in his laces. “It just don’t work that way.”
“Well, if that’s the way you feel, I’m afraid I’ll have to leave Mickey here—with you—and that the contract you signed will become void—uh, no good anymore. Of course, this means you’ll have to give back the money you already received.” With his announcement, Arthur stood up, stretched his arms, and made as if to leave.
“Now just hold yer horses there,” Clarence cried. “Hold on. Nobody said nothing about leaving the boy here. He wants to play baseball. I’m a good father. I understand now. We both want what’s best fer the boy, right? Well, then I’ll make the sacrifice. Fer the boy.”
“Now, that’s more like it. Oh, and if you’d like, I can arrange for you and your wife to come down and see Mickey play. If it would help with all the suffering, I mean.”
“Us? Come down there? To watch a retard play baseball? Are you off yer rocker?”
“Just something to consider. And if you don’t want to come, maybe you could send your wife. I know she’d enjoy it.”
Arthur walked with swift purpose back to the house, eager to rid himself of any more interminable exchanges with Clarence. His course was guided by the sound of rotten apples splattering against wood.
“Hey there, Mick. Ready to head back?”
“I reckon so, Mr. Murphy. Sure. Head back.” Mickey looked down at the ground. “I just have to finish this last row.”
Arthur watched, just as he had only weeks before, as Mickey fired, with alarming precision, each of the remaining apples into the turned barrel some one hundred feet away.
Thud. Thud. Thud, thud, thud.
Arthur’s eyes, wide with wonder, battled against the improbability of such a spectacle. One hundred feet? And so accurate? Shit, the rubber was only sixty and change. It made him think. His thoughts
bounced off each other like honeybees at work in a field of spotted jewelweed. In time, they ascended to the most fertile patch, and they buzzed feverishly until one broke free from the others. It flashed across Arthur, at that instant, that something could be done to help the boy. That all the disorder and Mickey’s uneasiness on the field could be righted. Murph’s face grew brilliant with pleasure. With eyebrows raised, and a boyish smile that could not be contained, he tucked away the revelation, said his good-byes, and walked to his car.
The ride back to Diamond Drive was cloying. Arthur was haunted by the memorable scent of anxiety, by all the things he should have said to the ignorant farmer. This was always his problem—the web of regret, and how to extricate himself from its sticky spirals before more damage was done. He had gotten better with time. Managed to muster the strength and resiliency most times to convey his feelings about things that rubbed him wrong. Yet he still found himself ill equipped to drop the hammer—to deliver the whole truth with a swift, punishing wallop.
The trip home was long. Mickey talked about everything from Oscar’s feet to road signs to how many breaths he could take in a minute. Murph just locked his hands on the wheel and listened as Mickey continued to pepper him with all sorts of minutia.
“Mickey thinks tomato soup is my favorite,” the boy said. “What about you Murph?”
“I don’t know Mick. I’m not much of a soup guy.”
“I just don’t like it when there is anything floating on the top,” Mickey continued. “Like crackers, or a piece of the tomato.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you think a tomato is rounder than an orange, Murph?”
“I don’t know, Mick. I never really thought about it.” He sighed helplessly. “And I have to tell you. It’s been a long day already. I’m sorry Mick. But I really do not want to talk about tomatoes and oranges.”
“Okay, Murph. But I think it is. Round.” The boy paused, his eyes scanning the trees that rolled away just outside his window.
“Potatoes aren’t round,” Mickey continued in much softer tones. “They look sort of like—”
“Mickey, please! Enough!”
They rode on for several minutes in silence, the only audible sound a faint hum coming from deep within Mickey’s throat that only ceased when he swallowed a piece of the licorice laces he had stuffed in one of his pockets.
“How much of that stuff do you have in there?” Murph asked.
Mickey frowned.
“I got’s no more,” he replied. “And Mickey is still hungry.”
They stopped at a diner just up the road. Then they pulled the car onto the shoulder not long after so that Mickey could pee. Shortly thereafter, he was hungry again. They stopped repeatedly, each time to tend to either Mickey’s insatiable hunger or to make use of the dense undergrowth along the road’s shoulder in order to relieve themselves. Arthur was beginning to flip. This was the fourth stop in the last hour. He could feel the muscles in his neck tightening and his stomach beginning to churn violently, as if his whole body were trying to turn itself inside out. He thought he just might lose it right there. Start screaming at the kid about all the work he had ahead of him and how many hours they had lost farting around. But he burst into a nervous laugh instead as he watched Mickey surveying the cluster of gooseberry bushes for the perfect location to unzip his trousers. “Great thing about being a guy, eh Mick?” he laughed. “Don’t really matter where you are. The possibilities are endless. Yup. When you’re a guy, the whole world’s your toilet.” Mickey stopped what he was doing, stared at Murph blankly, and placed a handful of berries in his pocket with great care before proceeding to take care of his business.
Murph just rolled his eyes. He was definitely shot. They had gotten lost twice, spent way too many hours at roadside diners and had nearly suffered an unfortunate encounter with poison ivy on the previous two bathroom jaunts.
“Okay Mick,” he warned. “That’s it now. I wanted to be home hours ago. No more stopping. It’ll be dark soon. But if we drive straight through, we’ll be home in time for bed.”
He drove with nervous urgency, Mickey seated quietly by his side, as if the falling of night might come down around on all sides, locking him in. Foolishly, he tried to outrun it, as if his efforts could stem the tide of nature’s unyielding choreography. He fixed his gaze on the landscape ahead, wedded to the irrational quest, with all sorts of calculations lighting in his head. He knew, however, when the winding asphalt before him began to melt into the horizon’s purplish yawn, that he was losing. His head drooped. And when the dark blanket had finally been lain across the countryside, and all he could see was the phantom outlines of cornstalks and fruit trees mocking his restlessness, he felt this profound sense of defeat.
The next night he was home, but the feeling continued. At the onset of evening, Arthur sat alone in his room, wrestling with the collection of discordant voices in his head. The restive dance of thought drove him from his chair to his bed, back to the chair, then finally to the window, where he stood momentarily, arms folded, before leaning out the tiny casement to close the shutters on a magnificent picture where white and salmon pear blossoms shimmered in the glowing twilight. The splendor of the scene struck him oddly and threw a spotlight on his misery. He sweated nervously and bemoaned with unexpected ferocity the misfortune that had dotted the last thirty-six hours. Dennison was an asshole—a first-class scumbag whose manipulation and cold, calculating manner scraped the delicate fabric of Arthur’s sound but sensitive core. All he wanted to do was give this kid a shot. And now his job was on the line. It hardly seemed fair.
Then there was Clarence Tussler, the most loathsome, repugnant excuse for a human being he had ever met. He recalled with an alarming vividness the harsh words expelled from the farmer’s lips and the foul breath on which they floated. Mickey didn’t stand a chance with him. And poor Molly. How could such a gentle creature survive under that viscous cloud of gloom? He spent the better part of the evening with Mickey, mostly chatting and getting things ready for the next day.
“Your dad’s quite a guy, Mickey,” Arthur said. “I had a chance to really talk to him.”
“Uh-huh,” Mickey answered, spilling the colored candy contents from a cardboard tube.
“It makes me wonder how you get along. You know, with each other?”
“I reckon I do okay.” The boy sat engrossed in the curious ritual, separating the candies into rows by color. “Mickey does okay. But Oscar doesn’t like all the noise.”
“Is that right?”
“Sure. Pa’s always screaming and all. It really bothers Oscar. Mickey can tell.”
Murph watched with fascination as Mickey began placing the colored chocolates in his mouth.
“Those are real good, eh?” Murph asked, laughing. “Guy at the general store just got ’em in. Calls ’em M&M’s.”
Mickey never looked up. He just kept sliding the M&M’s, one by one, row by row, across the table and into his mouth.
“What about your mom?”
“Mama’s a nice woman.”
“No, I mean, does your dad yell at your mom?”
A dead silence greeted Arthur’s words. Then Mickey’s gaze fixed on the fireflies that had gathered outside by the window. All of a sudden, Arthur could no longer see the value in going further with his inquisition, or in trying to figure out why things fell against each other the way they did. He knew that—especially regarding Molly. She was so lovely yet so fragile, so sad—a hummingbird feather beating nervously against a stiff, frigid squall. He tried to quantify her energy, the resiliency she needed to continue the struggle. At first he marveled at the chimerical nature of such an endeavor. Perhaps he could learn something from this timid, careworn creature. But ultimately, it just made him sad. Poor Molly. She was his last thought when his head hit the pillow.
He dozed, but it was a fitful sleep, punctuated by his whirling and turning in the tumult of fragmented images and restless thought. He hated nig
hts like these, when all around him hung these menacing abstractions, waving to him wildly. He could feel his body, weak and skittish, turning away from the formlessness, but was always powerless to wake himself during these moments.
Mercifully, dawn ultimately swallowed the moon and stars and a yellow sun ushered in the smells and sounds of a new day. Everything seemed better to Arthur. The sky was a deep, royal blue, and the tender shoots of grass emerging timidly from the barren lawn he’d seeded last fall were a vibrant green. He heard the sounds of springtime in the air, as if for the first time—screen doors banging behind eager children, bicycle tires rolling on gravelly thoroughfares, and from high in the thickest boughs of the sycamores, twittering from the indigo buntings, a melodious serenade announcing their arrival. It all smelled better too. Floating tenderly on the warming puffs of air was the bouquet of lilac, wisteria, and honeysuckle, tickling his nose with an intoxicating redolence. He closed his eyes and filled his lungs. What a day.
He drove to the ballpark with the windows open, although this made conversation with Mickey a near impossibility. He rolled his window halfway up, then back down again, then up almost all the way, trying to find just the right formula that would allow him to enjoy the warm, fragrant air and still be able to hear his soft-spoken passenger.
Mickey was hunched close to the windshield, as if his propinquity to the front of the car would somehow expedite the voyage. He seemed uncomfortable, although he pointed now and again excitedly and made a glib comment or two when they passed some stray dogs and wayward children wandering alongside the road. The observations almost ignited some conversation, but Mickey remained, for the most part, distant and meditative. He was feeling a little uncomfortable in his own skin. Baseball was overwhelming. It had trapped him. Forced him to retreat into a labyrinth, and he was too young, too inexperienced, too awestruck by all the eye-opening happenings, on and off the field, to find his way out.
“What’s the matter with you this morning, Mick?” Arthur probed. “Cat got your tongue?”
The Legend of Mickey Tussler Page 8