BAKER’S WOODS
Nine miles off the road, just beyond a low ridge of hemlocks, and across thickets littered with tumbled conifers, stood a small, dilapidated cabin, an abandoned shanty with weathered wood shingles and a rusty tin roof. With its partially boarded windows and a front door that was locked crudely from the outside by an iron spike angled just below the knob, it resembled more of a prison than a country dwelling.
It was Pee Wee’s getaway—in the heart of the tangled mess all the locals called Baker’s Woods—the place he went to fish during the off-season and when the busy schedule permitted. It was the first place he thought of when Murph suggested to him that he organize some sort of “bonding activity” to help everyone relax while at the same time get to know Mickey a little better.
“Just throw him together with a few of the fellas,” Murph suggested. “Shoot the shit for a while. We need this now. It’s our only shot. Once they get to know him like we do, they’ll understand. They’ll feel better, and he will too.”
Through those partially boarded windows slanted rays of light fell across a dusty floor and over a group of wet, hungry guys sitting on wooden crates as they bantered about the day’s events. The place was a shambles. The windows were cracked and clouded, the broken sills filmed with a greenish soot. Flaps of splintered wood and viscous cobwebs hung loosely from the sagging ceiling. Walls that had been erected with little attention to the basic laws of geometry and physics now signaled a slow, steady protest.
“This place is a shithole, McGinty,” Danvers complained. “This is the best you could do for us?”
Pee Wee shrugged. “It ain’t the Taj Mahal, pretty boy, but the fishing sure is sweet.”
“Yeah, not bad for only a few hours of casting,” Finster commented, looking at the score of fish dangling from a string in Pee Wee’s hand. “Too bad you can’t hit as good.”
Danvers finally laughed. “We all did pretty good. Enough to have us a good old-fashioned cookout.”
The three men surveyed the room with jocularity until their eyes fell on Mickey, who had failed to even get a nibble. He was just sitting there, sullen. He appeared so distant, so far away, that Pee Wee was tempted to view him through the binoculars he wore around his neck. Pee Wee shuffled his feet nervously as he watched the spirited mood he had tried to engender begin to wane.
“Jesus, Mickey,” he said, laughing, trying desperately to infuse some levity into the room. “How is it that you grew up on a farm, with a father who’s a fisherman, and you do not know a blessed thing about fishing?”
Finster and Danvers sat quietly with their faces wrinkled, frozen in bemused amazement. They had grown to tolerate their most unusual teammate, but still found him odd and for the most part unapproachable.
“I reckon Mickey fished no more than a couple of times,” the boy replied. “Couple, two or three.”
“How is that possible?” Pee Wee persisted. “You told me your pa was always fishing in back of your place.”
Mickey just stared at all of them blankly. “I kept getting my hook caught on the bushes, sometimes in the trees. I tried, but Mickey just couldn’t help it.” He paused reflectively. A single tear formed in the corner of one of his eyes. “Last time was real bad. Real bad. Pa broke my fishing pole across my back and threw it into the water. Told me that a fishing hole ain’t no place for a numskull.”
Danvers, busy opening a can of chew, looked up at the boy. “So that’s it? He says you can’t fish no more, and that’s it?”
Mickey frowned and sat rocking gently on his crate, staring at the little silver can in Danvers’s hand. “It ain’t no bother. Fish don’t deserve to be treated that way anyhow.”
“Why do you listen to something like that?” Danvers said. “Christ, if my daddy pulled that horseshit with me, I’d bust him one in the mouth.”
Mickey blushed. His thoughts were suspended somewhere between Clarence and the little silver can in Danvers’s hand.
“You want to try some?” Danvers asked, mindful of the boy’s gaze. He pinched off a piece of tobacco and handed it to Mickey. The boy looked at it quizzically before sliding it into his mouth.
“It ain’t that simple,” Pee Wee interjected. “It’s not like any other relationship you may know. Mickey’s daddy ain’t such a nice fella.”
“That don’t make no difference,” Finster said. “You gotta look after yourself. Be a man. Maybe that’s what we should be teaching our boy here.”
Pee Wee looked at Mickey, who was packing the chew against his cheek awkwardly with his tongue.
“Well, Finny’s got a point,” Danvers agreed. “That certainly would have helped that night at the Bucket. If our boy here knew how to fight, then maybe we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in right now.”
“I don’t think that would have mattered none,” Pee Wee shot back. “You know that Woody. Ease up, will ya.”
“I ain’t saying nothing that ain’t true,” Danvers said with a glint of protest in his eye. “I just mean to say that a man—no matter what type of man he is—has gotta know how to defend himself.”
“Against three guys?” Pee Wee lashed out. “Three of them? You’re telling me you could handle three guys?”
Both Danvers and Finster rolled their eyes and slowly, quietly looked away.
“Tell ’em what happened that night, Mick,” Pee Wee insisted. “Go on. Tell ’em. I want you to tell them everything you’ve told me.”
For a while, Mickey said nothing—just sat languidly, arms folded against his chest. The skin across his face tightened, and his eyes, lit only by a few errant rods of sunlight that had infiltrated the dilapidated structure, darkened even further.
Twice he tried to speak but failed. The air seemed to thicken. He sat uncomfortably, rocking and blinking his eyes, his right cheek now distended. Then he exhaled mightily and pushed out a few words.
“It were bad,” he said timorously, struggling to keep the wad of chew in place.
They all watched as Mickey explained how it all had seemed so wonderful. A beautiful girl, caressing his back, kissing his face with soft, full lips, whispering wonderful things in his ear.
“You are just the cutest ballplayer I have ever seen, Mickey,” she’d said. “Just adorable. Do you want to see how cute I am? Hmm? Or maybe you’d rather just feel for yourself.”
It all happened so fast. She had told him that she wanted to take a walk with him, in the cool night air. They strolled for a while, hand in hand, eyes fastened to the full, glowing moon and the glinting constellations all around.
“Ever just sit, Mickey, and look up at the stars?”
He shook his head, too busy with the joy of her presence to answer.
“My mama, she and I would sit outside, on an old blanket sometimes, and just stare at the stars for hours,” she said brokenly. “I used to be able to spot ’em all. Andromeda, Orion, the Big Dipper. I knew them all.”
“Why?”
“Why? What do you mean why, silly? Because they’re there.”
“We never spent no time watching stars,” he said absently. “I don’t suppose my pa would like it very much.”
Her body gave a nervous jerk. Through the chilly summer air, she heard a faint, faraway sound that quickly died.
“That’s a shame, Mickey. My mama used to say that God’s promises were like the stars—the darker the night, the brighter they shine. I think about that sometimes.”
A mild buzzing was in his ears, something nervous and uncontrolled. He turned his head and swallowed hard. She looked as if she was going to cry. Face-to-face with an unannounced emotion, she had no words of any kind. She breathed in the night air and shook her head as if to rattle the troubled thoughts from her mind. Then she grabbed his arm and pulled him behind a service station.
“Enough with the stars. I think we would have more fun back here.” Then she grabbed his other arm, slid her hand over his, and brought his fingers to her breast. It was soft, he thought, and he marveled
at how the tiny nipple rose up beneath her shirt to welcome his advance. It was a glorious feeling, exciting and energizing, like electricity flowing under his skin. He wanted to touch her everywhere, with his hands and mouth, to explore the contours of her curvaceous frame with the reckless abandon surging through his body. It felt familiar to him, although he did not know why. He thought of his first hayride, and the first time he jumped into a stream without his clothes. He remembered the rush, the breathless flow of energy and the thumping of his heart.
Now, it was happening again. And this time, that feeling had traveled to other parts of his body as well. He smiled uncontrollably and was just about to take her other breast in his hand when the moon disappeared. One minute he was lost in the rapture of his first romantic interlude, and the next, he was holding his head, struggling to get up off the ground.
“So did you get any?” Finster asked as Mickey struggled through the memory. “You know, before you were clocked?”
“Get any what?” Mickey asked quizzically. Then he swallowed hard, his face exploding into a full-scale grimace.
They all smiled. “You’re supposed to spit the juice out, Mick,” Pee Wee reminded him. Danvers and Finster laughed. They watched like patrons at some vaudeville act as Mickey crumbled to his knees and grunted, enveloped in a wave of dry heaves.
“Holy shit!” Finster howled, slapping his knee with perverse delight. “The boy’s gonna blow!” The laughter rose slowly to the surface like tiny bubbles before building to a raucous crescendo.
“Go get it, big fella!” Danvers roared. “Let it all out, brother! It’s okay! It’s all part of the baptism!”
The whimsical moment lifted the tension, preoccupying their thoughts for a while until they all just sat around effortlessly bantering with Mickey.
“What’d they hit you with anyway?” Danvers asked.
Mickey shrugged and held his stomach gingerly, still feeling the effects of the violent outburst only moments before. “I don’t reckon I know,” he finally said, moving his hand to his head and rubbing it as if the injury had just occurred. “But it sure did hurt.”
They all laughed again. Something pure and simple and likable about the boy could not be denied. Mickey was pleased that they were laughing and joined in before continuing his sordid tale.
His head ached and his nerves were frayed. He sat on his crate with an occasional birdsong and the approaching night wind for accompaniment, sunk in the dark recollection.
“She smelled good.” His lids fluttered wildly. “But Mickey never made sex before. I was scared.”
Danvers looked at Finster and smiled. The two of them shook their heads in glorious astonishment.
“Yeah, the first experience with the fairer sex is an amazing moment,” Pee Wee reminisced. “I still remember mine.”
“Of course you do, McGinty, you little turd pie.” Danvers laughed. “It was only just last week.” He spit out some tobacco juice while the others roared with approval. “But then again, I’m not sure if your mama really counts.”
Mickey was dizzy with happiness over his true involvement in the banter. “Mickey doesn’t know many girls,” he continued. “But I know Laney. She really smelled good.”
“How do you like that?” Finster mused. “That’s awesome. Our little boy’s growing up, guys. Sounds to me like our young friend here just may have had a chubby in his pants.”
Mickey spoke about the stars that night and about the sweet air, and went carefully through the pantomime of the moment, slowly, methodically, as if his audience required meticulous, laborious repetition to grasp what he was trying to impart. “So I get knocked here, right in the head.” He simulated what he believed the blow must have looked like. “Then while I was getting up, another guy kicked me in the gut, and then someone else stomped on my hand. Then the sheriff was driving me to the ballpark. That’s all I really remember.”
“What about that girl, Mick?” Finster asked. “You ever see her again?”
“Nope,” Mickey said, checking the buttons on the front of his shirt. “But I think she really liked me.”
Danvers tapped the little silver can with his finger and stuffed a wad of chew inside his cheek. “Of course she did, big fella,” he said, his eyes noticeably softer. “Of course she did. What’s not to like?”
MILWAUKEE—SEPTEMBER
In the still of the early-morning air, news of Mickey’s imminent return to the Brewers’ lineup spread around town like a wave of ground fog filtering through a sleepy valley, fueled by the improbable headline in the Daily Gazette: “Baby Bazooka Close to Return; Rogers Held for Questioning.” As the sun climbed higher and became a small fire lodged high and bright in between gathering clouds, people everywhere were unfolding their newspapers and gasping at the sudden turn of events that had breathed life into a dying dream.
For Murph and the Brewers, the elation over the startling announcement was energizing but a bit premature. Mickey would not be “game ready” for a little while. However, when the players heard the news being bandied about, many of them spoke of karma, and how those printed words just hours before could, quite possibly, trigger some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy or enlist some sort of divine intervention.
“You know, I think somehow Murph knew, that son of a gun,” Boxcar said to Matheson. “He must have just known somehow. That it wasn’t over. And now I feel it too. It’s bigger than all of us. We’re gonna make it. Somehow, we’re gonna make it.”
Matheson chuckled and scratched his chin. “Well, you know what they say, Raymond. God gives us a little garden in which to walk, but an immensity in which to dream.”
Boxcar smiled, marveling at how the old man had actually become a parody of himself. “Who exactly is they?” he asked, tongue in cheek.
The others heard Boxcar’s prognostication and sensed it too. They felt oddly outside of themselves, as if some higher power were moving them inexorably along, like chess pieces, toward some magical prize. Naturally, the loathing they felt toward Lefty was real and difficult to corral. Word was out that George “Lefty” Rogers had had a hand in the vicious attack on Mickey and that the police were building quite a compelling case against the suspended pitcher. The revelation was devastating, but they managed to set it aside and look to their unfinished business.
It was not as though they felt Mickey would be some sort of panacea. They had all been around too long to believe that, and each understood that the young gun was still not ready to jump back in. The doctor told Murph that it could still be as long as two weeks. But somehow just having him close had them all juiced.
The clubhouse was quite a scene, something right out of a Frank Capra film. Only a few days ago their backs were against the wall, and they were staring into the fires of ignominious defeat. Now, seemingly every opportunity had been given back to them.
In other places, however, the feel-good story generated little more than obligatory acknowledgment. Quinton and McNally found all the hoopla a tad overbearing and uproariously humorous.
“Do you know who that was?” Quinton asked McNally, placing the receiver of the telephone down gently. “Sheriff Rosco. He wanted to thank me for my help with the investigation.” Quinton’s modest grin broke into a full-blown nefarious smile. He looked over his shoulder at the picture of Shoeless Joe, some indefinable feeling of invincibility coming over him. “He also wanted to tell me that all of Rogers’s accusations against me and the team are being dismissed as unfounded,” he continued, rolling his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.
A wave of calm passed between them. It felt like standing on the railroad tracks with the train coming—lights flashing, whistle blowing—and having nowhere to go. And just when the train is close enough so that you can feel its power and smell its smoky breath, the railroad operator engages the switch and sends the locomotive speeding off in a different direction. The ecstasy of relief is intoxicating.
“Do you know what the rest of ’em are saying?” McN
ally said, laughing. “I mean their team? They’re actually talking like they have a chance now. After all this. Can you believe it? It’s sad. Fucking pathetic. Even if the missing link comes back in time for half of the games and plays well, it would still take a miracle for them to even get close to us.”
Quinton’s lips tightened around his cigar. “That’s quite all right. Let them go on believing that. They pose no threat. The minute they lose their next game, they’ll realize that all of this pomp and circumstance was meaningless. Let them talk. But do not engage them. I want to keep them focused on themselves rather than us. And once they’ve worked themselves up into this fairy-tale frenzy, the final defeat will be that much more painful for them—and that much sweeter for us.”
“I’d say it’s pretty damn sweet already,” McNally boasted. “The view from the penthouse is a hell of a lot better than the one we may have had if it weren’t for our self-absorbed, hotheaded friend.”
Quinton agreed, then held up his ceramic pencil case in mock invocation. “Well then, here’s to Mr. Rogers,” he toasted. “May his mattress be firm, his cockroaches friendly, and his bread and water clean and plentiful.”
“And to Ms. Laney Juris,” McNally added, “and the other unknown source who fingered our careless friend.”
A prison cell is no place for a ballplayer. Baseball players are built for life under a vast, blue ceiling, with clouds for company and warming bolts of sunshine to light their way. They are made for the great outdoors, creatures of the fresh green earth, delighting in the redolence of newly cut grass, wet unslacked lime, leather, and pine tar. They are designed to run and throw and move freely, like willful stars in a galaxy, their energies and aspirations gliding in some sort of cosmic, celestial dance. That is why for George Rogers, gifted southpaw for the Milwaukee Brewers, four stone walls and cold, iron bars were an all-out assault.
The Legend of Mickey Tussler Page 22