Seeing Off the Johns (15 page)

“Damn,” he said. He tried again, pulling with both hands. “Okay, I'm going to need your help.”

Chon expected to be asked to hold the flashlight, but Andres handed it to Araceli.

“The self-tensioner is sticking. I'll have to use both hands to loosen it so what I want you to do is slide that belt off the pulley when I do. Easy as that, just pull it off the track.” For the first time, Andres looked at Chon. He spoke quietly and patiently. “Can you do that?”

“Sure,” Chon said. He leaned in to better reach the belt.

Andres gave a nod and pulled the wrench back. When the tension loosened, Chon pulled at the belt.

“See,” Andres said, not looking at Chon. “That was easy.”

He got the flashlight back from Araceli and examined the belt.

“Cracked,” he said. “You're in luck. I think I have one this size in the truck.”

He walked back to his truck toolbox and rooted around it, finally pulling out a new belt. He examined it and compared its size and length with the old one. Meanwhile, in front of the Suburban, both Araceli and Chon watched him, neither saying a word and neither looking at one another. Convinced that it was a right fit, Andres brought the belt to the Suburban. He snaked it around the proper pulleys and gears and brought it back up to the top.

“We're doing the same thing.” His eyes seemed intimidating, but not challenging. “Only this time in reverse.”

He pulled back on the crescent wrench, straining to hold it there. When Chon finally got the belt over, Andres eased the tensioner into place. He pressed down on the newly installed belt.

“Good job,” he said. He replaced the battery cable, then started walking back to his truck.

“That's it?” Araceli asked.

“Almost,” he said. “Try the key.”

Chon got in the car and turned it on. Nothing. Andres was back, holding a jump starter in his hand.

“That's what I thought,” he said. “You ran your battery dead. I'll start it up and when you get home, leave it running for about twenty minutes.” He connected his machine to the car.

“Now,” he said.

Chon turned the car on. Andres closed the hood.

Araceli and Andres stood outside, a thin pane of glass separating them from Chon. Chon tried to pretend like he couldn't hear every word they were saying.

“Thank you so much for coming. I don't know what I would have done,” Araceli said.

“It's not a problem. I'm just glad you called.”

“How much does my dad owe you?”

“Mi ‘ja, don't embarrass me. I can't charge you.” Andres put down the jumpstarter he'd been holding. “What are you guys doing for Thanksgiving?”

“Going up to Houston to see my uncle,” Araceli told him.

“Your uncle Marky?” Andres said, giving a little bit of a laugh. “I thought him and your mom were fighting.”

“Yeah, they were. But they got over it.”

“That's good. Tell them both I say hello. And Christmas?” he asked. “Will you guys be in town for Christmas?”

“I think so.”

“It would be great if you'd come visit. She would really appreciate it. We both would.” Here, Chon had to look at Andres, if even only briefly. He met Andres' expectant eyes and turned back to staring at the steering wheel, embarrassed.

“Of course, I'll go over,” Araceli said in a tone like it was ridiculous for him to have even asked. “Of course.”

“Good,” Andres said, then turned to walk back to his truck. Araceli walked with him. They stopped behind the Suburban and talked for a bit.

In the rear-view mirror, Chon saw a man who could well be described as handsome, perfectly built—his graying hair and wrinkling skin only adding a dignified air to his look. It was in that stance—arms crossed at the chest, right knee locked and left knee bent, left toe planted on the ground behind him, its foot probably wagging like he was waiting for a pitch—but not so much in his similarly-built muscular frame, that Chon saw John. John used to stand like his father.

This is what John would have come to look like as an adult, as a grown up.

In fact, John could have ended up like this, like his father. He might not have gone on to play professional baseball. He could have easily gone on to sustain some freak injury or to flunk out of school—undrafted and unaffiliated with any team or club, only to try his luck and fail at tryouts in the minor leagues. Or, almost unimaginable and incongruent to the idea John had made of himself and all of town had made for him, he could have gone on to fall out of love with baseball. He had fallen out of love with Araceli enough to break up with her, proving that the fairy tale that was written for him in life and cemented for him in death was just that. It was a fable, a myth that represented what people in town wanted regardless of what the boy might actually have come to do—or want to do—in life.

John might have gone on to become a mechanic or a librarian or an English teacher. He could have done anything. Except that now his options had been cut short. The narrative of what he might have been, the story of him, had turned into who the boy was.

Chon felt bad for John. He would have given anything just then for John and Robe to be alive—for them to fulfill the prophesies of a whole town's expectations. Or for them to fail or to quit or to do something altogether different. Chon would even have given up the ground he'd gained with Araceli. The way it was now John Mejia and John Robison would never be left to rest in peace because they had parts to play in the fantasies of everyone in Greenton. John Mejia would never get the chance to choose whether or not to be a mechanic, whether or not to walk in the footsteps of his father, the father he looked so very much like.

Araceli got in the car and buckled her seat belt. She blew into her hands and rubbed them together like it was colder than 69˚ outside. She looked back at the headlights of Andres Mejia's truck. Finally she looked at Chon.

“He's waiting for you,” she said. “He's going to follow me home to make sure there are no more problems with the car.”

Chon okayed this and, using his blinker to indicate his intentions, pulled onto the highway and headed for home. Andres followed closely, driving at 75, making Chon have to speed up to not be rear-ended or overtaken.

“I'm sorry,” Araceli told Chon who was looking in the rear-view more than the road in front of him.

“For what?”

“Back there, I didn't mean to have a whole conversation with him while you waited in the car.”

“Oh, it's fine.”

“And I'm sorry if he was kind of rude to you. I don't think he was ready to come out and find me with a guy in the middle of the night.”

“Did you tell him we just went to the game?” Chon asked, wondering if some sort of explanation or excuse should have been offered. Judging by the way Andres was driving, the whole situation might not have come off as couth per the Mejia handbook of propriety and chivalry. Chon comforted himself in the knowledge that there was no way the man would run him off the road while Araceli was in the passenger seat.

“Yeah, of course, but still. Anyway, don't take it personally. He's just real protective of me. I think more because of my relationship with his wife than what John and I had.”

“So, she's really that bad?” Chon asked.

“Yeah. I mean, can you blame her?”

“No, of course not. She's allowed to be sad forever, to cry 24/7 for the rest of her life if she wants to. But it seems like she's getting beat by the same thing, over and over again. She's going to wake up tomorrow and be as sad as she was yesterday. It'll be like
that every day until she gets over it. And she may never.” Chon looked over at Araceli, Greenton High School passing by them in the passenger window behind her.

“That's why I go. Because it's too much for one woman to take,” Araceli said.

Chon nodded and turned right on Viggie, not bothering to come to a complete stop at the stoplight now blinking red.

“And if she never gets over it?” he said.

Araceli looked at Chon like she knew what he was saying but couldn't believe he'd said it, not because he was out of line, but because she didn't want to hear it.

“I guess I'll keep going over,” she said.

Chon pulled the car as far into the driveway as it would go with his parents' cars in front of it. He put the car in park and looked at over at Araceli.

“Then you're letting it beat you too. Over and over again. Like her, but not really.”

She got out of the car and was halfway around the front of the Suburban by the time Chon had opened the door next to him. He got out and stood before Araceli, the hi-beams of Andres' Chevy casting shadows of the two of them on Chon's house.

“Thanks for coming and getting me for the game,” Chon told her.

“Thanks for riding with me.” Araceli looked up at Chon with a sadness he was now allowed to see in her eyes.

Chon made to walk away, but Araceli stopped him and pulled him into a hug. It was a small gesture, the kind shared between hormonal-but-platonic teenagers in the lunchroom at school. Chon gave Araceli a tight squeeze. He let go of her before she let go of him. He looked down at her and she put her forehead on his chin.

“Thanks,” she said, “for tonight, for everything.”

She got in the Suburban. Its taillights let Andres know she was backing out of the driveway. She did a quick two-point turn and drove away, not once taking her eyes off of
Chon until he was standing, alone, on his front lawn, the darkness almost erasing in his mind all that had happened. He went inside, took off his clothes, and dreamed of John Mejia thirty years in the future, still alive and looking just like his father, trying to run over Chon, sweaty and panicked, as he fled away down Main Street.

The Greyhound baseball team is comprised entirely of young men who played and started for the football squad, making the transition from football to baseball season simple, like going from fall to spring semester. The switch is a seamless one, whether the kid identifies as a football or baseball player. But while the sons of Greenton are signed up for football as kids and taken to practices and cheered for and encouraged to learn rules and strategies, it is a borrowed sport—one rented, like the pads and helmet that protect and make the boys feel big, but that have to be returned at the end of the season.

Greentonites own baseball. In a town whose population sees itself as being too Mexican to connect to football and too American to do the same with soccer, baseball is the sports equivalent of Tejano music. Tejano music comes in the bastardized Spanish lexicon Greentonites find familiar and comfortable, even those whose first-learned and primarily-used language is English. Its accordions and synthesizers and sometimes country shuffle are distinctly Mexican and American, with none of the tubas or nasal norteño pitch and phrasing that mark banda or the antiquated standup bass and acoustic guitars of danzón.

So it is with baseball. There are Hernandezes and Lopezes and Valenzuelas in professional baseball who could be rooted for even if they aren't necessarily Mexican
because Mexican Americans aren't necessarily Mexican either. They often see themselves as having a closer connection to Cubans or Puerto Ricans or Panamanians than with their own Caucasian countrymen who themselves might see a brown Gonzales or Mejia or Monsevais—Texas, America, born and raised—as having more in common with foreigners too.

Baseball is the easiest and most natural sport for Greentonites to latch onto. It is the brand new glove they buy, rub with shaving cream, wrap with a large rubber band around a few balls, and leave in the sun one morning to retrieve worn, loose, and ready that evening. It's used until the stitching breaks and falls apart, when they'll get a new one and give it the same love and care, never throwing out the old one, but keeping it on a shelf or in a drawer or in a box in the garage labeled ‘old stuff.'

For the cream of Greenton's baseball crop, baseball season never ends. There's a summer league that starts at the end of Little League's playoffs, causing some boys to play for both their summer squads and Greenton's all-star team should the team have advanced beyond regional play. This is an exhilarating possibility. The boys who fall into such circumstances will likely go on to play together from then on, representing the town of Greenton against teams from around the area and even around the state in those all-star tournaments and then in high school, with everyone in town, not just their friends and families, watching and cheering them on. If their parents have the means, like the Robisons and the Mejias before them, if there were a boy or two who proved themselves special enough and dedicated enough and destined enough for a future of greatness—or at least a chance at it—they would be signed up for traveling autumn and winter league teams made up of the region's other elite baseball mercenaries. Their SUV and mini-van driving parents would travel from town to town to watch them play against other bands of baseball junkies and phenoms and kids whose glory-hungry
parents had dollar signs in their eyes and dreams in their hearts of better lives for their kids than they'd gotten from their own parents.

There was only one such ball player on the 1999 Greenton High School baseball team. He was a switch-hitting second baseman who could pitch an inning or two of relief if needed with a less than overwhelming—but still off-putting—knuckle ball that he had to complement a decent two-seam fastball. He was a freshman, starting varsity, of course.

On the day of Greenton's first game, he stood in front of one of the mirrors in the school's locker room taking in the sight of himself in a brand new uniform, bought with John-star money. The button-up green shirt and green pinstriped white pants looked good, better than any uniform he'd ever worn. But with the ‘8' embroidered on the left arm of the jersey and the ‘34' on the left, he felt cheated. He was four years younger than the Johns. He had met them and cheered them on. Both of them had taken an interest in his progress, giving him suggestions on his stance and swing in the batter's box.

But four years? Why not three? Wearing the jersey that bore the numbers of the Johns made him stand tall. He promised himself that he would do all that he could to live up to the colors he was wearing and to the fact that he'd just inherited the team from the Johns. He would play as hard as he could to honor their memory. He was proud of the mission he'd charged himself with, but still he felt cheated by the year that separated him from having played with them. He couldn't wait to dirty his new uniform with the orange red dirt on the diamond that was being watered and raked thick and crackly, ready to crunch under foot like he wanted to believe snow would crunch if ever he actually walked on it. He put on his cap. He was a superhero donning his mask and cape, a king his crown and scepter. He was no longer a student athlete, no longer a baseball player. He
was
baseball. Walking away from the mirror, his cleats click-clacking
on the concrete floor of the locker room, the young second baseman, still a week shy of his fifteenth birthday, felt something welling up in the deepest recesses of his being. It was a surge of emotion at reaching this new milestone, pride at taking the field a Greyhound, regret at not being able to do have done so with the Johns, profound sadness at their passing. He was not mature enough to recognize what he was going through. If he was, he would have to ignore it because you're not allowed to think of anything but winning before a baseball game. And you're not allowed to feel pain from anything but an injury in a locker room.

Coach Gallegos led his second baseman and a squad of fourteen other boys—who would do nothing over the next four years to make names for themselves—to the main entrance of the stadium and showed them the bronze plaques that had been forged in the Johns' likenesses. He told them about life being more important than baseball and about baseball being larger than life. He told them about winning and losing and playing with heart. He charged his players to, “do it for the Johns.”

A half-time or pre-game speech this was not. He could hear himself sounding like a fool. The rest of his career would be defined in contrast to the four years he had with the Johns, which themselves would stand, like the boys' images on the plaques that now adorned the entrance to Greenton's baseball stadium, in relief of every other squad he ever coached or played on. He would coach winning teams again. The Greyhounds would make playoff runs. But no team, no player, no era would ever match what the Johns had given him, given Greenton. Baseball was everything to him. The Johns' dying couldn't take that from him. But his passion for coaching wasn't the same anymore. His world had changed.

First pitch was scheduled for 11 am. People filed in an hour before. The stands weren't full, but there were more people there than normally show up for a Saturday
morning pre-season exhibition game against a Santa Rosa team who wasn't very good. They would face them three more times in the regular season anyway.

But people had heard there would be an unveiling of a couple of plaques in the Johns' likenesses. They had expected the plaques to be covered, like the crucifix at church during Holy Week, but there was no such affectation.

Eight months had passed since the accident. Things had settled down. The calm of Greenton that had been disturbed was now restored. People were mostly over the tragedy. What good would another awkward tribute have done anyone outside of the families of the dead boys? The Robisons were gone, and the Mejias had no intention of showing up at the stadium that day to be walked out to home plate to wave at people clapping.

But no one in the audience knew that. After stopping to admire the plaques as they walked in, they thought that the Mejias would surely be there. They also thought the show would be more than just five innings of lopsided baseball. The game, however, ended early on account of the ten-run rule. Four of the Greyhounds' runs were batted in by the fourteen-year-old second baseman phenom. His parents were in the stands to answer the questions that started floating around. “Who is that kid? What are ya'll feeding him?”

“Domingo,” the proud parents answered. “He loves baseball. He's loved it since he could walk.”

It was February 13th, the day before Valentine's day. The people in the crowd were disappointed in the Mejia-sighting that had not come to pass. But this Mingo kid…he put on a show for them. Their allegiances shifted that day, as they would have with the Johns off to UT, death or not. They had not seen a train wreck, but they had found their new man. It was a good day, February 13th 1999—one for moving on.