The Slide: A Novel (35 page)

I ran through a series of basic stretches I remembered from baseball practice. I swung my arms in small circles, then reversed direction. I swung large circles. We would stand in a circle, a bunch of young men twirling our arms and lifting one foot as if this was a perfectly normal thing to do.

I was still wearing my jeans and Opal Worpley’s too-tight shirt.

I went downstairs. At the sight of my green Pine Ridge polo, folded neatly by the front door, I began to cry. I cried silently and reluctantly until I remembered that the house was empty, and then I began to wail. Things I’d done with my body, the loyalties betrayed, expectations failed. I dropped to my knees and sank my face into my worthless hands.

I dried my face on the Irenia shirt, then took it off and put on the green polo.

It was a cereal-box morning: cloudless, sun big and sharp and impossibly round.

By the time I reached my car, I was sweating considerably. But this was not sweat. Nothing like it.

Submersion. I wanted submersion.

I found him shirt- and shoeless in his driveway, wearing a knee-length, loose-fitting skirt. He was bent over the ad, painting a splotch of what looked like bird shit onto its curve. The car was covered in dozens of these splotches, some with tails dripping downward, others with purple in their middles. The skirt he wore was gray with thin black vertical stripes.

Stuart looked at me and squinted. “Potter?”

“I need a quick jump in the pool. Take five minutes.”

“Now’s not good, actually.”

Something was missing from the driveway. I did a quick count of cars and came up short.

“Where’s your car?”

“I gave it to Edsel.”

And yet again: didn’t know what to say. I watched him paint bird shit and tried to understand what he stood to gain by giving Edsel his car. Why my dear friend would abet my blackmailer, driving assholishly across the city, weaving and cutting off and running his errands and did he even have a license?

“You shouldn’t have done that, Stubes.”

“As long as this American fairy tale lasts, I can give away a Ford Explorer whenever I damn well please.” He wet the tip of one finger to touch the center of a splotch, then looked at me. “You should go.”

He was looking past me. I looked at the skirt. Blackmail aside, the skirt had to be mentioned. I turned and saw Marianne at the end of the driveway, walking toward us. Thirty seconds, no more.

“We have to go over what you’re wearing. Unless I’m insane, that’s a skirt. This girl has you wearing a skirt, Stubes. She’s got pants on. There is no way you miss the meaning here.”

“We’re all wearing costumes, Potsky. Welcome to reality. Sometimes it’s hard.”

He set the paint down on the hood and went to meet her. The paintbrush jutting upward from the can looked like a. The brush he left submerged in the paint could have been. I saw the brush and thought of.

Stuart and Marianne kissed in the driveway.

Southward, winding roads and midday traffic. Posted speed limits. Lights. Yellow sign peering over trees, Tower Tee.

The man in the hut smiled smoker’s teeth and asked how many tokens he could change up for me.

“A whole lot,” I said.

Handed him a fifty and he laughed and filled me a plastic cup’s worth.

“Careful,” he said.

The bats available were old and dented, with browned, old athletic tape for grip. The helmet I picked up smelled almost sweet. Nine cages altogether, counting two at the far end for softball. It would have been busy even without the pizza party, for which I had no patience whatsoever. Groups of men and children stood crowded outside the middle cages, leaving free only the slowest cage, to my right, and the fastest cage, a ways to my left.

I stepped into the slowest cage and dropped a token into the slot. The red light above the machine lit, and soon the first ball came slowly toward me. I watched several pitches, settling in. These were not baseballs but yellow, dimpled, more like
field
hockey
balls that were lighter, with a bit more elasticity. Behind me was a thick rectangle of black rubber hanging from two corners by rope. I hit a few ground balls and watched them strike the fence before draining down the sloped concrete into the retrieval system. My trigger was lifting my left foot and setting it back down. The red light went off and I inserted another token.

After a while, the balls hardly appeared to move at all. They waited for me and I obliged, crushing them back to the machine. I formalized the technique of my swing. The hips, the shoulders, the hands coming downward through the zone. More tokens. More swing. But there was only so much satisfaction in conquering that which was presented on a platter. When the red light turned off, I took my plastic cup and stepped out of the slow cage.

I sat holding a can of Fanta in each hand, cold metal easing the blisters already forming on my palms. Calluses gone, hands soft. A few men were discussing this afternoon’s game. We had apparently called up a catcher from our Triple-A Memphis affiliate to fill in for the starter, who was suffering from back spasms. Poor old crumbling veteran catcher. Explanation for spasms likely that he spent his whole professional life
crouched
. His replacement was twenty-two years old and had spent four years in the minor leagues. I sipped a Fanta for Derril Brandt, the rookie, his first day in the Show, then walked into the only other available cage.

Token in, red light on, I stood waiting. The ball rocketed out of the machine, and I watched the hanging rubber square shudder. Watched a token’s worth of balls slung toward me with enough backspin that I could see the pitch climb on its approach.

A group of construction workers took turns in the cage next to me. Hourly wages, laughter, recreation. Between tokens I watched. I admired but no longer envied. Work alone would not be my salvation. I dropped a token into the machine and waited. I felt my trigger and swung, missed, and saw the shadow of the rubber padding swing. The sun had crested and shadows were growing longer.

The balls thudded against rubber, then gathered at my feet. Another token and I began to catch up. My hands were being rubbed raw. Finally I caught a piece of ball, just a nick, a tip, fouling it off into the fence. The light went out.

“Zooming, ain’t it.”

A man was standing outside the cage with his arms crossed. A big but I wouldn’t say tall man, flat wide face, eyes pinched close and shaded by the barely curved brim of his ball cap. He could have been any of a number of coaches I had known in my life, those authoritarians who barked help but could also chatter for days. Watching the kid who can’t seem to catch up with a single pitch.

“It’s like I can’t swing early enough,” I said.

I had to go down the slide. I had to make sure my top hand rolled over the bottom hand on my follow-through. Had to minimize the stroke. I had to calm the bat head while waiting. I kicked the balls forward and fed another token to the slot.

“You’re lifting your head,” he said. “You’re backing out of there; you’re scared of something. Got to stay over it.”

He was absolutely right.

“You’re right. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” he said.

More tokens, more missing. What had been pain in my hands faded to complete numbness. There were natural mechanics, that which the body did instinctively, versus that which was learned, forced, trained. The towering overhead lights flickered on and I thumbed another token into the slot. I hit a few weak ground balls. The other cages had cleared out. But there was no point going back to anything slower now; I was catching up.

On the next token, I found the rhythm. My trigger went earlier and my timing fell into place. To hit a ball square was a satisfaction unlike any other in life. And when I caught one a bit out in front of me and pulled it into what would be left field, the cheap bat responded with that clap sound like
fwap,
solid, and the dimples whizzed into the fencing.

“There you go,” the man said. “There you go.”

The most wonderful rhythm. After a few more of these it came to me; I knew what to do. I would immerse myself in the ethos of our national pastime. I would chew tobacco and coach some kind of team, Little League or Legion ball or anything I could find.
Yes.
I would lug bags of equipment and clap encouragement and say things twice. Speaking with them as this man spoke to me.

“You see what the Redbirds did today?” I asked.

“Yes sir. This kid Brandt might could turn into something.”

“That’s what I hear. Good for him,” I said.

Let this be the point. The rhythm of amicable speech, common interest between strangers. I would find a wife. We would attend the church of her choice, another weekly rhythm. I would grow myself a mustache, mow the lawn, and listen to sports radio. I would have children by former wives with whom I would maintain contact via the language and ritual of baseball.

The man said, “Left too many runners on base, though. Again. It’s what I been saying all summer. Keep swinging the bats like this, and we’re going nowhere.”

“The bats are starting to come around,” I said.

“I got my doubts about the bats. Bullpen’s getting tired also.”

“You said it. You nailed it with the bullpen.”

I would advocate the use of military force abroad to protect our national interest and pastime. I would buy a home buried somewhere deep in the county, a place west enough that my commute would be long, an important portion of each day, and I would appreciate my car.

“How many more coins you got in there?”

“Just a few more,” I said.

“You know, back when I played we used to drill a hole straight through a ball, run a piece of string through there, and tie it off, then take our cuts from a tee. Nothing like this place. Didn’t even know it was here until yesterday. Came by yesterday, then back today.”

The allure of the cage, a place where arms swung or stayed comfortably crossed.

“Then what happened sometimes was the string would break. You hit it so hard the string would tear apart. Or other times the knot would rip clean off. Always felt like you did something right when it happened. You’d see the ball go fly off into the distance and think maybe you were due some kind of reward. Then you realized the only reward was having to go get the damn ball.”

I laughed through a swing, then let two pitches go while I refocused. Once more, the sun released its hold on the day. The etymology of
token,
the satisfaction of it disappearing into the slot. Aside from two young women in one of the softball cages, everyone else was gone. The pitching machine churned, the red light came on, I swung, the red light went off.

“ ’Bout time for you to wrap it up.”

I looked at the man outside my cage. His arms were no longer crossed. One of the overhead lights flickered.

“Is it closing time?”

“I’m getting real tired of waiting out here.”

“Oh hey, I’m sorry,” I said. “Got so wrapped up in my swings I didn’t realize you were waiting. I don’t mind taking turns.”

“Not waiting for the cage,” he said. “Waiting for you to step out.”

A man all shoulders and chest, jaw prominent. He pointed a finger through the fence.

“You got some serious pain and harm coming your way.”

I stood holding the bat in two hands rubbed bloody by athletic tape. My shoulders ached fiercely. I glanced down at my green Pine Ridge polo shirt, drenched with perspiration, then looked back to the man across the fence.

“There’s a lesson to be learned in what’s coming. Take heart in that. Lesson is stay your ass away from other people’s kids unless you’re looking to get beat real real bad.”

The girls were gone. Just like that, nighttime had returned. Where had I been all day? Here? The machine waited for a token.

Mr. Worpley crossed his arms and leaned closer to the fence. Colors in the fluorescent light were harsh and cold. Eyes that appeared black. Eyes like shotguns, face of fire. My hands trembled around the cheap bat and I forced them to grip tighter. If he came at me I would have a weapon.

“At least now you know. Tonight’s the night you’re gonna find a bad corner of life. Soon as you step out of that cage. How’s that feel, knowing?”

“Difficult to say.”

“Smart mouth, ain’t you? Well, you can count on this. It’s gonna hurt, true as the rain and the dark and every other god-awful fact of the world. And it won’t change either, talk all you want.”

I could, of course. Talk to perpetuity. But any words at my disposal had been systematically drained, rendered insufficient. What nouns? What verbs?

“You might not even be a pervert. I sort of doubt you are. I don’t know who you are and I don’t care either way. Come around my house and this is what has to follow.”

I had wronged this man terribly. One minute my face pressed to the wife’s chest, her fingers tearing into my back. Then she was above me and I was reaching up to her face. I remembered the bat and looked down at my hands, pale skin flapping over raw patches of blood. The mistake was approaching Ian without any of society’s established blessings. The boy and his alien world I couldn’t hope to understand; sympathy versus empathy. I lifted off my helmet and leaned the bat against the fence. Anything I’d done to Ian I had also done to his father. But I was not a pervert, as far as I knew. I wanted to say something, tell him about purity of intention, innocence, and a desire to help. I lifted the latch and stepped out of the cage.