Butterfly Winter (8 page)

The scout explained in his halting Spanish that he was a baseball scout for a famous Major League team and that his car had broken down. He had hired the two boys to carry his equipment. He would pay them and put them on a bus back to Courteguay as soon he reached the Santo Domingo Airport.

“Beisbol,” the immigration officer said, smiling vaguely.

The scout named a couple of famous Dominican players. “I am the scout who discovered their talents,” he said, tapping his chest with a thick finger.

“Beisbol,” the officer said again.

The scout opened the canvas sack that held the bats. He pulled one out and extended it to the officer. That morning, while the three were eating a breakfast of mangos and day-old tortillas, he had used a black marker to sign one of the bats with the name of a famous Dominican shortstop.

“Ramon Esquibel,” he said, pointing to the black lettering.

The officer, clutching the champagne-colored bat, waved them through.

At the airport the scout used his team’s American Express card to buy tickets for the boys. He made several phone calls to America, first asking, then demanding that a team executive meet the plane with proper documentation for the boys.

“Don’t be fooled by appearances,” he said. “They look very young. But they’re sixteen. They are carrying their birth certificates, which were provided personally by the President of the United States, and El Presidente here in Courteguay.”

“
UNBELIEVABLE
,” said the field manager of the only Major League Baseball Club in the True South, as he first watched Julio hurl the ball toward Esteban’s mitt. His name was Al Tiller, and
Sports Illustrated
would one day call him the dumbest manager in baseball.

“We’ll start them in A-Ball,” said the general manager.

“Double-A,” said Al Tiller.

“Triple-A,” said the owner, who had been sitting in a director’s chair along the third base line. He was a slight, athletic-looking man with a soft, brown mustache, who was astronomically rich.

“I want them at spring training,” said Al Tiller. “That pitcher, I’ve never seen such a curve ball, such movement on a fast ball. How old did you say he is?”

“Sixteen,” said the owner. “The catcher’s not good though, get rid of him.”

“There’s a problem,” said the general manager. “They’re twins, the pitcher will only throw to his brother.”

“Offer the pitcher more money,” said the owner. “Everyone has a price.”

“Not these boys,” said the general manager. When I asked them about a signing bonus, Julio said, “I would like a Meccano set, if you please.”

“And a puppy,” said Esteban, the catcher.

“Perhaps a bicycle with a banana seat,” said Julio. “Candy-apple red would be nice.”

“Are they really sixteen?” demanded the owner. “Have you checked their documentation?”

“Our scout says they’re sixteen. That’s good enough for me. Besides, we have their birth certificates.”

“They’re sixteen,” the general manager assured Tiller. He produced birth certificates, 8½-by-11-inch parchments, bordered with blood-red bougainvillea, sporting the Courteguayan flag and the national emblem of Courteguay, the clinched fist holding aloft a glittering machete.

Tiller squinted at the certificates, counted on his fingers to substantiate that the twins were indeed sixteen.

“Joe Nuxall played his first game in the majors at fifteen, so I guess it’s okay.”

He did not notice the tiny blemish in the bottom right-hand corner of each certificate where
PRINTED IN USA
had been removed by some terrible chemical known only to the
CIA
.

“They play cowboys and Indians in the locker room,” said Al Tiller.

“Learn to live with it,” said the owner, who amassed
TV
networks as a hobby, and was married to an aging movie star.

E
ven my mother refers to me as Esteban the turnip, though she does it in a loving way, shaking her head at a son she cannot now, nor will ever, understand. I am, indeed, a turnip. I stare dreamily into the distance, conveniently not hearing the racket of my brothers and sisters, of my contemporaries. Julio will come and tug at my ear when it is time to play baseball. I would just as soon not, but for Julio the game is everything. We appear to be extraordinarily talented, at least Julio is, and Julio cannot pitch unless I am his catcher. Many people do not understand this, and since I alone am only an average catcher and a dismal hitter, they try to substitute for me at every opportunity. A foolish ploy. If I am not catching him, Julio throws balls halfway up the backstop, or sometimes behind the batter, or he will deliver a sweet batting-practice pitch across the plate for the batter to wallop wherever he chooses.

We play in the highest ranked league in Courteguay. We are the battery for the San Cristobel Flamethrowers, and Julio is 13-0 with a 1.28
ERA
. Scouts from the United States sit in the stands behind home plate, utilize their speed guns, scribble notes, and marvel at the talent of Julio as a pitcher. In Courteguay no one cares that we are children
playing with adults. However, for the benefit of the scouts, the Wizard has arranged false birth certificates for us, to show that we are sixteen years old, although in reality we are barely nine. The scouts have not yet come to realize that I am a part of the bargain.

On one of the happiest days of my life I remember watching as the Wizard tossed blueberries into the stream behind our home. As each berry submerged it became a dazzling blue fish.

“How do you do that?” I asked the Wizard.

“I will teach you,” he said, handing me several fat blueberries.

I tossed one into the stream. It sank like a small rock as the water carried it downstream. I tried again with the same result. The Wizard tossed a berry and it changed immediately to a sparkling fish that leapt gaily in the water, turning its turquoise belly to the sun for a second before swimming away. He handed me a large handful of berries.

“It takes years of practice,” he said. “But if anyone has the patience, you do.”

MY WORD FOR TODAY
is ullage: the amount of empty space in a closed container. Father Cornelius instructs me that the word is usually used to refer to the empty space in an opened bottle of wine. “With each drink poured from the wine bottle the ullage grew larger.” That is the sentence I spoke for Father Cornelius to let him know I understood the meaning.

Father Cornelius, Father Joachin, and Father Bartholomew, who has only one leg, live behind a chain-link fence that surrounds their residence. The house, of flaming white adobe, once sat next to a church, but the church was torn down by a previous administration, or perhaps by the present one, or simply by vandals, who knows?

An El Presidente once stated that “There is no need for God in a warm climate,” and mandated that if the priests wished to remain in Courteguay they must forever remain behind the chain-link fences. They rely on the kindness of former parishioners for food and clothing. They are allowed to converse through the fence but are not allowed to perform religious rites, though I’m told they do, in fact I’ve seen them, in fact I have been a part of those forbidden rituals.

Father Cornelius teaches me one new English word a day. I was three years old when I decided that English would be the language in which I would think. I was leaning on the fence watching the priests eat some fried pheasant that my mother had me deliver to them. They spoke in Latin to each other, Father Cornelius spoke English and a smattering of Spanish, “Enough to be dangerous,” he said. Father Joachin spoke Spanish Spanish, not the heavily accented, pidgin Spanish-French of Courteguay, and Father Bartholomew, who has only one leg, originated in Warsaw and spoke only Polish, Latin, and a few words of English. The one-legged Father Bartholomew used his few English words to say how good the fried pheasant was. Father Cornelius, who was tall and skeletal, his shiny bald head pointing like a beacon toward the sky, replied that the pheasant was indeed a gift from God, for which they would later give fervent thanks.

“Why don’t you thank my mother?” I said in English, for I had understood every word they had said.

“How does such a tiny child as you come to know English?” replied Father Cornelius.

“I just know,” I said. “It is a gift from God, perhaps?”

“You believe in God?”

“I don’t know. Suppose you tell me what God is?”

That was the beginning of my spending most of my waking hours outside the chain-link visiting with the priests, discussing theology, philosophy, metaphysics. The priests lend me books. I read them, we all four discuss them, very heatedly sometimes.

I soon stopped discussing the situation with my parents and family. My father is a thinking nonbeliever, my mother is a nonthinking believer. Julio sometimes hurls a baseball into the chain-link at a high speed, the sound of the crash and the ensuing shudder of the fence causing all four of us to jump with fright. “I am my own God,” Julio says. “I make things happen.”

The Wizard is a charlatan (one of the first words Father Cornelius assigned me) of unprecedented proportions, though sometimes he is not. He has magic about him and is not afraid to use it. The church,
although it believes in miracles, denounces the Wizard, which is apparently the same as denouncing El Presidente. This is a point I and the priests are not clear on. El Presidente in one of his incarnations turned on the church with a vengeance.

My fondest wish is to study for the priesthood, and perhaps serve in a country where the church and the power of the priesthood is understood and admired. Or, perhaps return to Courteguay and reestablish the church in this warm climate where the presence of a stable God would certainly enhance (to augment or intensify) the quality of life.

The priests, I’m sure even in the private of their tumbledown house, never refer to me as Esteban the turnip. They understand, though not completely, how a boy of nine can discuss religious history with them and have insights that sometimes engender (that was yesterday’s word) hours of conversation and debate.

The problem that the church encountered in Courteguay was that they were, as always, completely behind the times. In a land of magical happenings they pretended to be blind.

My word for tomorrow is pylorus: the opening from the stomach into the small intestine. It was assigned because I was complaining of a bloated stomach. I have yet to construct a sentence using it correctly.

But, the Wizard. The Wizard, like God, can be in more than one place at a time. And, like God, he does not intercede where he is needed most, allowing the people who believe in him to suffer unjustly.

T
his was the first major league job ever for Al Tiller, manager of the only Major League Baseball Club in the True South. He had once been a promising minor league player but his hitting had been about as substantial as a politician’s promise and he had withered in the minor leagues. Tiller had been a friend and teammate of the former manager, who when he was fired recommended Tiller for the job, not because of his ability but because he was the only one desperate enough and willing to accept the pitiful salary offered.

Tiller had not yet earned his reputation as the dumbest manager in baseball. Years later he would manage the Chicago Cubs to the last pennant before Armageddon.

Al Tiller had no idea what to do with the solemn, dark-eyed twins who appeared at spring training camp. They spoke virtually no English; Tiller spoke no Spanish. Not that Julio and Esteban actually spoke Spanish. Courteguayan was an amalgam of dialects, a bastardization of Spanish, French, English, twisted like toffee to fit the lilting tongues of the Courteguayans.

“How old are you?” was Tiller’s first question.

The boys looked about ten, he thought. The slim one with the short hair, handsome as a child Valentino; the catcher, stocky with an almost Neanderthal air about him, was ugly as the famous Yankee catcher Yogi Berra.

The boys giggled nervously, play wrestled, stole each other’s caps, and frolicked like children when they thought no one was watching them.

“
I WATCHED THEM WORKOUT
yesterday,” said Tiller. “The pitcher is phenomenal. In three or four years he’ll be the best in organized baseball. We’re desperate enough for pitching that the boy can serve his apprenticeship in the majors. The catcher’s all right defensively, but can’t hit worth shit. He needs a few seasons in the minors.”

“They can’t be broken up,” said the General Manager. “The pitcher will pitch to no one else.”

“He should learn. I don’t think keeping the catcher is a good idea.”

“You’re not paid enough to think,” said the General Manager. “That’s why we hired you.”

“Who’s gonna teach them English?” asked Tiller, who decided not to be offended. Major League managers, even if they weren’t paid enough to think, still got their family medical bills paid. Besides, the only non-baseball job he had ever held was a summer on an assembly line, stacking cases of soft drinks as they came off a conveyor belt. He had been supervised by a 6′6″ Jamaican who stared down on him with contempt and spoke only two words to him the whole summer, “Faster, asshole!”

“We’ll find someone to teach them English,” said the
GM
.

The next day a slim, dark woman with gimlet eyes appeared in the clubhouse. She had a hatchet face with lips thin as razor slits. She wore a white-belted raincoat with a cowl that made her look like a spy.

“Buenos dias,” she said to the boys as they trooped in from practice, where Julio’s sidearm curve had been dropping a full twelve inches, after gliding slowly toward the plate, fat as a full moon.

The boys, feeling as if they had been in solitary confinement since they left Courteguay, rushed to her and hugged her, babbling in Courteguayan, asking questions, making statements.

Al Tiller, never blessed with children of his own, took the boys under his wing. In the locker room he made a tent out of blankets and a bat. The three of them stayed long after everyone had left. They played cowboys and Indians. He took them to the zoo. He took them home where his wife cooked them burritos, and where he found they had an insatiable appetite for Popsicles. He would trade them half a Popsicle for proof that they had added a new English word to their vocabulary. He would reward Esteban with a lime Popsicle every time he got a hit. Esteban’s average suddenly began to climb.