Call Me by My Name (4 page)

It really did something to me, seeing my family there, Mama especially. She was wearing a straw hat and big, square-frame sunglasses, and she'd brought a fan to help with the heat. The lupus alone should've kept her home and out of the sun, but I also knew she was ashamed of her weight and dreaded bumping into people who might remind her that she was a beauty in high school and the first runner-up in the 1949 Yambilee Queen pageant.

I had Curly to worry about, so I didn't let myself dwell on Mama for long. He was only about half my size, but he was so intense that kids in the park said he belonged in Pineville, a town in the central part of the state where there was a big hospital for mental patients. His father ran a bar on the parish line, and nobody but her customers ever saw his mother anymore. Curly might've been white trash, but he could really make you look stupid, and I looked extra stupid my first two times at bat when I didn't even get the bat off my shoulder and watched one fastball after another run past me.

Tater didn't do any better. He popped up to the first baseman and struck out, his first strikeout of the year, and now he was coming up again in the bottom of the last inning with two outs and the Steers leading 4–3. With the win so close at hand, Curly was throwing even harder than he had to start the game, and his junk pitches were working better than ever too. Tater swung and missed at two curveballs, and then Curly followed up with three errant fastballs, all of them high and away, making the count full. The next pitch was identical to the first two, and Tater did a surprising thing. Just as the ball was leaving Curly's hand, he stepped up to the front of the batter's box and squared off to bunt. The ball met his bat and dribbled toward third, and he outran the throw to first.

I was next. I walked out to booing and stood outside the batter's box and looked over to where Mama and Pops and Angie were sitting.

“You can do it, Rodney,” I heard Tater call out, his voice clear to me even though hundreds of other people were yelling for me to fail.

I set up deep in the box, choked up high on the bat's handle, and shifted my weight to my back foot. I'd decided to forgo any titanic roundhouse swings this time and to simply try to make contact with the ball. Tater took a three-step lead, and Curly looked him back one, and now the ball was coming toward me. As soon as it left Curly's hand, I picked up the rotation, or lack of one. It was a knuckleball, widely advertised as the toughest pitch there was to hit. But this one didn't move or bounce around much, and the reason was probably because it was the first knuckler Curly had thrown all day. From where I stood, the ball looked as big as a dinner plate, and without being conscious of what I was doing I strode forward and met the pitch the moment it crossed the plate. It didn't feel like I'd hit it hard, and I thought I'd just lost the game with a pop-up to the infield.

But then I saw Tater leap in the air as he broke for second, and I looked up and located the ball in flight. It had already climbed higher than all the other blasts I'd hit that summer, and it was still climbing when it connected with a light tower on the other side of the fence. I heard a report like a rifle shot, and then the ball ricocheted back into the field.

All Tater and I had to do now was touch each base and home plate and the game was over, but as he cleared third I saw something flying toward him from the direction of the pitcher's mound. It was Curly's glove. Tater stopped to avoid being hit, but then Curly charged and knocked him to the ground. The two of them tumbled in the grass between the field and our dugout. I left the base path and ran over to help, even though by now Coach Doucet had grabbed Curly and pulled him away.

Curly was kicking his legs and swinging his arms and making sounds like an animal in a fight with another animal when it understands that to lose is to die. I helped Tater to his feet and saw a trail of blood at his nose. Then Curly's father moved past us in a blur of ear hoops and jailhouse tattoos. I thought he'd come to defend his son, but instead he reared back with one of his biker boots and nailed Curly in the stomach, knocking him on his back. Until now I'd always thought I had it bad with Pops. He'd beaten me before with belts from his closet and switches from the ligustrum hedge, but I couldn't recall ever taking a boot in the gut.

“Can Rodney and me cross home plate now?” Tater asked.

“Go on,” Coach Doucet said, then waved us on like a traffic cop.

We made it across, but the thrill of what we'd done was gone. Most of our teammates, afraid to get close to Curly's father, had already returned to the dugout, and a different excitement had come over the field. The umpires were meeting on the mound with parents of some of the Steers, and then Coach Doucet joined them. If I was hearing right, he was arguing for justice, a word I'd never heard mentioned at a baseball game before. Finally the ump broke from the group and walked over to where Tater was sitting.

“You're suspended for the rest of the summer for fighting,” he said.

“That was Curly fighting,” Tater said.

“You're telling me you weren't fighting?”

“That wasn't fighting. I was trying to get him off of me.”

“You also showboated on your way to second. They might abide that kind of behavior on the north end but not here. Get your things together and go home. That's an order.”

Tater turned to Coach Doucet. “But I just jumped a little when Rodney hit it.”

“Let's go,” the ump said.

“For the rest of the summer?”

“One other thing. You never brought a release from your parents when you signed up to play. Without that release you don't qualify.” The ump worked himself out of his chest protector and removed his shin guards. Clouds of sweat soaked his black shirt, and you could smell his body odor from ten feet away. “We got rules on this side of town, and if you expect to participate, you have got to respect them,” he said. “I should've sent you packing weeks ago.” And now he pointed to what must've been an imaginary door out of the park.

“What about Curly Trussell?” came a voice from the other side of the backstop. I didn't have to look to know it was Mama.

“Curly was provoked,” the ump said.

“He was not provoked. He started it.”

“He's suspended for one game, and if he curses or throws his glove again, he's done, just like this one.”

“Well, you should be ashamed,” Angie said in the loudest voice yet.

“I didn't make the rules,” the ump said, “I just enforce them.” And with that he gathered up his equipment and left the field.

The ump's other job was working the register at a convenience store called the Fill-A-Sack, and I told myself it would be a long time before I ever went there again.

“She Loves You” wasn't playing over the park speakers, but you might've thought it was to see Tater on his way out. I figured he was trying to give the appearance that everything was fine. Still, I was sick for him. I thought about running after him, but then Angie jumped down from the bleachers and took off in his direction. I waited with Mama and Pops until she came back.

“I invited him to my swim meet Friday,” she said.

“You did what, Angela?” Pops said.

Angie didn't answer. She knew he'd heard her the first time.

“They won't let a colored boy anywhere near that pool,” Mama said. “Rodney, ride your bike on up ahead and tell him politely that your sister made a mistake.”

“Why me, Mama? Make Angie do it.”

“Just go tell him, please. That poor young man doesn't need another situation, and I certainly don't need the whole town talking about the colored boy who watched my daughter gallivant around half-naked at the pool.”

“I don't do that,” Angie said. “It's a swim meet, Mama. I swim.”

“Rodney, go on, boy,” Pops said.

I rode through trees and past the picnic grounds crowded with barbecue pits to where Tater was crossing the pedestrian bridge over the bayou. I tried to figure out what to say to him, and I didn't know what that might be until I finally said it. “Hey, Tater, they don't have swim meets on the north end?”

His expression let me know the question wasn't one he'd expected, especially from me. “What are you trying to say, Rodney?”

“They'll just treat you bad again. It'll be worse than today.”

“If I let things like that worry me, I'd never leave the house.” He was standing in the middle of the bridge, and he leaned against the railing now and spat at the water below. “Was it Angie who sent you?”

I shook my head.

“Your mama's a nice person, Rodney. I heard her yelling at that ump. But it was Angie who asked me to come see her swim, and unless Angie takes the invitation back, I plan on being there.”

He spat one more time before leaving.

A tall hurricane fence surrounded the pool yard, with three strands of barbed wire running along the top. About ten feet from the fence were two stands of bleachers that were close enough to some oak trees to get shade, which made it tolerable for Mama, even on the worst summer days. Whenever Angie had a meet, we tried to arrive about an hour early to claim seats up on the top bench for the best shade and the best view. We arrived earlier than usual today, with more than an hour to spare, and Tater was already there waiting.

He was wearing a white button-down shirt with long sleeves, navy dress pants, and penny loafers with soles barely scuffed. He also had on a new cowboy belt, carved with his name,
TATER HENRY
, in the brown leather.

“I wish I could get you to dress like that,” Mama said, and cut me a look. It was July and hot, and I had on cutoffs, a T-shirt, and flip-flops—what I always wore on days like this one.

Pops was quiet. He couldn't have been happy seeing Tater, and he'd had only about three hours of sleep all day. His feet banged against the board planks as he led us up to our spot. To protect against splinters, he'd brought a pair of foam seat cushions, and he set one down for Mama, then used the other for himself.

“Tater, how are you, son?” Mama asked, and looked over.

“Doing pretty good, Mrs. Boulet. How are you?”

“Will you tell your auntie something for me? Will you tell her I said you shine like a brand-new copper penny today?”

“I appreciate that, Mrs. Boulet. She's the one that bought me this outfit. I hope it isn't too much.”

“Of course it isn't. Would you like to come sit with us?”

Pops started gnashing his teeth, the muscles in his jaw working. Then he pulled at the crotch of his pants, as if he'd just now noticed how tight they were.

“Come sit,” Mama said to Tater.

“Yes, ma'am,” and he tried to suppress a smile. I could smell him—equal parts hair oil and Aqua Velva—even before he slid over.

For a few minutes all you could hear was the noise from the pool. Then Tater said, “Why aren't you on the swim team with Angie, Rodney?”

“I have baseball. I couldn't do both.”

“You can swim, though, right?”

“Yeah, I can swim. Can't you?”

“No. I've never even been in a pool.”

“Not ever?”

He shook his head.

“Not even a baby pool?”

“I tried to take lessons. I heard somebody talking about it at Redbirds' practice, then I saw a paper on the pool-house door when I was walking home one day. I came and got in line with my dollar fifty—that's what it cost to take them for the summer—and when I got to the desk, that old lady, Miss Daigle, said I needed to leave because they didn't want any darkies in the water.”

“She called you that?”

“Not exactly. She said they didn't want darkies, then she said she was going to call the police if I didn't leave that minute.”

It was hard to hear, and I was relieved when Angie and her teammates came out to loosen up and swim practice laps. I gave a sharp whistle to let her know where we were sitting, and she answered with a wave.