Dirty Rice (18 page)

“I work,” I said, watching my hand lift the new glass of whiskey to my mouth. “I work,” I said again, after my hand had delivered the glass to my mouth and my lips did what they're supposed to do, “until the season's over, and if it happens the way it's supposed to, I'll get ready for the next season to come. That's the hard time.”

“The season's the hard time?” Edith said. “That's what you're saying, huh? When you're doing that work.”

“Waiting for the season, that's the hard time,” I said. “The season ain't no trouble at all, no matter how much trouble it is.”

“Do tell,” she said. “I believe you're making a riddle.”

That's when I saw myself lean forward and stick my face into her throat, right where it joined up naked with where her body started and right before where the cloth of her dress began covering it up. Her throat tasted a little like huckleberries just before they get ripe early in the summer, a little sour but promising to get sweeter later on.

“Now that there is exactly what I call pitching,” the woman said. “Just follow me on back yonder. I'll show you which room to go to.” I drank the rest of the whiskey in my glass, the last one I was going to allow myself for the rest of the season, and I did what she said. I thought I could hear somebody laughing and calling my name from over by the dice table, but I didn't look around to see who it was.

The room Edith led me to was real little, and all it had in it was a single bed and a table with a pitcher of water and a pan sitting on it. A light bulb hung down from a wire fastened to the ceiling, and the bulb had a paper shade with the picture of a bunch of flowers painted around it. I couldn't tell what kind of flowers it was, and after staring up at it from where I was laying on the bed, I decided it was just somebody's idea of what flowers might look like. Maybe the man who painted it had heard from somebody else the way flowers was supposed to look, and he had tried his best to come up with something that would pass for blossoms and leaves and stems. He'd done the best he could, I thought, and I guessed it wasn't fair to judge him too close. Maybe he was blind.

Edith asked me for two dollars as soon as we got in the room, and I gave her that, thinking that all I had left now to last me the week was one more paper dollar and maybe forty cents in change. She left the room for a while, and I studied the picture of the flowers above the bed while she was gone, feeling dizzy and a little sleepy, and I had closed my eyes by the time she got back. She had changed her clothes, I noticed, and now she had on a sort of yellow-looking robe and appearing to be a lot older than the dress she was wearing when I first saw her at the bar.

“You still got your clothes on?” she said. “I thought you'd be ready for inspection by the time I got back. Let's get them duds off.”

I wasn't surprised, but I couldn't stop myself from acting like I was, jerking up in bed like an alarm clock had just gone off. What I'm saying, I guess, is I knew why we were in that little room Edith had led me to, and why she asked me for money, and what she did for a living, even though I'd never been with a woman like her before. I'd heard all about that kind of women from folks back in the Nation who'd taken trips down to Beaumont and ended up on Crockett Street where the whorehouses were located. Some of the Alabamas and Coushatta who'd climbed up the stairs of them places in Beaumont to where the women did their business and paid them for what they were selling liked to tell about what they'd done. It was something to brag about, going to bed with white women, and they would talk about it to anybody on the reservation who'd listen to what they'd done.

There in that little room in Lou Anne's, though, I was finding myself for the first time with a woman like that, and I was acting surprised and keyed up even though I didn't have any reason to. The woman named Edith wasn't the least bit bothered, and she took off her old yellow robe like there wasn't nobody to see her doing it, naked as she was underneath. The young women back in the Nation that I'd messed around a little bit with always took pretty seriously what was going on. They acted like something was happening. It was a thing between the two of you that needed full attention.

Edith now, she just pulled off that yellow robe, went over to the pitcher of water to pour some into that pan, and picked up a bar of soap and a rag lying there and looked over at me where I was sitting on the edge of the single bed. “Are you going to take off what you wearing and let me get you ready, or not?” she said.

I did what she said, trying to keep my eyes on her breasts and what she had down below them while I did, but I couldn't keep from mainly staring at her feet. They looked different, from the way they did when she was wearing them high-heeled shoes covering them up. Her bare feet looked tired to me, like they'd been walking around all day while she was cooking and washing clothes and drawing water out of a well, and picking beans out of the garden, and shelling them for supper and walking to the store to get some flour. Looking at Edith's feet as she walked toward me with that wet soapy rag held out in front somehow didn't make me feel like I did back on the reservation when I was trying to get Shirley Bullock to let me put my hand inside her dress or Nelda Had Two Fathers to let me kiss her some more.

I knew if I kept looking at Edith's feet or the way she was using that washrag on me and how she was looking close at my prick to see if anything looked funny about it that I'd never be able to carry out my part of the deal we'd made when I gave her that two dollars. So I closed my eyes and made myself think that it was really Wanda, the preacher's daughter back on the reservation. That let everything work out all right, and when I opened my eyes again, Edith was putting her yellow robe back on and telling me what a man I'd been to her there in that room in Lou Anne's and how she hoped I'd come back again. I knew better than that, but I thanked her, put on my clothes, and got out of that building as fast as I could.

The rest of that bunch of Rice Bird ballplayers were waiting on the street outside Lou Anne's smoking and sucking at bottles of beer and carrying on, and when they saw me they all let out a big yell. I knew I had a lot ahead of me to put up with, so I grinned the best I could and we all headed back for the high-school gym.

“Let me ask you something,” Dynamite Dunn said to Tubby Dean as we walked along in a bunch. “It's a medical question. I know you stay up on that subject.”

“What's that?” Tubby said. “I'll be glad to render my professional opinion.”

“How quick does the clap work on a man to the point where he can't throw a decent curve ball no more? Is it a day's time or does it take as long as a week?”

“His nerve structure starts to go in the first twenty-four hours,” Tubby said. “But his pecker won't drop off until about ten or twelve days after the contagion sets in. Sometimes it will hang on for as long as two weeks.”

“What if he's a left-hander?” Frank Millspaugh asked. “Does that make a difference?”

“A left-hander has got a real weak dick attachment,” Tubby said. “A lefty pitcher might be having to sit down to pee in less than a week after the clap gets a good hold on him and makes all that manly stuff fall off.”

“I got to run on ahead of y'all,” I said about then. “I got to get some rest to let me pitch tomorrow, and I want to practice sitting down to pee before I have to get up on that mound.”

I did that, taking off to run ahead so I could crawl onto my cot as quick as I could, but kept seeing that picture of Edith's naked tired feet in my head all the way to the high-school gym, all the way up until the time I fell asleep in that big room full of ballplayers, hoping I wouldn't dream about how wore out and used up her poor feet, the same shade of yellow as her old robe, looked to me.

The next morning I surprised myself by how rested I felt, although I did piss a lot more than I had to, trying to judge every time I did to see if anything felt different. I figured it might help if I drank a lot of water, and the result was what you'd expect. So much passing of water that my prick felt not exactly normal to me, but I couldn't tell if that was from my drinking an overload or the first signs of a disease kicking up. One thing I didn't do was ask anybody for advice or their opinion. Most of the ones who'd gone to Lou Anne's the night before had problems of their own with hurting heads and bellyaches, so they didn't show any interest in picking at me.

When I got up on the mound that day to warm up before the start of the game against the Alexandria Aces, I was a little off with putting the ball just where I wanted it to go. That was a good sign, though, like I've said before. The last thing a pitcher wants is to be too sharp too early. What that means usually is that you're about to have your best stuff hammered as soon as the umpire tells you to play ball. It's easy to hit your spots when there's no batter around.

The game started fine for me and went along that way for the first four or five innings. The other side got a hit or two and some base runners, but they hadn't scored and we had three runs in by then. My fastball was getting in there, and the curve was breaking like it was supposed to do. It wasn't until the top of the sixth when the trouble started.

I'd been walked and was taking a good lead at first base, and G.D. Squires was at bat when things kicked off. G.D. had done got two hits, a single and a double, and drove in two of our runs with that last one. The pitcher for Alexandria was a right-hander named Joe Irion, and he was about the best one they had. Not that day, though, and the trouble he was having was getting to him. I could tell that by the way he kept looking over at me at first base when I'd take my lead. He kept twisting his face up into a frown, letting me know I was bothering him just by being there, not even considering the length of the lead I took.

That made me feel naturally good, so I began to look back at the mound real strong, but to get more at the pitcher I put a smile on my face, and then I'd take a longer lead than I had before the last pitch. Being a right-hander, he was already at a disadvantage when he'd have to spin around to throw over to first base, and worse than that was I'd figured out when he was about to go to first instead of home. After watching him with runners on first, I picked up that he had the habit of tipping his glove toward the pitching rubber before he'd try a pick-off throw. Every time.

I don't know why his catcher didn't see that, but that wasn't my problem. So after about Irion's fourth throw over to first and me getting back well in front of all of them, I looked into the dugout and Dutch was pulling at both ears to let me know I could go anytime I saw I might be able to make it to second. I took my lead, stretched it, and Irion gave me a look intended to scare me back, but that glove was pointing toward home plate.

I took off when he went into his windup, and I was more than halfway to second by the time he let loose with a slow curve that must've broke way outside to G.D. Squires because the catcher didn't even bother to throw down to second once he got the ball. He fired it back to Irion pretty hard, and I expect that helped make that pitcher do what he did on the next pitch to the batter—throw a high inside pitch to G.D. in a spot guaranteed to hit the batter if he jerked back from it. G.D. did, and the ball hit him high on the shoulder and glanced off and took him on the ear.

G.D. was fiery anyway. He had already got two hits off Irion and drove in two runs, and I knew he was still hurting from the amount of whiskey he'd drunk the night before in Lou Anne's. He'd also lost over ten dollars trying to guess right on the numbers coming up on dice, so when Joe Irion hit him on purpose, it just flew all over G.D. Ordinarily, I do believe G.D. would've just looked real severe at the pitcher who'd hit him, maybe throwed his bat down pretty hard, and trotted down to first to take his base while maintaining that stare at the pitcher who'd hit him.

This time, though, with all that bad stuff eating him, G.D. ran directly toward the mound, still carrying his bat, the catcher and umpire right behind him, and Joe Irion throwed down his glove and hollered at G.D., “Come on, you wall-eyed son-of-a-bitch.” By the time the two of them had run together and the catcher had caught hold of G.D.'s bat from behind, I had trotted on down the base path and stole third and stood there watching them tussle.

Most times when something like that happens in a game, no real damage gets down. The two men going at each other will throw a couple of wild punches, just looping their fists at each other because neither one wants to get his knuckles bruised up nor a finger bent back. Baseball players got to use their hands all the time, no matter what position they play. It ain't like in football where over half of the ones on the field never touches a ball, no matter how they might like to.

The catcher and umpire are generally all that's needed to take care of stopping any tussling match, and maybe the manager or the first base and third base coaches will come trotting up, their hand all raised to signal it's time to calm things down. But sometimes a tussle will go on long enough for somebody in one of the dugouts to pop up and come running. If one player on the bench does, another one will, and next thing you know, you have the whole bunch from both sides running at each other. They don't want to fight. I'm not saying that. And if you look the next time you see what these TV commentators call a bench-clearer happening, you don't have to look close to see most of the ones coming to fight are running in slow motion. The ones who're the slowest to get there and the easiest to calm down are always the pitchers, too. They do not want to chance doing any damage to the tools they use to make a living with.

But that day when the tussle between G.D. Squires and Joe Irion took place, it happened to be located in Alexandria, Louisiana, in the Evangeline League, and that was a different deal altogether. Them two come together like Alligator and Cotton Mouth Moccasin was always doing in them stories McKinley Short Eyes would tell back in the Nation. Them two enemies meant business, and that bunch of teams put together in the Evangeline League was also called the Hot Sauce League. The Evangeline League might have been named for a heartbroke girl in a poem, but on the baseball field that girl could be rough as a cob. She would burn you up.

From where I was standing safe on the bag beside the Alexandria Aces third baseman, a fellow named Plantier Butaud, I was prepared to watch the fight get broke up before it got started good. The catcher had done pulled G.D. Squires' bat out of his hand, so G.D. wouldn't have to swing that club and find a way for it not to hit Joe Irion as he come off the mound. The umpire was ready to throw somebody out of the game if he had to, and the two managers were just coming out of their team's dugouts, moving slow but on their way, so me and Plantier Butaud was watching peacefully together standing there on third.

“That was a pretty good lick Joe hit him with that ball,” Plantier said. “I bet he thought Squires would jump back quicker than he did.”

I was just fixing to tell the Aces third baseman why G.D. was a step slower than usual that day, when the first bunch of people in the stands along the first base line started hopping and crawling over the wall. Them fans are the ones who will take any excuse to come on the field first at a game, the cheap-ticket folks. The ones who paid the least was a lot more nimble and a lot drunker than the ones able to come up with the full sixty cents for a grandstand seat. The cheap-seat folks always took full advantage of getting their two-bits worth at a game.

But by the time I'd got the first few words out to explain to Plantier Butaud why G.D. had been too disabled by a whiskey hangover to get out of the way, the infield was already swarming with that bunch of drunks and worked-up folks from the first base stands. “Shit,” Plantier said. “I guess I ought to run up in there and help out.”

“Well,” I said. “Yeah, I expect so. I guess I won't be called out for leaving this base.”

“No, the ump will throw you out for fighting instead, I imagine. So you won't have to worry about leaving the bag. I suppose I ought to take a swing at you, though, Batiste. In case somebody's watching.”

“All right,” I said. “I'll take a poke at you, but I won't connect if you don't.”

“I ain't planning to do that,” the Aces third baseman said. “What you take me for?”

“I reckon you're a ballplayer,” I said and drew back my fist and let fly at the air close to Plantier Butaud's shoulder.

“Here comes a fist that'd take an ordinary man out if it was to hit him,” Plantier said and swung back at me, getting no closer than I'd got to him. “See you later. I'm on my way to push and shove.”

I followed him, a step or two behind, and by the time I got to the vicinity of the pitcher's mound, folks were falling on the ground in knots and bunches, pulling at each other's clothes and arms and heads and feet, and the ballplayers on both the Rice Birds and the Aces teams were mainly aiming their pushing and shoving at the civilians from the stands. Ballplayers will take up for each other in that situation, no matter what uniforms they're wearing.

I grabbed a fellow by his shirt front and pulled him around to face the other direction, gave him a nudge and watched him fall to the ground, and looked around for somebody else to lay hold of. I felt something hit me on the left ear, and I backed off to get away from whoever that was and ran directly into somebody behind me. That tripped me up, giving me the chance to roll away from the clot of people grunting and cussing and hollering and falling one way and another.

“Gemar,” I heard Dutch Bernson say. “Get up and run back to the dugout. Don't you get hurt, or I'll kick your ass until your nose bleeds.”

I did what my manager told me, and by the time I ducked down inside the dugout, things were clearing out on the field. A sheriff's deputy with a whistle was blowing the hell out of it, and the fans who'd been knocked around by the Aces and Rice Birds were trickling back toward the fence on the first base line, satisfied. Folks who'd paid full price for the grandstand seats were still in them or standing on them, enjoying the fight scene, and it was time for me to go back to third base, where I hadn't been tagged out.

“Kiss my ass if this ain't a show,” Phil Pellicore said to me. “Did you see me deck that bastard wearing a necktie with a hula girl on it, Gemar? I popped him real good.”

“Did you hurt your hand?” I said. “I didn't hit nobody with neither one of mine.”

“Naw, hell,” Phil said. “You better not have hit nobody with your left, rookie. I used my forearm, just like back on the football field. And I tell you what.”

“What?”

“It felt real good to me,” he said. “I got to go get on Dynamite and give him some shit. He was getting his ass whipped by a big fat man last time I saw him. Just grunting like a hog.”

Phil went off to do that, and in a few minutes, I was back safe on third, a different pitcher was on the mound for the Alexandria Aces, and Harry Nolan was up at the plate for G.D. Squires, who was back in the clubhouse lying down on a bench with a wet rag over his face. I didn't get knocked in home by Harry, but he was happy to brag about being put into a game to bat for the first time in twelve years and three leagues. “I got good wood on the ball,” he told everybody who'd listen to him. “And if it hadn't gone foul, it would've been a real pretty bunt down the third base line. It'd been a squeeze play.” Nobody bothered to tell Harry he couldn't have run it out and the squeeze wasn't on in the first place.

“Gemar,” Dutch told me after our third out of the inning before I went back out to the mound. “You got to let these assholes know they can't throw at a Rice Bird like that.”

“If I hit a batter, this same mess'll happen all over again.”

“Hell, I know that. I don't mean for you to hit nobody, but the first man up, I want you to scare the bejesus out of him. I done told Dynamite you're going to be doing it, so he'll be ready.”

“Throw close to that first batter, then,” I said. “That's what you're telling me.”

“I want you to bring that Thunder Bolt to bear,” Dutch said. “Put it high inside and give him room to back up from it.”

“What you mean by Thunder Bolt? You mean a fastball?”

“Listen, Gemar. This here is going to get us some notice in the newspaper. Tommy Grenier, that reporter for the
Rayne Tribune
, he called your fastball that, and when they ask me about this little dust up here in Alexandria, I'm going to keep on calling your pitch that.”

“Thunder Bolt?” I said. “You going to call my curve what that reporter did, too?”