Dirty Rice (22 page)

That night when I got back to Miz Velma Doucette's house on Serenity Street, I was by myself. Mike Gonzales must have gone with Hookey Irwin somewhere to keep on drinking until they got their fill. I wasn't thinking about much of anything when I walked up on that dark porch. Not having to think about stuff is what a man is after when he puts a chunk of mikko root in his mouth. You will have dreams, now, if you take on too much mikko, so you have to watch what amount you pinch off.

“I listened to the whole thing on the radio,” somebody sitting in the dark in the swing on Miz Doucette's porch said. “I was real proud of the way you played in that All-Star game.”

“Who is that?” I said in the language of the People. “Is it a witch? Have you covered your head with your blanket?”

“I don't know what you're saying when you don't talk English, Chief Batiste,” she said. “Don't you know that?”

“Teeny Doucette,” I said, this time in English. “I didn't know it was you. I thought you might've been one of them women who hides her eyes with a blanket.”

“Why would a woman do that?” she said, leaning forward. A shaft of light from the street lamp in front of the house on Serenity Street fell on her face. I still couldn't see her eyes, but the shadows of her cheekbones and the outline of her hair told me who she had to be. I said that to her.

“I can't be who I'm not, of course, Gemar,” Teeny Doucette said. “Nobody can do that. You're always going to be who you are, no matter how you try to hide it.”

“A witch is different,” I said. “A witch can make herself look like somebody else. She will want you to think that she ain't who she is. See, she can throw up a fog to hide her eyes, or she can look almost like somebody you already know. Then you'll be fooled.”

“All the time?” Teeny said. “This witch can always look like somebody she's not, and you'll never be able to tell her for who she really is?”

“She can do that if you can't see her eyes,” I said. “That's why she'll keep them hid long enough so you'll forget to look for them anymore. When you start making that mistake, forgetting to look, a witch won't have to worry then about you finding out.”

“Why's that?”

“You stop wanting to know who she really is. You stop caring. She can let you see her eyes like they really are then, and it won't make any difference to you.”

“Why would you stop caring if she's really a witch or not, or what her eyes tell you?”

“You give up,” I said to Teeny Doucette sitting there in the dark of the moon. “You give up because you ain't yourself like you used to be. You don't belong to who you are or who you used to be.”

“Who do you belong to then?”

“Her,” I said. “You belong to her. You belong to the witch.”

“Are you glad you do?”

“You ain't got any say so in the matter. So yes, you're glad. You quit being the one who didn't want to be the witch's. Now you want to be.”

“Can you see my eyes?” Teeny said.

“I can always see your eyes. As soon as I first saw your eyes, I didn't care any more who you really might be.”

“Am I a witch to you, Gemar Batiste? Is that what you're telling me?”

“I don't care if you are or not,” I said, stepping out of the street light and moving into the dark place where she was sitting in the porch swing. “It don't make no difference to me. Not ever again.”

“Look at my eyes then,” she said.

“I don't have to,” I said. “I can't see them no more. But that don't matter. I got them in my head now, and I always will.”

• • •

I don't know what time it was when Mike Gonzales came drunk into the room, but I was by myself asleep in bed. I was somewhere in that dream I had after Teeny had left and gone back to her room, next to where her mother slept. Teeny was quiet when she was with me, and nobody who wasn't right there in the room with us could've known we were together. Like some women in them stories McKinley Short Eyes would tell us, Teeny was there with me, but there was no sign after she left she'd ever been there.

I'd put my face deep into the black hair that floated up from her head onto the pillow, and I kept my eyes closed so as not to see her look into them. During that time together, I didn't think I was ever touching her. She was there in my bed, but she was somewhere else, too, and I couldn't get to that place or know where it was. While I kissed her and heard her make those songs in my ear, songs sung so low nobody could hear the music but me, I knew that when I saw her in the morning daylight, she would not be who she had been with me the night before. There together with her was a sad time, and I had tears to shed. But I would not let her see me cry, and I thought ahead to the next day when I saw her, I would not be seeing the woman who'd been with me in the dark the night before.

When she left me in the room by myself, some of the dream that took me belonged to the mikko root. I could bear to live through the mikko dream, and I could run from the Big Man Eater with my feet feeling like stones stuck in sand. I could survive that dream and wake from it. But I knew I'd never get away from the part of that dream that belonged to Louisiana in the swamp country where the land is flat all the way to the end of the world.

The Rice Birds had a home stand with two teams starting up the week after the Evangeline League took off work for the All-Star game, and we had the last half of the season to get through before the playoff games would come. That would match up the top two teams in the standings, and our bunch was now only two games out of first place. Dutch Bernson took it into his head to remind us of what all that meant right before we started that first game of the series with the Lake Charles Explorers.

“He's got him a new toad under his hat this morning,” Dynamite Dunn said as we all stood around in a circle to listen to Dutch explain things to us. “He found him one yesterday in a mud puddle somewhere.”

“Gents,” Dutch Bernson said, patting a couple of times on the top of his cap. That made the toad move around a little, and you could see a bulge start sticking up in the hat's material. “We're sitting pretty close to where we want to be. And that's fine and dandy for right now. But I expect it's some of you that ain't got your priorities understood or straight yet. Some of you might still think the main question here has to do with playing baseball. Let me tell you. It ain't.”

Nobody said anything out loud at that, and I fastened my eyes on a couple of gulls circling in the air above Addison Stadium. The two white colored birds had their heads cocked to one side as they glided above us, and hoping probably that somebody standing on the ground would throw something up at them they could catch and eat.

“Oh, we got to win enough games to get us where we want to go,” Dutch was saying. “That goes without saying. But winning baseball games ain't the point of why you're playing in the Evangeline League. Now is it, Phil?” He meant Phil Pellicore, who'd been with the Rice Birds since the Evangeline League started up.

“Hell, no,” Phil said. “I'm playing so I can beat this panic we're in.”

“I want y'all to hear what Phil just said back to me. What he means is the reason to bear down and win enough games to get into the playoff ain't got a damn thing to do with the games themselves. They are a means to an end, boys, and you got to keep that in mind. The more games we win, the more we can play. If we get in the playoff against Opelousas or whatever bunch it ends up being, the Rice Birds make more money. And you'll get paid more for a longer time. Ain't that what it's about? Baseball games is a means to an end, and that's all they are. Them other teams want to beat you for one reason only, and it ain't got nothing to do with proving which team is the best. No sir. They want to beat you so they can take the food out of your mouth and the clothes off your back.”

“They trying to rob us then. Take our stuff,” Tubby Dean said. “That what you saying, Dutch?”

“I wish he wouldn't talk back to him like that,” Dynamite Dunn said to me out of the side of his mouth. “Tubby's just giving the Old Man more to work with and more reason to talk.”

“Do you believe what Dutch is saying?” I said.

“I don't believe nothing anybody says,” Dynamite said. “I used to believe my mama, but I kept catching the bitch in lies.”

“In the meantime,” Dutch said, cutting his eyes over at me and Dynamite, “before we get to the end of the regular season and praise God, maybe get to play more games in the playoff, we got to find better ways to make money right now. Mr. LeBlanc and Mr. Guidry have let me know that, and they got some ideas about how to increase profits. I'm going to be talking to some of you about that. And you better listen to what I say, if you want to keep eating regular.”

Dutch talked on a little more, but I stopped listening to him.

It was the next day right after warm-up before the first game was set to begin that Dutch Bernson said something that let me know I should've spent less time watching sea gulls sail around and more of it trying to figure out how what he'd said to us applied to me. I was going to pitch the next night, so he had me scheduled to play in the outfield, and when Dutch asked me to come into his office, I figured he was going to talk about the pitcher I'd be batting against. Or maybe look ahead a little and get a head start on going over the Lake Charles hitters so I could be thinking about how I'd pitch to them the next day.

“Gemar,” he said, shifting that wad of Brown Mule chewing tobacco in his jaw. “We got a few minutes here before the first pitch, so I want to tell you what Mr. Guidry's been talking to me about. A couple of things that's bound to do you some good and the Rice Birds, too, maybe. We want to see what you think. Ready to listen?”

I nodded.

Dutch had started talking at a pretty good clip. “Everybody's real happy with the way things have been turning out for you here in Rayne, Gemar.” Dutch was saying. “It ain't no reason to tell you what you been doing on the diamond for the Rice Birds. Hell, you want to hear more about that, go read the newspapers or listen to the radio station. The thing is, see, that you being who you are and what you are has got as much to do with your time on the team here as your hitting and pitching does. It has more to do with it, to tell you the truth. Do you see what I'm getting at?”

“Not right off, no,” I said.

“Let me put it to you this way. What do the fans do when Dynamite Dunn gets a hit or Hookey strikes out a batter or Mike Gonzales does a flip and catches a hot grounder and throws somebody out?”

“Holler?”

“Right. What do they holler?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Just holler. That what you mean?”

“That is exactly what I mean. Now what do they holler when you get a hit or strike somebody out when you're pitching?”

“The same thing?”

“Nope,” Dutch said. “Sometimes they just yell, yeah, sure. But most of the time, they holler
chief
or
Thunder Bolt
or
tomahawk
or
scalp'um
or some shit like that. Am I lying now, Gemar? Tell me the truth.”

“Some folks do, yeah. They holler stuff like that. Don't make much sense, it seems like to me.”

“Not to you, no,” Dutch said. “You're just doing your job, and that's playing baseball. But to them folks in the stands, the ones that buy them tickets that feed the bulldog, a lot more is going on than just baseball. Hell, anybody can play baseball.”

“No, they can't.”

“Well, not anybody. What I'm saying is that any baseball player can play ball. There can't just anybody be an Indian and play baseball. You can take that and write it up on the wall and get it by heart.”

“No,” I said. “You're right about that, manager. First you got to be an Indian to do that.”

“We're getting somewhere now,” Dutch said, leaning forward in his chair quick enough to make the toad jump in his hat. “I see we're talking about the same thing here. We're getting to a meeting of minds now, like they say on the radio when they're doing the news.”

“An Indian is got to be an Indian first if he's going to be an Indian playing baseball. Yes, sir,” I said. “I will go along with you on that.”

“People will find that six bits to buy a ticket and a sack of peanuts and come to a ballgame if they figure it's worth it to them to spend their money that way. And what they're looking for is not just pitchers throwing the ball and batters hitting and running the bases. No, what people want, Gemar, is not just to see ballplayers doing what they do. The way how the players do it is what counts, and more than that, it's who's doing it is what really matters to your average man in the stands. You still follow me?”

“If you mean that folks want to see good players on the field, making good pitches and good at-bats and good plays in the field, I go along with that. And getting more runs than the other bunch, too. They want that. They don't want the short end.”

“You still not hearing what I'm saying, at least not all of it,” Dutch said. “Let me put it this way. Do you know I used to play baseball myself? Over in the Dixie League and up in the Sally League? A season and a half in the East Texas League, before they run me off.”

I nodded.

“I wasn't that good, but I wasn't that bad,” Dutch said. “A good journeyman first base and I'd hit the long ball now and then. But you know what? They stopped letting me play, and it wasn't because I got that bad so quick I had to be let go. No, it had nothing to do with whether I could still play or not. They did it because the folks in the stands watching me play got to where they didn't give a damn whether I got base hits or made good plays or came through in a pinch. I was bald-headed and had a belly and you see how I ain't no John Barrymore in the face. Fans never noticed me much to start with, and when they did start noticing me, they decided they didn't like me.”

I didn't make a sign, just kept my eyes on Dutch's cap where Herbert seemed to have found a good lodgment and wasn't moving around now at all. In a minute or so, Dutch started talking again, and I looked straight at a spot right in the middle of his forehead while he cranked up.

“No, they wanted to watch a goddamn college boy with a pretty face and blonde hair and blue eyes called Lonnie Lambert. He couldn't hit for shit, and he made more errors at first, but they let him take over where I'd been. That taught me something I ain't never forgot it. I'll tell you what it is. Stay pretty and do something people ain't used to seeing on the baseball field. Do that, and you'll stay around longer.”

“But you got to leave finally,” I said, “once you step across that white line that marks off the diamond from everything outside it. You can't get back across it.”

“Huh,” Dutch said and spit into the coffee can on his desk. “Well, to get down to it. Here's what Mr. Guidry and Mr. LeBlanc wants to happen with you. We got to play up this Indian business, and you got to do your part. Since you got here, more people has started coming to see the Rice Birds play than they ever did before, and not just here in Rayne at the home games. Wherever we go on the road now, the crowds there is bigger in every ballpark we play in. And it's because of Chief Batiste and the Thunder Bolt and the Snake Crawler, and since you did what you did in that All-Star Game in Baton Rouge, it's because of that goddamn homemade bat you used to do it with, too.”

“That particular bat might be getting old,” I said. “I ain't going to use it again much. I'm afraid to.”

“Gemar, you got to use it, and that ain't all you got to do.”

“It's a bat I used in only the one game,” I said. “I got the rest of my hits all season with just any one of the bats I'd pick up.”

“That ain't what the fans believe, hoss,” Dutch said. “And what they believe is what matters. They come to these ballparks in the Evangeline League all the way from Monroe to Morgan City to Houma mainly just for one thing.”

“To see a baseball game get played,” I said. “That's what they're there for, I reckon.”

“You reckon wrong, Gemar. Most of them's coming because they want to believe something good might happen that'll take their minds off what they dealing with, and it'll happen not because ballplayers are working hard at playing a game of ball. It's because some little thing you can't explain might pop up. Some little bit of magic is what they hoping to see. They don't believe just keeping your head down and doing a job of work is going to get it anymore. Not in this country. Not in this damn depression. It's the starving time, son. Folks have come to know you can't depend on nothing. Hard work ain't for shit. You got to count on magic.”

“You talking about a mojo?” I said. “Some kind of a charm or a good luck piece?”

“Call it whatever you want to, Gemar Batiste,” the manager of the Rice Birds said. “It comes down to this, what I'm fixing to tell you. Mr. Guidry and Mr. LeBlanc want to take you fishing out in the Gulf and talk things over with you.”

“Indian things,” I said.

“Indian things it is,” Dutch said and slapped his hand on the desk. It made a hard flat sound in that little room, like a beaver slamming its tail on the black water in Lost Man Marsh back in the Nation. “Next week when the Rice Birds play in Morgan City, that's when they're going to show you that good time out on the water. Catch some big fish, drink a little beer, and enjoy the fellowship. They'll lay things out for you. You ever been out on the ocean where you can't see land no matter where you look?”

“I spent all my time in the Nation looking for some other place I can see from there,” I said. “I ain't seen no speck of land yet to this day.”

“That's good, then, and I'm glad we had this talk and got these things said,” Dutch said, standing up from his chair and pulling at the crotch of his pants. “And got it all straightened out. You feel like you ready to go four for four today?”

“I never count on hitting a single ball that'll drop fair before any game I play in,” I said. “It ain't never no percentage in letting your mind take over like that.”