Dirty Rice (35 page)

Mike stopped then and looked hard at me, like he was waiting and wanting me to say something back, but I just nodded. That seemed to satisfy him.

“You now, being an Indian, you ain't limited to the Evangeline League. Hell, if you pitch or hit good enough, you could end up playing in the big leagues. You could go all the way to the top. You ever heard of Chief Bender? Jim Thorpe?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But they wasn't real Indians like me and the People I belong to. They was from that Oklahoma bunch. Sac Fox and Cherokee. They been white for so long they don't know what it is to be Indian no more.”

“Everybody called them that. They passed for Indians.”

“You pass for redbone,” I said, knowing that wasn't the same as what he was talking about, but I figured it was true enough to gig Mike a little. I was thinking about that popped-up bunt he made against the Monroe Zephyrs on what he called a missed and wrong sign and about that cut-off he'd made of my throw to third in that first game with the Opelousas Indians and the other one, the throw over Tubby Dean's head at first that let in two runs. I didn't want to let Mike off that easy.

“Here's what it comes down to then, Gemar,” Mike said. “I got to make all the money I can right now while they're letting me play in the Evangeline League for Rayne, and there ain't no tomorrow for me. I got to get them dollars quick.”

“Do you want to borrow a little from me? Is that what you're talking about?”

“You ain't got any money, not the kind I need anyway, and I ain't asking for any. But you might get some one day just for playing good baseball, and I never will. That's the fix I'm in.”

“How deep is he into you?” I said. “Sal Florio?”

“That depends,” Mike Gonzales said, giving me a quick sharp look and then dropping his head, “on which way you asking about and which way I see it.”

“How many ways is it?” I said. “Can you still count them up?”

“I can tell you it falls into two kinds of ways that Sal Florio and that bunch is into me, like you call it. One way's got something to do with the other one, though, so it ain't easy to talk about one without the other one coming up.”

I didn't say anything right back to him, but I knew what he meant by talking about the connection between one thing gone wrong and another one. The situation of a baseball game will not allow for a fair sharing of strength of mind and purpose. It is not give and take. It is take and keep.

“I'm listening to you, Mike,” I said. “I'll do that just this one time.”

“I guess it's an old story, from what I've heard said, but it's a new one to me. Sal Florio's always been real good to me and to you, too. The first time he saw us he paid our drinking bill. You remember that, don't you? That's when it all started up.”

“I remember Sal Florio before I even met him,” I said. “I been hearing about him since I was a kid in the Alabama-Coushatta Nation. Yeah, I remember him holding his hand out toward me on many an occasion this season.”

“Well, I took him up on it. I don't know how you heard about Sal before you met him. But with me, it came down to putting money on what horses might win a race, what numbers might come up on a pair of tumbling dice, what rooster would kill another one, where a wheel would stop turning after a man had give it a good hard spin, what card would be in whose hand when it came time to flop them over, things like that. I predicted wrong too many times.”

“I didn't know you had that kind of money to gamble on all them kinds of things,” I said.

“Sal would give me some money at first, and I lost it, and I ended up owing a lot more than I could pay off on. And then he stopped giving me money and went to advancing me the dough I needed to put on all those tables to try to catch up. I kept falling further behind, and I never have caught up. Yet.

“But Sal Florio's told me ways to get more money that'll let me pay what I owe them folks in Baton Rouge and Ville Platte and New Orleans and Hammond and have enough left over to pay for a place to live of my own and a automobile that's brand new and belongs to me and all the rest of it. Eating high-dollar meals in restaurants and taking pretty women places and wearing good duds. You get the picture, don't you?”

I said I did, and then I asked him what new way Sal Florio had come up with to let Mike Gonzales afford to live like that. I knew what the answer was in general. But I wanted to make Mike have to tell me himself and not just nibble around the edge of what he was having to finally eat the whole heaping plate of. Take the full goddamn bite, I was telling him.

“You already know some of it,” Mike said. “You seen it in Monroe and in Rayne when Cliff Labbé was pitching that first game of this series.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I did, and I ain't the only one it hurt to see that, neither.”

“I did my part today, though, didn't I, Gemar?” Mike said. “You liked that double play I started that put Opelousas away for good. You told me you did.”

I said something back to Mike in the language of the People, and I did that for a couple of reasons.

“What'd you just say?” Mike said. “I can't talk Indian.”

“No, I forgot for a minute that the only words you can use belong to the white folks and you're just borrowing them for a while. That ain't all the way your fault, though, how you was raised. I'll give you that. But let me ask you something. Why are you telling me what I already knew most of just from watching you play ball and from figuring out what was going on? Is it like what they do in the Catholic church Miz Velma Doucette goes to? Is it a confession you're making to me, to ease your mind? I ain't no priest like them preachers call themselves in that big church on Main Street in Rayne. I can't do you no good. I can't forgive you and I can't ask Abba Mikko to do it, neither. I don't believe he works like that.”

“No, I'm not looking for you to say it's all right what I got myself into and what I done once I got there,” Mike said. “I'm asking you to help me climb out of it.”

“You done said you ain't asking for money, which I don't have in the first place. So what can I do for you?”

“You know what it is, Gemar. And if you can see your way clear to helping me out of this fix, you'll get a lot more than just me saying thank you for saving my ass.”

“Go ahead and tell it out, Mike,” I said, feeling the tingling start in the back of my head and and the tips of my fingers and the bottom of my feet. It would begin to move toward the middle of my chest and then to my forehead, and it would get hot as it traveled, but it would turn as cold as the ice on Bear Lake in the Starving Month Moon once it hit my forehead. “Don't expect me to tell you what you're asking me to do. I want to hear you say it.”

“You ain't even pitching that third game, Gemar,” Mike said. “You wouldn't have to take the loss, since you won't be on the mound. It'd be Hookey that didn't win it. To hell with that white man, I say. He led the league last year in wins, and you got that record now, no matter what happens in the playoff series. Can't nobody catch you. You're already the best pitcher in the Evangeline League this season. You don't have to prove nothing no more. Everything's open up to you now. Your future's waiting for you. Follow what I'm saying?”

“Not until you say it all, every last bit of it, Mike. Every last bite that's left to swallow down.”

“All you got to do, all Sal Florio said to tell you he wants to see, is for you not to come through at bat just one time when it would mean something. And if that don't do it, just to let one ball get by in the outfield when it would do Opelousas the most good. Do that, and all my debts is wiped out, and I'll get enough money so I can make it to next season, and you'll get enough to set you up for a long time. I know you send money to your old man and old lady and the kids. Think how much you can help them out if you do the smart thing.”

Just as Mike got those words out of his mouth, I felt the ice set up in my head, the chill which let me move to do what my body told me it intended, and I watched myself start toward the man who'd been talking to me. He backed up quick, though, and my foot slipped in some gravel on the ground under the witch tree, that live oak full of Spanish moss, and I couldn't get to Mike before he turned and ran toward the other side of the street where the Rice Bird players were milling around the bus. By the time I got there close up behind him, somebody in the bunch reached out to grab me and I was able to pull away from that one, but the next one hung on until we both slipped down, banging up against the bus as we did. It was Dynamite Dunn, fully drunk by now, and enjoying himself as we wrestled around on the street. That scuffle got broke up quick, and Mike Gonzales was nowhere in sight, and the chill of what I'd wanted to do to him was gone from my head.

“Gemar,” G.D. Squires said, “I've heard of perfectionists before, but I swear I never saw a pitcher get pissed off at a shortstop because the last ball he fielded wasn't handled pretty enough. Son, you ain't drunk. That's your problem. Don't ride in that old toad mobile back to Rayne. Come get in my car with some people that know how to act after they kicked another team's ass and tied up a playoff series. We got to get some proper nourishment into our pitcher.”

I did that. We started out at a place in Opelousas called the Bon Ton and ended up at the Blue Goose in Rayne, though I don't remember that on my own. I acted the Indian and drank the white man's firewater, and by the time they rolled me into my bed in Miz Doucette's house, I was passed out like I was supposed to be. The only good Indian is a dead Indian, according to what some white eyes general said to his troops right after the Sioux and Cheyenne took out General Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at the Greasy Grass, and I ended up being a damn good one at the end of the night that started in Opelousas where Mike Gonzales had offered me money to do wrong against the game of baseball.

The next morning Miz Doucette did what she could for me. It was just her and me at breakfast, which I'd got to late, and she knew why. She cooked me some scrambled eggs and grits and sausage, but I didn't want to eat any of what she heaped up on my plate.

“Now, Gemar,” she told me, “I know your mind is saying no to what your eyes are seeing, but I have spent a long time living in Louisiana, and I guarantee you what I've fixed for you to eat will act in your body's favor. Don't listen to what your brain's telling you. It is out of commission and has been for a while, and you can't trust what it tells you. Now, I'm going to do one last thing here to help you get over all that celebrating.”

With that said, she shook some red stuff out of a little bottle onto the eggs, careful not to get any on the grits, setting there to themselves and sending up a little wisp of steam. “That's Louisiana hot sauce,” Miz Doucette said. “It's from tabasco peppers growed in Louisiana and made in New Iberia, and just looking at it, you'd think it's the last thing you'd want in the shape you're in. But you'd be wrong in that judgment. It's just what you need. Eat some grits first, then the eggs, and save the sausage to last. You'll see I'm telling you the truth.”

I did what she said, and she was right, and by the time I'd cleaned up all she'd cooked for me, I was feeling a lot better. The woman knew her drunks and what they needed to get them back on the road to recovery. I considered that I might make it through the day if I stepped careful and kept my eyes set on the line of the horizon where nothing was moving.

While I ate, Miz Doucette talked to me a good bit about the wedding plans being put into place for Teeny and the Big Man Eater, though that wasn't what she called Clayton LeBlanc, and I made myself listen to every word she said, answering back when I was supposed to and looking at her face while I did that. I had to pay for what I'd put my body through, and I figured I might as well start with hearing about the joyful union to come between that woman with the shining black hair and the perfect shaped face who'd asked me to kiss and love her and the Big Man Eater I'd always been warned was waiting somewhere ahead of me in the dark.
.
 
.
 
.

• • •

I could see that the crowd in Addison Stadium for that final game of the Evangeline League playoff wasn't as big as the one had been in Opelousas, but it was more than I'd ever seen before for a home game in Rayne. Before we'd got out on the field to warm up and listen to all the talking and introducing and music playing that was going to be done before clock time stopped and baseball time kicked in, all us players had to sit in the clubhouse and listen to a big lineup of folks telling us one thing and another. Usually nobody but Dutch Bernson wanted to act the manager and talk to us about the struggle to come, but this time it seemed like everybody wanted to get his say in.

The owners was there and the Evangeline League folks, all of them having a little speech to make to us about how proud they was of our effort and what it meant to Louisiana and the sport of baseball itself, the mayor of Rayne was there with some other folks I'd seen around town in stores and at the post office and the cafes and diners and all the other places where they had stuff for sale to folks with the money to buy it, and like always Sal Florio was in full sight working his way from one man to another, laughing and backslapping, with Soapy Tonton moving close behind him like he was tied to his boss with a steel cable.

Mike Gonzales was not in his usual place beside me on the bench where we'd get ready before we'd go out on the diamond for practice or for games, but I didn't have to look hard to see where he was. He couldn't sit still. He was walking around from one place to another, talking loud to everybody he could find to listen to him, and I made sure he'd be able to tell I wasn't paying him no mind if he was wondering about that subject.

Right after Dutch Bernson had made his speech to us, saying the same things he always did to remind us it was a baseball game we was fixing to play and telling us this was the last one of the season for the whole Evangeline League, speaking like he was bringing us the latest news that we hadn't had a chance to be up on yet, Dynamite Dunn eased over to me to say something. Ordinarily, Dynamite would have been fastened like a wood-tick on a cur dog to the pitcher he was about to catch in the game at hand, and he wouldn't have been looking at or talking to nobody but him.

Because he's the only one who can see everybody at every position on the field, the catcher in his squat behind home plate gets to believing he's the sole authority for what's going on. A pitcher's got to indulge him in that wrong way of thinking, if he wants to keep the catcher halfway sane throughout the course of nine innings of ball. They are crazy enough on their own without help from a pitcher who ain't got the sense to act like he buys the catcher's opinion of what's real. You want your catcher to be calm and if not that, at least able to stay steady in his crouch with his mitt held up for a target.

So I was a little surprised when Dynamite left Hookey Irwin alone long enough to come over to me and say something. I wasn't worried about Hookey being lonely, though, since I figured he'd enjoy a few minutes of being able to breathe deep and stare down at the floor and consider what he'd got himself into, the way every pitcher with any brains will do before he goes up on that little hill and tries to get a ball past a man with a club in his hand dying to knock the living inspiration out of what's coming at him. Hookey was always quieter than most pitchers before he pitched a game anyway—during it, too—and he wouldn't regret not having to listen to all them expressions of danger and concern from his catcher.

“Dutch is wearing Herbert today,” Dynamite said to me. “See him patting his hat?”

“How old is this toad? Is it a new Herbert?”

“I don't know if he is or not. Do you reckon it would go better for us if the toad was new or an old hand at the game?”

“I like and would prefer a rookie,” I said. “They bring new blood to a team.”

“True enough, I reckon,” Dynamite said. “But it's something to be said for experience. A man with that is got something to fall back on when times get hard. Nothing surprises him, and he won't get flustered like a rookie might.”

“You think a toad's the same? How will a rookie toad show he's got flustered, if he is?”

“In this case, the new Herbert might shit on the manager's head, if he sees something strange take place in the game. Don't you think? He might lose his head and not maintain bowel control.”

“You're saying his composure might leave him,” I said. “He might be overcome by running into something he hadn't expected. He might bust out from underneath that warm Rice Bird hat where he's being kept in the dark.”

“Composure? Where'd you pick up a six-bit word like that, Gemar?”

“In the schoolhouse, I reckon. A man will learn the word he needs to help him out,” I said. “I don't need to know what to call any part of an automobile engine or the insides of a radio or what allows a airplane to get off the ground. That ain't nothing to me. But the word composure might could fit me just fine about now.”

“What about the word pressure? Does that ring a bell for you, Chief Batiste?” Dynamite said.

“You mean because it's a game we got to win today?”

“Or maybe got to lose,” Dynamite Dunn said. “Looking at the other side of the coin. Let's put it in terms of money.”

“You ain't afraid Hookey's not going to be able to set them down, are you?” I said, speaking careful. “He looks to me like he ought to look about now before he goes out there to pitch.”

“What you mean by that, how Hookey's looking? Don't you think I got him ready? I've been laying down the law to the boy. I done all I can.”

“He looks like he just got the news his mama's in a dying state and that his dog got run over by a gasoline truck. He just heard his house is caught fire and his old lady's drunk in the middle of the day in a bar in Baton Rouge,” I said. “Yeah, he looks to me like he's ready to pitch a game of baseball.”

“What if things don't go right in this last one?” Dynamite said, after grinning a little bit about I'd said about Hookey's appearance. “Will it matter that much? We had a real good season, the Rice Birds did. Best we had so far. And for you, it couldn't be no damn better. Now, could it? If the Rice Birds win or lose, you're in the driver's seat. Just relax and take it easy, come what may. That's all you got to do. I don't think we got much to lose, one way or the other. It don't make that much difference now, I reckon, if we lose this last one or win it.”

“Let me put it to you like this, catcher,” I said. “I want to win this last one, and it don't make a bit of difference what happened in any game before this one with the Opelousas Indians today. Baseball don't give a damn what you did in your last at-bat or how good your last curve ball broke if you're the pitcher, or where your bunch ranks in the standings. Now is all baseball's studying. Right now, and even now don't last. It's gone before you can say it's here.”

“You talk like baseball is something alive, Gemar,” Dynamite said. “Like it's as real as these shin guards and chest protector I put on every day. It ain't nothing like that. It ain't here. What you're calling baseball don't even exist. It can't think.”

“Baseball don't think,” I said. “It does better than that. It knows. You don't have to think to know. The more you think about a thing, the less you know about it. Everything jumps around and won't stay still when you have to think about it.”

“God a mighty, you pitchers are crazier than shit. No wonder my nerves is gone, having to deal on a regular basis with you bunch of insane naturals. Let me tell you one more thing, hoss. All pitchers as a breed is crazy, but there ain't nobody crazier than a pitcher who's an Indian on top of that. That don't mean I don't like you fine, understand. I'm just stating a fact.”

“All right. That's fine with me. I don't want you to like me. I just want you not to let no more balls I pitch get by you. Get down in the dirt and dig them out.”

“I got to go see about Hookey,” Dynamite said. “He's my next patient in need of treatment.”

“Go ahead, catcher,” I said. “I know he's waiting on you, but let me tell you one more word I learned the meaning of a day or two ago. It's one I might have read or heard somebody say once, but I never paid no mind to it before, like I wouldn't to the name for an engine part on a brand new automobile or what WPA means.”

“What word's that? It sounds interesting.”

“It's nuptials,” I said. “That is the word I learned. That's the one I got by heart now and know what it means down to the bone.”

“I told you, didn't I, about that woman. I said not to let yourself get dragged into anything having to do with her, tempting as it is. You can't say I didn't warn you.”

“You did, Dynamite,” I said. “But you know pitchers. They will not listen to a thing a catcher says to them.”

“To my sorrow I know that. It's my burden, and that's the cross I got to bear. Let me go talk now to this next son-of-a-bitch that ain't going to pay mind to a single word I say.”

It didn't make any difference to Hookey Irwin what that last thing was that his catcher told him before the umpire hollered play ball and got things going, but I reckon he made out like he was listening well enough to get Dynamite Dunn willing to stop talking, go out on the diamond, and crouch down behind the plate set and ready. He did that, and the game kicked off fine. Hookey had his stuff for a good long while before things began to show some signs of unraveling.

I was in right field for that last game instead of center, because Dutch said he had a feeling it was going to be more balls hit in that direction than usual. I didn't bother to ask him why he felt that way. Sometimes a hunch will pay off, even for a baseball manager, and it will look like his master plan was thought through and was the only one that could've been right. I believe in signs and wonders as much as the next man on a baseball team, and I know it's no way to prove a one of them. So I didn't question Dutch, and he didn't have to convince himself he had a reason for putting me in right field.

I liked playing center field more than right, since you're likely to get more chances for action in that position, but there's advantages for the man in right, too. The main one is you can see better from that angle what the pitcher is doing, him being side on to you rather than in front with his back turned your direction, and you can tell better when he's staying strong and when he starts to flagging. A pitcher's posture is the tip off, the way he holds himself, both in his motion and in between pitches. Hookey stayed strong well up into the sixth inning, bending and striding like he ought to, and he didn't start to lose velocity on his fastball until the seventh. His curve was still biting the air pretty good even then, though, and he started going to that and to a change-up and a drop, what they call now a cut fastball or sometimes a slider. I don't buy all them new extra names they give pitches these days, since a man throwing a ball now ain't that different from a man doing the same thing in 1935.