Mudville (8 page)

“I'm a history teacher, not a weatherman,” he says with a shrug. “All I know is, it's a darned good day for a picnic.”

Just when it starts to get dark, the mayor gets up in the old grandstand.

“I better get a few words in here before it starts to rain,” says the mayor, looking up at the perfectly cloudless sky. The crowd titters a bit. The mayor holds out his hand, palm up. “I think I felt a drop!” The crowd hoots and hollers.

“Well, it's been a long wait,” he says. “It's been a long wait, and I'm amazed and proud at how many people stayed here in town, waiting it out together. They must know what I always knew, which is that this is a special town. A town worth waiting out a little rain.”

Scattered applause. Whistles. Hoorahs.

I search the crowd for those two girls, but I don't see them.

“The pessimists out there say it's going to start again any second, but I think we're in for better times. Moundville will be … Well, I almost said this town would be great again, but it never stopped being great!”

Now the applause is more thunderous. People like being told they're great.

“Either way, the forecast now is sunshine. So enjoy your Fourth of July, and enjoy the fireworks. And we'll meet back here next year for more fun in the sun. Maybe we'll even have baseball!” There's an especially loud swell of applause, with cheering and foot stomping and hollering. The mayor waves goodbye and walks off the grandstand.

“Yeah!” I trade a high five with Steve. If there is baseball, we're pretty sure we'll be in it.

“I can't wait for that,” says Steve's dad. “Just like the good old days. If we can find someone to beat us, that is.” He lets out a loud guffaw, and some of the guys standing around us join in.

The fireworks are nothing by Sutton standards, but I'm blown away. Really, I am. A brilliant flash of colored lights against a tapestry of stars. I'm awed by them. I'm usually not a big fireworks guy, but I'm in the mood this year. I think it's because it's not raining, and because a cute girl might have smiled at me.

I walk home alone and find the house empty. I guess that my dad and Sturgis went out to see the fireworks and will be home any second. I kick back on the couch and watch a sports news show while Yogi nestles against me.

Dad and Sturgis get home about an hour later.

“Where were you guys?” It sounds like I'm the dad, waiting up for the kids.

“We went to watch the fireworks in Sutton,” my dad says.

“There were fireworks here, too.”

“Oh. Well, these were great!” says my dad. “You should've seen them!”

“Yeah,” says Sturgis, flopping down next to me and reaching for his book. Yogi abandons me to nuzzle Sturgis's arm.

“The fireworks here were good, too,” I tell my dad. I think it's weird that they'd head off to Sutton instead of seeing what was going on here in Moundville. I just don't get it.

“Well, we didn't know they'd have fireworks here,” says my dad. “It's not that far to Sutton. Oh, and, Roy, that reminds me. We need to talk.”

“About St. James Academy?” I guess.

“Right.”

“I don't have to go,” I tell him. “It's no big deal.”

“It is a big deal,” he says. “But I don't see how we can swing it. I'm really sorry.”

“It's all right. I understand.”

“I'll call them tomorrow.” He gives me a one-armed hug before going off to his bedroom.

“Mind if I mute this?” Sturgis asks. “I'm kind of reading.”

“Whatever.”

He turns off the sound, and I look blankly at the screen while a bearded guy yells at the camera about something.

I'd really planned on going to St. James Academy, even if it was never officially official, so it's hard to adjust. I can't imagine getting very good coaching from a guy who's mostly a math teacher or something and just coaches on the side.
Sutton spends loads of money on football and basketball, but nothing on baseball.

The whole mess pushes the fireworks and Rita right out of my head.

I can't sleep that night. I'm wound up, thinking about every-thing.

“Hey, Sturgis,” I whisper. He's a pretty sound sleeper and doesn't respond.

I get out of bed and creep down the hall to my father's office. I turn on the desk light and fire up the computer. Yogi finds me there and jumps into my lap to help.

I check my e-mail, but there's nothing good. Check the baseball standings and see how Detroit's doing. They're on a tear this summer, which is way out of character for them.

Then I get an idea. I've been wondering about some-thing. I Google “Carey Nye” and get a few hundred results: player pages from baseball sites, autographed balls and jerseys on eBay, and so on. I follow the first link to a page on the official Orioles site. It's got a picture and some stats and a short biography.

“Carey Nye was once considered a top prospect in the Orioles organization,” the page reports. “He led the AAA Rochester Red Wings in wins and strikeouts one season and once pitched a no-hit shutout. He was not as successful in the majors. In his first year as a starter, he posted three wins and nine losses. He was transferred to the bullpen, where he was effective for short stints but inconsistent.”

Most of the other links all have the same information: a line of stats, maybe a brief description of a young pitcher who failed to live up to his promise. Nothing about his family.

So I Google “Carey Nye” and “Sturgis” at the same time and get exactly one result. It's some guy's biker blog, where he's posted a bunch of photos from the big motorcycle rally they have every year in Sturgis, South Dakota. There's a lot of pictures, so the page kind of goes on forever. Fat guys with big beards and tattoos sitting on Harleys. That kind of thing.

I figure the page came up because Sturgis is the name of the town. There must be other guys named Carey Nye in the world. I'm about to quit scrolling when I see his picture, though. He looks just like his baseball card, except he's wearing a denim jacket with the sleeves cut off and no shirt. With him is a kid, about four years old. His face is in the shadows, but I can tell it's Sturgis because of his long arms and legs.

“Carey Nye of the Baltimore Orioles,” the caption says. (He wouldn't have been an Oriole by that time, though.) “Named his kid Sturgis. HOW COOL IS THAT?”

I click back to Google and do another search on Carey Nye, wondering what happened to him. None of those biographies have what happened after he got cut by the Orioles. He just vanished off the face of the earth.

I find the answer in an old column on the
Sporting News
site. The article is basically about how pro athletes don't always get away with murder. The author mostly talks about some football player who went to prison, but he mentions a few others in passing.

“It barely made headlines even in Baltimore when former Oriole Carey Nye was convicted for murdering a man in a bar fight,” the article says, “but he was a player the fans in Baltimore would rather forget about anyway, even without a little recreational manslaughter on his résumé.”

I feel almost guilty, nosing into Sturgis's life like that. It just didn't occur to me that his dad was in prison. I clear the browser history to cover my tracks and return to bed, my head spinning.

I wonder if my dad knows all that. I think he must. The foster care people would have told him. How long would his dad be in prison? Did Sturgis ever see him? How did his mom die?

I lie there, wondering, while Sturgis sleeps. He snores lightly, with an occasional whimper, like the puppy I never had.

In the morning, I'm falling asleep in my bowl of cereal. Stur-gis has already finished a couple of bowls and is back on the couch, reading his book.

“Want to go play catch?” I ask him after breakfast. It looks like another gorgeous rainless day is in the making.

“Why not?” he says, setting the book down. So it's easier to get him off the couch than I thought.

We could throw the ball around in the patch of mud we call a yard, but we decide to walk down to the old ballpark instead, just to see how it's doing.

The ballpark is right downtown, so it's not a bad walk. There's a little business district across the streets on the first base side and right field. A hard-hit homer to dead center would land on the steps of the town hall. To the left is the old high school, which hasn't been used in my lifetime but still has offices and stuff.

“Darn hot,” says Sturgis.

“Yes, it is,” I say, “and humid.”

The ballpark is a mess. You wouldn't even know it's a ballpark, except for the rotting bleachers and rusted-out backstop behind the plate, or at least where the plate
used
to be. The ground has mostly drained, thanks to the canals, but it's slimy, with puddles of water everywhere, and not a blade of grass. Swarms of gnats greet us with every step, and
horseflies screech in our ears. The mud tries to suck off my shoes. It's disgusting.

“Will the grass grow back on its own?” I ask Sturgis.

“You're asking me?” He shrugs.

“Well, you're the major-league kid.”

“My dad was a relief pitcher, not a groundskeeper.”

I have my catcher's mitt and Sturgis has my fielder's glove—good thing we're both right-handed—and I've got an old, beat-up ball I don't care about. I hand it off to Sturgis and walk about forty paces.

“Show me what you got.”

He zips it in and stings my hand.

“You have good stuff!” It must be in his blood, I think. His dad, the big leaguer.

“I do?”

“Sure. Throw it again, as hard as you can.”

He rears back and lets it rip. The ball smacks into my glove like it's been shot from a cannon, even without a proper windup. Look out, Roger Clemens.

“You really never played baseball? You have a good arm.”

“I used to throw tennis balls to my dog.”

“Sammy?”

“Yeah.”

“That was a long time ago,” I remind him.

He shrugs. “I still throw sometimes.”

“Throw what?”

“Rocks. Whatever.”

He isn't so good at catching the ball. Even if I throw it right to him, he misses half the time.

“I usually don't have anyone to throw back at me,” he ex-plains.

We toss the old beanbag back and forth for a time, in the hazy sunshine, until the bugs and humidity get to us. Even with the bites and the burn, it feels great.

I half expect my dad to be making sacrifices to a rain god when we get home. Instead, he's signing the last batch of paychecks. He hands one to me and one to Sturgis.

I try to hand the check right back to him. “Keep it.”

“But that's for you,” he says.

I don't mean to get dramatic over what I know is only a drop in the bucket, but I don't want the check. It doesn't feel right, knowing about our new money problems.

Sturgis folds his own check and puts it into his pocket. He looks at us warily, hoping we didn't expect him to fork over the money.

“Just hold on to it for me.” I give my dad the check. “I'll use it for baseball camp next year.”

“All right.” He puts the check in his front desk drawer. “It's right here when you want it,” he says. I feel a little bit better. The money will sit in my dad's checking account, but Sturgis doesn't have to feel guilty for keeping his own hard-earned cash.

“Oh, were you out practicing already?” my dad asks, seeing the ball and gloves.

“Just playing catch. Sturgis here has a pretty good arm.”

“Good, good,” he says.

“Dad, do you think that grass will grow on its own in the ballpark, or will we have to plant it?”

“I imagine they'll have to seed it or sod it. Lots to do in that ballpark.” He looks kind of thoughtful, then goes back to his work.

Dinner is chili dog pie, which is not as good as it sounds.

“So you like to play baseball, too?” my dad asks Sturgis.

“Sure,” he says around a mouthful of canned chili, hot dog, and Tater Tots.

“Well, this used to be a big baseball town,” my dad says. “When I was a kid, everybody wanted to play baseball.”

“A lot of kids still want to play baseball,” I tell my dad. “They just couldn't. They will now.”

“You think so, huh?”

I tell him about what the mayor said, about playing base-ball next year, and the big round of applause. People seem pretty psyched.

“Why would anyone have to wait until next year?” asks Sturgis.

“It's not just about baseball,” my dad explains. “It's about tradition.” He tells Sturgis the long history of baseball on the Fourth of July. Every year, Moundville and Sinister Bend would play, and every year, Moundville would lose.

“My dad was in the last baseball game ever played in Moundville,” I tell Sturgis.

“Did you win?” Sturgis asks.

“Funny you should ask,” my dad says. “We didn't win, but it's the first time in about a century we didn't lose.”

“Hey, we should watch that game after dinner,” I suggest. I sort of do it for my dad. I figure he needs a break from worrying about money, and he loves to watch that old video. He even had the whole thing dumped onto a DVD a while back.

“I don't know.” My dad looks distracted. He's probably itching to get back to his spreadsheets.