Mudville (9 page)

“I was going to watch a show at seven,” Sturgis says. I give him a friendly kick under the table. “Um, but let's watch the game instead,” he says.

My dad grins. “I suppose.”

Sturgis and I do the dishes while my dad finds the DVD. When we come out of the kitchen, the slightly blurry image of the ballpark the way it used to be flickers into view, deep green with sharp white lines, like I've never seen it. My dad collapses into his favorite chair, the remote control in his hand. Yogi clambers up to the arm of the chair and sits in a stately pose, looking like he ought to be in front of the New York Public Library.

“Bobby Fitz,” my dad says with a happy sigh as the Moundville pitcher takes the mound. “Best baseball player I ever knew. He was going to be a superstar.” To prove his
point, Bobby Fitz makes short work of the Sinister Bend batters in the top of the first inning.

“So what happened to him?” Sturgis wonders. “Is he fa-mous now?”

“Last I heard, he was selling insurance in Sutton.”

“That's too bad.”

“Hey, there's nothing wrong with that.” My dad sounds a little defensive. “People in Sutton need insurance, too.”

“I didn't mean anything,” Sturgis says apologetically. “Anyway, let's watch this.” He leans forward in his chair as the Bend pitcher takes the mound.

He's a tall, mean-looking boy with unkempt hair. He throws hard. Really hard. The ball seems to be smoking as he hurls it at the catcher.

“Bobby was our leadoff hitter, too,” my dad points out as the first Moundville batter steps into the box. He knocks the first pitch over the pitcher's head for a base hit but is tagged out trying to stretch the single into a double. He limps off the field.

“Pulled his hamstring.” My dad shakes his head, remembering. “What bad luck. Every year, something like that. Moundville was just flat-out cursed.”

“I thought you didn't believe in curses,” Sturgis reminds him.

“I don't believe in weather curses. Baseball curses are a whole nother ball of wax.”

The Bend pitcher strikes out the next batter, and the
next kid comes to the plate. He's tall and blond, his hair long enough to stick out beneath his batting helmet. He looks at the pitcher with a big toothy grin, like he's not one bit scared. The pitcher zips in three pitches and strikes him out looking at a belt-high fastball.

“That was me,” my dad tells Sturgis, who nods.

“I guessed,” he says. “You look exactly like Roy.”

The Sinister Bend team proceeds to knock the new Moundville pitcher around like a tetherball, while the Bend pitcher glides through the innings. It's eleven to zero by the middle of the fourth inning.

“Look at these clouds gathering.” My dad freezes the frame so we can appreciate them. “It's starting to drizzle, see?” He indicates the vertical lines on the screen.

“I thought it was just the graininess of the old video,” says Sturgis.

“Our coach had this great idea,” says my dad. “He told us to play for the rain delay. The game wouldn't be official until the end of the fourth inning. If it was rained out, we could start over with a clean slate and a healthy pitcher. He told us to work the count, foul off pitches, and dawdle as much as possible.”

We watch the first two batters ground out, and my dad comes up to bat.

I've counted his foul-offs every time I watch the video, but I always get a different number. We watch Dad foul off pitch after pitch. He hits balls into the stands, right down
the line, everywhere but fair. The fans have to toss the balls back because they've run out. It slows the game down even more, while the rain picks up.

You can see the pitcher getting annoyed and tired, losing speed and control of his pitches. My dad even takes a few balls, mixed in with the fouls, until he has a full count. Then comes his famous base hit. He's just trying to protect the plate, but the ball stays fair. The crowd groans, then cheers as the ball gets past the third baseman.

We lose track of him as the camera follows the ball. The left fielder is running to field it but slips in the wet grass. The ball rolls to the fence. The center fielder bare-hands it but can't get a grip on it. The camera swoops back toward the in-field. My dad has rounded the bases and comes home with no play at the plate. He's greeted by the rest of his team with high fives and slaps to the helmet. The pitcher throws his glove to the mound in disgust.

The umpires meet, and the screen flickers into blackness.

“What happened next?” asks Sturgis.

“That was that,” my dad says. “The game was called for rain and never replayed.”

“Well, now you can have the rematch,” says Sturgis.

“Sinister Bend is long gone, though,” I remind him.

“Anyway, we're all old now,” says my dad. “Scattered far and wide, with bad backs and mortgage payments.” Thinking about mortgage payments gets him fretting again, and he goes back to his office to mess with budgets on the computer.

“Hey, Sturgis, you ever have a girlfriend?” I ask him that night after the lights are out.

“With this mug?” he asks. I didn't think of that. I barely notice anymore.

“Hey, chicks dig scars.”

“Yeah, right, they do.”

“They do. I'm sure of it.”

“What about you?” he asks. “Did you ever have a girlfriend?”

“Not really,” I tell him. Last year, in sixth grade, I was going with this girl for a few weeks. That's what they call it at my school, just going with someone. All it meant was that we had lunch together and she passed me notes. One day, one of those notes said she was breaking up with me, and that was that. I didn't lose any sleep over it.

“You got your eye on someone?” he asks.

“What makes you think that?”

“You wouldn't start talking about girls otherwise. You're trying to get the conversation around to how you like some-one.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I tell him about Rita, and how I've seen her but not talked to her, and how she smiled but it might have been at Steve. “Do you think a black girl would rather date a black guy?”

“Last time I looked at a calendar, it was 2000-something,” he says. “That's not an issue anymore. This Rita girl probably digs you.”

“How do you know?”

“’Cause look at you,” he says. “You're a jock. You're decent-looking. You're a nice guy. You're the guy a girl would dig.”

“Well, thanks. I guess if she says no, I have you as a backup plan.”

“You dig scars, too?”

“Heck yeah. Rita has a bright red scar right across her head, and it makes her look like a baseball. That's why I like her.”

He cracks up. I must be picking up my dad's gift of hu-mor.

“She have any friends?” he wants to know. “The kind who dig scars?”

“I'll ask her the next time I talk to her,” I tell him. “I mean, the first time I talk to her.”

“All right,” he says. He's out like a light again, and I'm left in the darkness for a while, wondering when that will be.

We work for the next few days, removing half-installed Rain Redirection Systems from houses. It's just Sturgis and me and my dad. My dad doesn't want to pay anyone to take down canceled orders and recover the materials, so we do it all by ourselves. That's how Sturgis and I finally get to work up on the roof. I like to imagine Rita will walk by one of those houses and see me glistening with sweat, doing a man's job, and maybe swoon right there on the sidewalk. No such luck, but thinking about it helps pass the time.

“Well, we're done with that,” my dad says as we wrap
things up late on Friday evening. “I think my rain redirection business is officially done.”

He doesn't feel like cooking again, which really isn't like him. We pick up a bucket of chicken on the way home. I don't mind one bit. I'm a big fan of takeout.

“What about that one?” I ask when we get home, pointing at the obsolete contraption of plastic sheeting on our own roof.

“Oh, right.” My dad looks up at it in disgust. “We'll get it sooner or later.”

We're barely through the door when my dad has the TV on and surfs through the channels until he finds a
M*A*S*H
marathon. Sturgis joins him on the couch this time, and they eat in the living room, not even using plates—just tossing their chicken bones back into the bucket and passing the little tubs of corn and potatoes back and forth.

“I love this one!” my dad says when one of the shows comes on. He points at the TV with a chicken leg and starts to explain to Sturgis how the actor playing a minor character went on to be someone else in a different TV show.

He hasn't been this happy since the rain stopped. I don't know if this is better or worse than stressing out about his business, but it's definitely messier.

It keeps on not raining. On Saturday, I call Steve and we head down to the park to chuck the ball around. I bring Sturgis, and Steve brings a bunch of guys, including Tim and Miggy. They nod hello to Sturgis, but I can guess they're a little peeved about the tantrum he threw at the rec center.

We don't have enough gloves to go around, so I hand mine off to Tim. It's good for a catcher to toughen up his hands anyway. Sturgis's pitches are a little hot to handle, though, even when he means to throw them soft. He doesn't say much, just catches the ball and throws it back, always with a little steam on it.

Tim and Miggy keep throwing the ball in the mud and over our heads. I show them how to put their fingers on the ball properly, and pretty soon they're throwing straight. Straighter anyway.

“When do we get to hit?” asks Kazuo. He's one of the new guys. I don't know him that well because he's a year behind me in school.

“I brought a bat,” I tell him. “It'll be good to get some swings in.”

First we have to pace out where the mound ought to be, then estimate where the bases are. We just draw
Xs
in the mud for the bases and kick a little mud around for the pitcher's mound.

I put on my catcher's mitt and get behind the so-called plate, and Steve throws some soft stuff at this other sixth grader named David. David swings and misses on the first five or six pitches. Finally, he makes contact, and the ball rolls through the mud, back to Steve.

“I got a hit!” he says, running to first base.

I laugh. “Only because we don't have a first baseman,” I tell him. “Normally, you'd be out by a mile.”

Kazuo has better instincts. He doesn't swing at every pitch, and when he does, he takes a good swing. He knocks what might be a bona fide hit up the middle, but he drops the bat and runs to third.

“You need to go
that
way,” I yell to Kazuo, pointing at first base.

“Sorry,” Kazuo says, looking bewildered. “I think I got confused because I was batting left-handed.”

“You were batting
right
-handed,” I tell him. “Don't you know left from right?”

“Well, sure,” he says, but he sounds a little unsure.

“Wait a second,” I say. “You said you were batting left. Do you mean you can also bat right? I mean, you were really batting right-handed, but do you mean you can also bat left?”

He looks more confused than ever.

“Can you bat both ways?” I ask him.

“Sure!” he says. “I can do everything both ways. I can write letters with both hands, draw, eat, everything. I can even throw both-handed. I think that's why I get confused. It's all the same to me.”

Sturgis takes a few swings, too, but can't catch up with the pitch.

“Maybe he can scare the ball with his face,” David says to Kazuo, who shakes his head and kicks at the ground in disgust. Sturgis turns and glares at them both. When he swings again, he's way out in front. He swears and drops the bat in the mud.

“Hey,” I say, picking up the bat, wishing I had something to wipe off the mud.

“Sorry, Roy.” He takes the bat from me and wipes the mud on his shorts before handing it back. “Can I pitch now?”

“Sure. Steve, let Sturgis pitch to you.”

Steve trades places with Sturgis, and I signal for the fastball. Sturgis scorches one in there, and Steve steps back in surprise.

“Strike one!” I call.

“No way,” Steve says, shaking his head.

“It had the corner.” I toss the ball back to Sturgis and signal for another fastball over the plate. Sturgis throws one even harder, right in the zone. Steve flails at it and misses. I toss the ball back while Steve shakes his head in disbelief and tries to get better footing in the muddy batter's box.