Long Ball

An excerpt from the novel Adrift in the Sound, this story takes place after the death of Greg, Marian’s boyfriend. The Dogs decide to honor Greg’s memory with a baseball game and challenge the Tuggers, a hard-swinging tugboat team from the docks. The Dogs are a ragtag tavern softball club, mostly drunks and potheads kicking around Seattle in the early 1970s. Lizette, Marian, and Sandy, the mother of baby Violet, live next door to the Dogs. They come along for the game and so do a couple of cops who’ve been tailing the Dogs.

 They pulled into Ravenna Park and watched the clouds moving in from the west, breaking the sunlight into puddles, and hoped it didn’t rain. Daisies popped through the grass, pushed their fresh, white faces toward the wandering sunbeams. Lizette got out with baby Violet and looked around. Marian took the stroller and diaper bag from of the trunk. Sandy stayed melded to Cadillac Carl in the front seat. The cops watched. The Dogs snarled and snapped while they pulled equipment from Rocket’s trunk and carried it to the nearest dugout, dropping bats and balls in a jumble.

Stinky checked field conditions, tapped wet dirt with the toe of his boot, walked the baseline to first, scuffed the ground where the bag would go. He went into the dugout and changed his boots for black and white Converse high tops, laced them tight, wiggled his toes inside. He took the heavy gray bags out to the bases and placed them, squaring them up against the imaginary baselines.

The Tuggers rolled up in trucks with gun racks and dented fenders. They tucked their matching blue jerseys into tight gray baseball pants, scanned the field, sized up the competition, snorted in disdain.

Gizzard gripped and ungripped the softball to work out the pain from getting his fingers mashed in the car door and to keep from shaking. A powder blue Mustang cruised up. Dickie Armstrong, the Tugger’s prize slugger, got out. Everyone turned to watch him standing there, preening in a sunburst, cleats thrown casually over his shoulder, chin lifted. One of the cops couldn’t help himself and clapped. His partner elbowed him in the ribs and the guy caught himself.

A flip of the coin and the Dogs won home field advantage. They spread out across the diamond, toed the dirt, pulled arms over head to stretch, jogged in place, squatted. The first Tugger stepped into the box, tapped the depression that served as home plate, took a check swing, softened his knees, bat on shoulder. The first pitch was high and outside, followed by a fat boy down the throat. Swing and a miss. Gizzard was just warming up. Two more strikes and one man down.

The cops settled on the bleachers, careful not to stir up splinters. Marian, Sandy, and Lizette took seats near the Dogs’ side. Violet let out a cry and Lizette pulled the stroller close.

“I hate the kid’s crying,” Sandy said in an unmotherly tone and got up to pace. “Makes me tingle.”

Lizette peered under the stroller’s little shade canopy. Violet started wailing. She pushed the stroller away, through the parking lot and up a little rise beside the field. She spread a blanket on the grass and lifted the baby out, changed her diaper. She picked Violet up, rocked her side to side, kissed her neck. The baby cooed.

Sandy grabbed a Rainer Ale from the cooler, popped the top, and leaned back on the bench, offering her smooth legs to the sun and flowed her long blonde hair behind her shoulders, shielded her eyes from the light. She caught Carl’s eye in the dugout, sent him a come-hither smile, took a gulp from the can, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

Toulouse showed up, flourishing his poet’s cape. He walked to the pitcher’s mound in the middle of the inning and took the ball from Gizzard’s hand, turned it in the light as if studying the facets of a jewel. He shifted to face the dugouts, gathered himself. The Tuggers complained about delay of game, but settled down when somebody barked that they were doing a tribute to a fallen player. Toulouse stepped forward, cleared his throat, addressed the crowd:

“I think I could turn and live with animals, they

are so placid and self-contain’d,

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their

condition,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to

God,

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with

the mania of owning things,

Not one kneels to another, nor do his kind that

lived thousands of years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy of the whole

earth.”

Toulouse grandly extended his hand from beneath his cape in benediction. “This is how we’ll remember Greg.”

            Marian came onto the field then and stood beside Toulouse while the Dogs clapped, sprinkled some ashes from a small wooden box. Spreading his cape, showing the flourish of its hot-pink satin lining, Toulouse stepped closer to home plate, hewing more to the Dogs’ dugout.

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.”

The poet wrapped himself in his cape, bowed and escorted Marian from the field. Cheering and clapping broke out on the field and in the Dogs’ dugout. Someone shouted, “Far out, man.” Another Dog proclaimed: “Greg was a tough little dude, man.” They pumped their fists and then the uproar settled. Somebody hollered, “Play ball!”

The Tuggers’s next batter got up and the Dogs crouched in their playing stances, bent over, hands on knees. He sent the ball soaring into left field over Fisher’s head, where it rolled into the bushes beyond the fence. The Tuggers got up from the bench and hit the dugout cooler, popped beer tops, slouched back into place, not even bothering to cheer. The Dogs frowned, threw each other hand signals, stood their ground.

Marian leaned over to Toulouse, sitting near her on the bleachers. “Your poem was perfect.”

“Not mine. It’s Uncle Walty’s.”

“Your uncle?”

“Walt Whitman, my good woman. Leaves of Grass.”

“Excuse me?” Marian said.

Toulouse scowled at her ignorance and stalked off. He headed for the hill where he saw Lizette making a daisy chain in the grass. Violet slept beside her under the shelter of a blanket she’d rigged to the side of the stroller, protecting the baby from the sun.

“Elizabeth. May I speak to you?”

Lizette looked up. “What?”

“May I sit down?” She looked at the baby sleeping peacefully and then at the stilted, black-draped poet.

“No.”

“I understand you may not care for me, but …”

“You killed Greg,” she said, looking down. “You almost killed Marian.” She lifted her face to him and flared her nostrils, the sun making her squint. “I know what you did.”

 “That’s a lie.” Toulouse shifted, considered leaving. “Greg did what he wanted. Look, all I want to say is this. A dealer in New York looked at a couple of your paintings and  . . .”

“How?” Lizette flew from the grass before he could answer and threw her body against him, knocking him down, grabbing him around the neck, choking him, her thumbs cutting off his airway. “How could anyone see my stuff? You stole it!”

Rocket saw the attack from third base and charged up the hill. The cops got up from their seats in the bleachers and hurried around the back of the dugout. They pulled her off him and Toulouse rolled away, rising breathlessly to his elbows, face purple.

“You’re crazy,” he hissed and crab-walked backward. Rocket had Lizette in a bear hug, pinning her arms. The cops hung back then and let the scene play out. Lizette spit at him, splayed as he was on the grass in his stupid cape.

“I’m telling you, you’ve got some sales,” he yelled at her. “They want you to do a show in New York. They think you’re the next big thing.”

“Liar!” She shouted and Rocket held her tight as she strained for the poet. “Murderer!”

“Listen to him, Liz,” Rocket said in her ear.

“You had your chance,” Toulouse said getting up from the grass. “Get your own flippin’ agent. I’ll have them send you the check, minus my ten percent. I’m done helping you.” He dusted himself off and stalked away. Rocket let go and Lizette collapsed, crawled to the edge of the blanket where Violet slept. She warbled anxiously to herself, fussed with the baby’s blankets, stared into her placid, sleeping face. She batted Rocket away and he limped back to the field, covered his base, played shallow off third.

During the confrontation, the Dogs hit the dugout and Cadillac Carl slipped into the parking lot to fondle Sandy. They entwined, whispered, broke free when Rocket called him to get back to short stop, but the cops blocked his path to the field. They hunched their shoulders around him and talked. Sandy stood to the side and everyone wondered what they were saying.

The Dogs spread out. Cadillac Carl took his position at second. Lucky hobbled to centerfield, an oven mitt on his gimpy right hand, playing deep. The Tuggers were ahead by a run. The teams exchanged at-bats, lousy pitches and bad fielding kept the score one-zero, Tuggers favor.

Bored with the game, disgusted with the level of play, at the top of the eighth inning the Tuggers had two outs, two men on, so they put Little Dickie up to finish it. They all agreed it was past time to get back to the bar. Rocket signaled the Dogs to spread out, play deep. He looked at Lucky, leaning on his cane, near the centerfield fence, scowled and signaled Slick to play over, cover the gap.

Dickie stepped up to the plate, rubbed his toe against the dip at home base, wiggled his bottom, joggled his knees and starred Gizzard down. Gizz gulped loud enough for the cops to hear in the top row of the bleachers.

Hippies, who’d been enjoying a picnic of cold lentils and alfalfa sprouts, lined up along the right baseline, blowing soap bubbles and singing some kind of garbled rendition of Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” No one paid any attention to them in their faded tie-dye. Lizette and Violet doze in a cuddle on the hillside.

Gizzard jerked into motion, wound his arm twice and delivered low and inside, brushing Dickie back. Bomber fell on the ball for a catch, threw it back to the mound. Ball one. Gizzard turned and threw to Cadillac Carl on second, almost picking off the lead runner.

He turned back to address the batter and the crowd fell silent. He adjusted the brim of his cap, dangled his pitching arm and smoothed into his windup. The ball came sweeping toward the base, a shoulder-high release with good movement. The ball dropped into the strike zone and Dickie was on it, eyes lit like a Christmas tree, hitting the ball about as hard as it could be hit without splitting the stitches and blowing off the cover.

The crack brought the bleacher crowd to attention. The hippies stopped blowing bubbles on the sideline. Lizette sat up, shielded her eyes to watch the ball’s white-lightening path. The crowd noise rumbled behind the spinning orb, the sound fading into space like thunder in a hail storm, gathering again, breaking over them.

Rocket’s eyes jumped from the ball to centerfield and there was Lucky, stumping hard on his cane, racing the ball to the centerfield fence, back turned, head down, plowing hard. His hopes sank. No way … but then he felt a flicker near his heart. Maybe?

Lucky’s position was good. No time to hope. Rocket froze, fixed on the speed, the arc, the pure beauty of the ball’s dizzying rotation. He ripped his mind from the ball, looked for an instant at Gizzard tracking it, his shoulders slack, helpless in the aftermath of the pitch. The runners advanced, confident the ball would easily top the fence and they could saunter home for the win.

Switching back to Lucky, maybe a split second or two had elapsed since the ball was struck, Rocket saw him look over his left shoulder again, lift his kitchen mitt, scorch marks showing along the edges where the cloth was sewn to the silvery asbestos pad. Then Lucky changed his mind and kept digging with his cane, hobbling faster than the crowd could register, racing the ball with all the might left after his electrical accident, long, greasy hair flying behind him. His “A & S Towing” hat popped off and no one saw it hit the grass, so focused were they on the ball.

It was close now, hovering in the air, spinning toward the fence, twenty feet from the ground, coming down hard. Rocket dared to think, only for an instant, for that fraction of time it takes an electron to pulse down a wire or an atom to split that … that . . .

Lucky slowed up so he wouldn’t crash into the chain link and put both hands up, like he was tracking a well-thrown football pass in the end zone, using his good hand to lift his mitted one. He made a cup. The ball sailed over his shoulder and dropped into the pocket like a billiard ball. Lucky went down, his good right side collapsed on impact and he rolled in the deep grass. The crowd exhaled and waited.

The Tugger’s base runners moved to and fro in confusion. Slick tripped the guy trying to get back to second base and a fist was thrown. Rocket shouted “Damn!” Lucky rolled over and held up the ball.

Everyone surged onto the field, shoving and clapping. Lizette cawed from the hillside like a lovesick crow. Little Dickie picked up his gear, got into his Mustang, gunned the engine, and was gone in a powder-blue streak before the Dogs carried Lucky on their shoulders from the outfield to the dugout. Laughing and slapping, they crowded in and didn’t notice the Tuggers trickling away, their tails tucked between their legs. In the heat of celebration, the Dogs forgot they’d lost the game, didn’t get their last at-bat.