A Quality of Light (9 page)

I
could have killed you when you came out with Laughing Dog that day. I mean, really. I wanted a warrior name to beat all warrior names. Something on a grander scale than Laughing Dog, though now, after all this time, I have to tell you that it fits me. Laughing Dog. Canus Satiricus. I’ve become far too cynical for the Lightning Hawk, Mountain Bear or Wolverine that I imagined myself to be. Funny, eh? I think we all dream sometimes of names other than out own. Like maybe if we live another name we could maybe live another life. That’s what I thought back then. That if I could have a fearless, independent name, then I could be fearless and independent too. That’s what I thought I wanted. Needed. But no, you come out with Laughing Dog after the Dietzes’ mangy collie. I hated that dog. Not because he was such a bad pooch. Just on principle.

But you know the funny thing? Whenever I go back there in my mind, I always remember the night more than I remember the day. You and your dad dropping me off at the house and my dad coming out to the porch all sloshed and angry. I hated that son-of-a-bitch right then. Not that his drunkenness or his anger was foreign to me. I’d been through that inning lots. But that night man, I was filled with light for the first time. Light, Josh. Your parents, that day, the way I felt around you and the way we both latched onto the idea of the game. And secrets. When you live the way my mom and I had to live, you get used to having secrets. You just can’t share them with anybody. Not even each other, even though it’s the same life. They become evil somehow. Like you’re trapped by them but at the same time, you know that letting them out will trap you even more.

Too bad. Kids and secrets should be indivisible. The world of kids is filled with a lot more magic and mystery than the world of adults, and you pretty much have to have secrets so their grown-up sense of reality can’t wash away the magic. Sharing your secrets is all part of the kinship in
being a kid. And suddenly, I had a secret and someone to share it with. Someone to trust. Everything was filled with light and I was too. It was like the feeling you get coming out of a long tunnel in the road. It’s so bleak and dark and chilled in there, you think it’s a permanent condition. Then the light hits your eyes so suddenly you blink. You think you’re going blind because the intensity of things is too much and it takes forever for your mind and your eyes to register color, shade and texture. Dazzled. You get dazzled by the light. You Christians call it rapture, I think. Us warriors call it getting vision. Either way, it’s the world and Creation opening up its inner life to you, spooking you some by its radiance.

That’s what I felt that day. Spooked but hopeful. Hope was a precious commodity in our house, so I clung to the little I had like the proverbial reed. And then him. Of all the things I never had and all the things he took away, I hate him most for taking away the light that day. When I walked away from you and your dad and into that house, I felt like I was walking back into the tunnel. The world, my world, closing in on me with all its shabbiness, dinginess and darkness. I quit crying over that bastard sometime in Toronto but I cried that night. For me. My mom. For the light. Funny. That’s what I remember most about that day. Crying. It felt good.

K
eeping secrets demands routine. Johnny and I began practicing baseball every chance we could get and that demanded a strict regimen of movement. For me it meant that my schedule of school, study and chores remained the same while I fit baseball into the corners of my life. Johnny, who had far more free time, began coming out every evening after school with his bike crammed onto the schoolbus. We’d chat with my mother for a few polite minutes and then head to my room with peanut butter sandwiches to leaf through the baseball magazines and cards we were collecting on the sly.

We analyzed everything. The players in the magazines were critiqued for their proper or improper body alignment. The statistics
on the cards were computed and the players rated for their efficiency or lack thereof. Science and math. We were becoming eloquent in our unraveling of hidden meaning, motion and application. We knew from the Ted Williams book, for instance, that more bat speed meant more power. Using the hips generated more speed and follow through. We knew that everyone has a sweet spot, a place in their strike zone where the most power could be directed into the ball, and that higher batting averages could be had for learning your high and low contact zones. We knew that leverage was everything in throwing and hitting. Leverage was achieved by using the body correctly, and we practiced in front of my mirror for hours, going through our throwing motions, our hitting motions with the thumb of our bottom hand clasped in the fist of our top hand, watching each other, critiquing, cajoling and encouraging. We knew that better baseball was better fundamentals and we drilled each other on correct thinking about techniques.

Soon we had favorite players in our swelling collection of bubble-gum cards. Mine were all Red Sox — Conigliaro, Petrocelli and Yastrzemski. Johnny, who shared my sentiments about Yaz and Tony C., also cheered on Maury Wills, Orlando Cepeda and Al Kaline. Good-natured arguments about our choices erupted often, especially when we assumed their identities during our batting pantomimes.

“Petrocelli’s at the plate. Bottom of the ninth in Fenway. Two on, the game tied. Here’s the pitch!” I’d say.

“He’s out!”

“Out? He hits a single!”

“Come on, Josh! His average is too low. He’d strike out.”

“Yeah, and Kaline would homer?”

“Yeah.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Johnny?”

“Yeah?”

“You dream too much.”

“I dream too much? You just had Petrocelli make a big hit and
I
dream too much!”

Once supper was finished we’d race each other to the equipment shed. My parents didn’t press us for details. They respected our secret and waited for it to be revealed. Of course, we both knew that they knew, that their knowledge of our secret was their secret too, but we respected each other too much to ever let on. We went through our charades casually, and those mealtimes were rife with chatter and gossip and laughter. Johnny became like one of the family, and if he didn’t want to speak about his own, we allowed him his reticence. We talked of tests and schoolwork while my parents shared farm business and stories of their childhoods. Johnny and I laughed at their reminiscences. Our world of science and math precluded things like horses and buggies, butter churns and hand-milking. We traded winks a lot during those conversations.

Johnny had come up with the idea of using an India rubber ball. One of us would stand on the pitcher’s rubber and practice throwing into the strike zone, while the other lined up beside him and ran in to retrieve the rebounds, or grounders as they were called. We switched after every twenty-five pitches, and it wasn’t long before we were hitting the strike zone every time and scooping the grounders routinely, either on the run or kneeling down to block their progress with our bodies like in the diagrams in the words-and-pictures book. Our arms grew strong and our legs fluid with accustomed motion. After two weeks we measured out the distance to second base and began to throw from there. The fielder’s responsibility was to fire the ball to second base as soon as he gathered in the grounder.

Those evenings were filled with the solid whack of the India rubber ball on the equipment-shed wall, the scrape of running feet on earth and the grunts of satisfaction for a play well made. We were proud of our command of the fundamentals of fielding and throwing, and the challenge soon shifted to achieving a higher average of successful strikes and scooped grounders. We stopped at one hundred each time for easier computation.

“Your fielding’s slipping, Josh. You’re down to an .850 average.”

“I am not. I’m .900.”

“Last night, yeah. Over
all
you’re .850.”

“Over
all?”
I asked.

“Yeah. Over
all.”

“You know what that means, then?” I asked.

“You’re gonna work harder?” Johnny replied.

“No,” I said. “It means I’m not wearing overalls anymore!”

By week three, we’d invented a strategy for flyballs. We hadn’t yet figured out how to get ourselves a bat so invention was the name of the game. One of us would stand at the pitcher’s rubber and heave the ball high against the gabled eaves of the shed. The other would close his eyes and flick them open as soon as he heard the whack of ball on wood, locate the ball in the air and run to catch it. At first it was frustrating. It was a demanding skill. But eventually, with determination, we bagan to master it. Our gloves grew softer and our instincts grew sharper. We were making running catches effortlessly and our throws had force, velocity and pinpoint accuracy. The science and math of things was making it all possible.

“It makes an arc as it flies,” Johnny said.

“Yep.”

“All we need to do is learn how to follow that arc.”

“Yep. And be there when it lands.”

“Right. And it will land in our
glove,”
I said.

“Just like Kaline.”

“Yaz.”

“Kaline.”

“Yaz.”

“Dreamer,” he said.

“Ditz.”

Those first three weeks flew by. On weekends we practiced longer. If it rained we practiced in front of the mirror, listened to the game on the radio, compared notes on players or read one of the baseball books Johnny was uncovering all the time at the Mildmay library. Our lives became richer with the images and sounds of the game. Durocher, Yawkey, Jackie Robinson, Shoeless Joe, Pee Wee Reese, The Say Hey Kid, Dizzy, Satchel Paige and Juan Marichal
became etched into our consciousness. We began to eat, sleep, think and dream baseball. Johnny said using regulation-size balls and distances was the best way for us to prepare for the tournament. According to his view, learning to control the rules and motions of the smaller ball and the bigger distances meant using the larger softballs would be a cinch. It made sense to me. I’d learned all about the benefits of smaller and faster over larger and slower from chasing chickens and herding cows. It was far easier to herd cows.

School demanded even more routine. The schoolyard games went on every day but we resisted the temptation to test our newfound skills in competition. We settled for watching warily on our walks around the edge of the field. Alvin Giles was disappointed with our lack of participation, but he’d been around boys long enough to know that not everyone liked the rough and tumble of sport. Johnny and I were at the top end of the class academically, so neither he nor Mrs. Thompson encouraged us to join in if we were not so inclined. For their part, Ralphie and the boys let us be. We were called sissies and whiners. Johnny and I just grinned. We knew from our cursory scannings that Ralphie and company were operating at a lower level of fundamentals than we were and that their chances of catching us scholastically were next to impossible. Sue Crawford was making eyes at Johnny all the time now and that seemed to rile Ralphie, who’d had designs on Sue’s attentions since Grade Three. Johnny relished that, too.

As the tournament crept closer, it became obvious that all three communities were eager for the day. Teeswater and Wingham were keen rivals of any Mildmay team. Naturally, the sporting excitement spread to the families. Gatherings of any sort were a challenge to the ladies, who went out of their way to provide a galaxy of foodstuff. Already, baking was under way and plans made for culinary contributions while the men talked of things like a horseshoe tournament, an afternoon away from the farm and whose kid was the best at ball. They always referred to it as
ball
, which drove Johnny and me crazy. It was
base
ball. Not softball, not slow pitch, but baseball. Pure and simple.

We laughed now when a good catch was made and shouted praise for a hard, accurate throw. The more we disappeared into the effort of the game, the more the numbers and the analysis disappeared too. We kept the cards and the books, but we read them and shared them in different ways. Now the careful scrutiny for form and function was being replaced by a reverential awe at the pictures of Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig and Cy Young. We quit trying to copy their stances and tried instead to articulate their spirit in our play. Play. The game was becoming a game in our hearts and minds and we abandoned ourselves to it utterly.