Battle Fatigue (3 page)

Chapter Three

The Champions

Now that I am almost eight years old, I feel I am old enough to take a stand on things. I may try to do this more often, but for now it is simply this: the New York Yankees must go down in defeat. Now and always.

The Brooklyn Dodgers are the team of the people. They are the team of the civil rights movement. They have integrated baseball, with Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella. In the South, Martin Luther King and the Freedom Riders are jailed, beaten, and pushed off the street by the rush of water from big hoses. I see it on television. In Brooklyn the Dodgers are playing and winning. So the line is clearly drawn: Dodgers or Yankees. Civil rights or not. Most of the other kids don't care because they are Red Sox fans. I am not sure about the Red Sox, but I like teams that take on the Yankees so I guess I am okay with the Red Sox winning.

I have not been a Dodgers fan for long. This, in fact, is the first year I have followed baseball at all. The Dodgers are the defending champions. Donnie LePine keeps saying that the year before was the first year they ever won. But there is no reason to believe him. He is a Yankees fan, and doesn't that just figure. The whole reason I got interested in baseball this year is that the evil Yankees are trying to unseat the champions. The Dodgers struggled all summer, whereas the Yankees had an easy season. People like Donnie, who don't understand struggling, root for the Yankees. Donnie never struggles. That's why he likes the Yankees. Also, the Yankees wear stupid striped uniforms that look like the kind of pajamas I always hate wearing.

Nobody else in school or in the neighborhood seems to be rooting for the Dodgers. Mr. Shaker even put up a Yankees banner in his classroom, dramatically tacking it on the wall like he was planting a flag. One day it fell down, making a flopping noise behind him and Mr. Shaker dropped his head as though ducking for cover. All the kids saw him do it and they laughed and it was talked about all over school.

They are all Red Sox fans but since the series has come down to the Dodgers and the Yankees, they are leaning toward the Yankees—even though they are supposed to hate them. They are Yankees fans just like they support Eisenhower against Adlai Stevenson. Adlai Stevenson seems like a nice man but, after all, Eisenhower won the war. Popeye Panicelli even says, or so Dickey told us, that Stevenson was a traitor to be running against Eisenhower. “You don't run against the General,” he says. “It's not American.”

Most everyone feels that way—except my uncle, who served under Eisenhower when he won the war. He hates the General.

“I've got no use for that guy,” he says.

“Wasn't he your commander?” I ask.

“Just no use for him.”

“Why?”

There is no answer.

It is hard to find a Stevenson supporter or a Brooklyn fan. Going into the third game of the World Series, I seem to be the only happy kid in Haley. Brooklyn won the first two games. In the second they beat up the Yankees pitcher, a not-very-good pitcher named Don Larsen, who does not even have a windup before he throws—the kind of loser the Yankees deserve. They had to take him out of the game in the second inning.

But the Yankees win the third game with their star pitcher, Whitey Ford.

“Here they come,” says a happy Donnie LePine. He is wearing a blue Yankees hat that his father bought him over the summer when they went to Yankee Stadium. He also has a ball, which he says he caught from a home run off Mickey Mantle's bat. He may have been lying but Donnie LePine is lucky enough that it could be true. He let us all touch the ball but he would never play with it.

“Joel, it's over for your guys,” Donnie says.

“The Dodgers are the champions,” I insist.

“Not for long.”

I am not worried. Then the Yankees win the fourth game and the series is tied.

But my father, who may be quietly rooting for the Dodgers—I think he may just as quietly be voting for Stevenson—tells me not to worry about game five. Sal Maglie, who destroyed Whitey Ford in game one, is pitching. He is the toughest man in baseball, mean-looking and never clean shaven. He looks a bit like Rocco Pizzutti and smiles about that much too. The best the Yankees can do is put in Don Larsen, who had been taken out in the second inning of game two. Even Yankees fans call Larsen “Gooney Bird.”

“Are you ready for Gooney Bird?” I tease Donnie. He doesn't answer.

Maglie is pitching beautifully, as I knew he would. But so is Gooney Bird. No one is hitting. Then in the fourth inning Mickey Mantle hits a home run. But I am not worried because the Brooklyn Dodgers have Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, and Duke Snider, and they are only one run behind.

But now the radio announcer is saying unbelievable things. They have all struck out. Come on! Over and over again. No hits, no walks, no errors—the perfect game. And that cements my hatred of the New York Yankees—and my love of baseball.

The Dodgers have their revenge. The next game has no score and is in extra innings. All of a sudden Jackie Robinson drives in a run and wins the game for Brooklyn! I don't have to say anything to Donnie LePine—I just smile and enjoy it.

It is the last game and the Yankees win 9–0, taking the World Series. Eisenhower has won by a similar score. These things go together—the Yankees, the Republican Party, Donnie LePine.

I understand that we live in Massachusetts and so people root for the Red Sox. But why would anyone root for the Yankees? Or vote for Eisenhower? Those people are just like that and there isn't much that can be done about it.

I learn a lot from baseball.

Chapter Four

When Grown-Ups Start Crying

Now that I am eleven years old, practically a teenager, we don't play war anymore. Instead we play baseball. I am a center fielder with a good throwing arm, though not as good a range for fielding as I should have. I hit pretty well, which makes up for what a bad base runner I am. Unfortunately my competition for center field is Tony Scaratini, the bad German, who gets not only larger every year but also meaner. No one really likes him but no one is going to tell him. Donnie LePine still does the best Scaratini imitation, and that is as close as anyone comes to telling him off. Tony runs bases as badly as me and he can't field at all. When a fly ball goes to center field he just stands there. If the ball comes right at him he will raise his glove. Otherwise, his feeling is that it is someone else's problem. He is the kind of player coaches don't like. Except that he can hit a ball clean out of the park. “There!” he barks, forgetting to run in case the ball doesn't leave the park. But it is usually gone.

“There!” Donnie barks just like him, and we all laugh, all trying to say it like Tony too, but only Donnie has it right. Tony is going to kill him someday. Except that Tony seems almost afraid of Donnie. If you look closely at Tony, you can see a lot of fear. But he is large.

Stanley Wiszcinski is no longer surrendering. He is managing the team and he is great at it. He always has the batter's box and the baselines perfectly limed, the bats and balls lined up, and even gum for us to chew—striped gum, each color a different flavor. It is one of those special things you get for being a baseball player.

Rocco Pizzutti is our left-handed third baseman. When he catches the ball, everyone runs for cover. He fires it so hard out of his left hand that it hurts to catch it. Sometimes it goes to first base where the play is, but often he misses and hits the pitcher in the back or gets closer to second base.

One afternoon we are playing a good hitting team. The first batter hits a grounder to third base and Rocco fires it to first. The first baseman gets it in his glove but then drops it, shaking his hand in pain. The next batter hits another grounder to Rocco and this time he fires it at the lead runner at second base. The second baseman, Brian Sorenstag, never wants to catch a throw from Rocco. He's already caught a few and it always hurts. Now he just gets out of the way. He is saving his hands for basketball. This means that the runner will be safe on second base or, worse, that Rocco has thrown so hard the ball will end up in the outfield and the runner gets to third. So I run in to catch the throw from Rocco that Brian did not want to touch. Then I understand why. The pain in my hand is so sharp I completely forget about tossing the ball to second.

Of course, our best player is Donnie LePine at shortstop. He never makes fielding errors, his throws are always on target, sometimes he goes to the mound and pitches a few innings, and he has a perfect swing without ever taking batting practice. What makes this even worse, everybody likes him best.

Even the coach, Mr. Bradley, likes LePine best. You can tell. He tries to let everyone play, so players are constantly being taken out. Only Donnie LePine plays all nine innings of every game.

Mr. Bradley is interesting to me. For one thing, he knows absolutely everything about baseball. If you talk about Sal Maglie, he will tell you his earned run average. Mr. Bradley used to be a pitcher and knows everything about all the pitchers. He is younger than the other teachers and one of the few adult men I know who has never been to war. He has never even been in the military.

All his scars are from baseball and he has quite a few. He was a pitcher for the Pawtucket Red Sox in Rhode Island but “threw his arm out.” That is the phrase everyone uses and whatever it means, it must have hurt. One day in the locker room I see his right shoulder. It is misshapen, with a strange dent in the middle covered with long whitish scars. “Oh, my God,” I think with horror. “That's what it means—you literally throw your arm out of your body. Then they have to stick it back somehow.” I keep thinking about that scarred-up shoulder.

The revenge for the 1956 World Series finally comes. It is four years later and there aren't any Brooklyn Dodgers anymore. This year the Yankees and the Republicans lose, both in very close contests. The World Series comes down to the last inning of the last game, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Yankees tied. Suddenly a Pittsburgh batter I'd never heard of and who is not known to be much of a hitter smashes the ball out of the park. It is reported that Mickey Mantle cried.

Mickey Mantle cried! I love that. I will always like the Pirates for that, the team that made Mickey Mantle cry. Adults don't cry very much. The only crying adults I have seen were my family one Saturday when they were listening to a broadcast of
Tosca
with Leontyne Price. It was my parents' favorite opera. I didn't really understand it but it seemed to involve love and torture, and the performers sung these amazing songs with so much feeling. After one song I looked over at my parents and their eyes were shining. They had been crying. Leontyne Price had made them cry. And now the Pittsburgh Pirates had made Mickey Mantle cry. When adults start crying, it's usually important.

Chapter Five

Paying the Price

The big thing is that John Kennedy has been elected president. You may not think this is such a big thing. But I've just turned twelve years old and the only president I can remember is Eisenhower. It seemed like he always had been president and always would be president. He was the General, the one who had led all our fathers to war, and had won the war, and so he would be president forever. He was old and he talked the way old people talk, like from a different time. He was all about a world that happened before I was born.

Now he is gone. We all knew Richard Nixon, who ran against Kennedy. If Nixon had won it would not have been exciting because he was Eisenhower's vice president. Like Eisenhower, he had always been there. Also, adults could argue about Nixon, but kids looked into his eyes and didn't trust him. He was scary-looking.

But Kennedy is different. He is young. Everybody says he is young, although actually he isn't. He is the exact same age as my father and no one is calling my father young. But Kennedy is a lot younger than presidents usually are—in other words, a lot younger than Eisenhower. And his wife, Jackie, is amazing. Who could have imagined such a thing, someone that beautiful living in the White House? Everything will be different now. Everything will be young, beautiful, and exciting.

To lead us through this time in history, we have our civics teacher, Mr. Walter. I can't figure out what civics is—something about learning to be good citizens. This year it is all about the election.

Every now and then teachers turn up who don't seem like one of the rest of them. It is always surprising that they got their jobs. These teachers are the only ones we ever listen to. Mr. Walter is one of them. He wears his hair a little too long so that it flops in front of his face when he becomes excited—like when he talks about Kennedy and turns to the class and says, “Man, can you dig it?” It really is a question. He wants to know if we are digging it. He plays a wailing alto sax whenever he is left alone. We can hear him playing alone in the classroom after school. Mr. Walter is a beatnik. Beatniks have long hair and listen to wild music and like crazy paintings and poems that don't rhyme. They aren't new anymore. They were new when I was little. But I only know that from television. Mr. Walter is the first beatnik anyone has seen in Haley. In Haley, long hair, especially with curls in the front, is seen on boys who are always in trouble. So this is all very surprising for a teacher.

Mr. Walter wants us to listen to President Kennedy's inaugural address. He has a copy and he reads it in class even though he doesn't have Kennedy's accent, which to us seems an important part of the whole thing because neither Eisenhower nor Nixon has an accent like Kennedy's, and even though we are all from Massachusetts, most of us don't either.

“Okay, cats, so he said, ‘Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans …' So who is he talking about, man?”

“Us!” we all scream. “He's talking about us.”

“Really? Donnie.”

“He is talking about how we are going to be in charge. A new generation taking over.”

“Really, cats. But dig this. He says, ‘Born in this century, tempered by war …' Is that you?”

“Yes!” we all scream.

But I can see that he isn't talking about us. He is talking about himself and about our parents—about the World War II people. Why is the torch being passed to them? Haven't they had the torch already? Now it is our turn. Why not take the torch while you are young enough to enjoy it?

“But have you been tempered by war?” Mr. Walter questions.

“Yes,” says Rocco Pizzutti. “So far our whole lives have been about war.”

“Okay. I can dig that. So what is this? Kennedy says, ‘We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.' What is he talking about? Are you ready to pay any price? What price are you going to pay?”

“Whatever price we have to pay,” says Stanley. “So we can all be free.”

Everyone cheers. And we are ready, ready to bear the burden and pay the price. We will assure the success of liberty. We are ready to stand up to our foes. We are ready for John and Jackie. Men used to wear hats but John Kennedy doesn't wear one and so we will not wear hats. He is the future.

We are all talking about these things in school, about the torch being passed and not wearing hats and paying any price and how Jackie is beautiful and speaks French. I don't know why everyone likes her speaking French so much. We have started French in school and we don't want to have to speak it. Maybe being beautiful and speaking French is a good combination.

But I heard other things in Kennedy's speech that I didn't talk about just then. No one would want to. Everyone was too excited. But Mr. Walter talked about them anyway, pointing out that Kennedy said, “The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.” Mr. Walter looked around the room and said, “What's that about, cats?”

“Do we really have the power to abolish all forms of human poverty?” I ask.

“Of course we do,” says Donnie, sounding annoyed. “And Kennedy's going to do it.” And the class cheers again.

“But aren't we spending more time and money on the other stuff?” I ask.

“What other stuff?” says Kathy Pedrosky in a voice that makes it clear she thinks I am disgusting.

I don't want to be disgusting to Kathy Pedrosky but I want to understand. So I keep going. “Why are we building things to abolish all forms of human life?”

“What are you talking about, Joel?” asks Kathy, pronouncing my name like it is the dumbest sound she ever heard. I want to just drop the whole thing. But she insists, “What?”

“The bomb. The A-bomb.”

The class laughs, possibly because my voice breaks when I say “A.” It comes out in a high squeak.

I don't want to talk about it anymore but it is bothering me. Kennedy mentioned “the deadly atom” and “mankind's final war.” Is that what my war is going to be? A final war with nuclear weapons that ends the world?

It is funny that just as Kennedy arrives and fills us with hope, I am starting to think about a lot of things besides the Yankees and the Republicans, and a lot of those things are really scaring me.

I ask Dickey Panicelli what he thinks about World War II and the bomb because he is older and knows about things. His long hair falls over his face and he throws it back with his hand before he speaks, giving him a James Dean aura, James Dean being the actor whose aura we most want. You want to know what someone thinks who can do that with his hair. Only it is hard to hear him over his lawn mower engine. He says something about “the Communists” and I guess that makes sense. We have to stand up for what is right. The Germans didn't, and they allowed concentration camps. We can't be like that. We have to be willing to pay any price to ensure the survival of liberty.

I am not the only one thinking this stuff. We all talk about it—World War III and the end of the planet. There is a movement called “Ban the Bomb.” Shouldn't the atom bomb be banned? Mr. Shaker, who is my teacher this year, says that we want to ban the bomb but can't because the Russians have it. Russia is the big problem because they are Communists. Nobody will explain to me what Communists are. Most people say they are people who want to take away freedom. But some say they want to share everything. The first group must be right, otherwise why would we pay any price to stop them? But I wish I knew more because everyone says that the next war is going to be with the Communists. Actually, a lot of people say we are at war with them now, but it is a “cold war.” “Cold” means no shooting. But that is just for now.

Does paying
any
price include destroying the entire world? Most of my friends don't want to talk about that just now. Kennedy is president and everyone is feeling good and excited. When I ask these kinds of questions, the other kids seem to get angry. So I avoid the subject—which, I suppose, is what everyone else is doing too.

Instead of asking questions, we form a club. We call ourselves the Three Musketeers, after a book we are supposed to be reading though it is a little too long. Stanley and Donnie and I are the Musketeers and Jackie Kennedy is Queen Anne. We vow that we will fight together and pay any price together and that, when the time comes, we will all go into the same branch of service at the same time, though we can't agree on which branch that will be. We give ourselves secret names, the names from the book. Donnie is Athos, Stanley is Porthos, and I am Aramis. We start calling ourselves by these names but only when no one else is around. There is a fourth character, D'Artagnan, and I suggest that we let Rocco be D'Artagnan. Athos and Porthos agree but Rocco says the whole thing is stupid, which is upsetting for me because Rocco was the only other Brooklyn Dodgers fan. But we all know that the character who is really missing is the beautiful Constance. In the book, they all loved Constance. We do not have a Constance.