Boonville (18 page)

A foul ball curved down the right field line and out of play,
bouncing off a parked car. The gofer was on it in a flash, climbing underneath a truck to recover it.

“Catch this one, Dorkface!” the gofer yelled, throwing the ball to John. It dribbled to a stop in front of him, not possessing as much spunk as the kid.

John lobbed it back to Big Jack. But before returning to his position, he noticed the boy's shirt, a pullover with the number 82 emblazoned in red. John didn't know whether the number corresponded to a player on a professional team or the year it had been purchased.

“Don't look down,” John told the boy. “If you can tell me the number on your shirt, I'll give you twenty bucks.”

The child realized the offer was serious and that twenty dollars meant a lot of Jolly Ranchers. He bit his lower lip, rolled his eyes downward trying to sneak a peak at the numeral that could put him in Candyland. All but defeated, he gave it his best shot.

“Four!” he answered.

“Sorry,” John said, making the sound of a buzzer. “Thanks for playing.”

The child checked his chest to see if John hadn't been lying. Finding the eight and two, he pulled a face, feeling John had somehow changed the number, gypping him out of a mouthful of cavities. His mother called his name from the stands. The boy stood trying to comprehend the turn of events before leaving, the moral finally dawning on him.

“I can change my shirt,” he said, before dashing off for maternal protection. “But you'll always suck!”

The insult echoed in John's ears as he repositioned himself. He remembered how his father used to attend his Pony League games, sitting in the bleachers with a bottle of schnapps. John used to pitch and his father had a string of insults waiting for him after every toss, “That fast ball couldn't puff a lip at ten paces! You couldn't throw a strike with the Teamsters behind you!” The premise was John would become a pressure player. The outcome was his father was banned from the stadium. He argued with the cop who escorted him off the grounds, “Don't tell me how to raise my kid! I don't come to your house and tell you to quit fondling your daughter!”

Another reason John stopped playing sports, the fans. He
couldn't think of anything more pathetic than a grown man sitting in the stands with some undereducated twenty-eight-year-old's name sewn onto his back. When the time came, he would play pickle and pepper with his own kids, but he would make sure they knew the difference between the big picture and Little League, the division between church and sport, stressing an identity that extended beyond a team's insignia. Something only Grandma had encouraged him to explore.

Three up, three down.

John found himself holding a Bombat, and waiting his turn to swing it. Hap told him this was the last game of the season. The winner decided the league champion. They weren't in the running, in third place behind their opponents Stafford Logging and The Boys of Summer, a group of teenage upstarts who the Mexican team called “Menudo Atletico.” The Spotted Owl Eaters were going to finish ahead of the Mexican team Los Diablos, and the hippie team, The Dharma Bleacher Bums, who were led by a six-foot-ten first baseman who played in a tie-dyed sarong. It was a point of honor not to lose to the hippies. Consequently, they were winless. But The Spotted Owl Eaters could play spoilers by winning this game against Stafford Logging, because a loss by Stafford Logging would drop them into second place. So, Hap was talking strategy.

“If I get on,” Hap told John, “I'd appreciate you not hittin' more than a single. These days, I run bases like I juggle women, one at a time.”

John replied he would probably hit into a double play. Hap said, whatever he did, not to do that. At his age, sliding was a last resort.

“Of course, if push comes to shove,” Hap said. “It's spikes high.”

John watched him head for the plate, the only wooden bat in the team's arsenal resting on his shoulder. He could barely read the autograph etched into the lumber, faded from countless collisions with a cushioned piece of cork: Joe Medwick.

“You got a final on this one?” said a large man with a friendly face, through the fence protecting the spectators from the playing field. He had a full beard and wore a tweed coat, wire-rimmed glasses, suspenders, and a gray fedora. In his hands he held a notebook and pen, poised for scribbling.

“We're still playing,” John informed him.

“You want to make one up?” the man asked. “Nobody gives a shit anyway. The only people who care are playing the game.”

John didn't want to predict the outcome. “That's why you play them,” he said. The man smiled. John could tell he had played his fair share. The man had the look of an athlete who had hung up his jock decades ago to pursue a career.

“They play them,” he told John, “because if they didn't, they would have to confront the fact that their communities have been destroyed, plundered by corporate giants who have stripped them of their jobs, natural resources, personal freedom, and left them behind with inadequate health care, faulty public schools, and a chain of fast food restaurants, all while they were out chasing a ball and giving each other high-fives. They play them because they're too dumb to realize the result is always the same.”

“Are you blaming the decline of Western civilization on the national pastime?” John asked.

“That's right,” the man said. “Apathy.”

Hap took a pitch inside. The ball rolled away from the catcher and behind the umpire, who seemed oblivious to its location. The catcher walked around the umpire to retrieve it, instead of the umpire moving out of the way. John noticed the umpire's mask was strapped on over the bald head of a man wearing all white, and that he was calling pitches by leaning an ear toward home plate.

“The umpire's blind,” John said, identifying Blindman.

“What else is new?” the man asked. “You're the Squirrel Lady's grandson, right? How would you like to write an article for our local paper on an outsider's perspective of the Anderson Valley?”

“I'm not an outsider, I live here,” John said, but how could he live somewhere they let a blind guy umpire softball? Even if he was calling a good game. “I don't think my perspective would win me any friends.”

“A newspaper has no friends,” the man stated. “How about covering a missing persons? Reports say you were the last one to see a certain Tony Balostrasi, a native of San Francisco who told his roommate he wanted to taste the food at the Boonville Hotel, missed work and his mother's birthday party, and hasn't been heard from in a week.”

“I don't know him,” John said, not wanting to concern himself with the whereabouts of Balostrasi who was probably off selling his stolen dope. He would turn up to treat his roommate to an expensive dinner and his mother would get a VCR and an apology for missing her celebration. But then John remembered Balostrasi's gun. He remembered he was supposed to help harvest Sarah's marijuana.

“You're up,” the man said. “If you change your mind, we might be able to pay you something in the low two figures.”

“I'll think about it,” John said. “Right now, I've got to take one for the team.”

“I understand,” the man replied. “The toy department of life.”

John entered the batter's box. Aside from his domestic problems, there were two outs and somebody was on second. Daryl stared in at him from short, Billy Chuck in center. Cal delivered the pitch from the mound. His teammates were cheering. The ball came in unbelievably high, at a slant above his shoulders, and landed six inches behind the plate. Blindman called it strike one.

“Next time you'll say hello,” he snipped, from behind his mask.

“I thought that was you, Blindman,” John said. “How are your sinuses?”

The next pitch hit the dirt a foot to the right of the rug. Blindman called it strike two. The Spotted Owl Eaters objected from the dugout, realizing the fix was on. John told himself to swing at the next offering, regardless of its location.

“This is a hitter's league, Squirrel Boy, you can't beg your way onto the base path,” Blindman informed him. “Ask your Itie friend from San Francisco, he had the right idea. My offer still stands if you want to do business.”

John didn't have time to reply, another pitch was approaching and he started his swing, weight shifting, hips flying open. Way out in front. He drilled it foul down the third base line. Strike three. End of inning.

“Good contact,” Hap said, tossing John his glove so he wouldn't have to go back to the bench. “Blindman needs to have his ears checked, those first two were balls.”

As the innings progressed, John felt more at ease in the field, but increasingly nervous about his postgame plans. Something told
him the newspaperman was trying to link him to Balostrasi's crimes. What crimes? he didn't know. But if something illegal had happened on the night of his arrival, a blackout wasn't much of an alibi. Especially if you were caught later engaging in similar activities. “Ask your Itie friend?” Why were people so quick to connect him with Balostrasi? Because they had exchanged a few words and were from out of town? Ask him what? Call it paranoia, but John had the feeling he should back out of Sarah's scheme. Maybe call a lawyer.

In spite of his fearfulness, the game began to take on a pleasant rhythm. He had always enjoyed playing at night, cheating the darkness of its rightful domain. He made a couple of plays from right, cutting down a runner trying to stretch a single, making a diving catch of a Daryl line drive. He could see Daryl's displeasure, adding the snag to a Scoreboard in his head, the only place John might be considered to have a lead. John also gained some respect at the plate, driving a double to left-center and a single up the middle, both on first pitches. He wasn't going to give Blindman a chance to squeeze him or renew the conversation about contraband.

By the seventh inning, the Spotted Owl Eaters had the lead, 6-5. The first two of their batters had failed to get aboard, each trying to tie the game with a swing of the bat and falling twenty feet short. The opposing bench turned their caps inside out, trying to seduce a rally. Billy Chuck wore his with the bill extended upright like a dorsal fin in the “rally shark” position. Daryl crouched confidently in the batter's box. An old desire crept into John's heart: Win. But a bad-hop ground ball found its way through the infield. The next batter hit a double, advancing Daryl to third. Cal drew a walk to load the bases. John could feel the game slipping away as Billy Chuck stepped to the plate.

John began to worry, not so much about the game, but about what he would do after it was over: avoid Blindman and Daryl, that was for certain. His plan had fallen apart. It was getting late and Sarah would be coming over whether he was going to help her harvest or not. He hadn't decided, trying to recall his first night in town so he could confidently deny allegations of being Balostrasi's accomplice, thereby deflecting suspicion of conspiring with Sarah. But the things he couldn't remember kept hiding behind the things he couldn't forget.

Billy Chuck watched Hap's first offering hit the heart of the plate for a strike. The base runners retreated to their bases, readying themselves to sprint with the release of the next pitch. John focused on Billy Chuck's face, trying intently to remember his first night in Boonville. What had happened before he awoke on grandma's porch? Half-images of heaving came to mind, Sarah's monologue, shots of tequila, shouting out eternal alliances. Hap hurled one inside. John recalled a mob, country music, hands guiding his to a steering wheel. Billy Chuck lifted a shallow pop-fly to left, both Kurtses converging at full speed. The night had been cold. Runners raced around the bases, the Kurtses charging the ball. He had cursed Grandma, saw her ghost in his empty glass, crashed her car into signposts while singing songs of liberation. “I got it! I got it!” He had tried to throw himself into an abyss, only to have his fall cushioned by people who had jumped in ahead of him. The Kurtses collided, arms and legs flailing in a confused tangle, the ball landing safely at the feet of their fallen bodies. John blinked at the familiarity. It was déjà vu all over again.

T
here was no time to masturbate. John had arrived home three hours later than he had expected, even taking into consideration that he'd been waylaid. After Billy Chuck's bleeder fell in for a hit, the Kurtses had been revived to face a two-run deficit and splitting headaches. The Spotted Owl Eaters squelched the rally and scored a run in their half of the seventh, but when Hank flied out with two outs and the bases loaded to become an “o-for” on the day, Stafford Logging preserved their victory and Kurtses left the dugout for a piece of Hank's ass and both of his cleats. Shortly following, Big Jack coldcocked Billy Chuck in the handshake line, believing he was gloating too much for a man who had won the game on a Texas Leaguer. John was congratulating Cal when he found himself being shoved toward the backstop, the deputy twisting John's right arm to his shoulder blades and forcing John to stand on his tiptoes.

“You don't want no part of this,” Cal warned.

Hearing the brawl behind him, John felt it was the safest place he could be. He could see a mound of bodies covering home plate while those on the fringe slugged it out toe to toe, their fights consisting of one or two decisive punches. When the dust settled, Cal released him, making the transition from one of the boys to Johnny Law. In the bleachers, bouts were scored; Billy Chuck, K.O., Daryl had beaten Bo on points, Big Jack flattened a couple of other takers, Hank was barefoot and unconscious near the foul pole in right field, T.K.O. Overall, each team would feel they had won the fight. Bruises would mark individual losers. John could tell by the way the two teams eyed each other during the aftermath that there would be new scores to settle next season, and for the rest of their lives.

But with Hank's cleats slung over his shoulder, Kurts was ready to celebrate. However, his brother was on his knees in the batter's box searching for his lower lip. He had been at the bottom of a dog pile trying to open up a can of flaming whup-ass when somebody had chomped onto the brim of his mouth. John saw blood dribbling from Blindman's chin as a Mexican woman led him from the field by the elbow. John didn't say anything. Kurts sifted dirt, one hand pressed to his mouth. Blood lay bulbous around him like breaded chitlins. Kurts dusted off a clump.

“Don't worry, it won't look bad from my house,” his brother consoled. “I got Krazy Glue in the truck. We'll patch you up, good as new.”

The players began to leave the field peacefully after Cal told them he was “on duty.” Women gathered their men. John could tell they would be in the stands next week, hoping for more of the same, excited by any beating they didn't have to take part in. Meanwhile, the gofer wrestled an equipment bag into the rear of a truck while his mother called for a Stafford Logging player to hurry. A derelict speared aluminum cans out of the trash using a stick with a nail hammered to one end. Hap led a flock of sheep onto the diamond for maintenance. Stafford Logging was organizing a convoy to Ukiah to celebrate their title-tying conquest. John followed the Kurtses to the parking lot after Big Jack made him promise to suit up for his team in two weeks for the play-offs.

“We need your bat,” Big Jack said. “We'll move you to center if Hank don't get his cleats back.”

Inside their truck, the Kurtses refused to drive John home until he had a heave-ho with them at the Lodge. Maybe two. By the time John realized the Kurtses' intentions, there was nobody left to ask for another ride or any way out of the truck. He had a hard time swallowing his beer with Kurts sitting across from him, scraped knuckles and Krazy Glue'd lip. John suggested he get stitches. Kurts said it didn't hurt. That's not the point, John replied, what about infection? Kurts ordered a shot of whiskey. Melonie poured a double. Kurts let it trickle over his lip, slopping some onto the bar. John realized some people were immune to pain, the paralyzed, the dead, the insane. Kurts clamped a hand to John's shoulder for his concern, forming a crooked smile, and recommended they get a burger at the drive-in. John grimaced for
both of them.

But now he was home, shaved, showered, and shitting, regretting having ordered his chili cheeseburger and not buying any roto-reading while shopping at the market. In Miami, Christina had kept a copy of
Elle
or
Cosmopolitan
in the bathroom. John was fond of leafing through
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
while he did his duty, but Christina didn't want to encourage him sitting on the throne that long. The bathroom was part of her domain. John was in charge of the drawer in the kitchen that held the potato peeler. Whenever he left
Bartlett's
in the lavatory, Christina reshelved it and he was forced to read about “What Women Really Want from Their Mates,” or “Ten Tips to Avoid Splitting Up.” None of which mentioned having to surrender the bathroom.

John found himself scanning the directions on a box of Q-Tips, wondering, who needed instructions to wipe wax out of their ears? Then he studied the list of ingredients in his hair gel, searching for the longest word. Winner: 26 letters. Several times he tried to pronounce the word, but couldn't make it more than three-quarters of the way through. He would have been happy with a
Watchtower
. He sat. The bathroom was filled with the steam of his shower and the scent of hard water. Eau de toilet. It condensed on the ceiling in mold-spawning droplets. The only thing worse than taking a dump in shower residue was taking a shower after somebody had punished the bowl. When Christina was mad at him, she would shit while he showered. Typical passive-aggressive. She also used a ton of toilet paper when she wiped, so it took two or three flushes to whirl the waste away. She would wait by the bowl for it to refill, jiggle the handle, and then reflush until every last speck was gone. Wee-wee or poo-poo, nobody ever saw an ounce of her excrement or the rain forest she felled in the name of sanitation.

John finished. Washing his hands, he heard the knock on the front door.

Sarah was dressed in hiking boots, black jeans, black T-shirt, a camouflage backpack, and a hunting knife hanging from her side in a leather sheath. Her hair was tucked under a red baseball hat with the words “McKay Construction” stitched across the front.

“You ready, Dieter?” Sarah said, noticing John was also wearing black, but cultivating a different look, one more appropriate for going clubbing in Prague.

“Is anybody ever ready for anything they do?” John said, realizing there was no reason for him to be doing this. Friendship, rebellion, and money weren't substantial enough answers. Identity crisis, maybe. Death wish, closer.

He recalled the first time he had ever smoked dope, pre-Christina, at a fraternity party. He had been in a mind-expanding mood and followed the sound of Grateful Dead music wheezing from a back room to a group of stoners passing around a ceramic bong with the word “love” etched into it. John told himself, “If anybody gets naked, I'm leaving.” He sucked from the hookah. Couples made out. Uncontrollable giggling. “It's all part of an energy thing,” a guy explained to him, as psychedelic wall hangings blended indistinguishably into the paisley bedspread. “You, me, the grass, Terence McKenna, everything. We're all just energy looking for love.” The next day, John awoke with one arm wrapped around a woman he had never seen before, the other clutching an empty bag of Funyons.

“No,” Sarah said, recognizing her words. “They never seem to be.”

“Well, then,” John replied, “let's make it happen.”

At Sarah's request, they loaded the pile of road signs into her truck to give to a bush-hippie on her commune who was doing a series of sculptures, shaping road signs into giant penises; “Men At Work,” “Falling Rocks,” “Xing,” “Yield Ahead.” John was happy to oblige. The Kurtses had told him he should disappear them before Cal found out; the deputy was looking to make an example of someone to halt the recent rash of thefts. Hopefully, Cal wouldn't be on patrol when they passed through town. As Sarah steered them down Manchester Road, Cal seemed to be the farthest thing from her mind.

John was getting used to riding in trucks. He had never noticed how nice it was to ride up high, the perspective and feeling of power caused by the extra height. Sarah told him there was a primal joy to riding in the back too, claiming it was the closest thing to being a German shepherd. One of her favorite memories was of crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in the bed of her mother's boyfriend's half-ton Chevy. The smell of the Bay, drift of fog, spitting over the tailgate, wind whipping your hair, red cable and impossibly high towers. Flashing the peace sign to passing cars.

John said his parents made him wear a safety belt and wouldn't let him put a hand outside the window of a moving vehicle.

“Of course they did,” Sarah said, mistaking his parents for concerned adults instead of control freaks. “Now they have laws against even dogs riding in the back of trucks. Not that my mom would have cared.”

“When did your parents get divorced?” John asked, figuring it was a common enough question, especially in California.

“Four wives ago for my father,” she said. “I don't know when it was official. I was about eleven. They separated before that. It brought up some interesting questions. For example, what do you call an ex-stepmother? The last one made it easier when she checked into the Betty Ford Clinic and became my ‘twelve-step' mother, but the others are harder to label. Bitch 1 and Bitch 2?”

“Your father married four times?” John said.

“He's on five now,” Sarah told him. “The exes are waiting for him to divorce this one so they can put together a basketball team. Right now, they just compare alimony settlements and play bridge.”

Again, John didn't know if she was kidding. Did women still play bridge?

When John was young, he had wished his parents would get divorced. No such luck. Most of his friends' parents were divorced, but John's refused to get with the program. “Nobody hurts me like your father,” his mother would cry. John became convinced it was the reason she never left. Symbiosis. Both of them were bottom feeders.

“My mom never remarried, but she goes through boyfriends faster than Stephen King writes novels,” Sarah said. “After every breakup, Mom goes to Ukiah to buy the latest and sometimes there isn't a current title. When that happens, she brings back a self-help manual or new boyfriend. They propose in a month. I swear, her ring finger is raw from indecision. But Mom loves herself too much to think about anybody else longer than the time it takes them to make her come.”

They had passed by town without running into Cal. There weren't many cars on the highway at this hour, the occasional tourist in mid-journey to somewhere else. Sarah slowed down and veered onto a gravel road.

“Anyway, marriage for women is the equivalent of a man
joining the marines,” Sarah theorized. “Essentially, you're saying you don't want control of your own life.”

John had never thought about joining the marines, but some of his friends had after binges and breakups. Three square meals a day, they said. Get in shape, learn to kill. Something that might come in handy should they get back with their girlfriends. One went through with it. The others finished college, developed habits, abused credit cards, went bulk-food shopping, found even worse matches for themselves, and got married.

“What's the female equivalent of a man getting married?” John asked.

“Getting a pet,” Sarah answered. “Maybe Jenny Craig.”

John could see her in the light reflecting off the hood as they sped along the back road, shifting gears as she accelerated around potholes. She beeped at animals as they bolted through the headlights. The road narrowed. The grade grew steep. The shoulder fell off into what seemed to be oblivion. John's ears needed to pop from the change in altitude. He stressed his jaw on its hinge, expecting to hear the tiny air-releasing report.

“That's why I got married,” Sarah confessed, sneaking a peek at John trying to control his bodily functions. “I wanted someone to make my decisions for me. And nothing was more rebellious to Mom than marrying a redneck. Major two-for-one. Daryl was different then too. Actually he was the same, but nineteen. He had an excuse.”

John wanted to confess something, too, but didn't know what. It was difficult to think with the truck bouncing him around. He searched for the safety belt. Sarah had strapped herself in earlier and seemed unaffected by the ride. He wondered what would happen if a vehicle came in the opposite direction; there was hardly enough room on the road for one car and with so many blind curves, they wouldn't see another driver until impact. John found the safety belt. Sarah told him not to worry, she knew the road better than her menstrual cycle.

“Let's hope you're regular,” John said.

She seemed to give that some thought, then began to hum the theme to “The Brady Bunch.” It reminded John of Christina's friends who were always discussing old television shows. Somebody would say, “Remember ‘Bridget Loves Bernie'?” knowing nobody could forget something that pathetic, especially when they
had asked the same question to the same group of people two weeks earlier at another party. “What about ‘Holmes and Yo-Yo' or ‘Chico and the Man'?” John was guilty himself, his dialogue smacked with sit-com analogies, and he could tell by the way the Bradys' station wagon entered the driveway if it was the episode Cindy got the sniffes or cousin Oliver was visiting and Bobby was going to take Mr. Howell in pool for a wad of bubble gum. 534 packs? The difference was, John was ashamed.

“Sorry,” Sarah said, stopping her humming. “Sometimes I do that.”

“It's all right,” John answered. “Sometimes we all do.”

They came to a fork in the road and John spied a huge glass barrel with material draped on its inside like a shower curtain. If somebody parted the curtain, you would get the false sense of having x-ray vision. Even the doors were made of glass. To the left of the peculiar building was an immense sphere of rusted iron, over thirty feet in diameter, and perched on top was a sculpture of a man in the Atlas pose, back bent, legs flexed, arms stretched behind him, but with no world on his shoulders.