Dirty Rice (10 page)

After we'd got suited up and Dutch had time to talk to the bunch of us again, all of us went out onto the diamond where the Crowley Millers played. I waited so I could be the last one out of the door, most of the rest of them pushing to get outside to start warming. The only one left besides me, Punk Kinkaid, would never leave the clubhouse on the road or at home, since his job during a game was to be sure nobody would come in and steal stuff the players might have left lying around. Punk had never played baseball that I knew of, but he'd worked with Dutch Bernson lots of other places before coming to the Rayne Rice Birds.

“Something wrong with your gear?” Punk said. “You missing something, rookie? Need some help?”

“No,” I said. “I just like to be quiet and by myself when I'm fixing to leave the world and about to step inside a baseball diamond.”

“Oh, hell,” Punk said. “Another one of them damn ballplayer superstitions. It's like assholes. Everybody's got one. It wears me out to keep up with what all you crazy bastards believe you have to do right before you can play a game of hard ball. How long do you have to wait before you can go out there?”

“Right now,” I said. “It's time.”

What caught my attention first was the colors inside the walls and fences of Millers' stadium. The grass in almost all them playing fields in the Evangeline League back then was green and plentiful. It rained so much in that country pretty much year round that there was no shortage of strength in the grass covering the fields. I expected that would be true in the Crowley stadium, about like what it was in the Rayne Rice Birds' field. But the grass in the Millers' field was so green it looked almost bluish to me, the shade you'd see in the sky in East Texas early in the spring after a good shower had stopped and the sun had come out strong.

That wasn't all. The lines marking the difference between the diamond and all that was outside was whiter than I'd ever seen, and the few people coming early into the stands to watch the game was wearing clothes that looked like they'd been special dyed for what was about to happen. That depth of color wasn't there for anybody to notice but me. I knew that. That said things to me, and I touched my hands together real quick so anybody watching me wouldn't have noticed what I'd just done and if they did see it, wouldn't have given it no weight.

“Abba Mikko,” I said in the language of the Nation. “Old Father. Today let me be what I'm supposed to be.”

I stepped over the diamond's white line, my left foot first, and I didn't let the right foot know I was going to make it do that until I was all the way on the field. I'd learned a long time ago, playing on the sawmill teams and even just knocking rocks off into the woods behind my father's house, that the less I asked the parts of my body to think about what they were being called on to do, the better they'd do the job I set before them.

So my left foot stepped over the white line, my right one went along without thinking about it, and I was standing inside the diamond of the Crowley Millers where I'd try to stay alive and make the other ones up against me fade away into nothing.

Nowadays when teams warm up before the game starts, they take a good long time doing it. The players lie down on the ground and stretch their muscles, the pitchers throw more times than they will in the game itself, everybody takes batting practice, the infielders catch grounders and throw to first base so many times they have to spell the man catching the throws, and the catcher behind the plate throws down to second base always right on the bag. It ain't never like that once the game starts, though, no matter how warmed up they get.

It wasn't that way in the Evangeline League back during what the white people call the Great Depression. I reckon if we spent more than twenty minutes before a game getting loose and ready, the people in the stands waiting for the game to start would have throwed bottles at us.

So that first-day first-game of the Rice Birds' season, after a few minutes of soft throwing and easy swinging of the bats, all of us players went to the dugout and sat down to listen to Dutch Bernson give us whatever directions he wanted to. They didn't amount to much.

“A lot of y'all have done batted against this Winston LeBreaux,” Dutch said, tapping on the top of his cap with one hand and holding its bill with the other one. “He's getting a little slower every year, but he can still sneak a fastball by you when you ain't looking out good. Lot of breaking stuff, though, like always. If we get on him early, he's apt to get discouraged. Keep that in mind.”

“All right,” Dutch went on. “All right, the plate umpire's fixing to get it cranked up, just as soon as that damn accordion finishes playing. First game, boys. Let's see what y'all can do.”

I was listed on Dutch's lineup to bat eighth, so I didn't expect to be able to get up until maybe the second inning, unless something bad happened to that Millers pitcher, Winston LeBreaux. Nothing bad did happen to him in the first inning, but he lost his chance at a no-hitter when Phil Pellicore hit a sharp single through the hole between second and first. That didn't do Phil no good, though, since a couple of weak fly balls ended up getting hit and caught.

Out in right field, I didn't get any chances when the Millers came to bat in the bottom of the first. Hookey Irwin was sharp, and he wasn't having to bother with throwing many balls to the first three batters, just putting strikes over in the places he was aiming at, getting two men to ground out and one man to sit down after swinging three times at balls that'd moved away from where he figured they was headed in the first place.

I did get to come to bat in the second inning, though, after we got a man on base with two outs. The one on base was Mike Gonzales, batting seventh right before me. I wasn't going to let that bother me yet, though, Dutch putting him up in that spot before me. I figured it was my job to correct his mistake, and if I couldn't do that in the first game, it wasn't nobody to blame but myself.

Mike had hit a good line drive just inside the right field line, and he didn't even slow down when he tagged first, figuring he could beat the right fielder's throw to second. That he did, popping up from his slide like he was on a spring.

I understood why Mike Gonzales was grinning, getting that double the first time he'd come to bat for the Rice Birds in a real game, but I wasn't about to let the expression on my face give away how I felt no matter whether I got a hit or died at the plate.

I remember as I stepped up to the plate I was thinking that I would not hold it against Mike Gonzales that he was standing on second base grinning like a jackass eating briars, so anybody looking on could tell how he was feeling from just seeing his face. That wasn't Mike's fault. He hadn't had the advantages of the raising in the Nation I'd had. I forgive him for that, I said to myself.

I looked down at the plate and saw it had a little dirt on it that had got kicked up when Mike Gonzales had took off for first, so I reached down with my bat and touched the tip of it to the sign Mike left there. It couldn't hurt to have a little bit of that evidence introduced to the piece of wood I was holding in my hand.

I took a long look at the pitcher then, Winston LeBreaux. Like Dutch had said, he was a man who looked like he'd been around for a good while, and that meant something. He might not have the stuff he'd started out with all them years before, but the fact the Crowley team was still paying him to try to get balls by people with bats in their hands meant he'd learned how to use what he had left. Mainly, that would be what was in his head now, not in his arm and back and legs.

Looking down from that little hill of dirt he was standing on, the pitcher wasn't paying any attention to me that you could tell. He was just looking in at the catcher, down in his crouch making signs just behind my left leg, and the pitcher was letting me know he didn't see no reason to be bothered with studying me. I didn't present any problem for him, he was saying. I don't even see you. You're just something to look past.

I was new to him. So what he'd do as a right-hander who'd been around for a long time with his first pitch was put it outside to the left-handed batter in front of him, and he'd want to make it look like he'd just missed with a curve ball. He figured I'd be eager and hot to swing the bat, not wanting to be caught looking afraid to take my chances, so he'd use that first one to set me up for the next one to come. If I swung at the first pitch, that'd tell him where to put the second one, but if I didn't, that'd tell him something different. He'd prefer I didn't swing at that first pitch, though. If I didn't I'd be all tensed up and ready to take a full hack at the second one, and he'd put that one inside. If he could get enough on the ball for that second pitch, he'd want that to be a tailing fastball tight up against me about mid-thigh level.

We both got set, and he reared back and here came the first pitch throwed to me in a real game in the Evangeline League, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time. It came in like I figured it would, and I leaned forward and shifted my upper body like I was trying to be able to reach the ball where it was going to fade outside. It did that, but I didn't swing. The umpire called it a ball, and it was, and Mr. Winston LeBlanc now figured he had me a little bit on edge. I was ahead in the count, and he figured that I wouldn't lay off anything now. He thought he knew now I'd chase an outside pitch, like a rookie will lots of times do, and all he had to do to get me leaning and he'd put that inside pitch right by me. And all that would be the worst that could happen for him, if I misjudged the pitch, would be a strike at least, and if I got the bat on it, it'd likely be a weak grounder hit to the left side of the infield, a bouncer a shortstop would eat up like breakfast.

Winston LeBreaux pulled at the bill of his Millers cap, ready for business. He hid the ball inside his glove, looked at the catcher, nodded his head, and went into his windup. I got ready, on my toes but laid back, tight and loose at the same time, my eyes on that spot in the empty air where his right hand would be when he let go of that pitch headed inside to me, and I took a breath and let it go. There wasn't anybody in the world now but Winston LeBreaux and me, and the only sound was the green color of the grass and the white lines of the diamond speaking to me in a low and steady tone.

It was a good pitch for him, coming to me where he wanted it to go, and if I'd been thinking the way the pitcher wanted me to be, I'd have hit the ball on the handle of the bat I was holding, and it would have squirted back fair, headed straight for where the shortstop was lined up, leaning forward with his hands raised and his eyes fastened on my bat like a tick seized up in an armpit. I was thinking only the way I wanted to, though, not the way Winston LeBreaux was figuring, and I put the sweet part of that piece of ash on the ball just as it reached the spot where it needed to be for me to drive it. I didn't really hit it that hard, but I hit it true, and the line drive went over the second baseman's head and touched the ground just in time to bounce twice before it hit the right field wall a few inches above ground level.

Hitting the wall like that made it take a nice crooked path off to one side, not tracking true, and by the time I'd rounded first base and was halfway to second, the center fielder was just picking it up and deciding to try to get it all the way home before Mike Gonzales would reach that final safe place. He ought not to've tried that. I figured he didn't have the arm for that kind of throw, since if he did, he would've been playing his baseball in a higher level league than the Evangeline. I'd put on more speed as soon as I saw him rear back, and by the time his throw had bounced just behind the pitcher's mound and ended up eight or ten feet up the third base line and the catcher'd grabbed the ball and fired it to third, I was standing there with my triple, watching what was going on. I wasn't concerned no more, since nobody could bother me now.

Winston LeBreaux looked at me for the first time then, holding the resin bag in his pitching hand, but he didn't have any expression on his face other than that of a man who was interested in not dropping what he was throwing up and down without looking at it. I could hear sounds other than just the colors now, standing there with one foot on base, while the third baseman waited with the ball in hand to see if I'd step off and let him tag me. I didn't want to do that, so I stuck where I was, breathing the air and watching the colors of everything around me in Crowley Stadium, the grass and the dirt of the base paths and the clothes and faces of the people in the stands, and listening to all of those different shades humming together. I looked away from the pitcher on the mound, not studying me now, and in at Mike Gonzales trotting back toward the dugout, getting slapped once on the back by Hookey Irwin waiting on deck to bat, now a pitcher with a one-run lead. My triple. My RBI.