Dirty Rice (20 page)

“I never been fishing before.”

“Not even in that creek you talking about? Long something? Ain't never caught no perch?”

“No, there ain't no fish to speak of in Long King Creek. Everything in the woods and water big enough to eat in the Nation got ate a long time ago. The ones that's left has learned how to hide. Our groceries come from the store and the stuff we grow behind the house.”

“You don't mean you been telling stories to Tony Guidry now, do you?” Zeb said, looking up from his sore foot. “Didn't you kill deer with rocks you throwed at them?”

“I never threw a rock at a deer in my life,” I said. “But I know what stories a man wants to hear. I know what satisfies him.”

“Lord, everybody lies these days. Even an Indian chief. What has become of the country during this Great Depression? Truth has left the territory.”

“You ever go fishing with Mr. Guidry?” I said. “Out in the Gulf for the big ones?”

“No, Gemar,” Zeb said. “I play second base off and on, and I ain't never hit above a two-fifty average, and I ain't never pitched a game or got more than just my name in the newspaper boxscores. And that was in real fine print. So I can't give you no fishing advice. But I can tell you one thing you'll need to know before you go out on the big water with one of them owners of the Rice Birds.”

“What's that?”

“Be damned sure not to catch more or bigger fish than Tony Guidry, whatever you do.”

“Why? He's not a sportsman? Is that what you're saying?”

“Not only is he not a sportsman,” Zeb Munger said, “if what you mean by that is a man willing to try to win and if he gets beat at a thing to put up with it because it's part of the game. No, Guidry won't have no part of that kind of situation. But beyond that, he is for sure willing to get beat if that will make him some money.”

“Willing to get beat?”

“Not only willing, he will fix it so he does get beat, and he will be happy as a king about it, Gemar. Tony Guidry figures only a fool wants to win if it don't make him any money.”

“But that's the way you make money,” I said. “By winning. Ain't it?

“Finally, I reckon. But you got to be willing to have it look like you lost, if you want to win big. Losers turn out to be the ones that ain't willing to look like they're beat. You got to give up wanting people to think you won. You want them to think you lost. That's when you win.” Then Zeb looked back down at his sore spot. “Damn, I hate a blister on my foot. I don't know whether to bust it or let it go down on its own.”

“It's going to hurt however you do it,” I said. “I learned to bust them and get it over with.”

“That is one philosophy,” Zeb said. “I will admit. But I reckon I'll just let nature take its course. There's not a damn thing you can do about it, no matter what.”

“You can make it happen. You can hurry it up.”

“I'll tell you something else, pitcher,” Zeb said, poking a finger at his blister. “After you go fishing with Tony Guidry and that goes OK, I predict you'll be getting a visit from Sal Florio and he'll start explaining about different ways to look at winning and losing. To get back to that sore subject.”

“I ain't got nothing to say to Sal Florio or him to me,” I said. “Better bust that blister, Zeb.”

“You'll see. And hey, take Mike Gonzales fishing with you when you go out there on the deep water. I expect Tony Guidry would like it fine to let Mike be one of the fishing party.”

“Why Mike in particular?” I said. “Because he's a rookie like me?”

“That, for sure,” Zeb Munger said. “But he's like you in some other ways, too. He's a damn good ballplayer at his position, and he comes from a funny place. And I ain't talking about Cuba, if you're wondering.”

I didn't say anything back to Zeb about that, and I was like every other one of the Rayne Rice Birds about that topic. Nobody believed Mike Gonzales was from anywhere but Alabama, but if saying Cuba made it all right for him to play shortstop in the Evangeline League, making good pickups and getting to batted balls nobody else could reach and throwing out runners and reaching base about every third time he came to bat, not a soul was going to say a thing to question his word. He could've said he was from another planet, and we'd have just nodded yes and asked how the weather was up yonder and if everybody there looked just like him, like a redbone from Mobile.

“Mr. Guidry said I could bring more than one Rice Bird with me on his fishing boat. Maybe I'll ask my catcher to come along. Dynamite might like to go out on the sea,” I said to Zeb.

“Dynamite?” Zeb said. “No, you don't want to ask him. He's done been fishing with Tony Guidry and some other folks, and Dynamite caught the wrong thing.”

“A bigger fish than what Mr. Guidry did?”

“It wasn't a fish, no. But it was something Dynamite was sorry to have hooked and was glad to give up. It like to've pulled him under, too, before the whole thing was over with.”

“I reckon it was a woman, then,” I said, “from what I been hearing about Dynamite Dunn.”

“I ain't saying no more, because I don't want to say more than's good for me,” Zeb said. “But I will tell you one thing. It is hard to turn a double play or tag out a base stealing son-of-a-bitch at second when the ball of your foot's burning like fire.”

“Bust that blister,” I told him. “Get it over with.”

“You got a lot to learn, pitcher,” Zeb said. “About how to deal with sore spots. Hand me that pair of socks yonder, if you please.”

The baseball season in the Evangeline League was a hundred and fifty-two games long, and that meant we had to play seventy-six of them on the road. We traveled as far north as Monroe to play the Zephyrs and as far south as Houma and Opelousas to play their teams and over to Lake Charles in the west, and we did that traveling in the toad mobile almost every trip. Sometimes the bus would die on us, and they'd rent another one to haul us around in while we waited for ours to get fixed. We generally liked that, since it would've been hard to find a worse bus than the toad mobile, but it was the cheapest way for us to go. They could always fix it.

We would get tired riding on the bus, and we'd get tired sleeping on cots in high-school gyms. Sometimes we'd get to stay in hotels, like the Red Lion in Baton Rouge, but mostly the hotels was what they called tourist courts back then, and I'd rather have laid down on a pallet on the floor in a gym than in a room in most of them roach dens.

One thing kept happening, though, back in that season in the Evangeline League in the middle of what the white folks called the Great Depression and what people in the Nation thought was life as usual. Here's what kept happening. The Rayne Rice Birds went on winning more games than they lost, no matter which teams we was playing against, and by the middle of the season we was only two games out of first place, just behind the Opelousas Indians. We was glad to be that close, and we knew we could catch the Indians in the second half of the season, and that meant we could be in the playoffs at the end. That would be a good payday, according to what the veterans on the Rice Birds said, and we was all ready for that.

At the end of the first half of the season, everybody in the Evangeline League got almost a week off from playing because there was the all-star game between the clubs in the northern part of the league and the ones in the southern. We were all glad about being able to stay in Rayne for five or six days in a row, and most of us didn't have anything to do then but rest up and go to honky-tonks. Three of us on the Rice Birds had to go to Baton Rouge for the week because we'd been picked to play for the South in the Evangeline League All-Star game. It was me and Mike Gonzales and Hookey Irwin, so we wasn't going to have that vacation the rest of the Rice Birds had.

Dutch was the one that told us we'd been picked to play in the all-star game for the southern team. After he'd told the whole bunch of us that, Dutch took us back into his office.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “We're the only team in the whole damn league that got three men named for the all-star game. That's good, and it'll mean a bonus for y'all and some kind of a medal to put in your dresser drawers to show your grandkids when you're old and crippled up. But there is a catch now having three Rice Birds get named all-stars. Know what it is?”

“Two pitchers?” Hookey Irwin said. “Is that the problem?”

“You got it, Hookey,” Dutch said. “You are a right-handed pitcher, and that's all you do. And that's damn fine, of course. Gemar is a left-hander, and he happens to be leading the league in wins right now, just a couple of games ahead of you, Hookey. Thing is, when Gemar ain't pitching, he's somewhere in the outfield for the reason everybody knows. He knocks the pure D shit out of the ball, and he's right up there with Roy Sanner on the Houmas in batting average and RBIs and home runs. And you know what?”

“No,” Mike Gonzales said, “what?”

“The other managers in the Evangeline League and the folks that run the show in the office don't like it that Gemar's doing an all-star job when he's pitching and when he comes to bat, too. They just act like they're paralyzed by that. And you know what else?”

“You're happy as hell about it,” Hookey Irwin said.

“I'm happy as a hog in the biggest mudhole in Arkansas about it,” Dutch Bernson said. “But what they decided is that Gemar can't be allowed to pitch in the game if Hookey's going to be an all-star, too. And if Gemar does pitch, then Hookey can't be on the all-star team, even though he's ten and two here at the break.”

“Gemar's twelve and two, though,” Hookey said. “With a lower ERA than I got and more strike-outs.”

“Did you know that, Gemar?” Mike said.

“I know I lost them two games,” I said. “I didn't pitch like I ought to've done in neither one.”

“Gemar ought to pitch in the all-star game,” Hookey said, not looking at me. That wasn't new, though. I'd never caught him with his eyes fixed on me since I'd hit that first pitch of his to me off the wall during my try-out for the Rice Birds. “He's got the best record, and he's a lefty. You know what that means, Dutch.”

“Yeah, I do,” Dutch said, and then I broke into what he was saying.

“If I got any say in this, I don't want to pitch in that game. I want to be in the outfield, and I want to come to bat without having to worry about how I'm going to pitch the next inning.”

“You want to be a hitter in the all-star game,” Dutch said, “that's what you're saying.” I nodded yes at him.

“I'm much obliged, Gemar,” Hookey Irwin said, and when I looked at him, he was looking at me. “I always wanted to pitch in the all-star game, and I think this might be my last shot.”

“Bullshit,” Dutch Bernson said. “Both of y'all going to be back next year. Don't say stuff like that. I'll let them accountants in the league's front office know what we decided. We going to have three Rice Birds playing for the South in the Evangeline League All-Star Game, boys. It's the first time it's ever happened for Rayne, and it's going to make everybody happy.”

“Especially LeBlanc and Guidry,” Hookey Irwin said.

“When them two's happy, I tell you I'm feeling a warm wet spot in my pants,” Dutch said. “Come on, you all-star pitcher and outfielder and shortstop. Let me buy you a drink or two, and I'll tell y'all what to say to them newspaper reporters when they start asking you their damn questions.”

Dutch took us to a bar on a side street just off the main one there in Rayne, a place called the Pelican, and he told us we could have two beers apiece. While we was getting the first one down, listening to Dutch tell us what to say and how to say it to the reporters he figured would be writing up the stories about us going to be in the Evangeline League All-Star game, somebody in the Pelican Bar saw us sitting in our booth up against the wall. I saw him say something to the bartender and in a minute or two, the bartender came over with drinks for us that the man had paid for. We all lifted them up toward him to say thanks.

“Who's that?” Mike Gonzales said. “I don't believe I ever seen him before.”

“That gentleman there is not from Rayne,” Dutch Bernson said. “But he does show up here now and then. Don't he, Hookey?”

Hookey nodded and took a drink. “You could say that, all right, without fear of successful contradiction. He does come around on a regular basis.”

“He ain't no rice planter, I guess, is he?” Mike said, “I mean with the kind of clothes he's wearing and that big ring on his hand and the way his hair's all combed up. He looks like he's got some extra money.”

“He does not plant rice, and he does not pick cotton,” Dutch said. “But he is a cultivator, let me tell you. He works for Huey, and he covers this part of the state of Louisiana like a blanket.”

“What's his job?” I said. “I ain't going to drink but the two beers, now. Just to let you know.”

“What's that got to do with anything, Gemar? I sure ain't paying for more than that,” Dutch said. “But to answer your question, Mr. Boose Fontenot just keeps an eye on things, and he knows where every little thing is all the time. Am I wrong about that, Hookey?”

“When are you ever wrong, Dutch?” Hookey Irwin said. “That you know of.”

“Not much, I got to admit. Back in 1922 I might've made a mistake, but I could be wrong about that. I can tell you, though, that Boose Fontenot already knows y'all are going to play in the All-Star Game, and I expect he can tell every one of you just how you're going to do.”

“How can he know that?” Mike said. “The first pitch ain't even been throwed yet.”

“I believe it has for him,” I said. “I imagine that man sees things before they happen. I wish I could take a look at his feet without them shiny shoes covering them up. I could tell then.”

“You drunk already, Gemar?” Mike said. “You ain't had but the one Jax.”

“I ain't drunk,” I said, “and I ain't going to get that way tonight, but I know the Big Man Eater when I see him.”

“Oh, shit,” Mike Gonzales said. “I wish you wouldn't say stuff like that, pitcher. You know I don't like that kind of hoodoo talk.”

“I'm glad you brought that subject up of how Gemar talks,” Dutch said, knocking back the drink sent over to him by the man sitting at the bar with his feet all covered up. “See, that kind of Indian stuff is just the thing Mr. LeBlanc and Mr. Guidry want you to talk about to any of these reporters that'll want to hear what you have to say about being picked for the All-Star Game.”

“That'll build attendance,” Hookey Irwin said. “Indian lore. Create interest, put people in the seats. That's what you're talking about, I expect.”

“That is exactly what I'm talking about, boys,” Dutch said. “You got to sell what you got and make people want to buy it, whether it's a baseball game or tiddly winks or a crop of sugarcane. So tell them reporters all you can about that Indian stuff, Gemar. Lay it out there. It'll do us all good.”

About then, the man at the bar got down off his stool, laid some bills on the counter, and turned toward the booth we were sitting in. He pulled at the crotch of his suit pants to make them sit better, and just before he raised his hand to wave at us, Dutch punched my knee under the table. “Don't say a word to him about his feet, Gemar.”

“Gents,” the man said, coming over. “Good to see you this evening.”

“Mr. Fontenot,” Dutch said. “Let me introduce you to these Rice Bird players.”

“I'm pleased to shake hands with them, naturally, and to say hello, Dutch. But I already know who they are. Hello, Hookey. We go back a ways.”

“Howdy, Mr. Fontenot,” Hookey Irwin said and made like he was about to stand up.

“Keep your seat, and call me Boose, please. You going to make me feel even older than I am with that mister business. I know who this pitcher is, Chief Batiste, and the shortstop sitting beside him, Mike Gonzales. Hola, Mike. You have to forgive me, Chief. I don't know how to say hello in your language. All I can manage is a little coon-ass and Mexican.”

“Hello,” I said, looking not at the man's eyes but at a spot on his forehead right above them. He wouldn't be able to tell what I was seeing. “An Alabama Indian would say
chica ma
to you when you come up to him.” I didn't tell him the truth about that, what
chica ma
meant, and I sure didn't tell him what a Coushatta would have said to a Big Man Eater he'd happened upon.

“I ain't going to try to repeat that,” Boose Fontenot said, and laughed twice like a dog barking, “but I appreciate you telling me hello in your Indian way of talking.”

“Thanks for the drinks,” Dutch said. “Would you have one with us, Boose?”

“No, thank you. I got things to do, places to go. But I want to let you boys know how proud we all are of the Rice Birds and about y'all making the All-Star team. The Senator asked me to tell you he hopes to be at the game in Baton Rouge next week. He says he's rooting for everybody, of course, who's going to be playing. He don't take sides against nobody in Louisiana. But he's a real fan of the Evangeline League, and he loves baseball.”

Boose Fontenot said a couple of more things to all of us in general, and then he asked Dutch to come outside with him and talk to him while he walked to his car. Mike Gonzales watched the two of them go out the door and then asked Hookey Irwin who this senator was that Fontenot was talking about.

“Huey Long is the senator in question,” Hookey said. “Don't you know that?”

“I thought he was the governor of Louisiana,” Mikes said. “Didn't you think that, Gemar?”

“Huey was the governor, so he still is and always going to be, and now he's an official United States senator, too,” Hookey said. “But he is mainly the Kingfish, and that means he's everything all the time.”

“You reckon he's really going to come to that All-Star game in Baton Rouge?” Mike said.

“He might be there for a couple of pitches,” Hookey said. “He shows up everywhere in Louisiana all the time, rookie. The Kingfish is set in solid in the Pelican State.”

“I never thought I'd be playing in front of a Senator,” Mike said. “I got to let my mama know about that.”

“I never thought I'd see the Big Man Eater wearing a nice suit and big old shiny shoes in Louisiana,” I said, reaching for that glass of whiskey in front of me. I'll take just the one sip, I told myself. That's all. “I thought he stayed in the Nation all the time, but here he is in Rayne in a whole different state.”