Dirty Rice (23 page)

“Use that special bat today then, Chief. I bet you'll surprise yourself.”

I didn't use my red oak bat against the Lake Charles Explorers, and I didn't get but one hit, and it was an infield grounder that a good shortstop would've had no trouble getting to and throwing me out at first if he'd kept his head down. The man at short for the Explorers was scared I'd outrun his throw, so he didn't tend to his business right, and I beat him by half a step. The only thing good I did at bat was to hit a long fly deep to right when we had Phil Pellicore on third. He was able to tag up and beat the throw at home, but that was the only run we made all game.

The Rice Birds was the bunch that died that day on the diamond, and we didn't look at each other much after the first three innings. We could feel it and smell it in the air whenever we drawed a breath. It was the little stench you can pick up now and then when you're deep in the Big Thicket, the smell that tells you Buzzard is happy and about to get his belly filled with rotted meat.

After that first game with Lake Charles was over and done, all of the Rice Birds got changed quick and got out of there. Nobody talked much to anybody else, and there wasn't a speck of hoorawing taking place after that game we'd lost.

You deserved to have lost because of something you didn't do right, a way you played that wasn't good baseball. Nobody points out what anybody else did wrong then. You make the mistake of doing that, and the best that can come from it is nobody else says a thing. The worst is that men might lock up and start throwing punches at each other.

Cliff Labbé held them to three runs, and we didn't get but the one. That made all of us clear out of the clubhouse at Addison Stadium, and not a one of us looked at Cliff Labbé as we did. He was sitting on a bench by his locker holding a sock in his hand and staring down at his shoes as I was going out the door. It was quiet enough in that big room to hear the water dripping back where the showers were. Everybody left by himself.

When I got to Miz Doucette's house, it was at the hour for supper. Our landlady had a set time for when she would cook and plate up what she'd made for me and Mike Gonzales and her to eat, but she would listen to the radio when we were playing a day game in Rayne in case the timing would be off. When she heard me and Mike come in the front door that day, she called out to us that we could eat right then.

I could hear Teeny talking to her as I came down the hall. I hadn't seen her since that night after the All-Star Game, and I hadn't expected I ever would at supper time again. She would work it that way, I figured, and I had told myself not to let my mind dwell on anything having to do with her again. Put all that in a place in my head where I could keep it locked up and not ever open to the light, I told myself. Let it be like facing a strong pitcher for the first time, one who has the stuff to set me down. Let me take my medicine and see if it works to any benefit.

“Gemar,” Teeny said as I walked into the room. “How are y'all feeling after the game today? Too bad it ended up like it did, huh?”

I knew I had to look at her. When I tried that, taking the chance of looking into her face just long enough to let everybody in the room see that I could, she had changed her eyes. They wasn't the same. They wasn't hidden the way they were the last time I'd seen them. That's when they had all their power, when I couldn't see them for the dark.

What her eyes were now was nothing like that. They didn't show a thing to me but she was pleased to see me and Mike Gonzales. Teeny made the look out of her eyes friendly and happy and sorry we'd lost a baseball game, and the way they looked fitted suppertime just perfect. Sit down, her eyes said, and let me and Mama help you feel better about losing. You played all right, it wasn't your fault personally, and you'll get them next time.

I emptied my plate and never tasted a mouthful of it. Mike Gonzales perked up and laughed a lot and told stories about the Rice Bird players and predicted we'd be in the playoffs and said one loss wasn't nothing to be worried about.

“You just watch,” Mike Gonzales told all of us there at the table. “See if what I told you ain't right. Am I lying, Gemar?”

“You don't know when you are and when you ain't, Mike,” I said. “And that's the truth.” Everybody laughed at that, Teeny the loudest and longest, and I sat there at the table and listened to myself join in.

The second game in that series with the Lake Charles Explorers was at night. Back in those days that was an advantage to pitchers, the lights then not having the strength they got now. It was still good daylight when the first ball would be throwed, and I was warming up with my last few pitches. Dynamite Dunn was catching me. He took a pitch from me and held up his glove before tossing the ball back.

“Damn, Gemar,” he said, trotting out to the mound to hand me the ball. “Save that fire ball for the game, why don't you? You among friends until Jimmy Lanier gets finished singing the National Anthem, so let up.”

“Why does he have to sing that same song every damn game?” I said. “We heard it yesterday already. It's about wore out.”

“Jimmy Lanier will sing it as long as they let him. It gives him a chance to show off his vocal cords, and my, don't he hit his high notes.”

“Get back there behind the plate, and let me throw a couple of more,” I said. “I ain't finished warming up yet. I don't want to talk.”

“Is it something wrong with you?” Dynamite said, tapping me on the shoulder with his mitt and tilting his head to the side as he looked up at me. “You sound as grouchy as Dutch Bernson.”

“Let me get my throws in to you, like I said.”

“Save them bad feelings for the sorry-assed Explorers, Chief,” Dynamite said.

“My name ain't Chief,” I told him. “I feel like I'm missing something. Somebody might've took it, and I need to get it back.”

“Find out if that Lake Charles bunch has got what you dying to get back. See can you take it,” he said and trotted back to the plate.

When the game started, I threw the first man up nothing but fastballs, and he sat down after I'd put three of four across the plate. It felt good to me to rear back and sling it, and I kept doing that for the next two men up. Just one of them got a bat on the ball, a little foul that rolled down the third base line and died like a shot dove. The next one he just waved at, and then he had to drag his sorry bat back to the dugout and pick up his glove.

The day before Lake Charles had made us feel as sick as a bunch of old men sitting in the sun. Now, we were as young and healthy as a litter of half-grown foxes playing around their den. Our batters wore out that first pitcher and the next one they put up on the mound just the same way. It was about like batting practice to us. Every Rice Bird player that came to the plate was leaning forward, swinging hard, and meeting the pitches. Everybody put a boost to their batting average that night.

Every inning, I was getting the Explorers out any way I wanted to. The more I threw the fastball, the better it felt to me. There ain't nothing that feels more comfortable to a pitcher than to feel that sweat rolling down his face and arms, so much he has to wipe himself down as he works. It shuts everything out of his head but the sight of the catcher's mitt behind the plate, getting bigger and easier to hit with every pitch he makes to it. It's like a warm shower loosening your muscles up. The more you sweat, the better it contributes to you.

By the seventh inning, the ones who'd been sitting by me on the bench had stopped saying anything to me and when I'd look over them, they never would look back at me. Instead, they'd stand up, move away, take them a drink of water, start talking to somebody else, turn their backs in my direction, and act real interested in anything but what I might be doing or saying.

I knew what that meant, of course, but I never made a sign that I cottoned on to what was happening. That's part of the game, and you got to play by all the rules. I started hollering a little bit, when one of the Rice Bird players would get a hit or take an extra base or stay alive. That wasn't the way I acted usually on the bench, because I never wanted to waste energy trying to think of something to say.

Top of the ninth inning with us ahead by eight runs, I took the mound after Dynamite had made the third out for us. Standing out there waiting for Dynamite to come to the plate, I looked over at the first batter who'd be up for the Explorers. He caught my eye, tapped his bat on the ground, and pointed his finger at me. People in the stands were making a good bit of noise, and a lot of them were pretty full of beer by that late in the game. I couldn't hear what the Lake Charles player was saying because of that crowd noise, but could read his lips as he looked directly at me and said what he did.

“I'm going to get you, Red Man,” he said. “I'm going to get you this time, Flathead.”

I know who he was. His name was Load Van Zant, and he had the highest batting average in the league the year before and was proud of that. He wasn't leading the league this year. Me and a player from the Opelousas team was ahead of him and had been most of the season.

Load Van Zant was a big fellow, but had a quick bat, and he was mainly interested in just putting the ball in play. You keep getting singles and walks and getting on base, and most of the time that'll pay off for the team. It'll sure pay off for your batting average, if you're all that partial to numbers. I figured that's the kind of batter Load Van Zant was.

I looked at him, leaning on his bat, and I said something back at him, not out loud since he couldn't have heard me in all that rumbling and squalling from the crowd.

“Banjo hitter,” I said, slow so he could read my lips. I knew he had a good eye, what with all them singles he hit. “Banjo hitter,” I said it again.

By then, Dynamite Dunn was set up behind the plate, and I threw him a couple of warm-up pitches while Load Van Zant watched me, pounding his bat on the ground a little harder than he had been. The umpire waved him to the plate, and I looked in at Dynamite's sign. He wanted a low outside pitch to Load, a right-hander, to start him off, and I shook him off a couple of times until he called what I wanted. High inside tight fastball, and I went into my windup and gave Load Van Zant that pitch right where I wanted the ball to go.

When he climbed up off the dirt where he'd had to dive to keep from getting hit in the head, I'd managed to get Load even madder than he'd been when he whispered he was going to get me. He knocked some of the dirt off his uniform, stepped back in, tapped his bat on the plate twice, and squared up into his stance. His stance this time was a lot more closed than it'd been before. Banjo hitters will generally take an open stance, not interested in getting much on the balls they hit since they're doing more slapping at the ball than trying to drive it. They ain't trying to coil up into a closed stance, like a timber rattler in the Big Thicket will do when he's hoping to get as much spring and reach into his strike as his muscles will let him. Unlike a rattle snake, a banjo hitter is not interested in killing you. He just wants a nibble.

This time, though, Load Van Zant was ready to try to put more on the ball, and what he wanted to do more than anything else was to bust a line drive back at the pitcher's mound. So what I did with the second pitch was to start with the show of a big windup and a high leg kick, and then to send him an off-speed breaking ball a little inside. He like to have torn his britches swinging at that one, so far in front of it he spun around enough to throw up a shower of dirt and leave cleat marks in the design of a circle to mark where he'd been.

“Banjo,” I whispered toward him, saying it twice to make sure he read my lips, and threw another high inside fastball that came an inch from his nose as he bailed out. That's when he threw his bat down and came running at me, Dynamite behind him but a little slow in getting started.

It felt good to me to see Load Van Zant coming, and I slung my glove off and was waiting when he made his first step on the dirt of the mound. “Not your left hand,” Dynamite was yelling, over and over again. I remember thinking I was much obliged to Dynamite for saying that, so I spun around to swing from the right side just as Load ran into me. He did want to land a blow himself, and that put him at a disadvantage. By the time Load Van Zant had swung and missed, and I'd thrown a right jab that took him on the left point of the jaw, all the real fist fighting was over, and the wrestling had started up. That didn't last long either, though, but I did get the chance to say into Load Van Zant's ear as he held onto me how did he like getting his ass whipped by a flathead Indian.

Both benches did clear, and everybody got to stumble around and push on each other until they were satisfied, and the folks in the stands got their money's worth. Dutch Bernson slipped down on the mound as he came running up to pull at Load Van Zant's collar.

The umpires got everybody separated and sent back to the dugouts, and not a real lick was hit. Nobody got throwed out of the game, because the umpires knew it was to the benefit of Evangeline League baseball for the game to get finished with me on the mound and Load Van Zant at bat.

He stepped back in finally, and I threw him a couple more fastball strikes, and he was back in his open stance by then and never caught one of them. The next two batters went down easy. Dynamite came running toward me and jumped up for me to catch him, and I did that.

All of us started working our way through the folks who'd run onto the field to get to be part of the carrying on, drunk and falling down and all of them hollering. They was trying to slap me on the back and shake my hand and one of them, a big old boy with no teeth in his head and wearing blue overalls and a fedora, tried to pull the hat off my head. A couple of sheriff's deputies that got to come to the games free if they wore their uniforms pushed a way through the crowd for the players to get to the clubhouse. I mean the ones that wanted to, since two or three hung back trying to talk to some of the women who'd run out there on the field. Mike Gonzales was one of that bunch.

The man on the loudspeaker was still carrying on about the first no-hitter ever pitched in Addison Stadium, calling me Chief Batiste and saying stuff about the pitches I'd been throwing, naming them. The last thing I heard him say through the loudspeaker as I went through the door of the clubhouse where everybody was hooting and hollering like ballplayers will do was the words “scalped by the Thunder Bolt.”

“Well, Gemar,” Harry Nolan said to me. “How do you feel now?”

“I feel all right,” I said, unbuttoning my shirt to let some air get to me and sitting down.

“Let me give you a tip that will serve you in years to come,” Harry said. “Memorize the way you're feeling right now, because you going to want to think back to it later on. You're going to find a need to do that. Get that feeling by heart.”

“Leave him alone, Harry,” Dynamite said. “The misery ain't set in yet, like it done has for you and me. Let it get here at its own speed.”

Tommy Grenier had showed up in the clubhouse by then, notebook in hand, and he was right ahead of Tony Guidry and Legon LeBlanc, all coming in my direction. Over in one corner talking to Mike Gonzales and a couple of other players was Sal Florio, dressed in a real nice black suit with lines running up and down it. He was tapping a finger into the palm of his other hand.

“I'll keep all that in mind, Harry,” I said back to him.

Everybody talked at me at the same time, and I said things back to different ones as I picked out what they were saying. All that loud talking was happening at the same time, like a thunder shower with a big wind pushing it hard enough to make trees bend over and leaves blow off, so there wasn't much chance to make sense of anything anybody was saying. The next day if you'd have read what Tommy Grenier wrote in his story in the
Rayne Tribune
, you'd have thought that time in the Rayne Rice Birds clubhouse when they were talking to me about the no-hitter was real organized and thoughtful. Whenever you read what somebody has wrote about things, you are reading a lie. Anything that happens, whether it's a man pitching a no-hitter in a ball game or two people sitting down quiet to eat a meal together, has got too much going on at the same time.

If you make allowance for the lying that's got to take place, sometimes you can pick out a little bit of truth from all the made-up parts. So all that talking and questions being asked and me trying to answer them and Dutch Bernson chiming in to show how good he managed the game, and Dynamite telling folks about how him and me had planned every pitch I throwed, and Mr. LeBlanc and Mr. Guidry trying to squeeze the last drop of juice out of me being an Alabama-Coushatta from Texas, all them words being put out into the air of the Rice Bird clubhouse was just like a big cloud growing denser and hiding more of what was behind it the more that got said.

It got real dark real quick.

After a while, though, folks had got all they wanted to, and the room started clearing out. I had got into my regular clothes, and had took a sip of whiskey from the bottle that somebody had stuck in my face, and Dynamite Dunn grabbed me by the arm and spun me around to face him.

“All right, Gemar,” he said, his eyes dancing in his head, “you ain't going directly back tonight to Velma Doucette's house to lie down on your bed and think nice thoughts before you doze off. Not this time, hoss.”