Dirty Rice (6 page)

“Well, I sure as shit got hit,” Dynamite Dunn said. He'd pulled his mitt off and was shaking his left hand up and down. “I wasn't even wearing no rubber pad in my glove, Dutch. It come like a thunderbolt.”

“Don't forget what you just called that pitch from Gemar Batiste,” Dutch said. “Thunder Bolt. That's got a real ring to it. I expect Tony Guidry will want to hear that name you just called. Maybe get some use out of it.”

After everybody got more adjusted, I started throwing again. This time G.D. Squires was warned like he ought to have been in the first place, and the next four batters were in the same situation.

I remember giving G.D. Squires a few more fastballs, moving them up and down, and in and out on him, a right-hander, and then I broke off a few curves on him, starting high and outside and then getting them to tail in on him. He took his swings, and there wasn't nobody calling balls and strikes, so I must have throwed him ten or twelve pitches while he was up. He got wood on a couple of the fastballs, one right after the other, fouling one off to the right field side because he was late on it and then getting under the next one and popping it up to the infield. That told me he was getting a rhythm established, so I took a lot off the next one but kept my motion the same, even grunting a little when I let it go, and that got him way out in front of the ball and tied him up in a knot. G.D. Squires almost fell down with that change-up by the time he'd stopped swinging at it.

After that, Dutch called for the next man to come up, and G.D. Squires stepped out of the batter's box, giving me a long look when he did it, still a little mad. He did touch his forefinger to the bill of his cap, though, letting me know he wasn't going to let the stunt lead to any longtime bad feelings. I didn't blame him for the way he felt.

I nodded back at G.D. Squires and touched the bill of my cap at him. He didn't hit me this time, but he'd known what was coming after that surprise first pitch. Now he was able to think what he'd seen and how he'd misjudged and got behind by a pitch or two and not caught up, and he could rest easy in his mind about how he'd lost in that at-bat. He'd see me again, he figured, and the next time he'd be better prepared than he was the first.

It's always just a matter of time with learning to hit a pitcher and how to pitch to a batter. Do it long enough, and if you're a hitter facing a pitcher who's always had your number before and has made you go back to that bench to sit down where nobody wants to look at you, there will come a day when you will see his best stuff coming and know it before it gets there, and you will hit it. Then he'll be the one spinning around to see where that good pitch he thought he'd made right on the money is going to end up. If one of his people don't save him now, he's lost. It's not in his hands anymore. He is as good as dead.

It's even harder on the pitcher when he loses, because he almost always wins that battle with the batter. Seven or eight or nine times out of ten, he is going to find a way to get that batter out, watch his knees sag, and see him go back to that bench, sit down and stare at the ground. So when a batter he's beat before almost every time he comes up to the plate, dragging that piece of wood that's not proved to be any good to him in the past, and all of a sudden he meets the ball that pitcher has throwed which ought to be a strike and the batter puts it down in fair territory, it's a sad and lonely time to be standing by yourself on a mound of earth raised up so everybody can see you.

Dutch Bernson sent up to bat against me my first day in an Evangeline League stadium the four men he knew to be the best batters he had on the Rayne Rice Birds team. That was G.D. Squires, Phil Pellicore, Lee Turk, and Al Aucoin. Every one of them had the statistics to show they ranged from decent to pretty good. But that day belonged to me, and I set all of them four down without any one of them getting a solid hit off of the stuff I showed that morning. A couple of them hit a weak fly or two, one hit a grounder that might have got by a slow shortstop, and one didn't get any wood on a single pitch I threw to him.

To give them credit, they had never seen me before, and they weren't playing in a real game. But they wanted to hit me, and I didn't want them to, and I won that day. My fastball was working, and I was putting it right where I wanted to every pitch.

With the last man Dutch sent up, Lee Turk, I gave him only change-ups, and what they call a cut fastball today, and then a couple of knucklers just to see if I could throw one that early on. It hung like a ripe persimmon high up in its tree where nothing but birds can get at it. Lee Turk just poked at it like he wasn't hungry. I felt good.

But when Dutch told me to come down off the mound and sit for a while before it got to be my turn to take batting practice with him throwing now, I told myself not to let any sign of the way I felt show in my face.

By the end of that first day, when the manager told all the players they could quit until tomorrow, everybody was moving slow as they headed for the clubhouse, some of them groaning out loud to show how whipped they felt, but most of them weren't saying anything. That was the ones that was hurting most, I knew from my time playing on the sawmill teams in Texas. If you had the energy to complain and whine, you were generally in pretty good shape. The ones that were suffering the most did it in private, and what they were feeling showed in their faces and the slump in their shoulders and the droop in their necks. The beat ones looked down at the cement floor in the clubhouse as they pulled their shoes off and studied their socks.

“Gemar Batiste,” somebody hollered across the room. “That's a hard name to remember. What they call you for short?”

“How can a man with your handle call anybody else's name hard to remember?” Dynamite Dunn said. “Zebulon Munger? What the hell does that mean?”

“It means he don't want nobody to call him that,” another man said, one of that bunch pert enough still to jump around and make jokes. “His own pappy must've looked at Zeb and couldn't stand what he saw. That's why he slapped that label on him. A name as ugly as he is.”

“Go to hell,” Zeb Munger said. Most people laughed, and that was the way it usually turned out to be in the clubhouse, always two or three or more jawing back and forth and looking to get folks laughing out loud. At least when all we were coming in from was practice or a game where we'd come out on top. It's easy to joke around and make fun and get away with calling folks names when you've not been showed up in a baseball game. Say the very same thing to somebody when you're on the short end after a game's over, though, and you're liable to get into a scuffle.

There in the clubhouse after that first practice, I figured I wouldn't say anything to nobody no matter what they said to me or asked me about. The thing a veteran wants to do with a rookie is make him lay a claim he's going to have to give up on later.

So when the man next to where I was getting my clothes changed spoke to me, I thought first before I answered him. “You looked real good out there today. You had good stuff,” he said to me. It was the man with his hair turning gray and with the good-sized belly, the one who'd been huffing and puffing so hard during that running Dutch had made us do first thing. I hadn't noticed him much during practice except to see that he was with the pitchers and catchers when that bunch was all clumped up together. I'd heard Dutch call him Harry.

“I appreciate you saying that,” I said back to him, looking down at my hands like I was interested in something about them. “I was lucky, I reckon.”

“I remember when I was that way,” the gray haired fellow said. “Lucky. That's a nice thing to have to say about the way you done something, idn't it?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, I remember pitching good enough at times that I'd have to tell folks it was just luck that I did that,” he went on. “Said something else, and I'd been bragging.”

I could see where he was headed now. “I saw you with the pitchers and catchers today,” I said, figuring that wouldn't give him any leeway to think I was stepping somewhere I shouldn't be.

“There come a time, though, for me when I found myself taking credit for what I'd done. Or explaining away why what I hadn't done was something I couldn't have done in the first place. No man could've done it, I'd tell them. I got to where I'd argue the point, you understand.”

“Argue?” I said. I was feeling an itch start up on the back of my neck, just below the hairline, and beginning to move down my back.

“Argue, yessir. And let me tell you, pitcher, when you find yourself not having to say when you done good that it was just luck, you have passed a milestone. The road is getting clearer ahead of you, and now you're able to see where it's going and where you're headed.”

“I been on lots of different roads getting here to Rayne, Louisiana,” I said. “I wouldn't have guessed it'd be so many.”

“At the beginning, it's always so many roads you can't count all of them. Take one, it's a surprise. Take a different one, it's a different surprise on it. But you know what, pitcher?”

“No sir,” I said, looking at him now. He had combed his hair and straightened the clothes he was wearing.

“The more roads you take, the less there is to take, and the straighter all of them get. It gets easier and easier to know where you're going the longer you travel. Finally it's just one you're on. Now that ain't true for you. Hell, you got lots of roads to go down, to pick from, straight and crooked, wide and narrow. For a long while yet. I'd put money on that.”

“All right,” I said. “I'll keep what you said in my mind.”

“You don't need to do that,” he said. “Yet. Don't never listen to a relief pitcher. What's a relief pitcher got to say to you that you need to hear? Nothing. Right?”

“Come on, Gemar,” Dynamite Dunn said, walking up, “let's go get something to eat at the diner.”

“I ain't got any money to do that. I got to eat at Miz Doucette's,” I said. Standing next to Dynamite was the Cuban. “I believe you going to be staying in the same room with me at Miz Doucette's house,” I said to him. “That's what Dutch said. You been over there yet?”

“Nuh uh,” the Cuban said. “Dutch done told me you was going to take me over yonder. You ready to go?”

Mike Gonzales wasn't no Cuban, of course. I'd thought he wasn't when I first saw him running laps. Coushatta County was where the Alabamas and Coushattas and the white eyes lived in East Texas, but it was the place where lots of colored folks made a living, too. Mike Gonzales was a lot lighter in color than most of the ones I was used to seeing, but when he talked I could tell he wasn't from Cuba. They talked Spanish on that island, and back then I didn't know what that sounded like. But I knew where Mike Gonzales had learned to speak a language, and that wasn't Cuba.

Everybody was drifting out of the clubhouse by then. It ended up that Dynamite and me and Mike Gonzales left the clubhouse at the same time and stopped together on the street outside. The air had cooled some, and a little breeze was blowing, kicking up trash in the gutters and moving the ends of the Spanish moss back and forth where it hung from the limbs of the live oak trees. The light was changing the way it does late afternoons in that flat country, and everything looked greener than it really was. Everything you could see looked like there was a light inside trying to get out.

“Listen,” Dynamite Dunn said. “I know y'all got to go eat that supper Velma Doucette's been cooking, but what you going to do after that?”

I looked at Gonzales, and he shrugged. “I don't know,” he said. “Go on to bed and get me some shuteye before we got to come back here again in the morning.”

“Hell, gentlemen,” Dynamite said. “The night is young. Y'all ain't that wore out, are you? I didn't notice you bending over and shaking and sucking in long breaths today. I recommend we ought to stay up tonight at least until the damn chickens go to roost. What about you, Gemar? You done throwed so many strikes today you ain't got nothing left in the tank?”

“Where can we go?” I said, “that we can walk to and that don't cost nothing? I ain't got a cent until the Rice Birds pay me some wages.”

“Let me tell you about getting paid by the Rice Birds,” Dynamite said. “The eagle screams on Friday, but sometimes he gets a case of the croup and has a hard time getting his holler to work. He takes a little throat problem, see, and he will need his medicine.”

I wasn't surprised to hear Dynamite say that about getting paid by the people you're working for, having had the experience of having to hunt folks down when I was owed money. They would get the slows now and again when it came time to reach down in the pocketbook.

I am still owed money today by some of them sawmill teams I played for, where they said they'd give me a dollar or two if I'd show up with my bat and my glove at stated times and locations. The way it worked then was they paid you by the game, sometimes as much as two dollars.

A fellow whose name I ain't never going to forget, Dan Mayfield, told me if I'd pitch for Carter they'd give me a dollar for every ten they pulled in from what folks paid to get close to the field and from what he called the concessions income. It sounded like money to me. Turned out after the game was over with that my share of the proceeds didn't amount to nothing. I never got a cent for that game, since Mr. Mayfield explained it to me when I showed up to get paid that the overhead had eat up all the money that came in from folks. My share came out to be zero, but I still liked pitching in the game, though. I was always glad I'd played in every game I was in.

So when Dynamite mentioned the problems the eagle had on some Fridays with being able to holler for the Rice Birds to come get their pay, that got my attention. “How do you take care of that?” I asked Dynamite.

“What I do,” he said, “is I have got real close with Theodora Fontenot, the lady who y'all ain't met yet, that works in the office and handles just about everything day to day, and she lets me know when I ought to go get in line early.”

“Y'all got to line up to get your money?” Mike Gonzales said.

“Naw, I don't mean getting into an actual line,” Dynamite said. “I just mean she lets me know when to start asking folks early about the payday that's coming up. You know, just letting them know I want my money as soon as I can get my hands on it.”

“That situation sounds pretty weak to me,” Mike said.

“It's as weak as maiden's piss, boys,” Dynamite said. “I got to admit, but this'un here is the only game in town. He will tell you that whenever the subject comes up, too. Check me on this after y'all been here awhile. See if I'm lying.”

“Dutch Bernson?” I said. “That's who you talking about?”

“No, not Dutch. Hell, no. Tony Guidry's who I mean.”

I asked Dynamite if Tony Guidry was a coach I hadn't met yet.

“Tony is not a coach of no sort,” Dynamite said. “He got too much sense for that. He has what you might call a financial interest in the Rayne Rice Birds, Gemar. He is the man who calls the shots around here. Complain about something to him, and he will listen to you as long as you want to talk, smiling just as sweet as a coconut pie, and he'll let you go on talking until you run down. And then you know what Tony'll say?”

“What?” Mike Gonzales said.

“He'll say something like this. Son, times is hard. It is a shame. It's what they call a depression going on, and it's got this country by the short hairs. The Rice Birds is not immune to what's going on everywhere around us in the economy. It breaks my heart to say it, but this is the only game in town. Son, if you want to make a living playing baseball, here it is. Do you, son, want to play baseball and get paid for it?”

“Damn,” Mike Gonzales said.

“Yeah,” Dynamite said. “Discussion closed, boys, and the matter's done been covered. Let's don't think about that, but do keep yourselves close and available when payday rolls by and the eagle tries to work that scream out of his big old yellow beak.”

By that time, everybody that was going to come out of the clubhouse had come out, I reckoned, so I asked Mike Gonzales if he was ready for me to show him where we'd be rooming together in Miz Doucette's place on Serenity Street.

“Yeah,” Dynamite said, breaking in before Mike could even say yes he was ready for me to show him our way home, “y'all go over there to Velma's, eat your supper, and then meet me at the Green Frog right up yonder on the road the other side of the courthouse. You can't miss it. Just keep walking until you see the picture of the big old frog about to eat a fly that's landed on his tongue.”

“I still ain't got no money,” I said. “Will they just let you sit and look?”

“Funny you ask that,” he said and laughed. “It's things to look at, all right. You are for sure going to see that. I'll stand your drinks tonight and you can pay me back.”

“When the eagle screams,” Mike Gonzales said, and we started up Serenity Street.