Gold Dust (17 page)

“Can you believe how close we are to the players?” I said in his ear. “Look how white their uniforms are.”

“That is what cricket players look like all the time,” he said. “As if they do their laundry every time they leave the playing field. Actually I prefer Oakland’s uniforms.”

“Cripes,” I said. The A’s, because they had a nutty owner named Charlie O. Finley, who brought his pet donkey for a mascot and paid his players to wear waxed 1890s mustaches, wore the most bizarre outfits in the game. Dark green shirts and yellow hats. It was just crazy.

“And I like their mustaches,” Napoleon added.

I couldn’t help it. Maybe this was one of those moments Beverly likes to point out, where my baseball-mania is over the top and I lose perspective. But I was getting bothered. By the way Napoleon was looking at the A’s, and the way he was looking at The Game. The uniforms and facial hair were not the point. In fact, they were distracting from the point.

Baseball people didn’t love Charlie O. Finley and his quirks. Baseball people loved
baseball.

And Boston people loved the Red Sox. Not the A’s.

But all this stuff fell gradually away once the game started. I wouldn’t really have noticed whether they were playing at Fenway, or Wrigley in Chicago with its ivy-covered outfield wall, or Kansas City with its fountain just beyond the fence in center. Luis Tiant was pitching, and the A’s—Billy North and Joe Rudi and Reggie Jackson and Sal Bando—were hitting.

Tiant was amazing. He was famous for his delivery, which had him spin completely around so that he was facing center field in the middle of his windup before coming in after the hitter. He was so good, and so fascinating to watch, that he was working on his third hitter when I was nudged by Napoleon and looked up. He had left and come back with two hot dogs and two Cokes.

“Wow, thanks,” I said.

He gestured toward Tiant. “He is really funny, the way he does that.”

I knew he bought me a hot dog and everything, but this was serious.

“He’s not funny. He’s a genius.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

We went back to watching, and Tiant finished off the side.

“This is when the good stuff starts,” I said, munching hot dogs with Napoleon. “The Sox hitters. Yaz and Burleson and Dwight Evans, and, of course...”

I was pretty obvious with my cue, but I wanted to be sure he got it.

“Right,” Napoleon said. “The... Gold Dust Twins.”

There was a slight hitch in there. Like the words didn’t quite leap to mind. Those words should have been leaping to mind.

I patted him on the back. He patted me on the back. I saw I had gotten mustard on his back, and I coolly took my napkin and dabbed at it without telling him. When he started doing the same move, we both laughed.

“All right,” I said when the game started up again.

Catfish Hunter was pitching for Oakland, which was good and bad. Good, because we got to see one of the all-time great pitchers. Bad because he would probably strike a lot of guys out, which means not a lot of hits, which can be a bummer. Not to mention he could win by doing that.

“Catfish,” Napoleon said. “That is a colorful nickname. Why is he called Catfish?”

I looked at him for a second. I started to talk, restarted. I was suddenly embarrassed, as if somehow this reflected badly on me. “Finley, the owner, gave it to him. Made it up out of nowhere, because he thought it sounded good.”

Napoleon nodded, but his face told it all. He smiled kindly on me like I was responsible and he felt bad for me.

I had known that story for a long time. It never mattered to me before. Now telling it to Napoleon made me hear how stupid it was. Why did I have to hear that? Why did I even have to think about that?

By the time I had taken the last sip of my drink, the great pitcher with the awful nickname had easily retired the first three Red Sox he had faced. The Twins would have to wait.

During the break I turned to make conversation with Napoleon, but he was staring off. I followed his line of vision out to the big neon Citgo sign outside the park, stretching up from the top of a building in Kenmore Square. It was this busy, moving, pulsating triangle of light that was so central to any Sox television broadcast, you would think the thing was sitting in the middle of the field.

“I like that sign,” Napoleon said. He looked half asleep.

“That old thing?” I asked. “I guess it’s all right. I personally think right-handed batters try too hard to jerk a ball into that sign. But I guess it looks okay.”

“My father works right over there,” he said, indicating the square, where Boston University was spread all up and down Commonwealth Avenue.

I hadn’t thought about this before, but as soon as he mentioned it, I felt like asking. “Ya,” I said, “about that. You think he’ll work there for a long time? Like, you’ll stay?”

Napoleon shrugged. “This position may be long-term,” he said, but without a lot of feeling. “No problem.”

The players were filing back onto the field, but I was not ready for them yet.

“What does that mean, no problem?”

“It means, I don’t mind. I have moved before. I can move again.”

No problem. He didn’t mind. No problem.

Maybe I was mistaken. All the way through. Maybe all those times I thought Napoleon just wasn’t understanding one thing or another I had it all backward. Maybe when I thought he was always cool, always trying to keep himself under control and all, maybe he wasn’t trying at all.

Maybe... maybe there was nothing to control in the first place. Maybe there was nothing there. Maybe he didn’t feel anything in the same way I felt it.

Maybe he didn’t care.

“From here? You wouldn’t mind leaving?”

I had to check. I somehow figured that by rewording it, he would see it more as I would.

“No, I wouldn’t mind, I guess,” he said, turning his attention to the field.

“Oh,” I said. Turning mine.

“Did you say
ow
?” he asked.

“’Course not,” I said. “I said
oh.
” Stupid thing to ask a guy. Ow means you’re hurt. Oh means... you really don’t care.

Jim Rice. I nudged Napoleon. He nodded. He had a power, Rice did, that was a lot more noticeable in person than on TV. Even though he was mighty powerful on TV. The crowd gave him a loud cheer, very excited. Very impressive treatment for a rookie. A knowledgeable crowd.

And Rice looked anxious to unleash his power for them. But Catfish wasn’t all about power, and he was a crafty vet to Rice’s eager rookie. It took exactly three pitches for him to send the first Twin back to the dugout. But it was a very powerful strikeout.

And then it was Lynn. And when Lynn came up, something happened. Half the crowd stood. A semi-standing ovation. The sound was thunderous, and John Kiley helped it along with some big fat organ chords he must have been playing with his feet. I stood. It was impossible to resist. Fred Lynn was the thing, the man, what we had been waiting for in Boston since the Sox’ last World Series victory in 1918.

Napoleon Charlie Ellis sat.

Three pitches later, we were all sitting again. Including Fred Lynn.

“Hunter pitched him really tough,” I said, sort of apologizing for my man. “How come you weren’t up on your feet?”

“These people love Fred Lynn,” he said. Not an answer.

“What’s not to love?” I said. “It’s okay to stand up when you get excited, you know.”

“He struck out.”

“Happens to the best of them sometimes.”

“So it does,” he said.

It went about like that for most of the game, a classic pitcher’s duel. Which is a great thing if you are a baseball purist. But it’s deadly if you are trying to introduce a newcomer. Napoleon’s attention was constantly wandering, and once it hit him how expensive it was to kill time at Fenway by snacking, that too lost its attraction. He was having much less of a fine time than I thought he would. You could feel it, in the space between us. He was drifting away.

We were standing for the seventh-inning stretch.

“Is the game over?” he asked. He did not sound disappointed.

“No. This is just the point where they figure you need to loosen up a bit.”

“Oh,” he said.

“So what do you think, Napoleon?” I asked.

They say that baseball is a fine art, an acquired taste for the newcomer. One that takes time to learn to appreciate, and maybe I should have prepared Napoleon better. Because it must have been impatience that made him come out with the answer he did.

“I think maybe it is the boredom element which keeps black people from coming here.”

I did not even know where to begin to respond to that. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. So I considered the angles, considered the approach, considered Napoleon’s point of view, considered the sport, the park, the teams, considered Catfish Hunter’s unfortunately masterful day. And still nothing came out.

So I looked. Followed again Napoleon’s line of vision, up our side of the stands, into the right-field bleachers, across sun-bleached center field, over to the third base line, behind home plate, up into the grandstands, down into the boxes, rounding the final turn like a runner trying to score, and finally back, all the way up to us, up to where I met Napoleon Charlie Ellis’s face right up in mine.

“Is it always like that?” he asked.

I waited. We sat down again as the stretch ended. I started watching the game, even though the game had not yet started back up.

“I said, is it always like that here, Richard? It is just a question.”

“The answer is, I don’t know, Napoleon.” It was the absolute truth. I had no idea. Had never noticed. Had never checked. “I was always watching the game,” I said. I shrugged. “I’m sorry.”

I had never said anything like that before. There was never any reason to apologize for baseball. And truth was, I didn’t feel the need to apologize now. It just seemed like the right thing to say.

I bought the next round of Cokes. The game dragged on. The pitchers continued to be great. The hitters continued to be not. Jim Rice didn’t get a hit all day. Neither did Fred Lynn, although he walked once and then got picked off trying to steal second. He’s not speedy. He’s quick. He had to remember that. He got a nice ovation for the attempt, though.

“They clap for Fred Lynn even when he appears to have done something foolish,” Napoleon said.

A small growl came out of me. “They were applauding the
effort,
Napoleon, the hustle.” He was
refusing
to understand things. I was sure of it now.

“And when he struck out, that took great effort?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“He struck out, the same as Jim Rice.”

“Like I told you, it happens—”

“But the people clapped madly for Mr. Lynn anyway. Not so much for Mr. Rice.” Napoleon had by now given up any pose of being casual with his questions. It became interrogation. “What does that mean, Richard?”

You know the moment. Like when an important paper comes back with a large F on it. When your father tells you he has searched everywhere but it seems the dog just won’t be coming back. Or there’s a phone call and you’re the only one home, and the person on the other end is sorry but there has been an accident. ...

And you don’t get to digest it slowly over time because it is a punch, hard in the stomach.

“No, Napoleon,” I said. “Stop. You’re not going to do your
thing.
Please. Not now. Not to
this
.” I pointed at the field, Joe Mooney’s perfectly groomed field, that was perfectly groomed for
us,
to enjoy all spring and summer and right through to the World Series in October when Napoleon and I could be right back here again, watching history.

“Did you know,” Napoleon said calmly, like a professor, “that there is a country club in Winter Haven, Florida, where the Red Sox golf during spring training? All the players get complimentary membership cards when they arrive. Except the black players. I read that in the newspaper. Did you know that?”

I was gripping the arms of my seat. My stomach was jumping. I threw my head back and stared straight up. “I told you not to go reading the papers. I told you that would only—”

“Did I tell you that my father was discussing Lynn and Rice with another man at the university and when my father suggested that Lynn was possibly not the better player the other man said, ‘Oh, you must be one of them Ricists.’ He thought that was funny. A joke.”

I said nothing. Napoleon could talk all he wanted to. He could pile one fact on top of another on top of another on top of my body and then he could go on and kick that body as hard and as many times as he liked, because he had already done his worst.

To me.

Something in him, I guessed, had to do this but I was never, ever,
never
going to understand it. Newspapers and universities and country clubs and all the rest are just poison. They don’t do anybody any good. What I had, what I thought
we
had, was better than all that. It was better, and it was great, and I really really really loved it because of what it was all by itself, inside itself.

Napoleon didn’t understand, after all.

The game ended quietly. When the sun starts going down in the late innings of the early season, it gets very cold very quickly at Fenway Park. You can almost feel people wishing the game to end. The hitters start looking stiffer, and the guys out in the field keep blowing on their hands to thaw them.

The A’s won 2–0. It was a fine game if you appreciated the sport, a waste of time if you did not. It was quiet enough on the way out that you could have a normal-level conversation and be heard.

“Why do you have to keep doing this to me?” I said to Napoleon, who was walking ahead of me at about the middle of the line of 32,149 pale cold Bostonians. “It’s
baseball.
Man, it’s
baseball.
Why do you have to be like that?”

I didn’t expect an answer. But maybe an apology. He took something away, he owed me something back.

I was way off, and I should have known.

“Because I have to,” he said.

He sounded sad. But it wasn’t an apology.