Just North of Nowhere (38 page)

This game was not the trade-off of passion and ego that she'd seen back in – she still got chills thinking of that hot day and the smell of real baseball – in nineteen-ought-one. What they and the Loggers had in common was the game of baseball. That and that they were going to loose; a real son-of-a-bitch of a loss.

She'd loose too. Loose the coaching gig after this long, long season among so many long, long seasons, but that was all right. She wouldn't miss the extra work, the heart-break, and frustration, the humiliation, the sad faces, paying for the pie.

No. She would. She tingled all over with wanting this. She wanted to coach this bunch another year. Another season and some of these kids might...

The already quiet crowd went silent. Utility Walter, playing third, had made a catch off a Wolverine hit! A line drive right to him and Walter had gotten it! Getting it, he'd spun and tossed to second where the Hacker Magnus had tagged another runner who'd been lazy coming off first. A double play! Hacker and Walter, together, had retired the side!

Keeping score down the line, Lyle Younger sat flabbergasted. He and Kyle, together, poleaxed dead. Then they went nuts.

So did everyone as the Catbirds trotted to the bench.

And that’s it
, she thought,
game highpoint, season topper
.

Nope.

In the bottom of the ninth, a million to nothing against the 'Birds, two out, nobody on, Spooky Roy at bat, two strikes against him, him looking everywhere for – for whatever those things were he saw in the outfield on the ceilings and in the air – the Wolverine pitcher tossed a hanging curve with nothing on it, right through the zone!

Roy nailed it. The hit seemed an accident, almost defensive. Everything about it was wrong! Spooky Roy swatted from the dirt up, like driving a golf ball off a tee. From it came a high, pop fly up into center. That was it. Just a pop-up would barely clear the infield. Easy out. From short, from the untenanted bases, from the outfields, the Wolverines converged on the climbing ball all of them ready to get back on the bus.

The Catbirds were on their feet. Leslie leaped onto the bench and stared at the ball as it reached the top of its arc.

Jill watched only to mark this moment in her history: The last play of the season, the last of her Consolidated coaching career. She lost the ball in the sun, but her head and eyes followed its expected path down to the Wolverine gloves. Where those gloves gathered, they waited for the ball...

...that didn't come.

In a moment Jill raised her eyes and there...

It was...

It was still aloft, the ball, frozen, above the field. For the second time that afternoon, the crowd drifted to silence.

Fielders converged till they stood belly to belly, chins up, squinting into the blue, blue air of Elysium.

Jill stood. Eventually, she moved among her players. All stared at the hanging high fly ball. She walked along the player's bench to where Leslie stood on tip-toes, her back and neck arched. A tear had left a white-skinned streak, cheek to chin.

“Nice one, Fritz,” Jill said quietly.

Leslie looked down. “Told you I was a witch,” she said.

Jill nodded. “Yep. That's one way to hit it where they're not.”

Jill walked to the chain link behind home plate. Along with the Wolverine catcher, the umpire, everyone else, Roy stood frozen, staring. The shaft of his bat rested on his left shoulder.

“Roy,” Jill said, quietly.

He didn't move.

“Roy...”

He turned.

“Your bases... Run your bases.”

He turned back and stared along the first base line.

“You have to round the bases,” she said.

He trotted slowly, as though he had no idea the way from home to first.

Run, but take your time
, Jill said to herself. “Don’t forget to tag up!” she called.

He did it right. For three-hundred and sixty feet, Roy trotted among frozen Wolverines, umpires, coaches, parents...and whatever horrors were out there, excusing himself as he went.

After, the umpire ended the game; declared victory for the Wolverines. The hanging ball, still officially in play, he reckoned “a natural act” like rain and more than seven innings played, reason enough to call the game, declare clear victory for the Wolverines.

The ball was still aloft. It stayed there all night.

Next day, the League made it official: called it an inside the park home run. Stats read: (P): E. Roy: AB 3, BA: .333, HR 1. The Catbird's first homer of the long, long season. What Jill remembered long after was that. That and the sad, sweet smile of Dummy Hoy.

Ruth sat on the bench, evenings, through the summer. For a while people came and looked in the air. Where it was.

After a while there weren't many who hadn't come and seen. Ruth sat in the light, loving the emptiness and quiet of late afternoon and the long, long shadows that wrapped her in the memory of summer.

For a while the Catbird boys came by the library. That was nice, she thought. They looked at the old pictures and looked at her. They hardly ever spoke about it – about the trip. She didn't bring it up, either. In a few months, they stopped coming.

Leslie returned over and over. Mostly, she sat and read. Roy sat near, looking at the walls, at the dusty dark corners of the reading room and at the shadows in the upper gallery. He refused to go near the Burroughs Collection.

When Leslie left each day, he left after her, looking back. He was getting taller. So was Leslie!

Ruth liked that girl. She remembered that look on her face as she watched, perched on-point, staring, quivering at that frozen baseball hanging in the air above Elysium Park that last day. Ruth had no idea what that had been about. It looked a little like the ball frozen in the air over the field in Burroughs' picture. The idea was a little queasy-making for Ruth. Could people really do such things? Of course not!

Miss Lukowski didn't come back to the library. Ruth saw her, of course, around town, at the store, always at a distance. She wanted to tell the teacher something, tell her every child needed to have something mean to hang on to, something close, hard, personal to protect inside him. Or her. And sometimes, sometimes the child might not even know what it had in there to protect, to let out! Ruth wanted to tell her that, but she didn't.

She waited for Jill – that was her name – she waited for Jill to ask. She never did.

At the end of the summer, after everyone in town had come out to look at the thing, the Selectmen took a vote and Vinnie Erikson came out with his double-ought Remington and blew the ragged baseball out of the air. Took six Goddamn shells before Mr. Spaulding was all the way gone. The Selectmen paid for them.

By then, like everything about the game, it was history.

When the young people came to look at the old house, Number 18 Slaughterhouse Way, Bluffton, Clem followed them everywhere. He pointed at the house’s scary parts. On the first floor landing, Clem told the woman how he once stuck his finger in the bulb socket on the stairway post. He pointed. “I was mostly killed!” he said.

The woman hugged her baby.

Mommy gave Clem a Look, took his arm and stuck him behind her. She smiled. “Clement loves this place.”

“Doesn't want to move,” Mom's Pop said. “That should say something about it.”

Everyone smiled.

The man touched Clem's head. “Well, hey, thanks for that good warning, Buddy. We'll sure keep a bulb in that electric hole so our little girl don't have that same accident.”

“No accident,” Clem told in his scary voice, “Uh-uhhhh. Clown took the bulb for a nose all shining bright. Clown said put your finger there, ‘go stick it in and you'll be funny, real funny ha-ha.'“

He had, and the tingles climbed his arm, then played him all over. Then mommy's pop pulled him away and down.

There had been people, a little party, Daddy's aneurism party. All the party people were sad. Funny Clem would make them laugh. Clem thought there’d be sparks, his eyes would blow up like balloons, steam would scream out his ears. The party would laugh, and Daddy would wake.

It didn't, Daddy didn’t.

Everyone stopped. He tingled and everyone stared. He didn't think there was steam. Mommy's Pop tackled him and rolled him to the landing.

“And at Mike's wake,” Mom's Pop said to the young people.

Mommy sniffed. “His dad's wake and he almost electrocutes himself.”

The man said again, “We'll sure plug that old socket up good.”

In a few weeks, the young people moved in.

Clem, Mommy and Mom's Pop went away.

Cliffy, next door, said if he didn't see them go, they wouldn't be gone. He didn't come out when they drove away. Even Olaf the Dog stayed in.

The new place was big and bright. The rooms were white and smelled of wood and paint. They all had low ceilings, except the living room, that went up and up. A bright lightsicle hung there – “chandelier” Mom's Pop called it. Chandelier tinkled in the wind when the front door opened.

No cellar. Good!

Up the steps, doors were everywhere. In the rooms, the corners were narrower than corners should be, or they were wider. The top level – the new place had “levels” not stories – the top level was just one room. Its floor was splinters. The roof was beams and dark spaces and a dead bulb, hanging.

The front dormer – Mommy called the window “dormer” – overlooked the driveway and street. The street curved then disappeared. The neighbor houses were just like theirs but different; different colors, roofs, windows. At night the neighbors were stars in the black sky. The black sky was their street at night. Cliffy wasn't next-door anymore.

The back dormer – Clem liked the word – looked over mud and flat brown grass. At night, beyond the neighbor's lights, Clem saw darkness across the valley. Bluffton was down there, below them, Mommy said. They didn't live in Bluffton anymore, they lived someplace, a place he couldn't say. Or, rather, when he said it, they laughed. That wasn't like being funny ha-ha so he stopped saying. He called where they now lived “the House”.

The rugs rolled out, their furniture came in. The rugs didn't fill the rooms and the furniture had gotten small and old. Things came out of boxes and went into the rooms. The things looked different, too.

What didn't go into the rooms stayed in boxes and the boxes went to the top level. The boxes held things Clem liked knowing were his. They were things from number 18 Slaughterhouse, Bluffton, things that wanted him. And maybe Daddy was in one of the boxes. Daddy was in a box, Clem knew that one thing! He'd seen him in a box. Maybe Daddy was in that room at the top level of the House and nobody knew.

Clem mentioned it.

Mommy cried. Mom's Pop gave him a Look.

The House was bright, but the top room was always filled with night. Day didn’t get through the dormers. The light bulb hung from a chain and pulled-on,
click
, with a string. Clem couldn't reach the string. So when he was there, alone, morning or evening, the room was night.

“That doggone attic bulb is out again,” Mom's Pop said at supper after carrying another box up there.

“Out again?” Mommy said, shook her head.

“Something’s wrong with the electric,” Clem said. “We better go back to 18 Slaughterhouse Street, Bluffton. Right? It can be dangerous, right? Electric?”

Smiles from Mommy and her Pop. Clem was a real comedian, a regular riot, Mom's-Pop said.

Clown didn't show up that night. Clem waited in his new room until he couldn't wait any more. When he couldn't wait, he fell asleep. Like. That!

Morning, and still no Clown. Clem wasn't to go out, Mommy said, and when he DID go out he was NOT to go to the Cliff. Did he hear?

He cried a little and told Mommy he wouldn't go near Cliff. He couldn’t go near Cliff. Cliff was down in Bluffton.

Mom's Pop was off to work. Somebody had to bring home bacon, he said! Ha ha.

Soon the rooms started looking like a place people lived, Mommy said. She cried once – one of her aneurism cries about Daddy – then she hung curtains. By evening, supper was ready and the place filled with fish smell. Mom's Pop came home from The Bank, like always, and there it was, the House was Home, they said, and ate fish. No bacon.

Clown came home that night.

Clem lay in the dark. His bed was not quite against the wall. Mommy liked it that way. “So I can tuck the sheets! How many times do I have to say?” she said.

Clem liked the bed shoved against the wall because… Well,
because!
He slept on the other side, the side nearest the door, his back to the wall. Clem lay in the dark. Here, the hallway light didn't reach through the open like it had at 18 Slaughterhouse Way, Bluffton. The night light, always on at 18 Slaughterhouse Way, was still packed, hiding in a box in the room full of night, above him. Without the light, there was no way to tell; tell whether the dark was black with empty or filled with shadows.

He liked empty. Shadow meant things. Sometimes one thing in the dark was Clown and Clown meant...

First, Clem thought maybe Clown hadn't come. Maybe Clown stayed at 18 Slaughterhouse to make the young couple's baby wear the nose, to show her what’s funny!

Then the dark behind him moved. In the crack between the wall and bed, the dark moved. He almost looked, but didn't. If you looked, that was it! Clown took you if you looked!

Clem pressed his eyeballs. Color exploded into rings, the rings exploded again then spread and faded to flickering black and he lay alone in the dark behind his eyelids. The room creaked. Clown music came out of the creak. Boop-boopBOOP, Boop-boopBOOP. He almost looked again but didn't.

After music, the voice: “Clem,” it said. “Clem-lemLEM, Clem-lemLEM...” his name like calliope's Boop-boop song. The Clem-song was outside him until it touched his ear with a wet lip then it slipped in. Long warm breath filled Clem's chest and the hairs tingled down his neck.

“Clemmmmmmm,” Clown said from Clem's mouth.

The house creaked again. The pages of his coloring book, his Golden Books, his “Best Loved Poems” book, wrinkled like bugs in the dark. He peeked. Night had flowed from the nightroom at the top of the house.

“Clemmmmmmm” Clown whispered, chewing his name into a growl like Olaf the Dog at Cliffy's house. “Mmmmrrrr...” white, wet teeth, black gums, a smell of Clown mouth.

“Hello,” Clem whispered.

“Daddy's here,” the voice said. “Daddy, funny Daddy.”

“Hello, Daddy” Clem whispered.

“Hello son.” Clown said, being Daddy.

Clem sniffed.

“What do you know of Death?” Clown asked.      

“It's where you live,” Clem whispered.

“It is, it is. I do. I do, and it's fun in here,” Clown tickled the hair of Clemmy-Clem-Clem's ear. “Big fun, fly-in-the-air fun.”

Clem knew flying fun. He'd seen it once, once a long, long time ago when Little Clem was small, when he wore a sailor suit and Daddy carried him whenever Clem asked. Long before Mom's Pop lived at home and when home was...

Then it was daylight and such a pretty day in the new Home, a beautiful, a nice day, outside and in the room. A summer day when big kids were off from school.

Next year he'd appreciate that, Mommy said at breakfast. “Next year, YOU'LL be going to school!”

“Forever and ever?”

“Well, until summer! You'll be in school. There'll be boys and girls your age. You'll see Cliffy again and you'll learn things!”

He couldn't imagine.

They went to the cliff that afternoon. Cliff was his friend, his old neighbor and best pal on Slaughterhouse, but now he found cliff was also a place where the earth stopped.
A
cliff was a place where the town, their old town, Bluffton, lay below, and small! Mommy pointed and said, “See? Down there? The old place, see. It's not far. There.”

He followed her finger down. There was 18 Slaughterhouse Way. There was Bluffton. Down there. “Yes,” he said. Yes.
The
Cliff.

“You're not to go near, here, now. Not near the cliff. See? You could fall and get hurt all the way down.” He looked, she held him. “You're not to come here alone, you hear?”

...and only a block from home.

“You promise you wont go near this cliff?” she said. “You hear?”

“Yes,” he said, “yes.”

After supper, when night filled the top of the house—and the damn bulb was out again!—and Mommy and her Pop were far, far away in the living room, Clem waited in bed in the dark to not see Clown again.

Clown wheezed through Clem. He sang, “I want to beeeee happy!” Clem breathed in and Clown sang, “But I can't beeeee happy, till I make youuuuu happy tooooo!” Clown wheezed in and out. Clem smiled and kept his back to the wall, his eyes open to the hallway door.

Tonight Clown sang and let Clem SEE!

His song went, “When skies are gray, and you say you are blue, I'll send the sun smiling thooooough...”

Clem saw Circus and Daddy! Daddy sat next to him. Then Daddy laughed and put Clem on his lap. Daddy's face was prickly and he smelled of tobacco. There were lions and elephants. The day smelled of them, of people and poop and sweet things too. There was noise: Calliope and a million people. This was long ago. Clem was so little and being on Daddy's lap, breathing the pipe smoke smell of him, was easy.

In the Circus ring, a big gun rolled! A big colored BOOM gun with stars and swirls painted on rolled in! Clem held his ears and worried. Daddy laughed. Horses and all the clowns in the sky dragged and pushed the gun. Not THE Clown, but a million others. They climbed like ants over the gun. Some flopped off, or slid down its loooong, long barrel. Some were rolled over, Crrrunch Slurrrrp, rolled into the ground. When other clowns pulled a crushed clown from the sawdust, he was flat like when Mommy rolled the dough. “Ha-ha,” said Clem but wasn’t sure.

Some clowns slid down inside the gun barrel and tumbled out the other end.

“See,” Daddy said, “It's not real. Ha ha ha.”

Looked real.

Then Clown strolled by. Clown flopped his big, big feet, and sang, “I want to BEEE HAPPY...”.

Clown passed. Stopped. Turned. Looked! He ran back, picked Clem from Daddy's lap and tickled him all over. Daddy told Clown, “Name is Clem!”

Clown laughed, “Clem! Clom! Clown!” he yelled, “Clem want to Clown!?” he said, and held Clem above his head and ran, feet flapping, all around the ring and everyone saw them and laughed. “Noo…” Clem cried and cried and Clown wouldn't give Clem back until Daddy reached for him, smiling.

“Ho, ho,” Clown said. And looked right into Clem's eyes, right inside, right down where the quivers of his hair lived. Clown filled Clem with Clown-smell and smeary face and breath!     When all that was left of Clown was face and teeth and stink, Clown pulled off his nose—his own nose!—and stuck it on Clem's own darn face.

“It smells! It smells,” Clem screamed.

“Noses must smell! Ho, ho, ha, ha…”

Clem saw it in the night of his room in his home, just like the day at the circus. Clem saw what Clown saw then: a boy with a nose, a screamy boy.

It felt so good to scream.

“With this nose,” said Clown, “I pronounce you Clown! You are now A. Clown two!” Ho ho ho. “Clown Clem!”

Clem cried and cried and Clown looked inside—way, way down—and said, “Look here! Watch. I'll go fly away, fly, fly just for you!”

Daddy lifted Clem back. He adjusted the boop-BOOP-boop nose on his son's face and said, “Look, now. Watch, now. Look, it's not real. Watch. Watch-watch.”

Clown, a new red nose on his face—Clown could have noses, all the noses he wanted—Clown ran swooping with his arms and flopping his feet toward the Big Gun.