Nobody Bats a Thousand (31 page)

“Cancer and just plain old age has always got our people. I can’t think of a single relative that’s died from heart failure.”

“I know
,
that makes it all so much more unreasonable. B
ut have you ever thought about…about
facing up to death?”

“Yeah.”

My old man looked straight ahead, seemingly thousands of miles past the reaches of his headlights. “Yes, I guess I have but not for a long time.” He slowed the car, pulled to the side checked his side mirror, then made a U-turn and began to retrace our path. “Let’s not go home just yet,” he said, he drove a little farther, made a right on Jensen and eventually stopped at a little liquor store, which sat alone surrounded by empty lots.

He went inside, and that short time I spent sitting alone in the car made me realize how terrible I felt. My head was already starting to hurt. I felt tired but not sleepy, and my stomach was twisting and turning, teasing my bowels.

My old man came out carrying a large sack. He sat, handed me a beer I really didn’t want, opened one for
himself
, then took out a bottle, broke the seal, took a drink and handed it to me.
More whiskey.
At this point I could hardly handle even the smell, but I felt obligated, some sort of communal obligation. I took a small sip, basically acting like I was drinking, before handing the bottle back.

My old man took another hit from the bottle, screwed the top back on then began to drink from his beer. We were parked at the side of the building, looking directly ahead at a brick wall, which my old man focused on for quite awhile before he began to speak.

“This may not sound good, but I res
igned myself to dying years ago,” h
e
said as he
glanced in my direction. I guess either to see how I reacted or if I was listening, again he looked straight ahead. “You know your sister was conceived during one of the last nights before I went to basic training. When I found out your mom was pregnant at first I was real happy, but then I started getting these weird feelings and for the last six months I was in Vietnam I had this eerie feeling that I just couldn’t shake. Something just kept telling me that no matter what I did or how careful I was, I just wouldn’t live to see your sister or ever see your mom aga
in.” H
e stopped for a drink of beer. “It really bothered me for awhile. I didn’t sleep
good
, couldn’t eat, and I was more scared than n
ormal about everything going on.
Then one bright, sunny, beautiful morning just before we were scheduled to go on this three-day patrol, something in my mind just shifted, and I wasn’t worried about anything anymore. Because I
knew
I was going to die. Something inside told me, convinced me that I wasn’t going to make it, and all my fear
s and worries just disappeared.
Me
and your mom were married so I knew the army would take care of her and your sister, and I just had this feeling of freedom, of relief. Like something I’d never felt before. I knew I was going to die. I was going to be just another body bag loaded on a plane and shipped back home, but I was okay wi
th it. I accepted it as my fate.” H
e was silent for several seconds. “In
fact when it didn’t happen, as strange as it sounds, I think I was a little let down.”

This type of confession from him was so rare I felt an urgent need to keep the conversation flowing so he wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. I went with the first thing that popped into my head.

“I remember reading a thing about Timothy Leary talking about eating acid and experiencing your own death, and that was what it was all about.”

“Yeah, well that sixties stuff is lost on me. The sixties didn’t hit this town until the seventies. By that time I was already married and supporting a w
ife and k
id with you on the way.” H
e killed off his beer,
tossed the empty over his shoulder onto the backseat floor and started the car. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t want to run into Melvin again tonight. He mig
ht start acting like a real cop.” H
e backed up and moved out of the parking lot and onto Jensen. “How about we go check out the old diamond, how would that be?”

“Sure,” I said just trying to be agreeable. But I really didn’t have any idea what he was talking about until a few minutes later when we pulled up to the curb on the street outside the cyclone fence that surrounded the varsity baseball field at the high school we both had attended.

My old man carried the beer and liquor. The gate was open so we just went in like the place was ours, and my old man walked straight to the shortstop position on the field as naturally as could be. He just stood there for a time, smiling and looking around. Like he was reliving the pageantry and glory he had once felt. He set down the sack, pulled out a beer,
then
suddenly he crouched down into a fielding position, did a quick slide step to his left and came up firing, throwing th
e full beer can in a
strike to first base. He pantomimed a few more fielding plays, quickly and gracefully, almost like he was dancing across the dirt infield. Then he picked up the sack with the beer and whiskey and walked over to the step-down dugout where I was sitting on the bench with my back against the cool bricks, trying not to move, trying not to get sick.

“Man, I didn’t remember h
ow much
fun I had on this field.” H
e sat a few feet from me. Pulled out the whiskey and offered me the bottle, which I declined. “You okay?”

“Barely.”
A
dull pain tighten
my stomach. “I
think I had too much fun tonight.”

My old man looked away from me, took a small sip of liquor,
and then
just sat there looking out at the field softly lit by the glossy light from the full moon braced high above us.

I belched and felt a little relieved and a little less likely to throw up, and then I felt a sudden rush of energy, of thoughts bare and simple. “See that’s the thing, I want to have too much fun or at least some part of me does. Part of me wants to do everything and be everywhere. To travel around the world and learn and experience everything, to fall deeply in love and have a hundred kids and run for c
ongress and who knows what else,
and part of me wants to just sit in my room and just watch TV and never have to come out and see another human being for as long as I live. Gina told me once that my main problem was that I didn’t know what I wanted. I guess she was right. That might have been the only really intelligent thought she’s ever come up with.”

“What do the other kids, your friends think?”

“‘Bout what?”

“About life, about their futures, about their plans?”

“I dunno. There’s a fair amount of goof-offs at school. Guys like me just sort of going through the motions, not really sure of where they’re going. Then there are all of those others who think they got it all
dicked
. Guys and chicks, who figure they’ll get their criminology degrees or their business or marketing degrees, and from there they got it all mapped out. Like the world is just out there waiting for them to come take charge.”

“Like David Briggs?”

“Well, no, he actually had some brains. All these other jerks just
think
they’re smarter than everybody else.” I thought for a second abou
t David. “But I guess Briggs is,
or was kinda what I’m talking about. He’s a guy who never got less than an
A
in his life, who never let a moment go unplanned, a guy who felt guilty if he wasted one second, and now he’s just another grease spot on Highway 95.”

“Before he really ever got a chance to live.”

With a light breeze slowly dancing across us in the dugout, we sat in silence for probably close to a full minute. Then my old man suddenly stood and slammed the bottle of whiskey into a thousand pieces on the cement floor of the dugout. “Fuck it!  Just fuck it, Billy!  Fuck it all!  If you work for a living, that’s all
you’ll ever do is work for a living. There’s got to be
anoth
er way. There’s got to be.” H
e moved above me to the top step of the dugout. “If you really want to tell Gina and her old man no, do it, follow your instincts, follow your heart.
You really have no other choice,” his voice got louder and clearer. “I
f you want to buck convention and become the Don Quixote of the hi
gh desert,
do
it, just do it!” H
e stepped out of the dugout, stumbled and had to grab on to the metal support post to keep from falling. “Whoa…I guess I got a li
ttle drunker than I should have.” H
e pushed away from the post and righted himself. “But fuck that too. Nobody’s made of stone. We’re not robots in total control all of the time. You got to get out and test the bound
aries, get out
and
howl
at the moon every so often. I
t’s part of being a hu
man being.” H
e looked up at the full moon and actually started to howl but stopped mid-howl as he stumbled backward a couple of steps li
ke he was suddenly dizzy. “Whoa.” H
e swayed a bit as he focused in on me. “I think it’s time to go.”

We left the schoolyard. I almost said something about the beer we left behind, but I certainly didn’t want any so I let it go. Out on the street just before I opened the passenger door I looked across the roof of the car at my old man. “So you really won’t get pissed off if I don’t try to get on at the irrigation district?”

“What you or I want doesn’t matter. It’s all in the hands of fate. Fate makes all the decisions.”

And those were the final words between us for the night. My old man drove home slowly and rather rationally as far as I could tell until he slid both tires against the curb in front of our house as he jolted us to a stop. We staggered inside, split up and went to bed.

Sometime later my stomach jarred me awake. I rushed into the bathroom and barely made it to the toilet before all that was left in my stomach of that wonderful Mexican food and beer and whiskey came back up, flew out of my mouth, and splashed into the water of the porcelain bowl. I flopped down on the floor and sat there dazed and weak. I had to throw up a couple of more times, mostly just clear vile tasting liquid, before I found the strength to rise, rinse my mouth, wash my face, and stumble back towards my bedroom.

On the way I noticed a noise from my older sister’s old room. I stuck my head inside and could see in the dim light from the small nightlight in the hallway that my old man had plopped down on her bed without even taking off his shoes. He was breathing and snoring with abandon. He seem
ed so free of pain and drudgery.
I soon quit watching and headed to my bedroom, seeking the same relief.

The light of morning found more suffering. My head pounded and was covered with sweat. No matter how I positioned myself I couldn’t get comfortable enough to go back to sleep, so I finally got out of bed and went into the kitchen, feeling the strength of gravity pulling on me like never before.

My mother was standing in front of the kitchen sink, looking out the window.  I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table.

“So what time did you boys get in last night?”

“Not sure.
” I tried the coffee. It tasted bitter and offensive. “Is the old man up?”

“Not so you’d notice.”

I sat there acting like I was trying to read the morning paper, but though the words physically came into focus my mind was in no state to bind them together to make any sense. Still I kept at it, forcing myself to drink the coffee, staring down at the paper, trying to avoid any more questions from my mother, fearing a self-righteous lecture about me and the old man being a couple of irresponsible drunk fuck-ups. But the lecture never came. She just stood in the same place, drink
ing her coffee, looking out at
the morning, seemingly oblivious to my current weakness and pain.

A few minutes later, I could hear the old man stirring. I left the kitchen, went down the hall, and caught my old man just before he got to the bathroom. Sometime during the night he had taken off his clothes, and now he was down to his pale body covered only by a pair of striped boxer shorts.

“Morning,” I said. He didn’t say anything. He just stopped and looked at me with tired dark eyes. For some reason I had a strong urge to communicate, right
then and there, so I continued,
“I’m glad we talked
last night. It really helps me to know that you’re on my side about bucking the tide.”

“‘Bout what?”

“You know, about turning down this job. About following my heart even if everybody else thinks
it’s
nuts.”

“Billy,” h
e paus
ed and seemed to strain to talk, “y
ou got to learn that nights like last night, things said in that frame of mind are forgotten the next day.”

“But…”