Shoeless Joe (24 page)

“Is it him?” whispers Annie.

“I’m not sure,” I reply, my voice constricted. “I never knew him when he was a young man.”

I’ve seen a sepia portrait of him in his World War I uniform. He is handsome and square-jawed, and the photo is touched up so much as to make him seem unreal. The tiny photo in its ivory frame still slumbers on my mother’s dresser in her high-rise in Montana.

As Joe moves into left field, Karin and I lean down to talk to him.

“Is it him?” I say, and I can tell by the look in Joe’s eyes that it is.

“Wait until the line-up is announced,” he says, almost keeping a straight face. My chest feels as if it is full of buzzing bees. Then Joe looks at Moonlight, who is sitting, neck bent forward, craning as if he is looking down a well.

“Graham?” says Joe, and looks the young man up and down thoroughly. “What the heck are you doing up here in the stands? Your contract arrived today, and we’ve all been wondering when you were going to report. You’re supposed to be warming up.” He nods toward the players along the baselines.

Moonlight looks down at his glove, which is buckled to a belt loop. “Me?” he says.

“You came here to play ball, didn’t you?” says Joe. “Manager’s waiting to see you. Come on down and start warming up.”

“Yes sir,” says Moonlight and starts climbing quickly down the bleacher. He walks around the end of the fence, where Joe shakes his hand and puts him to throwing a ball with a ghostly substitute outfielder.

“What’s going on here?” says Richard in a somewhat desperate voice. “What are you looking at? Who are you talking to?” He pulls at the sleeve of my shirt.

Richard can’t see the players on the field as we see them. As I realize this, I become aware that instead of feeling sorry for him, I am highly elated. I know without asking that all he is aware of is the deadly silent park sitting in the cornfield, illuminated by one stark bloom of lights on a single standard. Richard’s eyes are blind to the magic. There is finally a difference between us.

“Playing right field and batting seventh for the White Sox is Moonlight Graham,” the announcer intones, and looking down we can see Moonlight standing in the dugout, smiling like a Halloween pumpkin. He has been clothed in a new uniform, and his chest now bears the White Sox brand, an
O
in the top crook of the giant
S
, and an
X
in the bottom.

“Catching and batting eighth is Johnny Kinsella,” says the announcer.

My breath escapes like air hissing from a tire. I stare down to where he crouches, warming up the pitcher. My Class B catcher who played in the minors in Florida and California. My father. My dream has been fulfilled, my request granted. I have earned this favor by the sweat of my brow and the pain of my back. I should be ecstatic. Then why do I feel weak as a kitten? I feel as if I’m about to commit a crime.

Annie hugs my arm.

“That man has the same name as us,” shouts Karin, running up the steps toward us.

“That he does,” I say, and try to sound clam, for I have no idea how I will explain the situation to her if she persists.

Instead, she says, “Can I have a hot dog, Daddy?” And it is with relief that I cheerfully count change into her blunt little hand.

“Is this some kind of religion?” Richard asks. He has risen and stands a few feet away from me, his expression one of absolute bewilderment.

“It may be,” I reply, trying to picture the world through his eyes.

“You’re all crazy,” he says with my voice. But we don’t pay much attention to him. Annie is talking to Shoeless Joe, Karin has returned with a hot dog and a Coke. After the national anthem, I watch as Moonlight Graham trots to right field. If he is nervous he does not show it, for his stride is solid and his shoulders confident. He turns to face the infield and pounds his fist into his glove.

“Crazy,” says Richard.

Salinger leans toward me. “And I thought I had a good imagination,” he says. “I could never dream up a plot as bizarre as this.”

“I’m going back into town,” says Richard. “I was going to take the night off, but I’m darned if I’m going to sit around here with you people and watch the grass grow.”

“Take the car,” I say, tossing him the keys to the Datsun. I suddenly feel very benevolent toward Richard. “It will save you taxi fare.”

“Ray’s always been weird,” Richard says in Annie’s general direction. “He used to have imaginary friends when he was a kid. I don’t know if they were people or animals, but he called them Rags and Sigs, and he used to have conversations with them and play games with them. I thought he’d outgrown it.” Annie looks his way and smiles disarmingly. “I thought
you
were all right,” he says to Annie.

“I am,” says Annie. Her conversation with Shoeless Joe over, she steps back and sits down beside me, resting her head on my shoulder.

“And I thought the kid was okay,” Richard persists. “I thought when she talked about games and baseballs and things, she just had an imagination like her dad when he was a kid.”

“Kid?” says Eddie Scissons, suddenly attentive.

“Not you, Kid,” says Richard in exasperation. Then to Karin he asks, “What do you see down there?”

“I see the baseball game,” says Karin, taking a bite of her hot dog.

“Rags and Sigs?” Annie whispers into my ear. “Rags and Sigs?” She giggles prettily.

Richard glowers at Karin. I guess he thought he had an ally. When he is around Karin follows him as if she were a puppy and he had a pork chop tied to his ankle. He has taught her his carnival spiel, and she has learned it well.

“I thought I’d met some freaks with the carnival,” says Richard, “but, but …” Words desert him momentarily. “A guy who’s gonna be buried in a Chicago Cub uniform, somebody else who wears a baseball uniform day and night—where did he go anyway? Somebody who claims he’s J. D. Salinger. And my own brother, who’s too busy building a baseball field in the middle of nowhere and driving around the country collecting weirdos, to notice that his farm is being sold out from under him.” He stops for breath.

“Go to town, Richard,” I say. “I’ll wait up for you and we’ll have a talk. Sell lots of whatever it is you sell.”

“The world’s strangest babies are here. See the famous Siamese twins. The gorilla baby. The baby born to a twelve-year-old mother,” Karin singsongs as Richard stomps down the green painted bleacher, muttering.

“And I swear I saw Archie, Moonlight, whatever, walk down these steps and disappear, quick as if somebody switched off a light,” he says.

“Stay as long as you like. Come out when you’re ready. This is a family show. Mothers bring your daughters. Fathers bring your sons …”

“Shhh, honey,” says Annie, and Karin goes back to watching the game.

“Oh, lord,” says Salinger from behind me. “I was still in my crib when all this happened. These
are
the White Sox. After the scandal.” When I turn to look at him, he is staring at me, his face rapturous.

“There are racing cars spinning gravel all around my ribs,” he says, and rubs his chest. “It’s like the day I held my newborn son for the first time.”

I only smile.

“This is too wonderful to keep to ourselves. You have to share.”

“With whom?” I say. “How many? How do we select? And first, how do we make people believe?”

“I’ll vouch for you.”

“With the rumors there are about you! I think not.”

“You’re difficult to convince.”

“The pot calling the kettle names. But don’t you see, we have little to do with this. We aren’t the ones who decide who can see and who can’t. Wouldn’t I let my own twin brother see my miracle if I could? But more important than that, the way you feel now is the way people feel who react to your work. If I share, then so must you.”

Salinger flops back on his seat.

The Sox go down in order in the first two innings. Moonlight Graham leads off the third. He has been swinging two bats in the on-deck circle. As the loudspeaker booms out his name, he drops the weighted black bat and advances on the plate, slashing the air with a brand-new white-ash bat the color of vanilla ice cream. He jigs a little in the batter’s box, then cocks the bat, the top end of it trembling as if he were stirring something, and waits, tense.

The pitcher fires and Moonlight takes a curve ball for a strike. As he throws again, Moonlight snaps the bat forward and the ball sails in a high arc to right center. The center fielder backs up a couple of steps, lops a few strides to his left, and makes the catch. Moonlight runs it out, and as he curls across the diamond from second base toward the dugout, I’m quite certain he gives us the high sign. I think of my visit with Doc Graham and our conversation about a baseball wish. And I feel as if there is a hot-water bottle pushed against my heart as I watch Moonlight Graham take his seat in the dugout.

I phone my mother to tell her of Richard’s return. I’ve made sure to do it while he is away in town, in case he might bolt at the thought of any more lead being inserted in his boot soles.

She is very happy to hear the news. We talk for a long time, begin reminiscing about my childhood. I feel closer to her than I have in years.

“Remember the sparrow?” I say to her. And I don’t give her a chance to reply, but rush on. I retell the story. “Mom, you’ve got to come and see what I have here. What I’ve brought to life.” And I charge on, telling her the story of the baseball park—everything except about my father. But I hint, oh how I hint. I can only imagine her excitement.

When I stop for breath, though, she says, “I’m almost sure it was Richard with the gun that day. In fact I’m certain of it. You must be mistaken, dear.”

I turn away and hand the phone to Annie. She is very good at talking with my mother.

I prance out into the yard and bay at the moon, as if I am possessed, until Jerry appears at the back door, and eventually Eddie Scissions hobbles around the corner of the house to see what is going on.

Moonlight is no longer with us. The moment he walked around the corner of the outfield fence and shook hands with Shoeless Joe Jackson he ceased to be one of us, if he ever had been, and became one of them. When the game was over, he laughed and joked with us and accepted our congratulations on making the line-up, on making his first hit. But then he drifted to the gate in center field with the other players, his duffel bag miraculously transported from the house to his hands.

Late that night, as I sit at the table looking at my bank books and bills, Jerry comes padding downstairs. His hair is disheveled and he is wearing a white shirt with the tail hanging out over his jeans. He is barefooted.

Without a word, he pulls up a chair and sits across from me.

“I don’t want to offend you, Ray,” he begins, “but as you may know, I’m not exactly poor.”

“Okay, you can put in twenty dollars toward the groceries,” I say.

“That’s not exactly what I had in mind.”

“I know. And I thank you, but I’ve got to wait this out. If I let you help, I’ll feel like the rich kid who owns the ball and bat and makes people pay to be on the team. Anyway, I like to think I’m being put to a test of some kind.”

“Maybe the reason you came and got me was so I could help you out of your financial jam.”

“Maybe. But to use one of my mother-in-law’s favorite terms, this seems like such a worldly problem. Surely there was a more important reason.”

“What if you’re wrong? Your brother-in-law and his friend will have the ballpark plowed under in a matter of minutes, after they get control of the farm. They’ll bulldoze the house, sell of the equipment …”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Just let me bring the mortgage up to date. That will hold them at bay for a while.”

“No.”

“Why be so damn stubborn? Everybody needs assistance once in a while. I’d consider it a privilege to help.”

“Promise to publish, and I’ll let you.”

Salinger’s friendly but persuasive expression suddenly turns to one of indignation.

“One has nothing to do with the other,” he shouts.

“I know.” And for some reason I cannot fathom, I am smiling.

“You’re not only ungrateful, you’re stupid too,” says Jerry.

“I know.”

“What do you think you are, some kind of mystic?” He digs in his jeans and flings a quarter down on the table. “In God We Trust, and all others pay cash.”

“Hang in with me, for a few weeks.”

“Stick with you, and I’ll end up in irons,” says Jerry, the anger gone from his voice. He even half smiles as he adds, “I’ll help you and Annie look for an apartment after you get evicted.”

Then he rises wearily and makes his way toward the stairs.

“There really is something out there, isn’t there?” are Richard’s first words as he comes through the door. There is a faint odor of popcorn and sawdust about him.

I nod.

“I know you’re not really crazy, Ray. I wouldn’t put it past you to put me on, though.” He smiles my most charming smile, the one I sue on my mother-in-law on holidays and her birthday. “But why can’t
I
see?”

“Very few can. None of Annie’s relatives, or anyone who just drops in casually, can see anything more than what I’ve built. I chose Jerry, Moonlight, and Eddie. But it wasn’t exactly my own doing. It was like walking out in front of a full grandstand, the breath of thirty thousand faces on me, the throng clapping, cheering, stomping, whistling, reaching out to be chosen; but it was also like having my hand guided to pick out the
right
ones.”

“But I didn’t come here by accident. I didn’t start reading phone books as if they were manifestoes, for no reason. Something guided me to you. Something made me move in here to be near you. You should hear me explaining
that
to my lady.”

“As unsatisfactory as it may sound, we’ll just have to wait and see,” I say, thinking that I sound like Shoeless Joe Jackson sounded over the long months I waited for my catcher to appear. But earlier tonight, when my catcher was out there on the field whistling the ball to second, calling out which infielder should take charge of an infield fly, I sat as tightly in my seat as if I were glued there. I made no effort to go down to the field after the game to talk to the players, as I often do, until he was safely on his way to the center-field exit.