You Don't Know About Me (18 page)

I ripped down the stairs and out of the stadium. Some people were still in the parking lot. If he came after me, I'd scream. Reaching the camper, I found a rock by the fence. I broke the side window and yanked open the door. The alarm blared. I ripped off the Rockies jersey, threw it down. I grabbed my backpack and ran across the lot toward the elevated highway.

As I looked back to see if anyone was chasing me, I
thought my eyes were playing tricks. The stadium looked gigantic. Then I realized, behind it, spreading like huge wings, was a wall of clouds. A storm. But something about it looked wrong. It didn't look like rain. It looked like brown cotton candy.

I slid down an embankment. At the bottom was a small river. I picked my way along the brushy bank, looking for a shallow crossing point, or enough rocks to stepping-stone across. Up the long steep on the other side was the highway.

I sloshed across the river and started grinding up the steep. My legs went rubbery. Halfway up, they blew out. My knees dug into the sandy dirt. I bailed on my butt before the weight of my pack and gravity sent me backpack-sledding. I looked back at the ballpark. The storm had pushed closer. Bigger and darker, the clouds bulged over the stadium. Cars were leaving the parking lot.

I finally grabbed a moment to think. I wished every lightning bolt in the black clouds would hit Ruah Branch. He had a dark secret alright; it wasn't doing steroids or going criminal. He was a fag, a queer, an abomination to the Lord. I wanted to throw thunderbolts at him myself. I wanted to see him writhe and twist and suffer. He'd lied to me. He'd tricked me into riding with him, into becoming his friend. And all that time, his mind had been crawling with faggot thoughts.

When God doesn't want you to imagine certain things, sometimes He steps in; He stops you. The moment I started seeing things Ruah liked to do, God twisted my insides into a fist and punched. My stomach leapt out of my throat. I hurled. Nothing came up but air. I heaved again. More air.
With no trail mix to spew, a stomach gets confused. It keeps twisting up, heaving, trying to boot whatever is down there, even if it's nothing but bile and hate. I honked so many times it felt like I was throwing up barbed wire. All I could do was lie in the dirt and gasp for air between throat-tearing heaves.

It finally stopped.

I dropped my head in the dirt and cried. I thanked God for making it stop, for not letting my body turn inside out. And I prayed. I asked God if I should use the money I had left for a bus ticket back to Missouri. Or if I should climb up to the highway and keep going. I pulled out my GPS and turned it on. I was still 385 miles from Providence.

As usual, God didn't answer my prayer directly. He had this way of answering me with whatever I gave Him. If I gave Him confusion, He'd answer with His own version of confusion. And confusion on God's megascale is more like chaos. I looked up and saw His answer. The ballpark was gone, swallowed by the storm of dirty cotton candy. The stadium lights were on. They glowed inside the giant cloud like the eyes of a beast. The beast wasn't a thunderstorm. It was a monster dust storm, devouring everything in its path. His answer wasn't
Go east
or
Go west
. It was
Billy, right now you're not going anywhere
.

I scramble-crawled the rest of the steep to where the highway made an overhang. The wedge of space under the road looked like a good shelter from the storm. I crawled into the cave of steel girders and loose dirt. I watched the
mondo storm eat the river. I listened to it moan. Then, in a mad dash, a wall of dust swallowed the collapsing light.

Dust and biting sand slammed into me. My eyes stung, my throat clogged, my nostrils plugged. The air was filled with flying needles, and I was the dartboard.

I dug a shirt from my backpack and wrapped it around my head. It helped a little. Then my mouth got so dry and clogged I couldn't spit. It felt like swallowing sandpaper. I began to feel dizzy. I had to move. If I didn't, I'd keep sucking dust. I'd be buried alive from the inside out.

I grabbed my backpack, slid down the embankment, and found the river. I could just make out the water in the boiling dust. It had been clear before; now it was muddy brown. I washed out my mouth and nose, jammed with so much nosepickium it was nose
pack
ium. I dunked the shirt and held it over my face. Each time it got hard to breathe I rinsed out the shirt and plastered it back on my face.

I kept waiting for the dust to stop. I had no idea how long a dust storm lasted. It was my first. I wondered if it was going to be my last.

Then I remembered something I'd learned about buffalo and cattle in a storm. Buffalo are smart when it comes to surviving. Buffalo put their heads toward the storm, walk into it, and move
through
it. Cattle put their butts to a storm, move
with
it, and sometimes never escape. If I was going to suck dust till I died of an air-ectomy, I was going to die like a buffalo, not a stupid cow. I stumbled down the river, into the storm, back toward the ballpark.

Between not being able to see an arm's length and
squinting against the dust, I didn't see the fence. I face-planted into it. The fence stretched across the river and up both banks. I followed the chain link up the closest embankment.

At the top, my sneaks hit asphalt. I kept walking into the blowing dust. Soon I could see ten feet, twenty. The storm was letting up, or I was getting to the back of it. If I weren't hacking, and my mouth, nose, and lungs weren't stuffed with powdered doughnuts, I would've run.

I saw some cars. I figured I was back in one of the big parking lots. I'd come full circle. It was strange how few cars there were. Rockies fans must've known about dust-nadoes, or whatever they called them, and knew how to escape them.

A shape loomed in the distance: a cone of light, plowing through the haze. As it got closer, I saw they were headlights. Behind the headlights was something squarish and brown. It looked like a UPS truck. It didn't make sense. What would a UPS truck be doing in a stadium parking lot?

A tear of light opened in the dust. I saw part of the ballpark. I looked back at the truck. Its lights had turned toward me. It was the camper, corn dogged in dust. I could see Ruah behind the wheel. I never wanted to lay eyes on him again.

I hurried toward the growing split of light. The passenger side of the camper drew alongside me. I glanced through the broken window. The cab had a matching dust interior. I didn't look at him. I kept walking. The camper kept rolling next to me.

“I don't care about the window,” he said. “I would've done the same.”

I stayed fixed on the widening light and the safety of the ballpark.

“Are you gonna stop and let me talk to you?” he asked.

“No.” My voice wheezed like an old man's. I hacked and spat.

“Will you at least tell me where you're going?”

I figured if I answered maybe he'd stop following me. “I'm gonna wash up and hitchhike.”

He waited for me to finish blowing bran-flake boogers out my nose. “The first part's a good idea,” he said, “ 'cause right now, you're almost as black as me.”

I really wanted him to go away. I shot him an ugly look. “At least my dirt comes off.”

His head jerked. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nuthin.” I walked around a parked car to get some distance.

The RV swerved around the car and pulled back close. “Okay, lemme guess,” he said with an edge. “I don't think by ‘dirt' you're referring to my skin color. It must mean you think I'm dirty on the inside. That I'm a faggot, a fairy, a fruit, pansy, queer, homo, poofta, cocksucker …”

I stopped. His voice trailed off as the camper kept going. He must have been looking ahead and not at me.

The camper rocked to a stop.

I braced myself. If I saw the door open, I was going to run. It was less than a hundred yards to the ballpark; I could see people moving around.

Something flapped out of the camper's broken window. A white towel. He was dusting off the outside mirror. The towel sucked back inside; the camper backed up. It drew alongside me.

“Did I leave any out?” he asked. “Any other names you wanna call me?”

I glared at him. My throat clenched. If I was going to hurl again, there was finally something in my stomach to boot: dirt. “Abomination,” I said.

“Right,” he said. “Forgot that one. When you drop the faggot bomb you never wanna forget ‘abomination to the Lord.' ”

It pissed me off that he wasn't getting mad. He was just taking it. But what else was he going to do? He knew what he was.

He rubbed his hand over his head. “Okay, here's the deal.”

“There is no deal,” I snapped.

He lifted his hands. “Okay, no deals. How 'bout I just
tell you what I'd
like
to do? I'd like to drive you to the bus station and buy you a ticket to Providence, Utah, home, or wherever you wanna go. Can you trust me enough to do that?”

I stared at him for a sec, then looked away. “Why would you wanna do that?”

“Number one, the ticket's not gonna bust my bank, and two, it seems like the Christian thing to do.”

He had no reason to be generous. Unless there was something behind it. Unless he'd say
anything
to get me back in his RV.

“While you're making up your mind,” he said, “if you're asking yourself,
What would Jesus do?
I've got the answer.”

“Oh yeah, what's that?”

“Christ liked to chill with the scum of the earth, but there's nothing in the Bible about Him chillin' with a homo. So whether you decide to let me drive you to the bus station or not has absolutely nuthin to do with ‘What would Jesus do?' It's about what
you
would do.”

I wasn't sure of my next move. Climbing back into the camper scared me. But I felt he owed me. He owed me for being a liar. He owed me for being so nice and acting like a friend, when, all that time, there was something else behind it.

He leaned toward the open window. “Billy, I'm not asking you to come over to the dark side. I'm only offering you a ride and a bus ticket.”

I opened the camper door and dropped my backpack. It kicked up a cloud of dust. You don't think twice about sitting in dust when you're already dusted. You do think twice about climbing in a camper with a homosexual.

As we drove out of the lot, I tried to ignore the fear and disgust coiling inside me. I focused on the expanding light and sky. The sun punched through the haze. The backside of the dust storm blew to the north. But it had left a mini version in the camper. The wind coming through the broken window stirred up a dust devil. Ruah rolled down his window to clear it out. He made a stab at conversation. “I've never seen a ball game called because of dust.”

I thought about saying
I've still never seen a ball game
, but I didn't. I didn't want to make small talk, or any talk. I just wanted to get to the bus station.

He tried again. “Your head's probably full of worries and fears and questions, right?”

I stared ahead. “Pretty much,” I mumbled.

“So hit me with one of 'em.”

No way was I going to tell him about my worries and fears. But I did have a question. “Why would you wanna tell the world you're gay?”

“I don't.”

I wondered if he was lying. “Joe Douglas said—”

He cut me off. “I heard what he said, that I wanna turn the Cincinnati Reds into the Lavenders. It's not true. I'd rather stay in the closet forever. But when I told Joe I was gonna switch agents he went berserk. He threatened to out me if I fired him.”

“And that's why you're thinking about quitting baseball?”

He nodded. “Pretty much.”

I could've left it at that, not asked another question, just got to the station and gone my way. But I fell for the temptation of curiosity. “What are you gonna do?”

He let out a breath. “Don't know. All I know for sure is that I've reached a crossroads, and I can't stand there the rest of my life. I gotta go one way or the other.”

I stole a look at his face; his eyes were fixed on the road. His tense expression made me wonder why they were called “gay.” “Queer,” yeah, but not “gay.” I shut my eyes.

After a few seconds he asked, “What are you doing?”

I kept my eyes shut. “Praying.”

“For what? Me to be straight?”

I kept praying. “Partly.”

“You're that sure being gay is a sin.”

I finished and looked up. “It's in the Bible.
Thou shall not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination.
”

A laugh jumped out of him. “Yeah, good ol' Moses in Leviticus, I know it well. And a couple of chapters later Moses lays down the punishment for men lying with men.”

The answer popped out of me like I was in a Bible bee.
“They shall surely be put to death.”

He shot me a look, then scowled. “Mr. Bible Cred knows his homophobic scripture. So you're saying what was true back then should be true today, right?”

“The Bible's truth is forever.”

“Amen to that, brother!” He raised his hands in mock praise. “How 'bout we make
all
the abominations that Moses said deserved the death penalty true today. Anyone who commits adultery: death. Anybody who's a medium or a wizard: death. Anybody who curses or blasphemes the name of God: death. Anybody who works on the Sabbath: death. A child who curses his father or mother: wash his mouth out with death! I say bring on
all
the death penalties. It'll rid the world of politicians, porn stars, astrologers, Harry Potter, foulmouthed comedians, atheists, Walmart workers who show up on Sunday, and every snot-nosed kid who ever gave his mom or dad any crap. We'll never worry about population control again. We'll all be dead!”