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  Baseball is not about teamwork, no matter what anybody says. It is about pitching and catching and hitting a ball. Especially about hitting a ball. And all of those things get done by one guy alone. Baseball is a selfish game. I don’t mind that. That’s why it works.

  There is the snap. If I am going with the pitch, like when Quin or Butchie is particularly cute with the curves and screwballs and I have to go with whatever I get, then bat-meets-ball is more like a snapping sound, a slapping sound, and I knock the thing into right field with less authority than I might like, but all the same it is very satisfying. Because that stuff can be devilishly hard to hit, and you have to be both smart and quick with your hands to change your stroke on the fly and get the ball out there in play. Fred Lynn does this, and I have seen it in the news. Balls you are sure he can’t hit until, smack, there he goes, reaching out after it, putting the ball out there in play, and looking like he’s just going to go with the flow and follow the thing right out there into the outfield, just to watch it land where he tells it to. The ball in play. I love the ball in play. I hate the ball in the catcher’s hands.

  Pop. Pop is a bad sound, the way I hear it. Because I hear it pop-pop. Double pop, like a mock. Because that to me is the sound of striking out, and striking out is the worst thing that can happen to a person. Anybody can miss a ball—pop—one time, because, sure, there are some good guys out there who can throw, and they can get lucky now and then. And if conditions are right for them and wrong for you, you can even get caught a second time—pop—and find yourself in jeopardy.

  But a third strike. I have never been able to see the reasoning behind a third strike. Not in one at-bat, uh-uh, no way, no excuse. Nobody should be able to fool you or overwhelm you three times in one at-bat. No one. So the ultimate insult, the unbearable nightmare of a noise is the pop-pop of that third strike. The first pop being the ball landing in the catcher’s mitt. The second being me banging the bat off my helmet.

  Because striking out is not okay. Striking out means somebody else has the control. When the ball is over the plate, you should be able to hit it.

  Nothing else makes sense.

  The crack of the bat is churchbells to me. The sound of all is well.

  SEVENTEEN SQUARED

  THE ARRIVAL OF THE Ward 17s this past year was the first big import of new faces since Manny and all those guys came up from Cuba a few years back. But this bunch made even more of a difference, because the 17s didn’t just bring new faces from outside the neighborhood, they brought stuff. Attitude. Butchie was a Ward 17 guy, and he was a good example of stuff I could see where he might be a hard guy to handle, except for the baseball thing that got us together right away. He’s a good ol’ ballplayer. Mean pitcher. Loaded with intimidating, tough stuff.

  But the everyday stuff mostly had to do with the fact that they weren’t crazy about being here. All right, so it was school, so nobody was crazy about being here. But the 17s were the only ones who were here strictly because they didn’t want to be someplace else. They were kind of angry about the busing deal and they didn’t care who knew about it.

  I didn’t want to know about it.

  “I can’t stand this one more day,” Butchie said, throwing his big self down into the desk next to me. He looked miserable, his long hair hanging straggly three inches below his ski hat. The hair, frozen as it was, looked like brown icicles.

  “Hey Butch,” I said casually, since it wasn’t unlike him to be just like this. I knew his story. Everyone knew his story. He liked to tell his story anyway.

  “Walk a half-mile. Take the bus to Forest Hills. Wait in the freezing cold for another stinking bus. Walk another two blocks. And for what?”

  “To get to school?” I suggested.

  Just then, Napoleon Charlie Ellis entered the room, walked the aisle, and took the seat on my right. Butch gestured through me, toward Napoleon.

  “And why am I even doing this? Why am I even here? I’m sittin’ with them anyway now, and tomorrow I’ll probably be sittin’ with more of ’em. Until my old man finds me a school three buses away.”

  Napoleon leaned forward, looked past me at Butchie, expressionless, but not without a message anyway. Butchie looked back.

  “Forget about it,” Butch said. “Nothing personal.”

  Napoleon shook his head. “Nothing personal? Tell me, is it that you think I am deaf, or that I’m stupid and cannot understand the words?”

  I was now a hot sandwich.

  “Of course it is personal,” Napoleon went on. “You are talking about persons, and I am one of them. You traveled two buses to get here. So? I traveled two thousand miles. And to sit with you?”

  “So who asked you to?” Butchie said. “It’s not like we had a shortage of you people.”

  I did not want to be in the middle of this, but that is literally where I was. This did not have to happen. I had to do something.

  “Listen,” I said, making a slicing motion between them with my hand. “Butchie said forget about it. Didn’t you hear that? He said forget about it. When a guy says forget about it, it’s supposed to be the end of it, so... that’s the end of it.”

  Butch was in deeper than he wanted to be anyway, I could see from his embarrassed red face. Of course I could see nothing of the kind on Napoleon’s face. Napoleon had a different kind of face. I didn’t really know Napoleon’s face in that way.

  But I assumed that he wouldn’t want to be in this messiness. I assumed we would feel the same way. Wouldn’t we?

  Butch just turned away and sat rigid in his seat. I looked to Napoleon, who was slowly turning away as well.

  “See,” I said, “you just need to not make such a big deal out of stuff. Relax, Napoleon.” I was hit with a timely inspiration from TV. “Like the commercial says, right? ‘No problems.’ Right? ‘No problems.’”

  I thought I’d done pretty well, coming up with a smooth culture reference to ease things up. Maybe I knew more stuff than I gave myself credit for.

  “That’s the Bahamas,” Napoleon said.

  Now he didn’t look too thrilled with me either. Cripes. It was all so unnecessary. I couldn’t imagine it all wouldn’t blow over by lunch.

  Pre-lunch, down in the basement getting our food out of our lockers. There was a daily ritual, always brought the guys together no matter what kind of lousy day it was. Beating up on Arthur Brown’s brown-bag lunch.

  “Throw it here,” I called to Butchie. Butchie lobbed me a perfect spiral, the length of the corridor and right through Arthur’s outstretched hands. It was no fun unless Arthur at least had a shot at reaching it.

  “Arthur, what’s in here?” I asked, looking at the bag. “It’s leaking already after only three passes.”

  “Tuna. Jerk,” Arthur snapped, lunging my way.

  Butchie was about to catch it, then let it fall. He loves that move. “Too much mayonnaise. We told you last time on tuna day, you gotta tell your mom to go easier on the mayo. Makes our hands all slippery. And it’s making you too fat and slow to catch us.”

  “Give me my lunch,” Arthur Brown growled at Butchie. He was very serious about it, which meant we only had three or four tosses left in the game. Butchie let it fly in my direction.

  Just as I was about to catch it, a hand stuck up in my face, snagging the bag.

  “Good grab, Napoleon,” I said. Arthur was grimly heading our way. “Here he comes,” I said. “Unload, unload.”

  Butchie was waving his hands madly from the imaginary end zone. Arthur was bearing down on Napoleon.

  Napoleon handed the bag to Arthur, who was so taken by surprise that he dropped it.

  “What did you do that for?” I asked.

  “It’s the man’s lunch,” Napoleon said. “Is it not?”

  Butchie was headed our way, quite disgusted at the turn of events. “What happened?”

  “He gave me my lunch,” Arthur said.

  “Dope, whatja do that for?”

  “Don’t call me that,
” Napoleon said.

  “You had no business doing that,” Butchie said.

  “Nevermind,” I said. “He didn’t know.”

  “What?” Napoleon Charlie Ellis wanted to know. “What did I not know?”

  “What you did not know was that we have been doing this for a long time, and you weren’t supposed to give Arthur back his lunch yet.” Butchie was taking this very seriously, like we were some military outfit and the new scrub hadn’t been read the rules. “For your information, Arthur likes this game and as a matter of fact he has been playing it for so long that he can’t even eat right if he hasn’t chased after his lunch for at least five minutes to stimulate his appetite. Isn’t that right, Arthur?” Butch shouted, though straining in Napoleon’s direction.

  Everyone looked at Arthur.

  “Um. I probably could eat it anyway.”

  Napoleon Charlie Ellis nodded, then walked to his own locker.

  Butchie followed him. “So, you don’t have to save him, Charlie, and you don’t have to mess around with things you don’t understand, like how things run here. Maybe you were in charge back in the school where nobody wore any shoes, but it ain’t gonna be that way here.”

  Napoleon slammed his locker. That tin old-locker noise filled the concrete corridor and seemed to echo a hundred times.

  “I did not ask you to call me Charlie. If you wish to talk to me you may do so, and you may call me Napoleon, and you may do it more quietly. I’ll not be shouted at by you. And as for being boss of you, I have no ambition to be a pig farmer.”

  I had never seen anyone speak to Butch like this. I don’t suppose Butch had ever seen it either, since the idea of it was making him go spastic.

  “Who do you think you are, man. ...” Butchie said, inching up too close and staring down at Napoleon from his extra few inches of height.

  “I know well who I am,” said Napoleon calmly, so calmly he nearly closed his eyes all the way as he said it.

  This, I thought, was a good time to join in. I slipped between them.

  “He just never played throw the lunch before, Butch,” I said, giving him a healthy shove, but not so hard that he’d shove me back. Almost no one is allowed to shove Butchie. I am. But I’m not keenly interested in testing it beyond that. “He’s still getting used to everything.”

  Butchie stared as I threw my arm around Napoleon’s shoulders. Then Napoleon stared, at my arm. I don’t think he was all that accustomed to this kind of contact. But he didn’t do anything about it.

  “Right,” Butchie grunted. “Well, he better get used to everything. Quick.” He turned to go back upstairs. He signaled Arthur Brown to follow, even though Butchie would not ordinarily be walking with Arthur. It was just one of those moments you’re not supposed to walk away from alone.

  “That boy has got a problem, Richard,” Napoleon Charlie Ellis said.

  “Butchie’s just kind of... tense.”

  “He’s not tense with you. He is tense with me.”

  “And you’re tense with everybody. Maybe the two of you are too much alike, what do you think of that?”

  He removed my arm from his shoulders like he was removing a putrefied fish.

  “You couldn’t really believe that,” he said, opening his locker again to get out his lunch.

  “Well, you are kind of a hard guy yourself, Napoleon. It could just be that you make people be worse than they are, because of the way you are. Maybe it’s you.”

  He closed the locker, stood with his own perfectly creased brown bag. It smelled incredible to me, all mixed and spiced, like Chinese food, only I couldn’t imagine anybody bringing Chinese food for lunch, and anyway, it was a whole different spice smell.

  “I am certain you do not believe such nonsense, Richard.”

  We headed over to my locker.

  “Can we trade?” I asked. “Half of your lunch for half of mine? I never smelled a lunch like that in my life. I don’t even want to know what it is. Can we trade?”

  He sighed. “Possibly.”

  I opened my locker. It smelled like it usually does. like Spam.

  “No,” he said immediately.

  But as we walked up the stairs, he reached into his bag and handed me a small, breaded, spiced knot of some meat thing. I was almost afraid to eat it because that meant I wouldn’t be able to smell it anymore.

  “A gift,” Napoleon Charlie Ellis said. “Now, please tell me you don’t honestly believe...”

  “Where was I?” I interrupted. “Oh yes, Jim Rice is going to be in left field, with Fred Lynn in center. They are talking about putting them number three and four in the lineup, with Rice batting cleanup. ...”

  “I am asking you to talk about something serious, Richard.”

  “Baseball is as serious as it gets,” I said.

  Napoleon shook his head, took a polite bite out of his food.

  “Well it’s as serious as I get anyway,” I said, also taking a bite of his food.

  STING

  “SO YOU’VE NEVER PLAYED baseball,” I said to Napoleon Charlie Ellis as we stood on a smooth slick coating of snow.

  “I play cricket. As I said. Will I teach you?”

  “Will you t—?” I practically choked on the thought. Somebody in North America teaching me what to do with a bat and ball. “Ah, ho-ho. Napoleon Charlie Ellis, we’re gonna have big fun now.”

  “Now? No, not now. It is winter. In the spring and summer, then we will—”

  I stood there shaking my head at him, and smiling. He shook his head in response, without smiling. I think I was making him a little nervous. “I don’t believe in seasons,” I said.

  Napoleon Charlie Ellis looked past me, over my beloved and lovely field, still beloved and lovely with the snow continuing to come down over it. No matter. I knew what was under there, and it was beautiful.

  “I don’t know, Richard Riley Moncreif. If I lived here, I think I would believe in seasons.”

  I reached out and clapped him hard on the shoulder. It was a firm, square shoulder. “Excuse me? You do live here.”

  The shoulder sagged slightly, involuntarily. His face showed that his mind was off someplace else. A sudden small shock of sadness ran through me, like I had absorbed it by contact with Napoleon.

  “Pretty warm in Dominica right now, I imagine.”

  He nodded.

  “Stick with me,” I said. “I know what you need. This situation,” I waved my arm in a wide, sweeping circle over my hard-bit kingdom, where icicles climbed the chain-link backstop, and the pitcher’s mound was no greater than any other petrified mound out there, “this situation is all about mind over reality. That’s the trick. Remember, if you put your mind to it, you can do better than reality.”

  By now we were both staring off into white space.

  “I am ready to put my mind to that,” he said.

  Sometimes, when it is cold, you have to connect perfectly to avoid the worst feeling in all the world. The buzzing electrified stinging of the hands after hitting the ball one eighth of an inch too high or low of the sweet spot. It would hurt less if, when you saw the pitch coming, you simply dropped the bat and smacked the ball with your bare hand. And if you really mess up and catch it either high up on the handle or way out on the very tip of the bat because one of the slickmasters like Butchie or Quin can’t resist throwing the funny stuff in February, well, it’s almost enough to put a guy off baseball for good.

  Right, I know. Right about here is where I lose most people. I get the look, and the whole, aren’t-you-taking-this-thing-a-little-too-seriously jag.

  No. I am not. What really matters? It could be a million different things, and I don’t necessarily have to appreciate what matters to somebody, except that I can appreciate that something does. Right, so, when I am hitting after a baseball, all I can tell you is that is what matters to me, and when I start my swing everything else there is falls away. School, family, friends and food and sky and grass are all gone to nowhere because I exist
and the ball exists and that’s pure.

  Imagine the thing that matters. Imagine disappearing entirely into your thing that matters, needing that feeling. And then, zinnngggg.

  It bites you. It hurts you so bad that you have to throw the bat on the ground, the same bat that has to be pried out of your hands some July days. That is not fair. Your own dog shouldn’t maul you, and your bat shouldn’t sting you. That’s the world not right, right there.

  I guessed Napoleon Charlie Ellis would like to avoid that feeling. He would need to be sheltered from the elements to start off.

  “A batting what?” Napoleon said as we left the city proper on the bus north.

  “Cage. It’s a practice facility. Somebody invented this thing so that you could practice baseball against live pitching—well, sort of live—all day, all night, all year even if you were totally friendless and everything. Total baseball. Brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it.”

  “I will not be getting in any cage.”

  I had still not figured out Napoleon’s style. He sounded so proper and serious whether he was doing Hail Marys at church or telling you about the rice and beans and fish he fed his dog.

  “No, no, man it’s not that kind of—”

  “My uncle back in Dominica told me this would happen. He said if we dared come to this place, some white man would try to put me in a cage. ...”

  “That is so unfair... that hardly ever—”

  The way he laughed, even, was so controlled you had to pay real close attention to catch him doing it to you. Napoleon Charlie Ellis was very good at being controlled. I would have to get better at paying attention.

  “Fine,” I said. “Wait ’til you get conked on the head with a pitch, then it’s gonna be my turn to laugh.”