Casey's Home (7 page)

“Thanks,”
he said and rose to shake her hand, which was being offered as if it were a
consolation prize. How anyone whose entire job was hiring and firing people
could be so uncomfortable with the whole thing, he didn’t know.

“We’ll let you know,”
she told him, and left him alone again. He looked around the small office, now
missing a few posters, Bill’s coffee cup, the bowling trophies he had won with
Edie when she was still alive. Nothing much had changed, really, in the last
three days, nor would it change much when he had gone. Picking up the cactus
and tucking it into the corner of the window sill, he gathered his coat and
turned out the light.

1972

There was only one time in Ben’s
youth where Billy had made anything beyond a cursory attempt to treat Ben like
the proverbial son he’d never had. They had both agreed, somehow, early on,
that this was a friendship, maybe even a mentorship. Neither ever said a word
about his father, but Ben knew that this was not going to be a case of
assistant parenting, and he was happy enough with that. His experience with a
man in the role of father never seemed worth the effort required on his part,
anyway.

In late September, after the
Atlantics had been eliminated from the Pennant race, Billy had driven out to
the house to ask Ben’s mother if Ben could drive up with him to Chicago and see
Dick Allen and his White Sox play ball. At that point, Ben had never even been
on a real road trip, much less to see the Sox play at Comiskey. His mother was
no match for the quiet intensity of his desire and gave in before Billy had
even made it down the drive. Ben chased after the silver Corvette and barely
caught it, thumping his knuckles against the trunk as Billy was about to turn
onto the road. The older man rolled down his window and leaned out, grinning as
Ben caught his breath in the sweltering heat.

Billy was going through one of
his periodic mustache jags, and looked a bit like Burt Reynolds in
“Deliverance,” which Ben’s mother had expressly forbidden him to see, though he
and a few buddies had snuck out one night and seen it anyway at the drive-in.
One of them had brought along a few beers and a half-smoked joint stolen from a
parent’s nightstand, and Ben had viewed the entire movie through a weakened
haze of alcohol and second-hand pot. He’d had nightmares afterward, but would
never have admitted his mistake.

“She says it’s okay, but only for
a couple days,” he panted.

“It’s baseball,” Billy said. “How
much time do we need? It’s not like we’re sightseeing.”

“What should I bring?” Ben asked.
“Is it hot in Chicago? Like here?” He had this vague picture of the place as
frigid and wind-blown, the locals dressed in parkas like Eskimos. He knew this
had to be wrong, but it was North, and he had never been further north than
Charlotte.

Billy shrugged. “Bring your
glove,” was all he said.

His mother told him to bring
shorts and t-shirts, but only after she’d commented on the pathetic state of
geographic instruction at Florida high schools. He packed in a delirium,
folding and refolding his clothes, then rolling them so he could cram more into
the late-Fifties marbled plastic suitcase his mother had given him for the
trip. He was vaguely embarrassed by this suitcase, with its pale green satin
interior, but they never traveled, so this was the best she had. His mother
stood in the doorway as he sat on the suitcase to latch it closed. She was
muffling laughter.

“How long do you expect to be
gone?”

Billy had said they would drive
straight there, check-in to a hotel, sleep, go to the game, sleep, and drive
straight back. Somehow in Ben’s mind, that had transformed itself into days and
days on the road. He reduced the volume, and finally contented himself with a
few t-shirts, a change of jeans and shorts, and some underwear and socks. His
mother made him put a jacket into the now-empty second side. He insisted on
packing his razor.

On the morning of the trip, Ben rose
early. He wasn’t much for sleeping in, but this morning he awoke with a nervous
energy that wouldn’t dissipate. Through breakfast, his foot tapped beneath the
table, he clicked his watch against the cereal bowl, and finally, drummed the
tips of his fingers against the window next to the front door for nearly half
an hour before his mother made him stop. Fortunately, Billy was on time. He had
clearly taken the Corvette in for a wash and wax before the journey. The car
glowered in the driveway like a shadow and Ben’s mother eyed it warily,
prepared to do battle, if necessary, with the beast.

“He’s not to drive that car,
Bill. If you two get tired, pull over.”

“For God’s sake, LouAnn, you
think I’d let the boy drive the Stinger? I’ve done this drive a hundred times.
I never get tired.”

“I understand that. I’m just
saying. There’s no harm in staying an extra day or two if you need to. I don’t
know why you men always insist on driving straight through.”

Ben settled into the passenger
seat and cranked down the window. Billy had unclipped the t-top panels and
removed the rear window, and the car was hotter than a griddle, sizzling
against Ben’s skin if the seat touched any part of his bare lower thigh.

“We’ll be fine. We’ll call if
anything comes up,” Billy soothed as he slid in beside Ben. “Goddamn women,” he
muttered. “They all worry too much.” Then he popped the car into gear and blew
a cloud of dirt and gravel out behind him, leaving two dark streaks of rubber
at the entrance to the drive.

The road north was straight and
lined with trees; Billy floored the car until they were racing through a
private bubble of noise and wind. Ben stuck his hand out and let the air lift
it like a wave. The windshield seemed to function mostly in name only at this
point. With his hair rising in wild swirls around his scalp, Ben was in
teen-age boy heaven. He felt macho, pumped-up like a rooster; he preened in the
warm wind. Billy was casual beyond the point of cool: one hand on the wheel,
the other on the gear shift, as if at any point he might find a fifth speed and
rocket them off into space.

Though he would have enjoyed the
drive if the entire thing had been in a tunnel, Ben had to admit that the
scenery left much to be desired. The occasional small out-cropping of houses,
set back behind thin pines, popped up to relieve the green monotony, and the
rare glimpse of water through the trees beckoned with its cool shimmer.
Otherwise, he was staring at not much of anything. He let his mind drift, to
college the next year – he was considering signing up for the general science
program at the JC, mostly because they had a good ball team – and he pondered
this slight gain in independence with a mixture of fear and delight that
sometimes electrified his body and made his breath evaporate from his lungs as
if sucked into a vortex. This happened even when he wasn’t literally hurtling
through a wind-tunnel. He wasn’t really thinking about the Pros, yet. Billy had
hinted at Ben’s being called up fairly quickly, and had suggested he skip
college and go straight into the Minors, but so far Ben hadn’t received any
offers. That meant, he knew, nothing much. He still had one year left of high
school, and though the scouts had been around, no one was biting, yet. His arm
was good, better than even he had expected, thanks to Billy’s training, but he
didn’t want to jinx himself by wanting it too much, or thinking about it with
any confidence.

When he’d first started throwing,
back in junior high, it had been mostly because the usual pitcher was sick, or
injured. Hitting had been his chief pleasure, then, along with playing right
field. He liked the glamour of a good solid hit, as most kids do, and the way
it felt to race back after a hard-hit ball, to feel it slip almost softly into
the webbing of his glove, and then to hurl it, arm muscles releasing in a burst
of power as the ball sailed dead-on to the second baseman. He hadn’t been as
big, then, and his growth had waited until his freshman year of high school.
Once he’d begun to shoot up and fill out, his coaches had taken notice of the
one thing he’d always had: accuracy and control. They placed him on the mound
with increasing frequency. He was in his element on the mound, though he
wouldn’t have said that was true until he’d been there, day after day, and
finally understood the reasoning behind each pitch. In a pinch, when the team
was struggling, was when his ability to place the ball became almost uncanny.
Billy said it was Ben’s inner stillness, “your fucking Zen nature,” as he put
it. “Like one of those fucking rock stars with their Yogis and their gurus and
shit. Except you aren’t trying to blow peace out of your asshole.”

Ben had no idea, particularly at
sixteen, what any of that meant. He only knew that his body knew how to throw,
and how to get the ball to go where he wanted it. The coaches may have worked
hard to align his mental with his physical, but he knew it had nothing to do
with his brain. The ability happened, somehow, between his eyes and his hands,
without his conscious mind telling him anything. In fact, the more he thought
about where to throw the ball, the more wild he became. So he didn’t think: he
moved. And if that made him Zen like a rock star, he could deal with that. And
if, someday, it got him a car like this one, he’d meditate each morning in the
low-slung black-leather seats like a child in its mother’s arms.

The Stingray had no glove
compartment, but instead a series of pockets that seemed to be designed to hold
as little as possible: the manly equivalent of a wallet, Ben supposed, rather
than a purse. Billy had tucked a clearly never-opened map of the entire US, a
packet of beef jerky and three packets of Fruit Stripe gum into the pockets.
Ben’s feet rested over a small cooler filled with cans of Coke. Around noon, it
occurred to him to wonder if this was considered lunch, or if they would stop
somewhere. He didn’t dare ask Billy, who hadn’t said a word to him in four
hours, beyond, “Buckle your goddamn seat-belt, kid. I don’t plan on explaining
to your mother how you vaulted out of my car and I had to scrape your brains
off of the pavement because I had to brake for a fucking squirrel or
something.” Apparently, one of the more important aspects of enhanced machismo
was to speak very rarely to other men, and when speech was necessary, to use as
many gratuitous expletives as possible. Ben wondered if this was another of
Billy’s “lessons” about life, or if the man just didn’t want to shout over the
engine noise and rushing air. In the meantime, Ben gazed longingly at side-roads
and waited to see what Billy would do.

At one o’clock, Billy shifted
slightly and said, “Gotta take a piss. We’ll grab some grub at the local
whatever and head back out again.” Ben nodded, unsure what a “local whatever”
was, but unwilling to ask. He felt that if he questioned any of this too much,
the entire trip would evaporate, and he’d be home mowing the lawn, upper arms
sticky and covered in bits of grass, which was how he normally spent his
weekends.

The “local whatever” turned out
to be a greasy Mexican restaurant run by people who, even to Ben’s relatively
untrained eye, appeared to be Chinese. He ordered a tostada, and wasn’t really
surprised to get a rock-hard tortilla covered in barely-melted cheese and still
slightly frozen mixed vegetables, which included lima beans. It wasn’t really
edible, so he picked at it and ate copious amounts of the free chips and salsa,
which were cold, but at least tasted like they had been purchased at the local
grocery store. He eyed Billy’s chicken tacos, which looked both somehow greasy
and undercooked, but which Billy claimed tasted “authentic,” and wondered if
they wouldn’t have been better off with the beef jerky. At least the Cokes were
icy cold and straight from the can, which for once was reassuring.

The rest of the afternoon was
spent in miserable flatulence, easing his butt off the seat, fearing he would
somehow destroy the leather. Next to Ben, Billy’s face was puffy and green.
Somewhere across the border into Georgia, Billy pulled violently to the side of
the 2-lane highway, and staggered off into the underbrush. He returned a few
moments later, looking considerably perkier, wiping his mouth with the back of
his hand. “Throw me a Coke, kid, I gotta get the taste of puke outta my mouth.”
Ben tossed him a Coke from the cooler and watched as Billy downed the entire
thing in one, protracted swallow, his eyes clamped shut in concentration.
“Okay,” he called, “now the Fruit Stripe.” Ben threw an entire pack at him.

When it was his turn to get sick,
Ben made it to a gas-station restroom and locked himself in, hands trembling.
His gut roiled and bucked like a monster lurking within. He emerged a good
while later, aware from a quick glance at the polished sheet of metal that
served as a mirror in the bathroom, that his face was white and lightly slicked
with sweat. He rejected the Fruit Stripe and nursed a Coke as they moved north
more slowly, taking the gentle curves of the back road Billy had selected with
one hand on the door handle and his eyes locked to a steady point on the
horizon.

They stopped for dinner at
McDonalds, which at least felt more predictable, and both poked half-heartedly
at their cheeseburgers and nibbled at fries like dieting women, their bravado
laid-low by bad Mexican and the universal humility of vomit.

The evening stars were bright in
a clear sky, and they ground forward with a comforting stability beneath the
dome of deep, resonant blue. Ben’s eyes drifted closed somewhere around
midnight, and the rich purr of the engine eased him into sleep. It wasn’t until
the engine began to make noises like someone firing a shotgun beneath the hood,
that he woke with a start to hear Billy cursing and shouting.

“Goddamnit!” Billy hit the
steering wheel with his fist and pulled the car to a shuddering stop in the
grass at the side of the road. “I think we threw a fucking rod. How could we
throw a rod? This is a fucking new car, Goddamnit.” And then he emitted
something that sounded like a high-pitched shriek. Ben scrambled free of the
car into the grass and sat heavily a few feet from his smoking mentor.