Southpaw (6 page)

“Come on,” Ramiro said. “I was gonna show Willie my new fish. You want to see?”

“Why not?”

Ramiro lived in a narrow two-story brick house just off the Boulevard. They climbed the front steps and Ramiro opened the door with his key. They stepped into the living room and Jimmy recognized the aroma of rice and beans and chicken cooking, so similar to what he’d eaten at Jalapenos. On a wall was a small shelf with figurines of saints. Another wall held dozens of framed photographs of people and tropical scenes.

A small older woman looked out from the kitchen and said,
“Hola
.
”

Ramiro turned to Jimmy. “That’s ‘hello’ to you,” he said. “This is my
abuela
. Grandma,
es
Jimmy
y
Willie.”

She smiled sweetly and hugged Ramiro. They spoke in Spanish to each other for a moment, and then Ramiro led the boys upstairs to his room.

“New swordtails,” he said, pointing to one of three fish tanks.

Jimmy glanced at the tanks, but he was more interested in the walls filled with posters of singers and athletes. He studied a framed map of Cuba. “You from here?” he asked.

“Sort of,” Ramiro replied. “I’ve never been, but my parents were born there. My grandparents, too.”

“They all live here now?”

“Yeah. Every inch downstairs has something about Cuba in it. Music, pictures, you name it.”

“They wish they could go back?”

Ramiro shrugged. “I don’t know. They love it here. It’s like they have two homes—this one here, and the one they might never go back to. You know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“I mean, I’ve lived my whole life in Hudson City, but even I feel some roots back there. In Cuba.”

Willie tapped on one of the tanks. “That one’s pretty,” he said, pointing to a red-and-blue fish.

“That’s a neon.”

“These things hard to take care of?” Willie asked. “I might want to get some.”

“Not hard. I like it. You just want to give them a good environment. Clean and calm, not too much light. You know. Make them feel at home.”

They studied the tanks for a few minutes. Ramiro shook some food from a small container into one. “You got to watch which types of fish you put together,” he said. “Some of them don’t get along.”

“You train ’em?” Willie asked.

“Nah.” Ramiro laughed. “They ain’t like dogs or people. If a fish don’t like another fish, you can’t make ’em change.”

Jimmy and Willie left a few minutes later, walking in opposite directions on the Boulevard. It was nearly dark now, and all the streetlights were on. Many of the stores and restaurants had their doors propped open, and Latin music was pumping out to the street.

He was hungry.
Arroz con pollo
would be good, but his dinner would be strictly American. Dad had said he’d be making pork chops and broccoli.

Maybe they’d watch a baseball game tonight. Or probably two of them. It wouldn’t hurt to study the pitchers. He might even learn something.

T
hings didn’t improve for the baseball team that week as they dropped their fourth straight game. Again, Jimmy was on the mound in the crucial moments. And again, he didn’t come through.

He hurried out to practice on Thursday, not because he couldn’t wait to get there, but because he didn’t want to hang around the hallways and be confronted by any teammates. No one had said much after the game—they were all too stunned—but he’d heard a few rumblings in school today that maybe Coach needed to find a different left-handed relief pitcher.

So he was one of the first players to reach the field. David and Ryan were throwing a ball back and forth on the infield. Spencer was sitting alone in the dugout, reading the weekly
Hudson City Observer.
Middle-school sports never got much press, but there was a brief article about the baseball team’s latest loss.

“You see this?” Spencer asked Jimmy, rattling the paper.

Jimmy sat next to Spencer and pulled the paper toward him. He looked at the headline and winced.

Spencer took the paper from Jimmy and folded it up. “Looks like you get all the blame,” he said.

Jimmy stared out at the field. He felt bad enough about the game without everyone in town reading it in the paper. He’d barely slept that night. He didn’t need Spencer rubbing it in.

“They mentioned my homer,” Spencer said.

Jimmy kept staring. Willie and Lamont and some others had arrived and were jogging in the outfield.

Spencer rolled up the paper and smacked it against the cinder-block wall of the dugout. “One thing I don’t like is when the wrong guy gets credit for something,” he said. “And I like it even worse when the wrong guy gets the blame.”

Jimmy turned to Spencer, who was looking at him hard. Spencer had made that error, turning what should have been a game-ending throw to first into a disaster.

Jimmy had begun the inning with a strikeout, then walked a batter on a close 3-2 pitch after a series of foul balls. He’d then yielded a double, but came back with a three-pitch strikeout to bring the team one out away from victory. That’s when Spencer made the wild throw, whipping it way past Eddie at first base where it bounded off the fence and into right field. By the time Ryan chased it down and threw it home, two runs had crossed the plate.

“Don’t think for a second that I don’t know where the blame goes,” Spencer said. “I blew it. I blew it big-time. You pitched great.”

“Thanks,” Jimmy said softly. He nodded. “I did all right.”

“You did more than all right, Flem. Everybody here knows it, too.”

Jimmy put up his fist and Spencer met it with his own. “Don’t beat yourself up over that error,” Jimmy said. “If you hadn’t hit that homer we would have lost anyway.”

“I ain’t down,” Spencer said. “All I mean is, the paper gave you a bad rap. They should have said who made the error. I can take it.”

“I can, too,” Jimmy said. “They can write what they want if it’s the truth.”

Coach had arrived and called everyone onto the field. He had them run a few laps, then they worked on fielding ground balls and pop-ups. Everyone seemed listless and uninspired.

Coach had seen it all before. He tried to keep things moving, but the players were just going through the motions. He joked a little, as usual, and didn’t dwell on the most recent loss or the record. But he stopped practice half an hour early and told the players to go home and forget about baseball for a few hours.

“You all look like your dog died,” he said. “Forget the game. Go eat cookies or pizza or something. Watch cartoons on TV. You even have my permission to smile.”

Coach knew that his team was a good one, that the players had talent and heart and good attitudes.

There was just one thing they were lacking.

They were badly in need of a win.

A
nother weekend, another two-hour drive to Pennsylvania. Jimmy and his mom went out to the movies this time. Sunday morning they went to church for the first time in months. That afternoon they had dinner at the Sturbridge Inn.

Surprisingly, he found himself missing Hudson City: his room overlooking the back alley, the hustle and noise of the Boulevard, even the kids from the team. Spencer’s words had meant a lot. He felt like less of an outsider. So what if the team was losing? At least he was a part of it.

So he was glad when Dad pulled into the driveway in their old red Escort, beeping the horn twice. Jimmy kissed his mom and told her he’d had a good time.

Dad was talkative on the way home, telling Jimmy about work—things were going well, but he’d have to go to the office a few evenings this week—and mentioning a new recipe for pork stew he wanted to try making.

“What’s the secret ingredient?” Jimmy asked. There was always a secret ingredient, something Dad added to recipes as his signature contribution.

“I’m thinking it might be maple syrup.”

“In a stew? Sounds very weird.”

“Yeah, but I think it might work. I’ll try just a little. If it’s good, we’ll add more next time.”

They hadn’t talked about baseball for several days. Dad had been to the Palisades game but hadn’t said a word about it. They both knew it was too painful to talk about.

So Jimmy was the one who brought it up, waiting until they’d crossed into New Jersey and both of them had been quiet for a while.

“I feel like my fastball’s moving pretty well, despite ... everything,” he said.

Dad’s eyes got a little wider, and he nodded a few times. “I noticed. You’ve been striking out a lot of batters.”

“Yeah. That’s true.”

“Your coach seems to have faith in you. I mean ... he keeps using you.”

“Even though we’re losing. Yeah. He seems to be okay about it.”

Jimmy looked out the window. Things were starting to turn green—new leaves on the trees. The hills here in the Delaware Water Gap region were steep and forested. The traffic on Route 80 was light.

“How are the kids holding up? Your teammates getting discouraged?”

Jimmy could tell what Dad really meant: Was anyone getting on him about giving up the lead in two straight games?

“They’re okay,” Jimmy said. “Everybody knows we’ve been right there in every game. Just coming up short.”

“So no one’s too upset?”

“Well, we all hate losing. But I know what you’re asking, Dad, and the answer is they’ve been fine to me. Spencer especially—the guy who busted my chops in the beginning. He’s honest, at least. He acts like he’s the king sometimes, but he knows when he’s messed up and he owns up to it.”

“That’s good. There are a lot of professional athletes who won’t do that.”

They were quiet for a while after that, just listening to Dad’s Bob Dylan CD and watching the scenery. They were nearly to Montclair before Dad spoke.

“You know, I never really was much of an athlete,” he said. “I
wanted
to be. Oh boy, did I want to be. I guess that’s why I push you a bit, since I figured you wanted it as much as I did and had a better chance of succeeding.”

“Yeah, but what made you think I’d be better than you were? Wouldn’t you think I’d just inherit your ... um ... talents?”

Dad laughed. “Or my
lack
of talent. Sure, heredity is a big part of it. But you’ve got two sets of genes in you. At least one of your parents was a good athlete.”

“Mom?”

“She never talks about it, but she was quick and strong. Basketball, softball. Even tennis. So I figured you must have some of that in you. And if I pushed you to work at it, you’d succeed.”

“Makes sense, I guess.”

Dad tapped the steering wheel with his knuckles. “I think the biggest factor is the athlete’s heart. How hard he’ll work with what he’s given.”

“I work pretty hard.”

“I know that. It makes me really proud.”

“Makes me proud, too, I suppose,” Jimmy said. He hadn’t thought about it much, but just giving his all meant something. He wasn’t a bad pitcher. And he
was
getting better.

He opened his gym bag and took out the mounted trout he’d brought back from his mom’s house. “Remember this guy?” he asked.

Dad laughed. “The monster of the Lackawaxen! That was the day my waders sprung a leak and I nearly got frostbite in my toes.”

“Yeah.” Jimmy dug into the bag and took out the Little League photo. “Brought this, too,” he said.

“Champions,” Dad said. “Some run, huh?
That
was a team with heart.”

“I know it.”

“What made you bring all that stuff?”

Jimmy shrugged. “My roots,” he said. “Need to add a touch of my home back there to my new home here in New Jersey.”

Dad swallowed and blinked. “That makes sense,” he said softly. “Everything works out, you see?”

Jimmy just said, “Yeah,” and put the trout back in the bag.

Sooner or later it all works out. Jimmy thought about that a bit. As far as he was concerned, it was true.

J
immy stood in the narrow area of dirt between the fence and the step down to the dugout, gritting his teeth and watching intently as Coach Wimmer walked out to the mound. Would he let Ramiro finish this inning?

Hudson City trailed, as usual, 3-0, and Union City was threatening to widen the gap. Ramiro had just yielded a double, and Union City runners were poised safely at second and third. There was only one out in the bottom of the fifth, and the top of the order was coming up. That meant Blue, who had riddled the Hornets with three hits in the season opener and two more today.