The Legend of Mickey Tussler (15 page)

Pee Wee moved in closer. He was near enough now to see some of the scars on Mickey's face. “Well, then, besides work, what is it that you all do on that farm of yours?”

“Nothing. We don't do nothing. Mickey's always stirring up trouble. It makes my pa holler a lot. He gets real sore.”

“Well, that don't seem right now, does it? Don't it bother you? You know, all the yelling?”

“It's okay. It's okay. Mickey's used to it.”

Pee Wee felt a pressing need to turn the conversation elsewhere. He crossed his arms tightly and sighed. “Are you having a good time with the fellas and all, Mick? I mean, I know that some of the guys are giving you the business and whatnot.”

Mickey's eyes wandered to a poster tacked up sloppily on a bulletin board behind the counter. It looked as though he were measuring it with his eyes.

“That's Rosie the Riveter,” Pee Wee explained. “She's sort of an icon. You know, from the war and all. It's no big deal. Her face has been around for years. I guess you've never seen her before. Christ, the way you're staring at it, you'd think it was a Picasso or something.”

“She looks like my ma. The handkerchief in her hair. That's just like my ma. When she scrubs the floor.”

“I guess you miss her and all, especially when the fellas get on you the way they do.”

“Mickey's having an okay time, Pee Wee. Okay. It's okay I guess.”

“You know, Mick, you can help yourself sometimes. Like when they ask you questions and then laugh at your answers. They do that stuff on purpose. You don't have to answer them. Just lie—make up a story to shut them up.”

“Mickey don't make up stories, Pee Wee. On account of there's so many to choose from.”

“What does that have to do with anything? Just pick one. Any one. Don't give them what they want.”

Mickey brought his palms to the sides of his face and held them there, as if steadying the surging thoughts inside his head. “Let's say someone asks me what I ate here at Lucy's. Mickey had a hamburger. That's what I would say. But supposing I don't want to say that, 'cause the guys will laugh, and I want to say sweet-potato pie instead. But I can't say sweet-potato pie because before I can get the words out, I would want to say bacon and eggs, or meat loaf, or macaroni and cheese. Or maybe I'd just start naming sweet things, like chocolate pudding or sugar cookies. I don't know. Things get all bunched up sometimes. So you see, Mickey don't tell stories. It hurts my head. It's just easier to say hamburger.”

With this glimpse into the workings of the boy's mind, Pee Wee smiled, because he now felt a little closer to Mickey than before. “Well, I have to say, that no matter what anyone says or does, including you, Mick, we're all mighty glad you're here. All of us. Cripe, since you got here, the team's been playing better than I've ever seen.”

Outside, it was humid and all at once dark. Claps of thunder alternated with flashes of lightning. Then the rain came hard. Pee Wee and Mickey watched, through the cloudy window, as some of the locals scampered frantically through puddles that were already ankle deep. Pee Wee chuckled. Mickey dipped his finger in some ketchup and brought it to his lips. He opened his mouth, let his finger slide inside, and sucked it clean. His gaze was fixed off in the distance. The weathered wood fence that edged the road just outside conjured more images of the farm back home. He had begun to feel pangs of loneliness, a sort of bottomless anxiety, when a clanging of pots and pans from the kitchen jolted him from his thoughts.

“So if it weren't your daddy who taught you, where'd you learn to pitch like that, Mick?” Pee Wee asked. “Sure is the most goddarned thing I've ever seen.”

“I don't reckon I ever did. Too busy with the farm.”

“How's that?”

“Why, it were Mr. Murphy showed me how to pitch. Shoot, I ain't never even seen a baseball until Mr. Murphy put one in my hand.”

Pee Wee paused, rolled his two fists in his eyes, then asked with sudden resolution, “Are you trying to tell me that you never pitched before? Or even played baseball?”

Mickey nodded.

“Nothing? Not even a catch or a pickup game?”

“Nope. Most I ever done was throw some crab apples into a wine barrel for Oscar's slop.”

Pee Wee smiled and let his forehead fall quickly into his open palm. “This is too much. Here we are going out on a six-game road trip, fighting for first place, and our star pitcher is some hayseed who got his training from a pig.”

A look of sudden amusement passed between them. Mickey abandoned his pursuit of a trapped fly that was frenetically bouncing against the window and smiled. They sat a little longer, each piecing together the difference between the polluted past and the near future burgeoning with opportunity.

The road trip began against the Mudcats. The stands were packed. At the ballpark, with the smell of cowhide and freshly cut grass in your nose and the taste of hot dogs dancing on your tongue, your vision of the world adjusted, narrowing to a snapshot of life as it should be—ordered, playful, and limitless in possibility. Each enchanted game shows you the glory and breathless exhilaration that lies somewhere out there, just within your grasp, there for the taking should you ever decide to finally reach.

On this day, the atmosphere was particularly electric. The Brewers, who traditionally generated little interest outside their immediate geographic region, had suddenly become a draw, due mostly to the hype surrounding their newest pitching sensation. Although Mickey was not slated to pitch until midweek, the crowd caught a glimpse of the “new look” Brewers anyway when Woody Danvers drilled a 2-2 fastball over the center-field wall in the top of the ninth inning to sink the hometown heroes and lift the Brew Crew into second place, just three games behind the rival Rangers of Spokane.

Their winning ways continued that week, including convincing victories over the Indians and the Sidewinders. Murph called on Lefty next; he had been showing signs lately of snapping out of his prolonged doldrums. Lefty was sharp. He made it through the seventh, bottling up the Spartans with a blazing fastball and a twelve-to-six hook that was, by all accounts, “dropping off the table.” But the Brewers' potent offense had stalled, providing Lefty with nothing more than two infield hits for support. The anemic attack drew the ire of the irascible southpaw.

“Unfucking believable!” he ranted, firing his glove against the dugout wall.

Boxcar put on his inscrutable face. “What's your problem now, Rogers? Shit, you're throwing better today than you have in a dog's age.”

Lefty's thoughts zigzagged. Several of the others stopped what they were doing and fixed their eyes on the two men.

“Oh, nothing is wrong, nothing at all,” Lefty shot back, launching into a diatribe that resonated throughout the dugout. “Everyone else gets runs. That's all. Sanders, Mickey. I bet even Larry would get a few runs on the board if he took the hill. It's bullshit. There's always plenty of scoring for everyone else. Not me. No, sir. Not Lefty. Lefty has to do it all by himself.” He walked off in a clumsy daze. “Bunch of bullshit!”

Matheson had been watching the entire episode. He spat out a wad of chew on the dugout floor and doddered over to the cantankerous pitcher.

“Come on now, Lefty my boy,” the old man cajoled. “We need this one. Bad. You sulking and carrying on like this, all full of piss and vinegar, don't do no good. You gotta shake it. Or we is done. Shit, for want of a nail, the entire shoe could be lost.”

Lefty turned his head slowly toward Matheson, then exhaled in thunderous, absolutely unbearable exasperation. “What the hell does that even mean?” he wailed. “I can't listen to this drivel anymore. Do me a favor, you babbling old fool. Just go away. Pick up your sagging mess of a body and get the hell away from me.”

As the game went on, Lefty crumbled beneath the weight of his discontent. In the eighth, he walked the leadoff batter on four straight balls, which prompted the Spartans' skipper to play for one run. The next batter squared and dropped a beautiful bunt that hugged the chalk as it crawled up the third-base line. In his haste to cut down the lead runner, Lefty fired wildly to Arky Fries at second, sailing the ball over his head and into center field. Both runners advanced. Lefty sweated heavily and cursed his misfortune once again. Murph folded his arms and glared out at him from the dugout steps.

Things only got worse. The next Spartan batter took advantage of another mistake—a hanging slider—and laced a single back through the originator, scoring both runners. This was followed by a frozen rope that split Jimmy Llamas and Buck Faber, and a roundtripper off the bat of the Spartan cleanup hitter, Buzz Billings—a prodigious blast that seemed to climb higher and higher until finally slamming into the scoreboard some four hundred feet away. When Murph took the ball from Lefty, the pitcher scowled like a wounded animal. Under his cap, his brow sweated with humiliation.

“Hit the showers, kid,” Murph instructed. “Enough for one day.”

Lefty could feel himself slipping out of the manager's favor, feel the space he had left, a space undoubtedly now occupied by another. The realization stung.

Murph turned the reins over to Butch Filocomo, who, after walking the first man he faced, induced a 6-4-3 double play before fanning the next batter to stop the bleeding.

Clem Finster led off the ninth for the Brewers with a sharp single to left. A walk to Amos Ruffings and a push bunt by Pee Wee loaded the sacks for the big boppers. In the wake of the Brewers' threat, a murmur went up from the restless crowd. The Spartans, mired in last place, were notorious for squandering leads late in the game. All too often, the Spartan faithful were brought to the brink of victory, only to have their hopes dashed unmercifully by an errant throw or misplayed ball.

“They'll break your heart, boys,” the old men in the bleachers always grumbled to each other. “Just like a cheap whore.”

Jimmy Llamas smiled as he dug in for his at bat. With the bags juiced, he was sitting dead red—pipe fastball, first pitch. He got it and smashed a searing line drive to left center. He was halfway between first and second when he heard the ball thump in the glove of the Spartan center fielder, thwarting Llamas' quest for late-game heroics. The stellar play seemed to deflate the entire team. Danvers followed Llamas' liner with a weak foul-out to the catcher, and Boxcar, who usually thrived on opportunities like these, proved he was indeed human, taking a called third strike to end the game. It was the team's first loss in more than two weeks, and it left the upstart Brew Crew tied with the Rangers for first place, setting the stage for a classic showdown between the rivals the following day.

The Rangers sent their ace, Bucky Vardiman, to the hill under a gray sky that threatened to dump rain on them at any minute. Despite a heavy, whistling wind and a dampness that hung over them with ominous patience, Vardiman was on, setting down the Brewers one, two, three.

“Come on, fellas,” Murph implored desperately. “We can't keep doing this. We need the bats.”

Mickey trotted out to the mound in the bottom half of the inning, looking to silence what was already a hostile crowd. A commotion started in the lower seats behind first base. A man with a grizzled beard and paint-stained overalls was doing his best to incite the others around him.

“Hey, freak show!” he screamed to Mickey, looking back at the others for approval. “Look at me!” He mimicked Mickey's unusual delivery. “Look at me, funny boy! I'm a ballplayer.” Mickey heard him and was conscious of being watched, but continued to roll his arms and fire his warm-up pitches. He wondered, as he delivered each toss, why the ornery man was taunting him. Having no tangible answer, he mistook the man's ignorance for his own shortcomings. For a brief moment, he thought of Clarence. The recollection made him wince and shudder, altering his mechanics so drastically that the frazzled hurler sailed the next two tosses clear over Boxcar's head, much to the delight of the raucous crowd.

“Come on now, Mick,” Pee Wee said, trotting in from his position at short. “Forget everyone else. Just you and Boxcar. Right? That's all. Come on now. You can do this—just like tossing crab apples, right?”

Mickey, still absorbed in thoughts of his father, pounded the ball in his glove.

“Hey, Mick,” Pee Wee persisted, placing his hand over Mickey's glove. “Come on now. Nobody's better than you. Nobody.”

Mickey said nothing, just stood there, sucking his teeth and staring moodily into the stands. He made out one or two faces, including the slovenly, loudmouthed grumbler, but after some time, each visage just melted into the next, like gray shapes in the darkness.

When Mickey had seen enough, his eyes, hot and watery, turned to Boxcar's glove; then he rolled his arms, leaned back, lifted his leg, and fired two more warm-ups—this time strong and accurate.

The half inning began on the umpire's call. The Rangers' leadoff man, Kiki Delaney, bounded to the plate. He was a rabbit. He was only a .260 hitter, but he could go from home to first in just over four seconds. Delaney was also a terror on the bases, swiping a league leading seventy-six bags each of the last two seasons. Everyone in the league knew that he was the catalyst for the Ranger offense. So, the scouting report that Murph gave to Mickey and Boxcar was simple: keep Delaney off the bases.

Mickey missed up and away with his first offering, then evened the count with a fastball right down the pipe. Delaney stepped out of the box, tapped his spikes with the barrel of his bat, and checked the third-base coach for signs. After studying a series of frenetic gestures that looked something like a full-blown seizure, he eased back into the box, slowly, methodically, then laid his bat out flat just in time to deaden Mickey's next offering. The ball wheezed and stumbled, staggering past the mound and out of the reach of a charging Clem Finster before dying just before Arky Fries could get a handle on it. By the time Fries picked it up, Delaney was standing on first base, laughing. “Let 'em play small ball all day long, Mick,” Danvers shouted. “They can't touch ya.”