The Legend of Mickey Tussler (29 page)

“Holy shit!” Finster howled, slapping his knee with perverse delight. “The boy's gonna blow!” The laughter rose slowly to the surface like tiny bubbles before building to a raucous crescendo.

“Go get it, big fella!” Danvers roared. “Let it all out, brother! It's okay! It's all part of the baptism!”

The whimsical moment lifted the tension, preoccupying their thoughts for a while until they all just sat around effortlessly bantering with Mickey.

“What'd they hit you with anyway?” Danvers asked.

Mickey shrugged and held his stomach gingerly, still feeling the effects of the violent outburst only moments before. “I don't reckon I know,” he finally said, moving his hand to his head and rubbing it as if the injury had just occurred. “But it sure did hurt.”

They all laughed again. Something pure and simple and likable about the boy could not be denied. Mickey was pleased that they were laughing and joined in before continuing his sordid tale.

His head ached and his nerves were frayed. He sat on his crate with an occasional birdsong and the approaching night wind for accompaniment, sunk in the dark recollection.

“She smelled good.” His lids fluttered wildly. “But Mickey never made sex before. I was scared.”

Danvers looked at Finster and smiled. The two of them shook their heads in glorious astonishment.

“Yeah, the first experience with the fairer sex is an amazing moment,” Pee Wee reminisced. “I still remember mine.”

“Of course you do, McGinty, you little turd pie.” Danvers laughed. “It was only just last week.” He spit out some tobacco juice while the others roared with approval. “But then again, I'm not sure if your mama really counts.”

Mickey was dizzy with happiness over his true involvement in the banter. “Mickey doesn't know many girls,” he continued. “But I know Laney. She really smelled good.”

“How do you like that?” Finster mused. “That's awesome. Our little boy's growing up, guys. Sounds to me like our young friend here just may have had a chubby in his pants.”

Mickey spoke about the stars that night and about the sweet air, and went carefully through the pantomime of the moment, slowly, methodically, as if his audience required meticulous, laborious repetition to grasp what he was trying to impart. “So I get knocked here, right in the head.” He simulated what he believed the blow must have looked like. “Then while I was getting up, another guy kicked me in the gut, and then someone else stomped on my hand. Then the sheriff was driving me to the ballpark. That's all I really remember.”

“What about that girl, Mick?” Finster asked. “You ever see her again?”

“Nope,” Mickey said, checking the buttons on the front of his shirt. “But I think she really liked me.”

Danvers tapped the little silver can with his finger and stuffed a wad of chew inside his cheek. “Of course she did, big fella,” he said, his eyes noticeably softer. “Of course she did. What's not to like?”

In the still of the early-morning air, news of Mickey's imminent return to the Brewers' lineup spread around town like a wave of ground fog filtering through a sleepy valley, fueled by the improbable headline in the
Daily Gazette:
“Baby Bazooka Close to Return; Rogers Held for Questioning.” As the sun climbed higher and became a small fire lodged high and bright in between gathering clouds, people everywhere were unfolding their newspapers and gasping at the sudden turn of events that had breathed life into a dying dream.

For Murph and the Brewers, the elation over the startling announcement was energizing but a bit premature. Mickey would not be “game ready” for a little while. However, when the players heard the news being bandied about, many of them spoke of karma, and how those printed words just hours before could, quite possibly, trigger some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy or enlist some sort of divine intervention.

“You know, I think somehow Murph knew, that son of a gun,” Boxcar said to Matheson. “He must have just known somehow. That it wasn't over. And now I feel it too. It's bigger than all of us. We're gonna make it. Somehow, we're gonna make it.”

Matheson chuckled and scratched his chin. “Well, you know what they say, Raymond. God gives us a little garden in which to walk, but an immensity in which to dream.”

Boxcar smiled, marveling at how the old man had actually become a parody of himself. “Who exactly is
they
?” he asked, tongue in cheek.

The others heard Boxcar's prognostication and sensed it too. They felt oddly outside of themselves, as if some higher power were moving them inexorably along, like chess pieces, toward some magical prize. Naturally, the loathing they felt toward Lefty was real and difficult to corral. Word was out that George “Lefty” Rogers had had a hand in the vicious attack on Mickey and that the police were building quite a compelling case against the suspended pitcher. The revelation was devastating, but they managed to set it aside and look to their unfinished business.

It was not as though they felt Mickey would be some sort of panacea. They had all been around too long to believe that, and each understood that the young gun was still not ready to jump back in. The doctor told Murph that it could still be as long as two weeks. But somehow just having him close had them all juiced.

The clubhouse was quite a scene, something right out of a Frank Capra film. Only a few days ago their backs were against the wall, and they were staring into the fires of ignominious defeat. Now, seemingly every opportunity had been given back to them.

In other places, however, the feel-good story generated little more than obligatory acknowledgment. Quinton and McNally found all the hoopla a tad overbearing and uproariously humorous.

“Do you know who that was?” Quinton asked McNally, placing the receiver of the telephone down gently. “Sheriff Rosco. He wanted to thank me for my help with the investigation.” Quinton's modest grin broke into a full-blown nefarious smile. He looked over his shoulder at the picture of Shoeless Joe, some indefinable feeling of invincibility coming over him. “He also wanted to tell me that all of Rogers's accusations against me and the team are being dismissed as unfounded,” he continued, rolling his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.

A wave of calm passed between them. It felt like standing on the railroad tracks with the train coming—lights flashing, whistle blowing—and having nowhere to go. And just when the train is close enough so that you can feel its power and smell its smoky breath, the railroad operator engages the switch and sends the locomotive speeding off in a different direction. The ecstasy of relief is intoxicating.

“Do you know what the rest of 'em are saying?” McNally said, laughing. “I mean their team? They're actually talking like they have a chance now. After all this. Can you believe it? It's sad. Fucking pathetic. Even if the missing link comes back in time for half of the games and plays well, it would still take a miracle for them to even get close to us.”

Quinton's lips tightened around his cigar. “That's quite all right. Let them go on believing that. They pose no threat. The minute they lose their next game, they'll realize that all of this pomp and circumstance was meaningless. Let them talk. But do not engage them. I want to keep them focused on themselves rather than us. And once they've worked themselves up into this fairy-tale frenzy, the final defeat will be that much more painful for them—and that much sweeter for us.”

“I'd say it's pretty damn sweet already,” McNally boasted. “The view from the penthouse is a hell of a lot better than the one we may have had if it weren't for our self-absorbed, hotheaded friend.”

Quinton agreed, then held up his ceramic pencil case in mock invocation. “Well then, here's to Mr. Rogers,” he toasted. “May his mattress be firm, his cockroaches friendly, and his bread and water clean and plentiful.”

“And to Ms. Laney Juris,” McNally added, “and the other unknown source who fingered our careless friend.”

A prison cell is no place for a ballplayer. Baseball players are built for life under a vast, blue ceiling, with clouds for company and warming bolts of sunshine to light their way. They are made for the great outdoors, creatures of the fresh green earth, delighting in the redolence of newly cut grass, wet unslacked lime, leather, and pine tar. They are designed to run and throw and move freely, like willful stars in a galaxy, their energies and aspirations gliding in some sort of cosmic, celestial dance. That is why for George Rogers, gifted southpaw for the Milwaukee Brewers, four stone walls and cold, iron bars were an all-out assault.

With the moon bright on the outside window and slanted shadows that stretched across the concrete floor mocking his restlessness, Lefty sat on the edge of his rickety mattress, springs squealing plaintively each time he moved. His chin was in his hands and his elbows rested uncomfortably on his knees as he lamented the wicked twist his fortunes had taken. The last thing he recalled with any clarity was sitting at the Bucket, his sorrows soaking in a bottle of Jack Daniel's. Then Sheriff Rosco and his deputy had their hands all over him, and with barely a warning, he was facedown, kissing the dirty floor.

“Let's go hotshot,” Rosco mocked. “You're needed in the pen.”

They dragged him out, hands pinioned behind his back. It was humiliating. A star of his magnitude, being yanked away in front of scores of eyes, two of which he recognized immediately; eyes that did not want to look but could not turn away; eyes that were green in sunken cheeks. Laney's eyes. They were eyes that held a story that needed to be told but could not be, a story of hurt and broken promises, one of regret and recrimination.

Once at the station, Lefty sobered up and sulked, all of his indiscretions and their consequences resonating in his head like falling timber in a gloomy forest. A thrumming began in his chest as he digested Rosco's biting words:

“Seems like you're in it up to your neck, Rogers.”

“That's bullshit,” Lefty replied. “I don't know what the hell you're talking about.”

“Is that right? Tell me more.”

In the dankness of a tiny, malodorous holding cell, Lefty spoke freely, his focus narrow. He had always been a creature of the moment. A one-strike-at-a-time kind of guy. It was always all about him. He saw everything only in terms of how it impacted him, at that very point in time. His insufferable self-absorption had rendered him a victim of a kind of egomaniacal myopia, a deficiency that left him open to the predatory ways of others.

“They came to me, told me they needed help getting Mickey out of the way. I told them to take a walk. Shit, he's my teammate.”

“Is that right?”

“Sure, that's all I know.”

“And who's
they
?”

“Coach McNally, of the Rangers. And some other stuffed shirt. I think he is the owner.”

The sheriff turned his head away, looking at nothing, thinking of nothing, save the course of the present interrogation. With one hand on his head, and the other awkwardly at his hip, he resumed his questioning.

“And exactly why did they want him removed?”

“Because he was winning. Why else? He was getting our squad all sorts of attention. The Rangers were second fiddle. You can see why they would want him gone, can't you?”

“I don't know, Mr. Rogers. That's why I'm asking.”

“Well, why aren't
they
here? Why aren't you asking them anything?”

Rosco chewed on the butt of his unlit cigar. “I got nothing that says they were part of it. And the motive is thin. Lots of guys in the league play well. They're never attacked. It ain't like it's open season on baseball players. Besides, there are no witnesses. No one saw what you have described. For all I know, you're just blowing a whole lot of smoke.”

“Look, I am telling you
they
are the ones who came to
me
! You got nothing on me.”

Rosco had the sense to let him go for a while. He sat back in his chair, rolling his cigar in between his teeth, his left hand busy it seemed with repairs to his shirt. “Interesting,” he continued, fingering the tiny lint balls attached to his shirtsleeve. “I seem to have a different version of the story. I got me a teammate of yours who can link a certain young lady to you. And that young lady, while she defended you as best she could, hung you out to dry, my friend.”

Lefty scoffed. “So what? It's their word against mine. Right? Like you said, no witnesses. Who's to say how it really happened?”

Rosco, struck by the smugness of the statement, reached into a cardboard box resting by his feet. “Ever seen this before?”

“Can't say that I have. Looks like a regular baseball glove, but I ain't never seen it before.”

“We found it in your locker. Along with some other personal items. And, as luck would have it, they all belong to Mickey.”

Lefty straightened up and pounded his fist on the table in front of him. “That's impossible. I never seen any of that stuff before. Can't you see what's happening here? It's a setup, I tell you. I had nothing to do with what happened to Mickey. You got the wrong guy here.”

Lefty sat there resting, almost blank-minded, except for an involuntary picture of McNally that formed in his mind's eye. He was slowly realizing that he had been played.

“That's rather curious, because a Miss Laney Juris, your girlfriend, seems to think otherwise.”

“Girlfriend? This is bullshit. I'm being set up here. I don't have a girlfriend.”

Rosco laughed. “Well, not anymore I presume. I mean, shit, you can't have a girl grab you by the onions and squeeze and still call her sweetheart. Right? Come on now. What kind of guy would you be? But then again, you wouldn't care about that, now would you. Because you dumped her, right after you used her of course for your little plan. And, despite this twisted love she still has for you, she decided to get even.”