A coughing sound came from the back of the room, “Vodka, vodka.”
The liquid helped restore the color to his face. His eyes crossed slightly and he picked up his pen to start a new entry into a new journal: “Maybe I’m Beelzebub, Evil Incarnate, the devil. Give me a pitchfork, light up the fires. I’ll show these little serpents the medieval dragon burning my brain. One day a great mutiny will come and all the mutants will rise up and perpetrate massacre of Biblical proportions. Time for the cyanide pill. The world ended and no one noticed.”
CHAPTER 6
Baseball makes you crazy. Jasmine is at the game today and announces that today is a great day for a game, hot dogs, peckerwoods and crackerjacks. Gramora corrects, “Try hotdogs, peanuts and crackerjacks.”
The old ball game. Jasmine is probably kidding us about not caring if she ever gets back. Is she kidding us and not caring if we know it or not? She does raise the IQ of any group she is in by several digits. I see her looking at someone in the stands and notice Mr. Shane is here to put a curse on us like that goat in the Cubs’ curse story that Saint always tells no matter who is listening.
Shane watches. He takes the game more seriously than god, but I think he is plotting to kill us; doing his homework now about how and when he will dispatch us like some hash smoking assassin. Give up Bin Laden, Mr. Shane will kill us first.
Focus on the field. This game will kill you if don’t pay attention.
5 – 1 in the fourth. We’re winning. I look up; it looks like Mr. Shane has a vodka bottle in a suicide squeeze play of his own.
“I think he wants to put a curse on you,” says Jasmine.
“Like he’s a warlock,” I said.
The coach hears my conversation. No talking to girls during the game. He’s staring at me like he is the Pope and I’m in hell. He’s about to say something when Fleming hits a three run homer to put the game out of reach. Fleming can hit and pitch and take the coach’s mind off of little indiscretions by the players.
We move up a notch in the playoffs. I played a good game, but Fleming gets all the attention in the press with his big way of looking and playing like he is in the big leagues already.
“Who are you playing next?” Jasmine whispers.
“Western Village. San Fernando Valley.”
“From Prom to Porn.”
“What?”
“They’ve had more prom queens turn porn star than any other school in the country. Their school motto should be, ‘From Prom To Porn’.”
The coach is watching. I go to other end of the bench to look at the bats even though I probably won’t bat until next inning at the earliest. The coach talks to the assistants, not so worried now that we have a big lead.
I look at JP and laugh at the porno joke. The girl, more fun telling a joke than some girls I’ve been with rolling naked.
CHAPTER 7
Game time, Western Village. I’m afraid we’re in trouble. The whole team is checking out the other team’s girlfriends trying to figure out which ones are promising porn actresses.
“Why don’t you just go over and ask them to audition,” J.P. says.
She always seems to know where the mind is traveling. Lana G. jumps in.
“They’re not the only bitches that know how to audition. They’re not real actresses anyway.”
“Take it off Lana G.”, yells Squirrel J.
“Three laps guys”, yells Coach. “Three laps. And watch where you’re running.”
We stumble out of the dugout trying to think of a style of running that an XXX rated girl would notice. I try to think of ways to keep the team focused on the game, but I can’t find a solution.
Milton jogs to my side, straining to suck air even at our lazy pace.
“I think I can tell the ones that are going to turn porn star.”
“All of them?” I answer.
“No, the ones with the fake boobs. They get the implants because they want to be sure they get all the action.”
“Did you test them all yourself?”
“No you can see for yourself. Fakes are hard as rocks. They don’t have the same bounce of a natural.”
Milton’s essay on fake boobs as an indication of porn activity is cut short by a fall as he is tripped up by his own footwork and the left foot of Jay, an outfielder. We’re still in the pregame warm-up and our starting pitcher is done for the day. He holds his ankle and does his, “I’m in pain” wiggle dance to the ground.
We carry Milton back and lay him out behind the dugout so the trainer can ice his ankle. Coach and the assistants come over and stare at his ankle and stare at his face. Milton keeps his head down. Coach and the assistants shake their heads and walk to the far end of the dugout. They stand in a tight circle and talk. A muttering huddle. Their heads bob up and down and they look around from player to player. None of us look like we can pitch.
Lloyd Fleming talks to them. Thinks he is a coach. He talks and everyone looks at me.
Coach motions to me
“Mickey, come here.”
I meet with the huddle.
“Fleming says you can pitch,” Coach says.
I nod.
“No wonder your teachers don’t like you. You never answer their questions.”
He tries to smile.
“I’ve pitched for most teams I’ve been on.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“I didn’t think you needed me as a pitcher.”
“Could you let the coaches do the coaching? I need a gamer. Do you think you can pitch today?”
“Sure, I can pitch.”
I warm up with Fleming and the coaches watching.
“Got some giddy-up on the heater. What else can you throw,” asks Coach.
“I haven’t thrown a curve for a while, but I can throw a change-up without tipping it off.”
“Throw the curve.”
The curve ball was five feet higher than the catcher’s reach.
“Let’s go with the heater and the change-up.”
“Okay Coach.”
Coach looks at Fleming.
“Show him how to grip the curve.”
Fleming nods and shows me. I imitate the grip.
“Take a little bit off your fastball when you throw it. They’ll think it’s a fat pitch until it breaks and then it’s too late.”
“Throw the damn ball,” Coach said. “We don’t have time for the whole lecture series.”
No time to be nervous. Joe Rico the catcher called for the changeup on the first pitch. The batter taps an easy groundball to the second baseman. One out.
Joe Rico to the mound.
“That was supposed to be a fastball.”
“You gave me the sign.”
We go over the signs again.
“Don’t piss coach off. He’ll take it out on one of us.”
“I know.”
Rico runs back to the plate. Three innings later we’re up 2 to 0. We’re batting and Rico sits next to me.
“The ump asked about you.”
Some of the umps are scouts or have a scout’s phone number.
“Yeah.”
“Next batter, try your curve on the first pitch.”
“Okay coach.”
The curve worked. A weak pop-up. Either I’m good or these guys can’t hit their grandmother. Easy so far. I keep my mind off of porn queens for two hours and we win. The ump asks me how long I’d been pitching. He listens without changing his expression, nods and walks away. My arm feels good. Everyone slaps me on the back and we’re two wins away from the city championship.
CHAPTER 8
MR. SHANE’S NEW NOTEBOOK
They’re stealing my thoughts. Next they will be eating my entrails. The pack of jackals is circling; sniffing out the prey; looking for weak spots in my defenses.
They stole my journal and posted it on My Space. The principal called me in to the of
fice and asked me to explain myself. I am not on trial. Treating me like I was misbehaving school boy. Those were just a few pages of my notes. The real story will be told.
On My Space there were two pictures. One of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter and one of me as myself. The caption – “SEPARATED AT BIRTH?”
They are not original.
I wrote that I fell asleep once in class. Just once. I told the principal I was writing a short story. He told me to be careful. Kids make accusations about anything these days. Everything that is wrong with the world is happening in high school.
They made fun of my line about my students being future felons by posting pictures of some of the worst students looking like they were mug shots taken at the police station. Lock those mugs up. Throw away the key.
We’re a country of misfits. I’m the last sane man. The last one to make sense. Give me a blindfold and a cigarette and shoot your last bullet straight and true.
CHAPTER 9
I have my first pitching dream. I dream that Albert Pujos was staring at me out of a cloud. Instead of a dark cloud hanging over it was a silver cloud with the superimposed face of Al P tacked on the side like a special effect in a low budget movie. Every time I look at the cloud he is watching me. He never changes expressions. He just watches me with predator’s eyes. How is he going to kill me? In his eyes I’m already dead. I won’t suffer long. He’ll kill me quickly and efficiently; no toying around with the prey. He was taught not to play with his food as a youngster. I remember that I saw him strike out once. I guess he decided to feed the pitcher to someone else. I wake up with no appetite. I lost it somewhere in the clouds.
CHAPTER 10
Two more teams to beat. The next one is a gang, better at being thugs than being baseball players. They have tattoos and stand around posing in the nasty manner of a raunchy rap video, but it isn’t helping them play baseball.
Lloyd Fleming shuts them down, almost a no-hitter and it is obvious that they couldn’t hit him if they threw their bats at the pitcher’s mound. We’re going to the finals.
Finals, game day. By rules we can’t use our best pitcher, Fleming, since we just used him in the last game. Coach has two pitchers warm up before the game, Wayne Knotts and me. Wayne has a better arm, but we all seem to agree that he is a guy capable of doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.
So I pitch and we win. The team scores a lot of runs, 11, and I gave up 4, which I didn’t care about – we got the W. The win happened so quick I don’t really remember the other team’s players. Our names are in the paper. Everything is a big deal. The guy in the paper wrote that I had learned instant mastery over the split fingered fastball which wasn’t true, but it did sound good when JP read it over and over again to me in bed.
One cliché down. The girl sleeps with the jock who wins the big game. One down, so many more to go.
I think I’m in love and I want to jump up and down on the bed and tell the world, but I know better so I’ll shut up and not tell anyone including Jasmine Pepper.
“Let’s get tattoos,” she says.
“Sports are making you stupid.”
“I’m supposed to say that to you.”
“See, it really is making you stupid.”
“Maybe it’s just the sex.”
She smiles and we have sex again.
Sex can make you stupid? If sex can make you stupid then I want to be the dumbest man in the world and Jasmine is just the one to take me to that idiot place. Let me die stupid. Die stupid, die.
CHAPTER 11
Mr. Shane is going to flunk me just to make it hard to get a college scholarship.
A couple days after the championship, a Friday afternoon, the kind of day that Shane uses to start his weekend early, someone asks him if he likes teaching. He looks tipsy and ignores the question while taking role.
“Will all the students who are absent today please raise their hands. No one. Perfect attendance. Good.”
When someone points out that he didn’t make any sense he explains.
“I know. Just like to say that to see if anyone is listening.”
Again the question about whether he likes teaching comes up.
“Teaching, teaching. Do I like teaching? Let me say that I started out teaching middle school. I didn’t like it. After teaching seventh graders the only twelve year old I wanted to see at the end of the day was Johnny Walker.
One day I handed out index cards and asked the students to write down any question about any subject. Do you know what that sounded like?
First question: Why were the Greeks so famous for their erections?
Second question: Is your refrigerator running? ‘Yes I told them, it’s chasing Prince Albert in a can.’
Third question: Are people from Ghana called gonorrheans? No they are not.
Fourth question: Can I say Lake Titicaca three times, quickly? I could, but I won’t.
Don’t get me started about teaching.”
You can’t get him started about teaching because he doesn’t know anything about the subject.
“Don’t get me started about teaching,” he goes on, “you just go ahead and do your work and I’ll just go behind my desk and crawl into the fetal position and suck my thumb. That’s what you want isn’t it?”
He is done. Mr. Shane strikes again. Marvin captures the whole speech on his I-Phone. Shane sits in his chair and swivels his back to the class and takes another drink from his ‘water bottle’. After a moment or two he pulls out a notebook and begins to scribble.
There has to be way to get around Mr. Shane. Why should a man who leaves such a small imprint on the earth have such a big say so in my world.
CHAPTER 12
Dinner. I tell Mom and Dad about Mr. Shane.
“If nothing else I think that you are learning a lesson about alcohol abuse and the damage it does and the way it ruins peoples lives.” Mom’s advice.
“I know Mom. What about St. Sligo? Is his life ruined?”
“He didn’t need alcohol to ruin his life,” said Dad.
“It didn’t help”, said Mom. “He had himself and that’s enough to ruin anyone’s life. What about that woman he left at the altar in Chicago? Didn’t he ruin her life?”
“It was ruined the day she met him.”
They don’t talk about him often, so I stay out of the way and listen quietly. There is a story about Saint that everyone repeats whether they believe it or not which just goes to prove that if a story is told often enough it is the truth whether it happened or not. Any politician will tell you that is the gospel.
St. Sligo knows that himself. He always tells me, “Some people have substance, some are just full of it.”
The story is about a woman he left in Chicago, or maybe she left him, but it was all a problem because of an argument about the Cubs.
Mom’s face tightened.
“He’s just a bum.”
“What does he do for money?” I asked.
“He freeloads off of society.”
Dad rolls his eyes.
“He does have a source of income.”
“What does he do, rob banks?”
“He lives off of his investments,” says Dad.
“So he had a job at one time?”
Mom shakes her head and stabs at her food.
“No one has ever seen him work. God forbid that would be the end of the world.”
“Where did he get the money to invest?”
“He was born lucky,” Mom says.
“He can’t be that lucky, he’s a Cub fan.”
“He won the lottery,” says Dad.
Mom steps in.
“You know it wasn’t the lottery honey, it was the Irish sweepstakes. His great aunt bought him a ticket on the day he was born. A winning ticket. Since she bought the ticket for him she put the money in a special account for him in his name. He found out about it when he wa
s twenty one and he hasn’t worked a day since then.”
“Not that he amounted to much before that,” says Dad, “or would have amounted to anything.”
“We’ll never know will we?”
“That’s a cool story.”
“No it isn’t,” says Mom, “there is nothing cool about a bum.”
“That’s why when I make my fortune,” says Dad, “I’ll give it away instead of giving it to you. I’m afraid all that money will ruin you.”
“Thanks Dad.”
“All what money?”
“Good one Mom.”
“Thanks honey.”
“I’m trying to keep things honest.”
So there, they finally revealed the dark secret of St. Sligo’s source of income. I guess they were waiting until I was old enough to handle the massive impact of the truth. I wonder how much he has left. My uncle, the girl ditcher and trust fund abuser now wastes all his money and his brain cells on the kookoo juice. There is probably more to it, but it took me eighteen years to get that much information out of them and I didn’t want to push it any further.
The next time I drive the sainted one to his destinations and he is appropriately intoxicated I ask him about Chicago.
“You’re parents told you about the woman, didn’t they? I can see how you’re looking differently at me. I never asked them not to talk. Everyone hears that story sooner or later. I’ve never been in love. Big deal. Maybe I was, I might have been. I could have been. Love is for crazy people. I’m madly in love. I’m going out of my head. Crazy people. Why was she so much better than the next girl?”
“Because you loved her?”
“You should marry J.P.”
“Get out of the car.”
“I can’t I’m drinking.”
Stalemate. Sligo laughs and takes a sip.
“See how it goes. You don’t like the scrutiny either.”
I nod. I reach my hand out for the bottle, but Sligo holds it away.
“No, no, I can arrange a bad marriage for you, but I’m not going to be the one to put the drinking thing on you.”
“So you think J.P. and I would be a bad match.”
“Who knows? You never know until you’re married.”
I reach my hand out again and he still shakes his head no. Somewhere in there is the code of Sligo, in Latin, backwards, forward, sideways. Lord help us all. Da Vinci had it easy.
Marriage? I’m still in high school. Some girls have joined the making babies parade arcade. Bing, bing, bing goes the trolley. Call me a cad, but don’t call me Dad. I’m too young to die. Maybe I’m overreacting, but I’m still a young man. Don’t weigh me down. I’m going to have a bad dream tonight. Maybe unconscious forces will challenge me in a Freud Vs. Darth Vader kind of way. The beard and the cigar against the hairless one behind the mask.