Black Maps (8 page)

Then the umpire step before the plate and say Throw the ball Sanchez or it is delay of the game. The batter he step out of the box and shrug his shoulders to the dugout of his team and spit. I stand there more. Then Gene say What the fuck and everybody in the stands start to yell and boo but I don't do anything.

Then out of the dugout come Coach's face looking red. All of a sudden I feel so sorry for him, so sorry for Gene and Peachy and my teammates and for Jackie and Pilar and Angelita and the umpire and the people in the stands who are booing so disappointed. I feel so bad for everybody I want to cry. Then Coach he say What the hell do you think you're doing Sanchez. I say it again—
Nada
. And he say Don't give me any of that I want to know why you aren't throwing the goddamn ball. His face is close to mine the way he get with a umpire who make a lousy call. I look down and say from somewhere My wife she leave me and my little girl is gone away. Jesus H. Christ he say then and touch his left arm which mean bring in the lefty. Then he say You're under suspension Sanchez now get your sorry ass out of this park and don't come back until your head is on straight. I don't want to see you or hear you or even
smell
you until then is that clear. I just stand there and listen to him, I can't even nod. Everything I live for is disappearing into nothing, I am becoming like a zero, and I am sad but somehow all of a sudden I am so much of nothing I am gone away and I'm there but not there too and where I am is so peaceful I want almost to cry. I want to tell Coach about this place, I want to tell everyone, but there are no words there so I only smile at him. He look away then mad and cursing but still I smile so happy.

And I am still smiling when Parisi come in to take from me my no-hitter and make me a nobody who can not go to home or stay where he is without shame. I am holding the ball and everything have stop and I am so happy and I love everybody even Coach and the fans booing and Whitey Herzog who keep me from being in The Bigs so long and Antonio who steal my wife maybe. I love everybody so much I feel like I am dead and looking down on everybody from heaven, not a man anymore but a angel with no sadness or pain or anything, just love. But then Coach take the ball away from me and give it to Parisi. He take the ball away, he take everything away, and I am standing there waiting and alone and there is no sign.

It was late on a dark, moonless night, and they were driving home from a party at their friends' house on the other side of the city. Although they had been married for almost twenty years, Elliot still loved Susan very much and found her attractive. At the party, he'd glanced at her across the room, and the way she crossed her legs when she sat down made him desire her. Now he was anxious to get home so they could make love. He thought she must be feeling the same way, for her hand was resting on his thigh and she was looking at him while they talked.

They were talking about their friends' little boy Joey, who had kept running in and out of the living room with a toy machine gun, pretending to shoot everybody. He had laughed like a crazed movie villain while he sprayed the room with bullets, the gun's plastic muzzle glowing a fiery red. At first, everyone laughed too, but after the fourth or fifth time it stopped being funny. Finally, his father lost his temper, spanked Joey fiercely, and sent him crying to his room. Then his mother apologized to the guests. It was his grandmother's fault, she said; every time she came to visit, she brought him a gun. He had a half-dozen in his toy box, most of them broken, thank God. But the next time she visited, they were going to tell her they were opposed to children playing with guns. They would have told her earlier but they didn't want to hurt her feelings.

Elliot and Susan had married during the Vietnam War and, like many parents then, didn't buy toy guns for their son. But Elliot had played with guns when he was young, and now he was telling Susan about the rifle his father had carved for him out of an old canoe paddle. “I loved that rifle,” he said, as he drove down the deserted street past the sleeping houses. It had been almost as long as a real rifle, and he had worn it slung over his shoulder wherever he went the summer he was nine. Even when his mother called him in for supper, he wouldn't put it away; he had to have it propped against the table in case the Russians suddenly attacked. As he thought about the rifle, its glossy varnish and its heft, he moved his hands on the steering wheel and could almost feel it again. A thin shiver of pleasure ran through him. “It was my favorite toy,” he said wistfully. “I wonder what happened to it.”

“I used to think it was so awful for kids to play war,” Susan said, lifting her long dark hair off her neck and settling it over her shoulders. “But now I don't know. Look at this generation of kids that were raised without toy guns—they're all little Oliver Norths. They're playing with
real
guns now. And kids like you—you turned out all right. You wouldn't even think of going hunting, much less killing someone.”

“At least not anymore,” he said.

“What do you mean?” she said. “You mean you used to hunt?”

Susan was a vegan, and she did volunteer work on Saturdays for the Humane Society. Elliot had told her many stories about his childhood—he had grown up in a small town in another state and didn't meet her until they were in college—but he hadn't told her he'd been a hunter. It wasn't that he considered that fact a dark secret; he just knew she'd be upset and didn't think it was worth telling her. He hadn't meant to mention it now either—it had just come out. Perhaps he'd drunk too much wine at the party. Or maybe he'd gotten so lost in his memories of the toy rifle that he spoke before he could think. Whatever, he didn't want an argument. He was in a romantic mood and he didn't want anything to destroy it.

“I was a kid,” he explained. “I didn't know any better.”

“How old were you?” she asked.

“What does it matter?” he said. “You know I wouldn't even kill a spider now.”

“But you killed something then?”

He could lie now, he realized, and say he'd gone hunting but never shot anything. He could make up a story or two about his ineptitude as a hunter, and she would laugh and everything would be fine between them. But as he'd gotten older, lies had become harder for him. They had come easily to him in his youth, but now they tasted like rust in his mouth.

“Yes,” he said.

She took her hand from his thigh and sat there silently. They passed under a streetlight, and her face flared into view. “Come on, Susan,” he said. “Don't be mad.”

Then she said, “How could you do it? Why would you even
want
to do it?”

It was a question he had asked himself from time to time. He had enjoyed hunting and trapping animals as a teenager, but now that he was an adult, he had no desire to do either. He thought of his brutality as a phase he had gone through, a period of hormonal confusion, perhaps, like puberty. But he still remembered the pleasure hunting and trapping gave him, and he still understood it.

“Do we have to talk about this?” he said.

“I want to know,” she said.

He sighed. “Okay. If you really want to know, I did it because I wanted to see if I could hit something a long ways off.” It was the simple truth. It was a thrill to shoot at the empty air half a sky in front of a pheasant or duck or goose and see that emptiness explode with the miraculous conjunction of bird and shot. It was a kind of triumph over chance, over the limitations of time and space, and each time it happened, he felt powerful and alive.

“But you could have shot at targets,” she said.

“Targets don't move,” he answered.

“What about clay pigeons? They move.”

He wished they hadn't started this. “Can't we talk about something else?” he asked. He tried to make his voice as warm as he wished hers would be.

“First answer my question. Why not shoot at clay pigeons instead?”

He considered several lies while he turned onto the avenue that led toward the suburb where they lived. Then he sighed and said, “Because they aren't alive.”

Susan looked at him. “I can't believe this,” she said. “My own husband.”

“Come on,” Elliot said. “You're overreacting.”

“Maybe I am. But I feel like I'm seeing something in you that I never saw before.”

“You're making me sound like a criminal or something,” he complained.

“I think killing
is
a crime,” she said. “It doesn't matter if it's an animal or a person, it's still murder.”

He'd heard her make this argument many times before, but this was the first time she'd directed it at him personally. He wanted to defend himself, but even more he wanted to regain the romantic mood they were in when they left the party. He drove on in silence. Then she asked, “How did you feel when you killed something?”

He was glad this question had a more human answer. “I felt bad,” he said. “I felt sorry for it.”

“But you kept on hunting?”

“For a while.”

“If you felt so sorry for the animals, why did you keep on killing them?”

He looked at her face then and knew he would have to tell her everything. If he didn't, she would never forgive him, and everything between them would be changed. He looked back at the road. “It may sound crazy,” he said, “but the first time I shot something, I did it
because
I felt sorry for it.”

“I don't understand,” she said.

“Do you want to?”

“Yes.”

“All right then. I'll tell you the whole story.” He took a breath. “The first real gun I owned was a .22 pistol. I was thirteen. I'd had the pistol for two or three months, and I'd never shot anything with it except Coke bottles and tin cans. I'd
tried
to shoot squirrels and birds, you understand, but I'd never hit anything. Then I met this boy. He was a couple of years older than me, and I looked up to him. Frank Elkington. He taught me to shoot and trap.”

“Trap?” she said. “You trapped too? Elliot, I just can't believe this is you you're talking about.”

“It isn't. Not anymore.”

“But it's who you were. And who you were is part of who you are, isn't it?”

He didn't like the way she was cross-examining him like a lawyer, and he thought about making some sarcastic joke about the statute of limitations. But he just stared straight ahead. They were driving through a business district now, and the reflections of neon lights crawled on the windshield. Finally he said, “I don't have to tell you this. I'm telling it because I love you.”

“I know you do,” she said. “And you know I love you.”

He went on. “Frank trapped mink and muskrat and beaver along the Chippewa River and sold the pelts to a fur processing plant in town. I used to tag along with him when he did his paper route, and one day I went with him while he checked his traps. He was talking about trappers and how they lived off the land. They didn't breed animals just to slaughter them, he said, and they didn't keep them penned up either; they let the animals live free in the wild and gave them a sporting chance. He made it sound so noble that I told him I wanted to start trapping too. And he gave me my first trap.”

He paused, remembering that trap. It was a rusty number eleven Victor Long-Spring, and it smelled oddly sulfurous, like the air just after a match is struck. Thinking of the trap did not give him the same pleasure that remembering the wooden rifle did, but it gave him some. He could not deny that.

“Frank showed me how to set the trap,” he continued, “and the next day when we went to check it, there was a weasel in it.” He paused again. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

Susan's back was against the passenger door now and her arms were crossed over her breasts as if she were cold. She nodded.

“Okay. It was a black weasel. It wasn't worth much, but I was happy as hell. Frank was congratulating me, shaking my hand and patting me on the back, and I felt proud to have caught something on my first try, even if it was only a weasel. Then I noticed the weasel's mouth was bright red. I didn't understand at first, but then I saw its leg. It had started to chew the leg off, but we had gotten there before it could finish.”

“Oh, Elliot, that's awful,” Susan said, and hugged herself tighter.

“I know. I know. I felt so sorry for that weasel I took out my pistol and shot him four or five times, to put him out of his misery. Frank yelled, ‘What are you doing!' and grabbed the gun from me. ‘You idiot,' he said, ‘you're supposed to shoot it in the
head
. Now the pelt's
worthless
.'”

Elliot could feel Susan looking at him, and he gripped the steering wheel a little harder. “That was the first animal I shot. The next one, I shot in the head, between the eyes, just to prove to Frank—and, I guess, to myself—that I could do it right.”

“And you sold their fur?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“Yes. And that's how this farmer found out about me. Mr. Lyngen. He got my name from one of the men at the fur processing plant, and he hired me to trap gophers in his bean field. They were damaging his crop, and he didn't have time to trap them himself. He bought me a case of traps, and he gave me twenty cents a tail. By mid-summer, I'd earned enough to buy a .22 rifle, and by pheasant season I owned a 12 gauge shotgun too.”

“You cut their tails off,” she said. This time it was an accusation, not a question.

Yes, he had. When he'd found a gopher trapped in the entrance to its own burrow, he'd killed it with a single shot to the head, cut off its tail, then buried it in the grave it had dug for itself. He kept the tails in a marble bag tied to his belt, and every week or so when the bag got full, he took it to Mr. Lyngen and collected his bounty.