Authors: Jessica Minier
Billy spent the next few minutes
with his head under the hood, poking at things and pulling out dipsticks and
swearing. Then he lowered the hood with a tremendous crash and stood still,
staring past the car at the empty road as if waiting for inspiration. After a
pause, the cursing resumed, and he stormed around the car to the trunk, jerking
it open and tossing luggage to the side of the road so that Ben had to jump out
of the way or get beaned by a wild suitcase.
“Come on, kid. We’re hitching,”
Billy said, stomping over to retrieve his cases. Ben was suddenly very glad he
had cut down on what he had brought. Then he looked around, at the dark shadows
of the trees, at the black ribbon of road, at the fussing silhouette of his
friend.
“Are you sure that’s a good
idea?” Ben squeaked. “I mean, at night? In Georgia?”
Billy looked at him, clearly
perplexed. “What the hell does that mean?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Ben said, hugging his
suitcase to his chest. “Forget I said it.”
“Uh huh,” Billy said. The night
was thick with the sound of cicadas. Warmth rose from the damp soil of the
shoulder and wove around Ben’s ankles in waves.
In the distance, a set of
headlights appeared, mirage-like through the quivering heat.
Billy began to whistle “Dueling
Banjos,” quietly, without looking in Ben’s direction. After a moment, he said,
“If they’re gonna ass-rape anyone, it’ll be the young, cute-lookin’ one, I
would think. But don’t worry, while they’re doing it, I’ll try to get help.” He
sounded philosophical, as if he’d been pondering this.
“Shut up,” Ben said.
“Ungrateful little shit,” Billy
said, and stuck out his thumb.
The car pulled slowly past them,
then eased over to the side and stopped. Ben was relieved to see that it was a dark
brown Ford LTD station wagon, not a beat-up pick-up truck as he had secretly
feared. He doubted that butt-rapists drove Ford LTD’s. The man who stepped out
from the driver’s side further assuaged Ben’s fears, as the man was short,
skinny, and wearing the uniform of an office worker: a pair of black polyester
pants, a white button-down and a garishly-printed polyester tie. He pulled
nervously at the waistband of the pants, which had no belt loops.
“You folks in some trouble?”
Billy, who was wearing a sleeveless
black muscle shirt and tight black jeans, not to mention the mustache, probably
looked more threatening than anyone from Georgia, Ben surmised.
“We surely are, friend. The boy
here and I are on our way up to Chicago to see the White Sox and wouldn’t you
know it, the damned car threw a rod out here in the middle of nowhere. We’d
certainly appreciate a lift into the next town, if you’re able.”
“Well, I don’t know…” The man
eyed them nervously, then stepped forward and peered at Billy as if he’d suddenly
developed near-sightedness. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” he asked.
Billy puffed up his chest and
grinned widely.
“Are you a baseball fan,
yourself, perhaps?”
The man nodded, and then
comprehension dawned across his face and he smiled, clearly delighted.
“Well I’ll be,” he said, and
stepped forward with his hand outstretched. “Wild Bill himself!”
“That’s right!” Billy was equally
effusive, shaking the man’s hand with vigor. “The very same. This here is a
friend of the family, and a damn fine young pitcher, Benjamin McDunnough.” Ben
shook the man’s hand, which was a bit clammy, but then, Ben reasoned, he was
covered in polyester.
“Charles Patterson,” the man
offered, and beamed at them both. “I’d be absolutely honored to drive you into
town. You could get a tow from there, in the morning. I’ll even put you both up
for the night, if it’s all right with the missus.”
“Now that is just too generous of
you,” Billy said warmly. “We couldn’t bother you that much. They boy and I will
be perfectly comfortable in a local motel.”
“Well, I appreciate that,”
Charles said, leading them toward the LTD. “But, well, there’s nothing in town
at all, in the way of places to stay. Really, the missus and I would be
thrilled to have you with us, I’m sure.” He opened the back door of the wagon
and took each of their suitcases, gently placing them beside several black
leather cases. Ben recognized the violin case and the one for the trombone, but
wasn’t sure what the others were for. He wondered what this man did, carrying around
instruments in the early Georgia morning. It wasn’t exactly threatening, but it
wasn’t reassuring, either.
“We would just be honored, I tell
you, to stay with you folks. It isn’t often that I get a chance to spend some
real time with a fan such as yourself, Charles.”
“It’s my honor, really,” Charles
said. “Please call me Chuck.”
“Chuck, you’d best call me Bill,
if we’re to be staying with you kind folks and all.”
“I appreciate that, Bill, I
really do.” Chuck had a bit of a stammer, when nervous. He opened the door for
Billy, just as he probably did, Ben surmised, for The Missus. Ben was left to
fend for himself with the broad second door of the LTD.
“So tell me, Chuck, who do you
like this year? And don’t say Oakland, or I’ll just have to step right back out
onto the highway and wait for another man to come along, one with some sense.”
Chuck laughed, a squeak really,
and answered: “The Sox, right? The Sox.”
“Damn right, the Sox!” Billy
thundered as he slid into the car, and Chuck nodded before shutting the door,
politely as a prom date.
Billy seemed to take up the
entire front seat, his arm thrown casually across to touch the headrest of
Chuck’s seat, as if they were indeed going steady. He was painting Wild Bill in
broad strokes; his gestures wider, his voice louder, his grin flashier than
he’d been during the entire previous eight hours. Ben wasn’t jealous, exactly,
but found himself wondering why, if he got the “real” Bill, what he received
seemed so much less interesting. Ben had never been much of an actor. On the
rare occasions that a teacher had managed to persuade him to step up on stage
in front of his peers, he’d approached the circumstances with a certain nervous
acceptance. He certainly hadn’t enjoyed being the center of attention.
Being on the field was different,
of course. There, he felt the edgy focus of the people in the stands, of the
other team, of the batter and the ump and the guys standing tense behind him
the way he felt the energy of a great rock song. It moved through him with a fierce
electricity that built with every movement until he felt as if the cheers and
shouts were collecting in his muscles like blood, like fuel. Later, athletes
would coin a word for it: pumped. The boys in his charge would feed from the
adulation, would wither when it was withdrawn. He only knew, at sixteen, that
it was a bit like wooing a girl. When everything was working, the feeling left
him dancing internally for days.
Chuck, this small, sweaty man
from rural Georgia, was touching greatness, and his high-pitched, animated
voice told Ben that he was flying, barely aware of his surroundings. They could
careen off into the dark, lurking trees and the car would float, just like a
rocket on descent. Billy knew it too, of course, and so perhaps it was an act of
kindness to be the big man, the best pitcher in the whole game, scuppered again
by a team unable to react quickly enough to the power contained within his arm.
Ben both admired Billy’s ability to be a star, and was made uncomfortable by
it. What did it mean to him, to be the one Billy had chosen?
There were times, after a game,
when the other boys in the locker room looked at him with that same mix of
admiration and discomfort, and he longed to just be the kid who’d had the
interest in astronomy and physics. He had no interest in drama, and the teenage
world that slipped by around him sometimes seemed as alien as if he’d been
dropped in the middle of a school in another country, another culture. He had
few friends. He was too quiet, too intense and at the same time, too relaxed.
He intimidated other boys, even without meaning to. They retreated before him;
then, he knew, they mocked him behind his back because he didn’t know the
secret handshake, the admission policy for teenage boydom. He wasn’t always sure
this was a bad thing, exactly.
By the time they reached the
nearest town, which barely registered as a town, just as Chuck had intimated,
Ben was finding it nearly impossible to keep his eyes open. It was after two.
Ben wondered what The Missus would think as Chuck pulled into the driveway of a
low-slung brick house and stepped out to open the garage door. Billy turned and
regarded Ben, all the liquid cool drained from his face to reveal his
exhaustion and frustration.
“How’re you holding up back
there?” he asked, his voice quiet and for once, somewhat paternal. Ben
shrugged.
“Just tired.”
“You know we probably aren’t
going to make it to Chicago,” Billy said.
“Yeah,” Ben said.
“I’m sorry, kid. I know you
wanted to go.”
“It’s not your fault,” Ben said,
as Chuck returned, opening Billy’s door. In the garage, a door opened and a
tired-looking woman wearing a yellow-flowered house coat stepped out from a
wall of light.
“The missus says we’d be
delighted to have you folks stay the night,” Chuck said. Ben wondered what
other options had been available to her. From somewhere close by, he could hear
the excited barking of what sounded like a multitude of small dogs. It was the
deepest black part of the night, and the stars above Chuck’s tiny hamlet in the
back woods glittered as though the night sky had worn thin, showing the bright
light of the infinite beyond. He could have many of the pulsating points, had
his mind not been firmly lodged in the sweaty, aching small of his back.
Wearily, Ben hoisted his suitcase
out of the back of the wagon and followed Billy and Chuck inside. The house was
warm, without air-conditioning, and not built to stay cool, as his home was. An
odd, sharp smell permeated every surface and rose up like a wall as they
entered through the kitchen door. It wasn’t until Chuck led them into the
living room that he realized what it was. In a corner of the room, a low wooden
gate system fenced off at least twelve wiggling, frantic puppies. Beneath them,
a ragged pile of urine-soaked newspapers explained the smell. The mother dog
stood at the front, tail wagging as Chuck greeted her with a few gentle
strokes. She had dark brown hair that fell in waves like chocolate frosting.
Ben knew she would feel exactly like the chamois Billy used to clean his car.
“That’s my girl,” Chuck said, and
then to them: “We breed cockers.”
Unable to resist, Ben stood next
to him and reached down to touch a puppy. The fur reminded him of a seal-skin
toy he’d had as a child, only a thousand times softer. Chuck smiled at him.
“Cute as a button, but then,
their mom’s a champion. Aren’t you?” he asked the dog, who panted happily at
the attention. The thick scent of pee floated around them, a miasma of soured
sugar, with the pungency of a skunk. Billy shifted from one foot to the other,
his eyes watery, his cheeks twitching.
He was saved by the missus, who
turned out to be named Betty. She offered them both “a little something,” which
consisted of small glass tumblers of weak orange juice and a crumbly,
sand-colored cake that she referred to as a “coffee cake,” despite the fact
that it tasted like coconut and cardboard. Ben nibbled at his cake without
enthusiasm and sipped his orange juice, while Billy made polite conversation.
It was strange to see Billy perched on the edge of this woman’s striped sofa, a
saucer balanced on his knees as he took delicate bites of the cake and talked
relatively intelligently about the local weather. Outside, the dogs had settled
back into an occasional startled yipping. The puppies curled up on one another:
a pile of whimpering, sleep-coated fur.
Chuck told them, over the last of
the cake, that he was a musical instrument sales-man, traveling to schools all
over the state to supply the children of Georgia with the ability to play Sousa
badly at football games. Ben listened politely, but his eyes felt raw, as open
as wounds. He wanted only to go to bed and perhaps nurse his growing
disappointment in dreams. At some point, through his haze, he realized they
were being led into a back bedroom, complete with two twin beds pushed against
opposite walls. Everything seemed to be happening in disconnected chunks, as if
one moment he held a plate with cake and the next he was standing beside a
nearly-empty bookcase in a room with gold and orange floral wallpaper.
The room had clearly belonged to
one of Chuck’s daughters, as the wall paper still bore the scars of posters
tacked directly to its surface, the books appeared to be teen-themed romance
paperbacks, and a well-loved teddy bear stared with black glass eyes from each
of the beds. Ben smiled as Chuck wished them a good night and Billy thanked him
again. With a flick of the gold corduroy bedspread, and a quick toeing off of
his shoes, he was comfortably settled with his head against the pillow, the
bear unceremoniously tossed to the floor. Billy took his time brushing his
teeth in a bathroom across the hall, and Ben drifted between waking and
sleeping until Billy returned and slid into his own bed. As he turned out the
light, Billy whispered: “I feel like some fucking teenage girl at a sleepover.”