The River Burns (12 page)

After lunch she surveyed the competition. Potpourri
was unquestionably the largest, the most long-standing, and the most successful of the town's gift shops, and so benefitted in particular from the broadest inventory. Other stores showcased artisans who were either local or relatively local, and Tara committed a few names of the better craftspeople to memory. Lemonade might give her a modest daily income, but she needed quality merchandise to bankroll the broader enterprise.

Back at the store she ordered her mattress and bedding from a chain in the city. Before coming here from the coast, she threw out a relatively new queen-sized bed that never would have made the trek in the back of her pickup, or alongside her on the steam train, but even had it survived—and wouldn't
that
have made for an entrance into town!—it never would've come up the narrow stairs to her new premises. This proved, in a way that she found gratifying, the wisdom of leaving all her old stuff from her old life behind in its entirety to start anew. Less satisfying, she acknowledged, was that she'd now have to shell out cash to have something to sleep on.

She'd stay on at the inn while awaiting delivery.

12

F
rom this plateau, the Gatineau Hills concealed the horizon in all directions. No one could gauge a change in the weather with acuity, although those who were preparing to play or settling into the stands to watch the game detected an electrical charge in the air. A languidness affected the motion of women whose slow, deep strides in the heat bore them along the dusty tire tracks up the hill to the plateau's mown field, and affected the men as their arms arced through soft tosses, their gloves lazily sweeping the air for an easy catch. No player exerted himself for a ball slightly out of reach, no one drilled it, no one hustled, the air too humid, the day's heat pervasive still. Breath felt difficult. Soon the sky would be ransacked by a cooling storm, although players and fans alike assumed that prior to matters becoming nasty they'd hear the approaching rumbles of thunder, spy a telltale black anvil cloud forming beyond the hills and so have time to pack up and leave. With any luck the teams might sneak in five innings, enough to make the game count, and the boys would be back in the pub for a few cold ones before rain pelted down and violent wind and lightning chased them off.

No minute could be spared. The teams were ready on the dot of seven.

The first pitch a strike. A few fans clapped.

“Swing the damn bat,” griped the catcher to the hitter, his voice growly. “We don't got all night.”

“Keep your jockstrap on,” the batter, a trucker, answered back. The Blue Riders, Denny's team, worked in the forestry industry in some capacity. They had enough players that they could play against themselves if their opposition failed to show. Customarily, they wore uniforms, shirts at least, although tonight a portion of the men chose shorts and a few opted for mere T-shirts. The team boasted of relief pitchers should their starter falter, and pinch hitters, and spares who were better fielders than some in the lineup and would play if the team built a decent lead, and one of their guys, a skimmer by day, did nothing more than steal bases for them, coming into a game as a pinch runner when the situation warranted. He got into games often, as the Riders were slow.

The second pitch was outside, the bat steady on the hitter's shoulder.

“Take it the other way.”

“Skootch,” the batter advised him, a man known as Slim for good reason, although the catcher he was talking to was skinnier still, “don't start with me. If you start with me the next ball I hit is maybe your head.”

The umpire, a short, chubby druggist by day, formerly a catcher himself until a torn rotator cuff wrecked his arm, in any case now in his sixties, waddled out to the front of the plate, faced his bottom to centre field, and bent over to sweep the plate clean. The batter and catcher waited, although the plate was already spotless and the action unnecessary. The ump took his mask off then put it back on and while he was doing that he said, “Both of you, shut the fuck up. Skootch, you don't have an extra man. Not one. If you think that'll stop me from tossing you out of the game if you give me cause, think twice. I'm not putting up with this shit tonight, it's too damn hot. Do you get me?”

Gordon Skotcher hunkered down into his crouch and ran through the signals with his pitcher. When the umpire leaned in behind him for the pitch, he said, “You're a hard-ass, ump.”

The umpire called out, “Steeeee!” loudly, right in his ear as the ball zipped in, catching a corner of the plate. Unhittable.

The batter smiled. After throwing the ball back, the catcher made a point of sticking a finger in his ear as though the drum was now in need of repair and a few fans chuckled. The next ball the batter dribbled down the first base line and thinking that it was arcing foul he didn't run it out. The ball took a bounce off a stone and shifted fair and the batter was left looking lazy and dumb as the first baseman snagged it, and fans, even those who rooted for the Blue Riders, booed his utter lack of hustle.

In disgrace he walked back to the team's bench, as the evening was too warm to jog.

Fans seemed into the game tonight, which was not always the case. A few spouses were on hand with their youngest kids and often they just talked among themselves at the games and asked, when it was over and they were piling their husband's gear into the back of a pickup, “Who won?” This evening they were into the game because the Blue Riders were playing a team that called themselves the Wildcats but they were referred to as Tree Huggers for being on the opposite side of every political, economic, and environmental issue from anyone who happened to work for a living cutting down trees. On occasion, fielding a full complement of players was a problem for them when one or more of their number slipped in a little jail time over the course of a summer, or another went missing and a rumour spread that he was in California, as if that could not be helped, or in Prague, as if that made any sense to anyone. A couple of their players were quite good, which only partially made up for the two who were daft, while others fell between okay and not so bad. Their main pitcher, his name was Benoit, who actually worked in a visible job as a car mechanic, snapped off a fastball that ate loggers and truckers alive. On a few rare nights his velocity fell off a notch and only then did the Blue Riders scratch a few hits off him. Most nights they couldn't touch his heater and they needed luck to eke out a run and if they expected to win they needed to pitch well themselves. They always had a chance of winning because the Wildcats were prone to making errors, especially in the outfield where some of their guys went to sleep. Their minds just drifted off to la-la land. In the main, the Blue Riders played the game for fun except when they played the Tree Huggers. That group wanted to hamper their right to earn a living, and what happened off the baseball diamond inevitably found its way onto it. They wanted to win those games too much to have any fun unless they actually did win. Each team's record against the other was about fifty-fifty.

The Riders' second batter struck out on three pitches without swinging at any of them. Skootch looked at the umpire and smirked.

“Just keep your yap shut and play ball,” the umpire warned. “I don't want to hear any mockery out of you.”

“Ump, I mock. That's my game.”

“Not tonight it isn't.” He was worried that in the heat tempers could easily flare between two rivals who despised each other, off the field and on.

The third batter up was Dennis Jasper O'Farrell.

“Hey, Denny,” Skootch said.

“Skootch,” Denny said.

“He's firing tonight.”

“Early days,” Denny reminded him.

“The storm will get here before he wears out,” countered Skootch.

Agreeing that that was probably true, Denny O'Farrell felt demoralized. Especially when the first pitch blew right by him.

“Told you. He's got his pop. Hey, you going to that meeting tomorrow?”

“This is ridiculous,” Denny said. He stepped out of the box to look at the signals from his third base coach who was an older gentleman in sales at his company. He was making his signals unnecessarily complicated for the situation. Two out. Nobody on. An oh-and-one count—no need for signals.

“Christ, Denny,” Skootch said. “He wants you to bunt.”

“How come he wants me to bunt?”

“Beats me. Unless he thinks you can't hit my guy tonight.”

Denny called time and strolled down the third base line, using his bat as a cane. Dimitri the salesman, overeager, loped down to meet him more than halfway. In the outfield, players bent at the waist and tore out a few strands of grass to pass the time, and the guy in left wore his glove on his head, slouching. In the infield, the players moved dirt around with their toes and the shortstop spit a few times then dusted over the spots, creating small clumps. The Wildcats didn't wear uniforms and quite a few wore shorts. They had on different coloured T-shirts except for the centrefielder who was bare-chested.

“What the fuck?” Denny asked his coach.

“We need to manufacture a run, Denny. Put some pressure on him.”

“Skootch reads our signals, Dee.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

Denny shot a glance at the third baseman, who was someone he'd never seen before, then he walked back to the batter's box. Then he stepped out to confirm the signals. He knew he was sweating but he blamed the heat. He wiped his eyes on his shirtsleeve but even the sleeve was soaked.

“Yeah, I guess I'm going to that meeting,” he said. He squinted.

“He still wants you to bunt,” Skootch informed him. While Denny was gone Skootch lit up a roach and now he pulled on a long drag while bringing the infield in. He offered it to the umpire as he always did but the umpire, as he always did, declined. He held it up to Denny but when Denny didn't look at him he got the message. Skootch got into his crouch and balanced the roach on the trailing edge of home plate and Denny took a couple of halfhearted half swings then stepped into the box. The pitcher wasted no time. Denny couldn't believe how well he saw the ball coming in, as if he could count the laces, and he was surprised by how slow it seemed and by the amount of time given him to make up his mind, as if the ball was a balloon and in that millisecond which computed velocity and trajectory and spin he determined that it was not slow, only that his brain was fast, and he couldn't believe how the ball just
ticked
off the bat as if the bat barely touched it, nor could he believe that he was rounding the bases at a jog, having finally gotten this guy when he was having a good night only no one would believe that now, people would think the pitcher botched the throw before believing that Denny hit the best pitch he'd ever hit in his life, taking it over the low right field fence although, admittedly, on a muggy night the ball was prone to jump, high humidity was great for home runs, and as he rounded second Denny checked out the third baseman who'd been in for the bunt, and wondered why he didn't know him, and why his hair was cut short like a regular Joe's haircut and not like some warmed-over hippie's from another era or off another planet like the rest of his teammates, and he noticed the guy's spanking-new cleats as well as he trotted past him and that made him consider at that very instant and for no reason that he could fathom his wife's right foot poking out from the sheet the other morning and as he stepped onto home plate just a second before Skootch removed the roach he felt weak, particularly in his knees and in his stomach, and Denny decided that he must have taken the bases too quickly on such a hot day, or maybe that wasn't it, and he heard Skootch say, “Nice bunt,” as he was being welcomed into the hoots and applause of the audience and into the embrace of his teammates while feeling as odd in his own skin as he'd ever felt, as if he was not standing in his own flesh.

Then Denny did something he'd never done before. He looked back at the catcher, Skootch, a tree hugger Ryan's age, thirty-five, and probably the oldest guy on the field, and he saw that Skootch was looking back at him probably for the first time ever in that situation as well, and he noticed something else that amazed him. Skootch knew. Skootch knew that he just hit the best pitch he'd ever hit and Skootch could no more believe it than he could. That hit. A freak of nature. An anomaly. His rival's look was saying to him that he should enjoy it because
You'll never hit a pitch that good again
, but Denny was thinking exactly that on his own. He couldn't help himself. He shrugged at Skootch, and the ragamuffin eccentric catcher shrugged back, put his mask back on, and everyone then settled in for the next at bat.

Denny sat on the bench.

Feeling weird.

He hit his share of home runs over a summer, but none were ever so sweet or so perplexing, the way it just ticked
ticked
off the bat like that. Like snapping his fingers and it was gone, as if he wasn't the one swinging the bat, as if he wasn't himself.

Two innings later, Denny was in the field and taking an interest in the next hitter for the Tree Huggers. His counterpart at third base. He looked down the line and moved his toe through the dirt as he always did when there was no one on base, then he leaned into his stance and punched the pocket of his glove twice. Then he put both hands on his knees. Outside the batter's box, the newcomer took a few practise swings that seemed smooth to Denny, fluid.

The batter stepped into the box.

Denny thought later that it was just as it was with his swing, the way the ball clicked off the bat, and that it was just like Val's foot, the way it left an impression on him, as though its life suddenly transcended its function, as though it shone with its own light or something equally perplexing. This was just like that and so he didn't think about anything. He called time.

The ump swung his arm up.

Denny called it intuition. He had an urge to call it something.

He walked to the pitcher's mound. The catcher was going to join them but Denny held up a hand to stop him and the catcher was grateful to be spared the hike. He waited with his face mask pushed up over the top of his head and tapped his glove.