I
was never a baseball fan, not as a kid, and not as an adult. I vaguely recall being in Little League and hating the outfit—the long socks, the pants, the hat, the whole thing. I was a bad player, too, always placed way out in left field, and hardly ever hitting the ball when I went up to bat. But there I was, thirty-eight-years-old, disbarred and unemployed, and I was playing baseball every Saturday afternoon with a bunch of middle-aged men who should’ve known better.
At first, I just went to watch the games; David was the pitcher and Bryan acted as a sort of quasi coach, barking out orders like this all meant something. It was a good excuse to get out of the house, kick back, and drink beer, watching these heavy-in-the-middle, balding, and squinty-eyed men play.
It was amusing, to say the least.
The bleachers were never very full at the park, mostly wives and children, a few friends, a few kids from the neighborhood who would heckle and yell, “You can hit a ball farther than that, old man!” or “Run, pops, run!”
One day, as the story goes, they lost a player—the fellow had a minor heart attack at home, so he wouldn’t be back on the field. Bryan and David suggested I fill in the spot.
“I don’t play baseball,” I said.
“Everyone plays baseball,” David said. “It’s the all-American sport!”
“I don’t play well,” I said.
“Neither does anyone else on the team,” Bryan said.
He had a point. I figured, what the hell, why not. They got me a uniform—the team was called the Fritzes, of all things—and a hat, and I was ready to play.
Tina thought I was being silly, “men acting like boys” she said; yet I knew she was relieved that I would be getting out in the sun and engaging in some much needed exercise.
To my surprise, I enjoyed that first game. There wasn’t the pressure of Little League—where you felt examined, where you knew your parents were watching from the stands, hoping you’d dazzle everyone, only to fail; where other boys on the team—those who could play—would ridicule you for messups. Out here, among the middle-aged, it didn’t matter if you screwed up. No one was a star, and no one was passing judgment. If you didn’t catch a ball, or if you struck out, it was, “Darn, better luck next time.” Not only that, we drank beer in the dugout. When Bryan asked me, after the game (which we lost 12-7), if I wanted to be a permanent member of the Fritzes, I said yes.
Now that I was an amateur baseball player, I felt I had a new purpose. I was energized. After five months of being cooped up in the house, I was starting to think of the future again. On Monday, I told myself I’d look into getting a job; part-time, perhaps, or maybe something temporary, but
something.
That night, I vigorously made love to Tina. I marveled at my own randy stamina and succeeding erection. So did Tina.
“Where is all this energy coming from?” she asked after the second time.
“You don’t like?”
“I love it,” she said. “I’m just wondering—″
“Just feeling horny,” I said, my mouth on hers.
“So I noticed, cowboy.”
Our sex life had dwindled quite a bit. I didn’t realize this until that night. It’s the way with husbands and wives, married five years.
I thought we’d get back to more regular sex after that.
I was wrong.
We got married in Las Vegas, by the way. It should have been somewhere else. Las Vegas is a curse for me.
B
ryan lived next door. The first time I met him, I was mowing the lawn. Or trying to. The lawn mower kept dying, and I had trouble restarting it.
“Problem?”
He was standing on his neatly mowed lawn, in shorts and a T-shirt, holding a glass. He wore a floppy canvas fishing cap. He was five-foot-nine, heavyset at two hundred and seventy pounds, I’d say. Pale blue eyes and ruddy cheeks. Think the Skipper from
Gilligan’s Island,
but with more style.
“Damn thing keeps dying,” I said.
“Let me take a look.”
When he passed by me, I smelled vodka from his glass. He seemed like an all right kind of guy. He took one look at my lawn mower, fiddled with the engine a bit, stood up and said, “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He was holding something small and cylindrical in his hand. “Fried spark plug. When’s the last time you changed it?”
“Never have,” I told him. “Never thought I needed to.”
“You change the spark plugs in your car, don’t you?”
“My mechanic does that every six months.”
“You gotta do it once a year with mowers. How long have you had this one?”
“Not sure,” I said, and I really didn’t know. I think we bought it when Tina and I got the house. “Three years.”
“Well, there you go. I just might have the spark plug to fit the bill. I’ll be back in a sec.” He walked over to his garage door, opened it, and went inside. I stood next to my dead lawn mower like an idiot. He came back, smiling, drinking from his glass. He placed the new spark plug in my lawn mower and said, “Okay, son, give her a whirl.”
No one had called me “son” in a long time, except for one of the senior partners in the first firm I worked for. I felt a pang of nostalgia, and an ache for my first major fuck-up. My own father had never called me “son.” It was usually “kid” or “brat.”
I hit the button, and the mower started, and it
purred
.
“Damn,” I said.
“Good as new,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said, over the purring engine. I held out my hand. “Philip Lansdale.”
He shook my hand. He had a very tight grip. “Bryan Vaughn.”
I mowed my front yard and Bryan Vaughn went back to his porch; he sat in a rocking chair, fresh glass in hand, and watched nothing—maybe the clouds in the sky and the occasional passing airplane. I didn’t do a good job with the lawn, at least not as good as Vaughn kept his, or many of the other neighborhood lawns.
When I was a kid, I never cared for the task. The smell of grass often made my nose itch, and sometimes I’d sneeze. Tina used to do this chore, when I was working during the day; she said she loved yard work. She could have it back as far as I was concerned.
When I was done, and I put the mower away in the garage, Bryan Vaughn called out, “How’d she do for you, kid?”
Kid. “Great,” I replied. “Thanks again.”
“Hey, no problem.”
I hesitated and said, “How about a beer?”
“In town, or here?”
“Well, here, my children are inside.”
“Sure,” he said, “why the hell not? I like beer just like any other guy.”
And vodka. But I hadn’t started to touch the hard booze yet—not yet, not until later.
Bryan came over, and I got out the good stuff, Samuel Adams. I thought it would be rude to give a man who’d given me a new spark plug a Budweiser. I had some white plastic lawn chairs I placed out front, and we sat down with our beers. His glass of vodka was still half full, which he sipped at from time to time, chasing it down with beer.
“My lawn looks like crap,” I finally said.
“Nah,” he said. “It’s okay.”
“Yours is so neat and perfect. How do you do it?”
“There’s this enterprising young fellow—eleven years old—comes around every Saturday. I pay him ten bucks. He goes from house to house. Bet the kid clears a good one, two hundred a weekend. I like kids who know how to work and make a buck. That kid’ll go far.”
That didn’t make me feel any better. “Send him over here next time.”
He laughed.
“What’s ten bucks,” I said, “between a nice lawn and a crappy one.”
“It’s not like anyone looks at lawns around here,” he said.
I
was looking, all of the sudden.
“People don’t look at much anymore,” he went on. “They don’t see what’s in front of them. They don’t see the people around them. They don’t pay attention. Always busy, going here, there. Wouldn’t you say?”
“I guess so.” I knew what he meant.
“It’s sad. But hell, it’s the way it is, right?”
“Right.”
We opened two more beers.
My daughter, Jessica, came out, crying. Matthew wouldn’t let her watch the cartoon she wanted to watch.
“Matthew!” I yelled. “It’s your sister’s hour! Let her watch her show!”
I sent her back in. She seemed happy now.
“Sweet little girl,” Bryan Vaughn said.
“Yeah. She is. How long have you lived on this block?”
“Hell,” he said. “Fifteen years, I’d say.”
“And we’ve never met before,” I said, like it was a surprise. We both knew it wasn’t.
“I’ve met your wife, Tina, any number of times. Back when she was around more. Now she’s always gone, and you’re here.″
“She’s the full-time worker now,” I said, feeling some shame admitting that. He didn’t know that I had plenty of cash reserve from the investments; my statement probably sounded like I was lazy and my poor wife had to go out and earn the bacon. But his face didn’t register any opinion or disapproval; it didn’t register anything. And why should I care what he thought, anyway? I added, “I’m between jobs.”
“Good to take a break now and then. I gather you used to be busy, you were always coming and going in such a rush.”
I nodded.
He said, “What did you do before?”
“I was a lawyer.”
“Oh! Oh my!” He laughed and clutched his chest. “There was a time when I used to wanna shoot every lawyer in town.”
“Well don’t shoot me, I’m a lawyer in the past tense,” I said. “What did you do?”
“I was a cop,” he said, drinking, looking at the sky. “Cop for thirty years. Detective in vice when I retired. But I worked narcotics and homicide. Didn’t like corpses, killers, and drug dealers; so I stuck with pimps, prostitutes, and kiddy-porn pushers. Now I hear you get it all over the Internet, never have to leave your house. As for lawyers—damn slimy cheap lawyers and public defenders always getting their clients off on bullcrap: warrant not worded properly, rights weren’t read, violation of—what was it? How did they say it? ‘Procedural due process.’ But hell, that’s all in the past now. Lawyers gotta make money like anyone else. What kind of criminal did you defend?”
“I wasn’t that kind of lawyer,” I said. “Civil litigation.” I didn’t bother to tell him that I started off in the public defender’s office and defended every kind of petty criminal and thug you could imagine.
“You mean lawsuits?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Bullshit lawsuits?” he said.
“Sometimes they’re bullshit,” I said, “sometimes they’re sincere.”
He smiled. “Well, I won’t hold it against you. You seem like a good person.”
I wondered if I was a good person. I
was
then, at any rate. Tina’s car pulled into the driveway.
“Little lady’s home,” Bryan said.
“Yeah,” I said. She was early. I had a bad thought that maybe she got fired. We’d be two unemployed people, staying home all day. That didn’t sound too bad. I realized I hadn’t started dinner, and at this point I think I was too buzzed. Bryan and I were on the second six-pack of Samuel Adams and the alcohol was already starting to affect me.
“Boys,” Tina said, looking at us with a
tsk-tsk
quietly on her lips.
“Mrs. Lansdale,” Bryan nodded. “How’ve you been?”
“Busy busy,” she said. “What are you boys up to?”
He said, “Drinking beers and shooting baloney like manly men do.”
“I see.”
“You’re home early,” I said.
“Can’t I come home early once in a while?” Tina said. “I don’t want to keep a routine. I’ll be too predictable. You’ll start bringing women around if you think I’ll always come back at the same time.”
“I didn’t start dinner,” I said sheepishly. “Maybe we could go out. Taco Bell. Jack in the Box.”
“Burger King,” she said. “You know the kids’ll want Burger King.”
She went inside.
“My wife works too,” Bryan said. “Ellen. You probably haven’t met her.”
“No.”
“You will. She works down at the library. Downtown. Loves books. She doesn’t need to work, my pension does us fine. But she loves the library, and she loves books.”
“I made money off some investments,” I blurted out. I guess I wanted him to know that Tina wasn’t bringing home all the bread and butter.
“Good to have securities,” was his reply to that.
“Well,” I said, “it won’t always be there.”
“If I was smart, when I was your age, I would’ve invested in computers. Computers were a joke twenty years ago. Thirty even. Now look, they run the world.”
I didn’t tell him my investments had been on World Wide Web companies, back when people thought those were a joke as well.
Tina came out with the children—Jessica in her arms, Matthew next to her. “Off to Burger King,” she said. “What’s your order?”
“The usual,” I said.
“The usual it is,” she said.
She piled herself and the kids into her car and they drove off.
“Nice to have a family,” Bryan Vaughn said, nodding, looking at the sky, drinking his beer.
“You have any children?” I asked.
“I did. Two daughters.” He shook his head. “The oldest, Donna, she committed suicide at thirteen. Over a boy who dumped her. Slit her wrists and neck, I found her that night in the tub, same day I found two dead children in a car while on the job.” He said this so calmly, like he was reading a report of someone else’s life. “That was the day I quit homicide,” he added. “My youngest, Rachel, she left home at nineteen, and I haven’t heard from her since. That was ten years ago. She hates me and I don’t know why. Something about being a cop. A lot of anger in that girl. I don’t know if she’s alive or dead, she’ll never contact me or her mother, this I know, so I figure …” He didn’t finish. His voice had cracked.
I felt weird. I couldn’t imagine a future without Matthew and Jessica. “I’m sorry.”
“Hell, I’ve gotten over it,” he said. I didn’t believe him.
“Ellen hasn’t. That’s why she likes books so much. Books are always the same. They’re always with you. Those are her words.″