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The roll continues into the next
game, but this one has more to do with defense. Sparked by Billy’s example, the
outfielders have taken to backing each other up, which allows the front man to
play aggressor. Pablo dives for a line drive and misses it, but finds Phillie
right behind him, gathering the hop and holding the runner to a single. Two
innings later, Pablo dives at the same spot and gets it, soaring so high it
looks like he’s gone off a springboard. Merzy joins the fun with a ball
directly in front of him. He launches a gleeful swan dive, manages only to trap
the ball, but performs a body-roll throw to get the force at second. All these
bonus outs are pure cheesecake to David, who responds to the challenge by
turning himself into a hockey goalie, stopping three shots up the middle, one
to start a double play.
Come the sixth inning, David is
nursing a 7-0 shutout, unheard-of in slowpitch. The first batter lifts an easy
fly to Merzy, but the play produces an unexpected offshoot: Billy drops to a
knee, inspecting his left leg. He waves and calls out “Derek!” then limps to
the foul line as Derek covers his position.
Their opponents get a couple of
singles, and David’s shutout is looking fragile. The next batter hits a
comebacker, but David bobbles it and has to settle for the out at first. Their
cleanup hitter strokes a long fly to right. Derek tracks it in the textbook
style, running back and toward the line as he eyes the ball over his right
shoulder. He does it so well, in fact, that he arrives early – which for Derek
is not necessarily a good thing. With time to think, he begins to look
unsteady, as if he were made of paper.
During the course of the flight,
David jogs to the dugout, and is sitting on the bench when the ball smacks into
Derek’s glove.
Lemke jogs over from first and says,
“You know something we don’t?”
David smiles. “They call him Scary
Derek.”
Derek arrives from right field and
Lemke shouts out “Scary Derek!”
Thus are nicknames handed down.
David wanders plateward to make the
official substitution. He returns to find Billy at the end of the bench,
holding his leg straight out.
“Damnedest thing. I was just planting
a foot to back up Merzy and I swear, it was like somebody threw a rock and hit
me in the calf. I was actually looking around to see who did it. Further
investigation, of course, reveals that it was an inside job.”
“Damn. Pulled muscle. And I don’t
have any ice.”
Abbey appears at the dugout fence.
“We better get you home. I’ll pull up the truck.”
“Well it’s just another inning…”
“No, I’m with Abbey,” says David.
“Let’s get some ice on it as soon as possible. And ibuprofen, if you got it.”
“Alas,” says Billy. “I am outvoted.
Go ahead, Abbey. I’ll start crawling toward the road. Nice catch, Derek!”
Derek gives him a wave, and grabs
Pablo’s Easton for another at-bat. David takes up the scorebook, picking up a
snatch of Billy’s grumbling as he limps away: “…never shoulda gotten so damn
old.”
Abbey lives on the harbor side of the
peninsula. On clear days she can see Mt. Rainier, a tiny Mozartean wig on the
green line of the Cascades. The house is a modest prefab ranch, but the front
accords a long covered porch that David has always envied. The yard offers
signs of feminine residence: a whirligig roadrunner, his legs circling in the
wind; packed flowerboxes hung from the porch railing; an enormous birdfeeder
across from the kitchen window. The only masculine marker is the knocker, a
brass duck’s head that slams against a receiving plate. Abbey opens the door,
dangling two beers on a plastic ring.
“Now that you mention it, a beer
sounds great!”
“Are you injured?”
“No.”
“Then forget it. Come on in.”
“How’s the patient?”
“I think all the excitement and drugs
have made him sleepy. Were you intent on a face-to-face?”
“No. Just checking up.”
“Ah. Wait here.”
She heads down the hall with the
beers, leaving him to roam the living room, a clutter of autumn-colored walls
and bookshelves. The star attraction is a sunset panorama of the Chicago
skyline four feet wide, two feet high, signed with one of those limited-edition
numbers, 123/2000. David takes a
visual walk along the waterfront and arrives at a small copper frame of leaves
and acorns. The paper has two horizontal creases, as if it’s been mailed; the
letters are inconsistently inked, indicating the use of a manual typewriter
(the historian/detective is everpresent).
Because I am My Mother’s Daughter
I scrape the innards from peanut butter jars
until the glass screams for mercy
against the pressure of the knife
Because I am my mother’s daughter,
I choke the life from toothpaste tubes,
coaxing that final evacuation
from their last breath
Soap chips are mashed together into mutant, incestuous life
forms
Bottles of hand lotion and ketchup are stood on their heads
to drain
their vital fluids
All this because her mother was served stewed cabbage and
boiled
potatoes as a child while dairy cows grazed in nearby fields
At my grandma’s bedside, as the ends of her S-shaped spine
reach around to try and touch each other,
we listen to their lowing, and she tries to forget
the taste of sweet cream she never had in her coffee
The name at
the bottom is Abigail Meriwether Saddle.
“Come on,”
says Abbey. “Let me show you something.”
She walks
him outside to an old porch swing of rough-hewn blonde wood. Its backboard
offers three carved figures: the north wind blowing a frosty cloud, Apollo
driving his chariot and, at center, one of those art deco suns with outshooting
rays and a Mona Lisa smile.
“Abbey! It’s
gorgeous.”
“Family
heirloom.” She sits down in the bohemian manner, folding a foot under her leg.
“Poor thing was stacked up in the tool shed ever since we got here. I finally
found a woodworker in Oyhut to strip it and stain it. Join me.”
Sitting next
to a one-armed woman presents certain strategic considerations, but David is
distracted by the way that Abbey said “we” – meaning “Randy and I” – without so
much as a stutter. Map-wise, she is east of the sun, so he ends up west, her
stub between them, under the flap of a Run Like Hell T-shirt.
“I was
reading your poem. It’s great.”
Abbey smiles
“I thought you were. Thanks.”
“I generally
dislike modern poems. They too often contain many beautiful words that say
absolutely nothing. Your poem,
however. Decades of blood history in a handful of stanzas. And the words – the
placement, the usage. As if you chiseled it from a block of marble.”
She laughs.
“I worked on that fucking thing my entire freshman year. I took it out every
Friday, changed a comma, switched a gerund to an inifinitive – switched it
back, put it back in the drawer. When I went three Fridays without any changes,
I sent it off. My first published poem. Many Mountains Moving.”
“Jesus. Even
I’ve heard of that one. Your
classmates must have hated you.”
She widens
her eyes for emphasis. “I never told them. At the end of my sophomore year, I
dropped it rather casually into my bio for the student anthology. That way,
they had an entire summer to just get
over it.”
“Wow. I’m
picking up a hint of animosity.”
“Writers are
by and large introverted mindfucking assholes who will do anything to piss all
over their peers. Do you know how much time I spend unwinding the preposterous
notions my students have picked up from self-declared experts? ‘It ain’t poetry
unless it rhymes.’ ‘The present tense is just a gimmick.’ During finals week,
my star pupil declared that exclamation points have been officially banned from
narrative fiction! I’m trying to open
their minds, these fuckers are trying to slam them shut!”
“Wow,” says
David. “I’ve never seen you so
pissed.” (“It’s turning me on,” he doesn’t say.)
“This is why
I hang out with musicians and history teachers.” She reaches into a wooden box
beneath Apollo and pulls out a pack of cigarettes.
“Scandalous!”
“Oh give it
up, Mr. Clovebreath. Here.” She hands him a stick, lights them both, and
exhales in a zig-zag, coating the horizon. The smoke dissipates to reveal a field
of stars, losing ground to a Viking fog.
“During my
coming-out period, when I was finally ready to ditch the grief, I would come
out here every evening and allow myself one cigarette’s worth of heart-rending
sobbery, and then I would see about getting back to the present.”
“Hmm. I
guess I was doing the same. In a manly, non-sobbing kind of way.”
Abbey
chuckles. “And here I thought you were just being an effete poseur.”
“I knew it!”
“The kids,
they know these things. But enough of this! Did you get your shutout?”
David
laughs, releasing a cloud of smoke. “Those poor schmucks felt so snakebit, they
hit three straight one-hoppers back to the mound. It was pathetic.”
“Good.
Billy’ll like that.”
Abbey angles
herself so she can rest her head on David’s shoulder. They smoke in silence as
the fog grows closer.
“That name
on your poem.”
“Yeah. I
don’t think I’ll allow anyone to call me ‘Abigail’ again until I’m seventy.”
“No.
Meriwether.”
“Family
name.”
“And?”
“Yes.”
“No!”
Abbey tosses
her cigarette into the yard and transitions to teacher-voice as she walks her
fingers up David’s chest.
“As you
know, class, Meriwether Lewis got his
first name from the maternal side of his family. And I am related to him.”
“Holy shit.
You’re like… royalty.”
Abbey takes
the cigarette from David’s mouth and flicks it away. She brings her face
dangerously close to his.
“Then treat me like it.”
David leans
forward and keeps going, propelled to his feet by a wave of guilt and habit.
Abbey tumbles to the bed of the swing and lies there horizontal, as she berates
him in a whispered shout.
“Christ,
David! Stop being a saint. Your fat wife is making you work your ass off so she
can stay fat. I don’t want anything
from you. Seriously. But if you and I are alone on a dark porch with a
fantastic alibi sleeping in the back of room with a bag of ice on his leg…
Fuck! Allow the both of us a few measly moments of pleasure.”
The fog has
arrived, adding to their camouflage. He paces toward the front door.
“David?”
David stops.
His cigarette has landed on the bird feeder, a tiny ship on a sea of cracked
seed. He picks it up, takes a long drag and hurls it into the yard. He walks
back to the swing, kneels on the porch and covers Abbey’s lips with his.
Photo by MJV
Poem by Anne Gelhaus
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