Mudville (25 page)

So it wasn't a wolf that left a mark on Sturgis, I think. It was his dad.

“What's going on with Roy?” someone asks.

“Search me,” says another voice.

I'm shaken awake by Miggy. He's with Google and Anthony and, of course, his shadow, Carlos. I sit up and rub my eyes.

“We want to practice,” he says.

“What time is it?”

“Evening.” He shrugs. I see the shadows are getting longer in the outfield.

“Will you pitch batting practice?” Miggy asks. “Just an hour or so?”

“Nah,” I tell them. “If you can't hit now, one more hour's not going to help.”

Miggy nods and speaks a bit to the other boys in Spanish. Google answers, and Miggy laughs.

“He says he wants practice dodging bullets,” he explains.

“We'll probably need that,” I agree.

“We're going to get killed, aren't we?” asks Carlos.

“Probably,” I admit.

Google says something in Spanish again, and Miggy translates.

“He says he can't wait,” he tells me.

I head home, skip supper (I'm still pretty full from lunch), and go to bed early. Exhaustion wins out over insomnia, and I finally get a good night's sleep.

I do have bad dreams, though. In one, I oversleep and show up late to the game. When I get there, we're already
trailing by a score of twenty-three to nothing, and the Sinister Bend team is in full Dakota war dress, looking like extras from an old Western. In another, my mom stands up in the bleachers, just like the woman in
The Natural.
Sturgis throws a ball at her and knocks her head clean off. The crowd cheers, and the umpire hands him a giant stuffed panda.

I blame the bad dreams on stress and too much chili dog.

When I wake up, Sturgis is long gone. So is my dad. Somebody's scrawled “Good luck!” on the marker board and drawn a smiley face in a baseball cap. Either it's my dad and he means it or it's Sturgis and he's being sarcastic.

I can smell burned frankfurter two blocks before I get to the ballpark, and I figure my dad has already set up his hot dog tent. I hope he's just testing out the equipment and not selling whatever it is I smell to customers.

He gives me a friendly wave as I walk by.

People begin to fill the bleachers as we practice. They clap and chatter as we take batting practice and shag fly balls. The fielding warm-up is crisp and steady. Maybe Bobby Fitz was right. We just needed a day off.

The Sinister Bend team shows up an hour later. They're wearing their Pirates uniforms and new yellow caps with
SB
drawn on the front, the
S
hooking the
B.
No two are the same. Most of the logos are misshapen or out of proportion. Sturgis still wears his old cap.

“Hey, let's get off the field so those guys can warm up,” I tell my team. We gather our stuff and head for the dugout.

I pass Sturgis as he heads out on the field.

“Hey, Coz,” I say, offering a hand.

He trots by me without a word, his game face on.

A few of us visit the hot dog tent while the Sinister Bend team gets ready. My dad is grilling up hot dogs by the dozen. “Free hot dogs for players!” he announces, and starts lining up the counter with paper baskets, each with a hot dog, a little pile of chips, and a dill pickle. We all take one, and a
couple of us take two. Not even my dad can mess up hot dogs that much, even if he does offer people sliced olives and crushed pineapple as optional toppings.

“Use both,” he tells us. “I call it the Caribbean!” My stomach is unsettled enough without subjecting it to experimental hot dogs, so I go with my usual dog, mustard and chopped onions. Google tries it just like that, though, with olives and pineapple, and loves it. He compliments my dad in Spanish and makes a thumbs-up sign.

We carry our hot dogs back to the dugout while spectators cheer and reach out to slap my hand in greeting. The bleachers are already packed. More people are gathered beyond the outfield fence.

Channel 4 from Sutton is there to tape highlights of the game for the evening news. A radio van is there, too, with bullhorn-style speakers on the roof. They're going to announce the game later, but for now classic rock is piping out of the speakers. Sturgis stops practicing and talks to the DJ. It's his kind of music, so I'm not surprised.

Bobby tries to inspire us with a few words about the long, noble tradition of Moundville baseball. We even do a little pregame ritual, stacking our hands and shouting, “Moundville! Moundville! Let's go!”

The announcer calls the Sinister Bend team's names first, to scattered applause. Then he reads our names as we come out of the dugout. I feel a thrill when I'm announced as catcher and team captain, batting fourth in the order, and
the crowd goes nuts. It's a tremendous feeling, like being in the big leagues. I try to find my mom among the sea of faces, but I can't see her.

We run out onto the field to take our positions. A local singer belts out the national anthem. The mayor throws out the first pitch, and I have to move about a foot right of the plate to catch it on the bounce.

Finally, it's time to play baseball. The roar of the crowd grows louder as Rita throws a few warm-up pitches, and the first Sinister Bend hitter stands on deck and takes a few practice swings. When the batter steps into the box and takes the first pitch for a strike, I wonder if the entire town will simply be swept up into the sky by pure joy and excitement.

The excitement doesn't last long, though. The first batter raps the second pitch into shallow center field for a hit, and the next batter singles to left. Rita panics, walks a batter, and then gives up a double to Peter “the Bat” Labatte. Just like that, the score is three to nothing, and there's still no-body out.

It feels like the inning might go on forever, the Sinister Bend team piling up runs until all of us are old and gray. The crowd gets restless, muttering encouragement that sounds a bit sharper as Rita falls behind the next hitter.

I see P.J. getting careless, taking too long a lead off of second base. I catch Kazuo's attention and fire the ball to him. We have P.J. picked off. The crowd goes wild as he runs back and forth and the ball is tossed back and forth in front of him.

Please don't goof this up! I think just as the runner tries
to dive past Google and touch the bag. Google applies the tag, and a tremendous cheer goes up, shaking the ballpark. The radio van blasts a song called “Been Caught Stealing,” with dogs barking, and the Moundville fans join in, barking and stomping on the bleachers.

It changes everything. Rita gets her screwball working, and the next two batters ground out. We go back to the dugout trailing by three but feeling better.

When Sturgis goes out to throw his warm-up pitches in the bottom of the inning, the speakers blare an old hard-rock song.

Outlaw from the badlands baby badlands baby.

“That's his dad's song,” says Bobby Fitz. “Ironic, isn't it? I mean, considering what happened to him.”

“What's that?”

“They played that song in Baltimore when Carey Nye came out to pitch. It was his theme song, you know, like Mariano Rivera has with that song about the Sandman. All them pitchers have theme songs now.”

“Of course.” That was why Sturgis went to the radio van. He wanted to put in his request for mound music.

I know the Robinsons are seated right by the dugout, so I pop out.

“Mr. R., can you get the PA guy to play Rita a song? For when she comes to the mound?”

“Sure. Like what?”

“You know music better than I do. Just don't pick any-thing too weird.”

“I have an idea,” he says, squeezing past his wife and eighteen other people to run down the bleachers.

“Nothing weird!” I holler after him.

Sturgis quickly strikes out the side. A few minutes later, we're running back out onto the field. I wonder how we're ever going to score four runs on these guys. The radio van blares another old-time rock-and-roll song:

It's pretty great. The crowd is into it, and Rita is pumped up by it, bouncing around on the mound, throwing her warm-ups with new zip. She gets the first two batters out on ground balls, then strikes out Sturgis to end the inning.

“I can pitch!” she shouts as we go back to the dugout. “Who says I can't pitch? ’Cause I can pitch!”

I lead off in the bottom of the inning. Sturgis throws right at me. I dive, but the ball still clips me in the shoulder. It smarts like anything, and for a split second, I think I'll charge the mound and force-feed him the ball. Instead, I take first, just
hoping we can make him pay for putting the leadoff batter on base.

Instead, he strikes out the side.

“He's so amazing,” Shannon says as Sturgis saunters off the mound, her eyes misty with emotion.

“The boy can pitch,” I agree.

Rita settles down, and for a while, it's a pitchers’ duel.

The Sinister Bend team gets a few base runners but doesn't score any more runs (PJ. ends up three-for-three). We get out of trouble with some good pitches and some good plays on defense. The highlight is a triple play started by Google, but it's taken back by the umps, who decide in retrospect that the in-field fly rule ought to have been called.

There are no highlights on offense. We're hitless through four innings plus. Our only base runners have been on a hit-by-pitch and an error. Nobody's even gotten to second base.

The highlight for the Sinister Bend team is a strikeout by Sturgis, with me at the plate swinging out in front of what I can only describe as a twenty-six. It's got so much heat it leaves burns on my jersey. Sturgis loses his prosthetic ear on the pitch from the effort. He's still out on the mound, swaying like a scarecrow in a windstorm, one-eared and fragile, long after I've dropped my bat and skulked back to the dugout.

Rita is supposed to lead off in the fifth inning.

“I'm going to have Anthony pinch-hit,” I tell her.

“All right,” she says.

“I think I'll have someone else pitch the sixth, too. Get a fresh arm out there.”

“So you don't need me anymore?”

I don't know how to answer that. It's too loaded with meaning.

“You were amazing,” I tell her. She
was
amazing, too, pitching far above her ability on nothing but grit and determination. “But yeah, I guess that means you're done.”

“Okay,” she says casually, setting the bat aside. I can't tell if she's relieved or disappointed. Then she gives me a big hug, squeezing the life out of me. I can't help but wonder if there's a bit more than team camaraderie to it. I'm redder than the stitches on a baseball when I get back to the dugout.

Anthony digs in, staring down Sturgis. He swings past two fastballs but lifts the third over the shortstop's head. The ball bounces on the grass in no-man's-land. Anthony is so stunned he doesn't leave the batter's box right away.

“Run! Run!”

He does at last and gets to first base just in time to beat the throw. The crowd sends up a deafening roar. We have a hit! We have a base hit!

Sturgis stamps on the mound and wheels around to bark at the shortstop for being out of position. The boy shrugs and takes a few steps back.

Peter walks out to the mound. He hasn't had to do too much as their team manager so far. He talks to Sturgis and
calms him down, gives him a friendly pat on the back, and returns to the dugout.

Sturgis fools Miggy on a changeup, striking him out, then stages a long battle with Steve.

Google squints at Sturgis while he pitches to Steve and says something in Spanish.

“He says watch the way the mean boy is breathing,” says Miggy, translating.

“Huh?”

Steve manages to draw a full count before swinging over another junkball and striking out. The crowd groans, then groans again: Anthony has taken off on the pitch and is thrown out trying to steal second. So much for our first base hit of the game.

Google is talking excitedly. Miggy shrugs him off.