The Legend of Mickey Tussler (19 page)

“Fuck you, McGinty, and the white horse you rode in on. He left by himself,
after
I saw him—and you know it. I was gonna take him home, but he split. What did you expect me to do? That's it. Now you take back all that malarkey that you've been spewing in here, you little shit stain, or I'll put you through that goddamned wall!”

Lefty rushed toward Pee Wee. His face was red with a violence that exploded once Pee Wee started swinging wildly at him, heat radiating like light from his clothes.

“You left him in there, you stupid asshole!” Pee Wee bawled, struggling to break free from Boxcar, who had stepped in between them. “Holy shit, what kind of scumbag are you?”

“Relax, both of you,” the burly catcher commanded, each fist filled with a shirt collar. “This doesn't solve anything. You heard what Murph said. We have to work together. We have to help each other find out what happened to Mickey. The rest of it—blame, whose fault it is—that's all wasted energy.”

The skirmish now diffused, Murph proceeded with his speech, although he was having a difficult time dismissing the new thoughts in his head that had blossomed in the wake of Pee Wee's accusations.

“So we'll spend today searching the immediate area and surrounding towns. Ask anyone you see if they have seen him. Christ, it shouldn't be too hard to find him.”

“What about tomorrow, Murph?” Danvers asked. “How are we supposed to play?”

Murph wondered the same thing, but his mind did not allow him to shape the words. He knew what his answer had to be. “Well, the game goes on, Woody. You know that. Baseball waits for no man. It's part of what is so glorious about the game. But hopefully, by tomorrow, he'll be back, and this will all become nothing more than a bad dream.” Murph sighed as he surveyed the room. “Any more questions, fellas?”

Silent stares provided the response.

Boxcar sat at his locker, gripping his bat, and playing over in his head like a newsreel everything that had happened the previous night at The Bucket. He was testing the possibilities, but sitting there, struggling against this urgent need to know, it all became this jumbled mess inside his head. He looked over at Pee Wee, miffed at him for bringing Mickey to a place like that. God, it was just plain stupid. He wanted to put his hands on his shoulders and shake him. Make him realize how none of this would ever have happened had it not been for his poor judgment. But Boxcar, like everyone else, saw that the man was in emotional ruins. What good would stepping on him do now?

Of course, Boxcar was angry at himself as well, for playing the role of enabler. So many times that night he could have stepped in—should have stepped in—but for some reason, he had not seen the need. The whiskey, the girl, the predatory crowd. It was so clear a day later. Mickey had no business rubbing elbows with the motley crew at The Bucket. And Mickey should never have accepted anything from Lefty. Boxcar knew he'd screwed up.

Sitting there that morning, twisting the bat handle in his massive hands, Boxcar turned his attention to the self-interested pitcher who sat there that morning, unlike the others, seemingly impervious to the tragedy that had befallen them. While the rest of them were making preparations for a day of frantic searching, Lefty malingered at his locker, folding his stirrups and working some smudges off the tops of his spikes. Boxcar's eyes narrowed and his face burned. He got up, placed his bat in his locker, grabbed his bag, and headed for the door, stopping just long enough to whisper in Lefty's ear. “You better not have had anything to do with this, you scurvy little bastard.”

The boy awoke in a crumpled heap that morning when the sun's fingers poked mercilessly at his eyes and the metal trash-can cover had become too painful to remain underneath his head. His clothes were torn and smelled bad. His stomach hurt and his mouth was dry, as if he had stuffed inside his cheeks too many spoonfuls of his aunt Marcy's homemade sponge cake. And his right hand really hurt. But worse than all of that was why.
Why?
That bothered him most, until the word
where
popped into his head. Where was he? He recalled very little. He vaguely remembered a girl named Laney. Where was she now? And little glasses. He remembered little glasses—fourteen in all—with dark liquid that burned his stomach. He sat up, with some difficulty, and looked down at his hand. It was bloody. And the fingers did not line up the way they always had. His heart thumped loudly. He began to think that he was reading about someone else—that all of this “jumble” as he sometimes called it was not happening to him. He had all but convinced himself when his hand really started to hurt. Then he knew it wasn't someone else; it was him.

He looked hard at everything around him. He was not sure that he had ever seen his current surroundings, much less belonged in them, and feared that he would continue for an unnamed time in a state in which he was simply a solitary puzzle piece, wayward, discarded, in an unknown, hostile geography.

His thoughts began to boil over.
Where was Laney? Baseball practice starts at eight. Why are my fingers all twisted? Oscar needs to be fed. The smell of my clothes is burning my nose. There is garbage everywhere. Where am I?
The thoughts just kept coming, wave after wave, and filled his head until he could no longer house all of them at once. He pulled his knees in close to his chest and began to rock.

“ ‘Slowly, silently, now the moon, walks the night in her silver shoon … ' ”

Miles away, life on the Tussler farm kept moving forward in laborious ritual. Molly had lulled herself into a tired, dreamlike numbness, in which she felt nothing but the tiny wisps of grass stirring restlessly at her ankles. Emptying the slop buckets, her mind floated vaguely on the unfulfilled adage that
good things come to those who wait.
How much longer would it be? And would it arrive before death? She felt the bewildering sensation that somehow she had already died. Her body, though, as cruel as it seemed, was forced to live on. She ate, what little she could, and slept, some nights better than others. And of course, she rose each morning to face yet another day of toiling on the farm. This “life” of hers just went on. But despite the living, she felt this prevailing sense of disassociation, connected to nothing but feelings of exposure and alarm. The only thing that came close to bending her scowl into a smile was the thought of Mickey, free from the stifling world behind their wooden fences. It was as if a part of her had broken free, which is why when she received the call from Murph and thought that she had lost the only thing in her life that mattered, she prayed that death would be swift and reward her for her patience.

“Please, Molly, please do not panic,” he said, trying to console her. “Don't talk crazy. Mickey needs you. I know we'll find him. It's nothing. Really. I just thought you should know.”

When the sun rose that day, the same searing yellow disk that had poked at Mickey only an hour before, Murph awoke at last from his fitful sleep. His eyes opened and surveyed from his bed the oblong splashes pressed against the wall, but his vision remained locked inside. For a fleeting moment, he thought that it had perhaps all been some hellish dream, that Mickey would be sitting at the breakfast table as usual, fully dressed, spikes and all, eating apple buttermilk coffee cake with a grapefruit spoon. The idea germinated only briefly, then died with the unmistakable sounds outside his window— reverberations of a new day, one without Mickey.

He suddenly felt an emptiness in his stomach. This longing grew from deep within him, an unremitting craving, like the need of a famished man for food and drink.

He rose from his bed and stumbled to the bathroom, dragging his feet across a floor already warm with a seasonal August heat. The water in the shower was cool but somehow bothersome, beating hard against his skin like tiny hammers chipping away at a crumbling edifice. He rolled his shoulders in mild protest, then adjusted the temperature and stood there, languishing now in a rising cloud of steam, wondering what the hell he was going to do.

He thought of Molly, and how the news had seized her. He marveled at how he could feel her anguish so many miles away. She was so beaten, seemingly beyond repair, and expressed not only this acute desperation but a pressing fear should Clarence find out. As she conveyed this feeling to him, she realized herself that she wasn't sure what frightened her more—Clarence's wrath, which she knew all too well could take many forms, or his likely indifference. Her words echoed in Murph's ears and bounced off the tiled walls as if they had just been spoken. He knew he had to see her as soon as possible.

The day was miserable. The field looked to be sick, frying under the oppressive sun. Murph blundered across the diamond, which seemed now to be starkly barren, and into the clubhouse, where he took refuge in his office. On the shelf behind his desk was a picture of him from his playing days, yellow and dog-eared, sandwiched between several books. He picked up the photograph, smiling faintly at some of the more pleasant reminiscences—Rookie of the Year, 1924—Batting Title, 1925—pennant-clinching home run that same year. God, things were good. He could still hear the crowd. He ran through every other memorable thing that had happened to him and actually began to feel a little relief, until McNally and the bitter specter of how it all ended slipped into his consciousness and dashed the nostalgic jaunt.

He had half hoped that he would arrive at the ballpark to discover that Boxcar or Pee Wee or one of the other guys had found Mickey, or that the sheriff had pulled some strings and uncovered where he was. No luck. He was to be alone with his thoughts, with only the faint sound of Matheson puttering around in the equipment closet for company. Murph stared around the room out of strange, black eyes, trying to fill the daunting minutes.

He busied himself with all the usual game-day duties—pitching charts, lineup cards, game balls—but he struggled as this impregnable emptiness pursued him. Behind a cluttered desk that matched the disorder of his thoughts, he tried to picture what Mickey was doing— if he was hurt, or lost, or God forbid worse. The boy was so pure, so simple. How could he ever survive?

And then, like a bolt from the blue, the ordeal was over. Sheriff Rosco shuffled in, Mickey by his side, and everything was right again. The boy was worn. His eyes were barely open and his breathing was quiet. His left arm dangled lifelessly by his side, and the other was crumpled at a right angle, pressed tightly against his chest.

“Found him in an alley, just off to the side of the road, 'bout three miles from The Bucket. He was just sitting there, talking to himself. The same thing, over and over. Not quite sure what it all means. But it looks as though he took a pretty good beating.”

Murph stood dumbfounded, his eyes blinking randomly. “Did you catch the guys who did it? I mean, what the hell happened?”

“Don't reckon I know,” Rosco said. “He won't say nothing I can make sense of.”

Murph walked over toward Mickey. His spirits, which had risen dramatically with Mickey's appearance, fell markedly when Murph noticed the boy's right hand, bloodied and mangled.

“Oh, Mickey,” Murph gasped. “I'm sorry. Jesus, boy, what happened to you?”

Mickey just stood there absently. Under the steadying influence of Murph's hand on his shoulder, Mickey struggled to form words that would just not come. He stood, inanimate as the big, moldy poles in the locker room, his eyes clouded windows to some peculiar expression, silent and far away, before he finally spoke.

“ ‘And moveless fish in the water gleam, by silver reeds in a silver stream.'”

Murph got up and paced nervously, sat back down, got up again, then sat once more.

“We've got to get him to a doctor, Sheriff,” Murph said. “I want him looked at.”

“Whatever you like,” Rosco replied. “Let's go.”

Matheson, who had been observing the entire scene quietly, said suddenly, “I'll go with the kid Murph. You stay. Without you here, the rest of the guys don't have a row to hoe.”

With Mickey on his way, Murph's thoughts turned to more pressing issues.
The Giants,
he thought to himself.
How are we going to play the Giants today?
He put his hands on the great stacks of papers towering across his desk and shuffled through, not in search of anything in particular, but just to satisfy his nervous appetite. He had just decided to check to see if Larry had outfitted the lockers the day before when Boxcar came in.

Murph hardly recognized him. He was standing in the doorway with his palm to his head, his glassy eyes fixed on a spot on the floor in front of him. His hair was messed, and he looked like only half of the previous night's inebriation had worn off.

“He's back, Box.” A nervous chill climbed Murph's body.

“Mickey? He's back? When? How?”

Murph blew his nose and discarded the tissue basketball-style in the wastebasket just across the way. “Pull up a chair. I'll tell you what I know.”

They sat together in Murph's office, talking casually between intermittent silences, trying to mend the fractured face of things.

“I should have been there, Murph,” Boxcar said, hanging his head in utter dejection. “I saw the whole thing happening—and should have known he was in over his head.”

“Don't,” Murph said. “Don't do that to yourself. All of us played a role, Box.”

“But I'm the captain, Murph. I was there. Shit, these guys rely on me. I know that sounds boastful, but it's true.”

It
was
true, and Murph knew it too. He was so thankful for Boxcar. Boxcar was the closest thing he had to a real assistant coach. Sure, Matheson was a good baseball man. Nobody had been around the game longer. But age had stolen his effectiveness, leaving Murph to work essentially alone. So he really valued Boxcar's passion, experience, and equanimity. On so many occasions, Murph had deferred to the veteran catcher when unforeseen circumstances had rattled his cage and clouded his vision. Boxcar just had a way about him. All the guys respected him. Sometimes, when the situation necessitated it, he sat them down and lectured; on other occasions, when rational discourse fell on deaf ears, he took a more physical approach, allowing them to feel what he was saying; he could even resolve some problems with nothing more than a stare. True, his skills had diminished some with age, and he was beginning to tire a bit, but Raymond “Boxcar” Miller was still a presence, and even though he knew it was asking a lot, Murph was going to need him now more than ever.