The Legend of Mickey Tussler (3 page)

“Well?” Clarence asked. “What did you say you were doing in these here parts?”

“Baseball,” Arthur replied, wiping the moisture from his right eye on his shirtsleeve. “I work for the Milwaukee Brewers. I'm here to scout a local kid.”

“No kidding? Hey, Molly,” Clarence bellowed. “Did you hear that?”

A tiny woman with long brown hair and a faint smile entered the room, carrying a tray on which rested a sweating pitcher of lemonade. She was much younger than Clarence. She walked with her shoulders slightly hunched, as if each step were a painful deliberation. He recognized the look in her eyes—it was Mickey's. She moved carefully around her husband, like a frightened puppy negotiating a dangerous intersection. Her gentleness and timidity were incongruous with everything else he had experienced thus far.

“Pardon the intrusion, ma'am,” Arthur said, removing his hat. “I had a little car trouble.”

“Not at all, sir.” She placed a glass on the cluttered table in front of him. “Guests are always welcome in our home.” She poured the lemonade and stood uneasily next to her husband.

“Say, before I use your telephone, do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Well, I reckon that ought to be all right. Shoot, Mr. Murphy. What's eating at you?”

“Mickey's got quite an arm. I was watching him hurl those crab apples across your property. He ever play any baseball?”

Clarence laughed incredulously. His voice became louder and even more overbearing.
“Baseball?”
he mocked. “You want Mickey to play
baseball
? Now, what in tarnation is a baseball team gonna do with a retard? Huh?”

“I don't understand.”

The farmer was scratching his beard. His amusement brought forth a smile, foul and yellow.

“What my husband meant to say, Mr. Murphy, is that Mickey is a little—”

“I said exactly what I meant to say, woman,” Clarence barked, raising his hand in mock attack. “Don't you be correcting me. He's a retard. Ain't much use to us on the farm and probably would be even less useful to you. Tits on a bull. That's what that boy is.”

Molly frowned.

“Look, Mr. Tussler, I mean no disrespect, but I think your son has an extraordinary talent. I watched him out there.”

“Now, what kind of a country fool you take me for? Huh? You watched him? What, for two minutes? He was smashing apples to mix in with the pig slop. That boy ain't got no talent. He can't find his own behind with two hands.”

Arthur stood up. His eyes were bothering him again. “May I use your telephone?”

Molly led Arthur into the small kitchen. Off to the side, next to the pantry, was a kerosene heater. It was old and, by the looks of it, barely functioning. The smell ran together with the pungent odor of cabbage cooking on the stove.

“Here you are, Mr. Murphy,” the woman said softly. “I'll leave you to your business.”

Arthur dialed Dennison's office and explained the mishap. As he detailed the events, he could hear Molly and Clarence exchanging words in the other room.

“Why do you have to talk about him like that Clarence? Why?”

“Don't you question me now, woman,” he fired back. “We got to face what we got here. I don't got to sugarcoat nothin' for nobody.”

“The man says Mickey's got talent.”

“Mr. Murphy is a city boy. Don't know shit from Shinola.”

“But, Clarence, why can't we just—”

“Hush up, woman, ya hear? That's enough lip from you. Get back in the kitchen and finish fixing what it is you're fixing.”

Arthur had finished talking to Dennison when Molly returned to the kitchen. “Thank you, ma'am,” he said. “Much obliged.” She would not look at him, just passed by, head down, chin resting on her chest.

He put his hat back on his head and started for the door. Clarence had taken a seat in the rocker and was whittling a piece of wood with a small knife.

“Did ya get through all right to your friend there, Mr. Murphy?”

“Yes, yes, I did. They're sending someone for me right away.”

“Well, you can set yourself down here for a spell until they come for ya.” Murph cringed at the thought. “If it's all the same, Mr. Tussler, I'd just as soon wait outside. But before I go, I'd like to make you an offer.”

“How's that?”

“An offer. You know, money.”

“Mr. Murphy, a phone call ain't but just a couple of pennies. That's all right.”

Murph glanced to the side and smiled. “Well, Clarence, I'd be happy to pay for the call. I insist. But you misunderstood me. I'm talking about Mickey.”

The farmer stood up. Molly came back quietly and listened by the doorway, out of view.

“Come again?”

Shit, what did he have to lose? Murph had no idea if this kid could really cut it on the diamond, but given the situation, how bad could it be?

“I'll pay you—thirty-five dollars—if you will let me sign Mickey up for a tryout. Just a tryout. No big deal. It's just a formality, really. He'll come with me, back to Milwaukee, and stay with the rest of the fellas on the team. We'll be able to give him a real good look.”

Clarence was smiling. All at once the abrasive farmer was juggling crowding thoughts.

“I can assure you both, it won't be a big deal,” Murph continued. “He'll be with me the entire time and should be back in a few days.”

A loud sound, something like pots and pans crashing against each other, dashed the air.

“Now hold here, Mr. Murphy,” Molly interrupted, as she emerged out of hiding. “You don't know anything about Mickey. He's not what you think. He's special. You don't know him. At all. You can't take him with you.”

Clarence looked as though he would explode. “Pipe down, Molly,” he thundered. “Don't go starting a row. Let the man finish. He was talking money with me.”

“I'm not trying to start a row, Clarence. I appreciate the offer, Mr. Murphy. Really. It's nice that you like our boy. But it is just out of the question.” Molly continued to duck the menacing looks Clarence was shooting.

“Please don't worry, Mrs. Tussler,” Murph interrupted. “Really. It's all legit. I have papers, and everything.”

“Pay her no mind, Mr. Murphy,” Clarence demanded, shooting Molly a piercing look. “I'll fix her later.”

She frowned again and left the room, defeated and bothered by the transparent reversal of her husband's mood. Arthur watched the conquered woman, her hands in her pockets, feet shuffling quietly, as her silhouette vanished around the corner. Then he turned to face the room once again. The slovenly farmer was smiling at him.

“Now, Mr. Murphy,” he asked through narrowed lids, “you was saying?”

Michael James Tussler, “Mickey,” was born on a frigid evening in February, when the clouds had gathered in clumps across a gray, melancholy sky, bringing a thickening darkness and premature night to an already beleaguered town. Tree limbs and rooftops, heavy with the previous night's storm, frowned at the thickening white veil that had just begun its descent. All around, stray lines of yellow light escaped from frosty windows of the surrounding farmhouses and slid across the icy enclaves, exposing the obvious signs of distress— evergreen boughs hunched mournfully over paralyzed automobiles that had fallen victim to the natural boundaries of the landscape, which had been erased by waves of drifting snow. Barren apple saplings, tiny limbs peeking out helplessly from underneath a suffocating shroud of white. A lonely schoolhouse. It was as if the universe had suddenly sat up and cried out plaintively in defiant opposition to the new life that was destined for hardship and uncompromising cruelty.

At first, everything seemed normal. He was a beautiful baby boy, like every other. He grabbed his toes. Gurgled and cooed. He was the light of his mother's life. But before long this newfound bliss was betrayed, in a burst of consternation for the little boy. Molly always told herself that God would never give her more than she could handle. Like the man she married. She had grown up in the small town of Bakersfield. She lived according to small-town rules and adopted a small-town sensibility. The concerns of most Bakersfield folk were limited to agricultural. It was their livelihood. Good crops meant good living. And when the harvest was plentiful, and life was smiling upon them, they kicked back and drank beer and talked about hunting and fishing and how the city folk were stuck-up fools, misguided in their frivolous love for theater and music and all things cosmopolitan. Molly was surrounded by that mentality all her life. And although none of the simplicity that plagued the others seemed to run through her veins, she married small-town, as most girls there did. Who knew any better?

On a bright Sunday morning, the kind where the sun seems to be a splash of yellow sponged across a canvas of blue, she first met Clarence. It was the semiannual pancake breakfast held in the St. Agnes auditorium. He was tall and strong. He had a square jaw, rugged and cleft, and broad, hulking shoulders. He also had his own farm.

“Say there, little lady,” he said to her, tugging unctuously at his overall straps. “Ain't you Otis's daughter?”

She clasped her hands behind her back and turned her face away. “Uh, ye—ye—yes. Yes, I am.” Her head was down and her eyes fixed on the errant shoots of straw suspended in his bootlaces. Poor Molly. She was timid and unsure. And she was never comfortable around men, much to the chagrin of her father, who lamented that he would never see the day when his daughter would be claimed.

“Fix yourself up, Molly, for chrissakes,” he always urged. “No man worth a lick ever looks twice at no mousy girl.”

Molly had had one or two other opportunities with men when she was younger—but nothing had ever materialized. And as time elapsed, thirty approached like a ruthless executioner.

“Seems to me a purty little thing like you ought to be keeping company with a fella,” Clarence persisted that day. She was sort of interested. It had been a long time since she'd heard such complimentary words. And she had grown tired of watching all the other girls get married and begin families of their own. She decided to give it a chance.

But little things got in the way. Little things bothered her, such as his long, bushy sideburns, reddish brown lightning bolts that angled toward his chin. His breath and teeth were equally repulsive, both tainted by the potency of tobacco juice. She managed to tolerate it for a while. They took a few walks together and even shared a soda once or twice. But his visage had grown repugnant and she could no longer feign interest in the pedestrian things he loved to prattle on about. He continued to call on her. She just kept avoiding him. Despite his persistence, Clarence found himself chasing a dream.

Things sort of righted themselves until Otis caught wind of Molly's withdrawal. “Goddammit girl, what in tarnation you thinking? You ain't getting no younger. And you ain't exactly turning too many heads neither. Now I now that there boy ain't no movie star, but by cracky he's got his own farm. His own farm, Molly. I reckon you best think twice, missy.”

“But, Papa, I really don't—”

“You really don't what?” he fired back. “Like him?”

She was biting her lip. Tears formed behind her eyes but she refused to cry. “We don't have anything in common, Papa,” she pleaded. “All he talks about is pigs and fishing and—”

Otis had his arms folded. His eyes were narrowed and he was chewing on the end of his pipe. “That there's yer problem, little lady. Ya know that? You think yer better than everyone else. Always fooling around with that clarinet and reading all the time. Poetry? What's the use in that? Nobody, nobody worth a damn wants to talk about that.”

Not long after that conversation, Molly and Clarence were married. In the beginning, it wasn't all bad. She could recall happily riding next to him in his truck, his massive arm stretched across her chest each time he slammed on the brakes to avoid smashing into a vehicle in front of them. Her heart was timorous, but somehow she felt safe. As if he would protect her. Love her. What a mistake. One year later, she found herself living with a monster—a slovenly, bilious, self-righteous dolt—and living with the steady pulse of regret, forever beating. She prayed a lot and convinced herself that it was all just part of divine providence, another phase of God's plan for her. It comforted her to some extent, especially when she felt the pull of the world tearing at her resolve. But at many moments all the justification in the world was just not enough, such as the night he broke her nose with his open hand when he caught her playing the clarinet instead of tending to the wash.

“Now I'm sorry that this had to happen,” he told her later on. “But maybe this here will learn ya not to ask fer no trouble.”

All she could do was sob and nod her head. And then there was the whole thing with Mickey—a pressing concern that would not go away. Something about the child's demeanor—the way he was—did not seem right. She was powerless to identify it. Attach a name to it.

She tried to forget. Often, she and Clarence would playfully joke about the size of the boy, particularly his head.

“We must have us a regular Elber Einsteen,” he mocked. Truth be told, he was more interested in the boy's musculature. Clarence was so proud of the child's unusually large size, tickled by visions of his strapping young son working the family farm. He saw it as some sort of accolade, a living testimony to his own virility.

Molly never gave much thought to that. The idiosyncratic behaviors, however, crept into her consciousness and rattled around with blinding regularity. It was the lack of declarative pointing—Mickey's inability to point his finger at objects to get another's attention. It was the child's vacant stare, and his failure to simulate real-life scenarios during play. It was the incessant rocking, back and forth.