The Legend of Mickey Tussler (6 page)

“Why are you crying, Em?” Pee Wee often asked. “What's wrong?”

The answer was always the same. “It's the other kids,” she signed. “Nobody likes me. They look at me funny. Or walk the other way when I'm coming.”

“Come on, Em, give it some time. Once they get to know you, you'll have plenty of friends.”

“I don't think so, Elliot. Nobody wants to talk to someone's hands.”

Murph remembered the bus ride home from Millersport, when he and Pee Wee wound up sharing a seat up front, and Pee Wee told him all about his rough childhood. A pitch-black sky was overhead. The only visible light came like fireflies from distant farmhouses and on the rare occasion when the wheels of the bus rolled past a utility pole with a lamp. Then, for a brief second, the entire cabin would flood with light, and they would momentarily smile but watch helplessly as the white streak rolled gracefully across their faces and up and over the seats, ultimately receding like a phantom.

“I've been in this racket for a lot of years, Pee Wee,” Murph lamented. “Bus rides never get any easier.”

“How come you still here then?”

“Gets in your blood, boy. Like a virus or the sweet scent of a woman. Something like that. Some would say I'm still looking for something. Got some unfinished business. I don't know. I just can't help it I suppose.”

Pee Wee was staring at the hole in the back of the seat in front of them. “No, I don't mean baseball. This. Here. How come you're still here—not riding first-class somewhere?”

In the safety of the darkness, Murph resurrected that dream. It wasn't the type that just faded with waking, acquiescing to the early dawn. This dream was imbued with a colossal vitality, insinuating itself into everything he saw or heard. Everything he smelled. He couldn't look at a scorecard or put a bat in his hands without hearing the calls from the crowd. Everything was haunted. The smell of freshly cut grass. The sound of flags dancing in a stiff breeze. Shit, he couldn't even eat sweet-potato pie without reminiscing about Rosie's, the little truck stop he used to frequent with the guys when he was just a rookie. The images of glory days past spilled out of his head prolifically, each bump the bus hit rattling another loose from its cell. His first game as a Brewer; the game-winning home run to win the championship; the newspaper headline that read, “Murphy Can't Miss”; the little kids, a zealous throng that followed him around after every game, clamoring for his signature. Then he recalled the collision, and the glorious jaunt through his storied past faded, and he was left, once again, sitting in a broken-down bus staring into the dark.

“I don't understand,” Pee Wee repeated. “How come you're not with the big club?”

Murph sighed. “That's a story better told on a longer ride.”

The two men sat quietly for a while, gazing out blankly through the window at the deserted landscape engulfed by a blanket of darkness. There were owls, not visible to their tired eyes, hooting from distant trees just beyond the open fields. Everything seemed to be inhabited by this vast emptiness. Through the still, lonely air, all they could discern were indistinct outlines of barns and cornstalks, as vapid and impalpable as their breath against the glass.

“Say, what about you, McGinty?” Murph finally uttered softly, interrupting the silence. “What's your story?”

Pee Wee shrugged and his mouth twisted a little. “Ain't a very happy one, I'm afraid. Daddy died when I was a kid. Mama was crushed. Damn near killed her too. She just cried all the time. I had to take care of her, and my deaf sister. Didn't leave too much time for anything else.”

“That is rough.”

“Yeah, that's it. I know what you're saying about the whole baseball-in-your-blood thing. It's what saved me. And I even had to fight for that. All the ‘he's too small' talk. But I wouldn't have any of that! Shit, the diamond is the only place where I feel right. Like all the other bullshit that
seems
to matter outside the ballpark ain't worth a hill of beans.”

“Amen, McGinty. I hear that.”

The bus rolled past one of those lighted utility poles, and an errant ray of soft white caught Pee Wee's cheek and rested momentarily on a single tear that had come to rest. Murph pretended that he didn't see.

“It ain't easy being a man when you're a little boy,” Murph whispered. “Looking out for your mom, and little sister. Cripe, half the time you don't know what to do, and the other half you do all wrong. And shit—when you're your size, not too many folks take you seriously anyhow.” They both chuckled.

“You're all right McGinty,” Murph continued. “You know that old expression Matheson uses—‘It ain't the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.' I like that one. Makes a whole lotta sense. And shit, by the looks of things, I'd say you swallowed yourself a Saint Bernard.”

Murph remembered that conversation with Pee Wee, and the tear on his cheek. He was a kid who knew what it meant to struggle. Knew what it meant to be the underdog. He was just what Mickey needed.

In the cool blue twilight, with the distant lamps of the tiny town glowing like the tattered ends of lit cigars, Mickey sat down on Arthur Murphy's front porch—squeezed himself into a rickety, white rocker that protested loudly under the burly boy's weight—and fumbled nervously through the team's media guide. Murph lived just a few miles from the ballpark, a twenty-minute scamper down the narrow dirt road all the locals referred to affectionately as Diamond Drive. His place was small, a modest gray dwelling that looked as though it had been dropped indiscriminately in the middle of a pale grass field flanked by clusters of big dead trees and restless tumbleweeds. The windows, clouded casements that winced uncomfortably at the barren acreage just outside, allowed only glints of light to pass through, obscurely illuminating the austere furnishings inside. It wasn't much to speak of, but it was home and would now provide Mickey with a haven from which Murph could watch him for as long as he was with the team.

“Your picture will be on one of those pages next year,” Murph said with alacrity, dragging a bench alongside the rocker. “How does that grab you, Mickey?”

The boy nodded absently, his eyes affixed to the publication.

“You know, Mick, I was planning on using you in tomorrow's game—if the time is right. You've practiced enough. Now I kind of want you to get your feet wet. Sound okay to you?”

The boy nodded again, continuing to nourish a daydream of limitless expansion seemingly tied to the pictures before him. Murph smiled at Mickey's innocence.

“Mickey,” Murph repeated louder. “Do you want to play baseball tomorrow? In the game?”

Mickey lifted his head. “Yeah. Baseball.” Mickey's eyes darted wildly from side to side, like two marbles rattling around inside a glass jar. “Got any pigs here?”

“How's that?”

“Have you got any pigs? Mickey loves pigs. Got me my own back home. Name's Oscar. Oscar's my pig.” Mickey jerked his head irregularly and looked all about out of haggard and homesick eyes. He blinked erratically, with great purpose, as if the fluttering of his lids would somehow clear the lenses and bring into focus the orphic surroundings.

“I tell you what, Mick,” Murph said, ever mindful of the boy's emotional state. “I don't have any pigs. But if you throw for me a little tomorrow, I can sure as heck try to get my hands on one.”

Mickey looked down glumly at his feet and nodded. Without a word, Murph dragged the bench even closer to Mickey, engendering a quick look from the pensive boy.

“That's a pretty serious scar you got there, Mick.” Murph traced with a steady eye the jagged line of raised skin on Mickey's forehead. “How'd it happen?”

Mickey sat quietly, staring blankly ahead into the approaching darkness, while unwittingly running his thick finger over the damaged area and scowling, as if the mention of the injury had brought to his idle mind a flood of memory.

Mickey spoke slowly but did not say much of anything, selecting his words carefully as if he were feeling for stones to step on to cross a rushing stream. He could still hear Clarence roaring and was unable to articulate the terror that had seized him now, all over again.

“You fucking moron! Of all the harebrain, bone-headed things to do. How could you leave my good work gloves outside? Huh? How do ya suppose I wear 'em now, all soaking wet from the goddamned rain last night?”

Mickey was paralyzed. He just stood before Clarence, head down, his voice reduced to nothing but a series of spasmodic whimpers.

“ ‘One by one the casements catch, her beams beneath the silvery thatch—'”

“I'm talking to you, boy!” Clarence wailed. “Enough of that sissy shit. Look at yer daddy when he's talking to you.”

Mickey shuddered beneath the blasts of alcoholic breath, raising his eyes ever so slightly.

“Well, dimwit. What have ya got to say fer yerself?”

“I, well, I—”

“Spit it out for Christ sakes!” Clarence demanded, raising an opaque glass bottle to his lips and gulping some of its contents. “I want a goddamned answer, boy!”

“I, uh, Mickey don't really know.” He began to cry. “I guess I forgot.”

“You forgot! You forgot? Is that what you said?” Clarence clenched his teeth.

“Mickey forgot,” the quivering boy said through surging tears. “Mickey forgot. I'm sorry.”

“Of all the stupid things to say! You forgot. Holy Christ. Are you kidding me?”

Mickey withered before the tyrannical farmer, his eyes shut, ears covered while he continued to utter, “I'm sorry,” over and over.

Clarence's anger boiled over. “Look at me boy!” he barked. “Look at me now!”

Mickey opened his eyes and brought his hands down away from his ears. Clarence lowered his hands as well and sank into a momentary silence. The fit appeared to have abated, and Mickey had just started to breathe a little easier when Clarence whipped the bottle out from behind his back and struck him just above the eye, shattering the bottle and splitting open the boy's forehead. Sitting there with Murph, Mickey could still feel the sting of alcohol and dirt mixing with his blood. He could feel it just the same, but was powerless to share the horror.

“Your daddy isn't a nice man, Mickey, is he?”

Mickey's emotions formed a labyrinth out of the lines on his face. “I make him mad. Very mad. On account of me being a retard.”

“Is that what he calls you?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Murphy. He gets awful sore. Mad. He's always pitching a fit about something. It's why Oscar and me get on so well. I love all my animals. They can't talk, so I reckon they can't hurt you none neither.”

“Yup, sure seems that way. But not all people call you names, Mick. There are some good ones. And as far as hitting you?”

“I ain't much good at anything.”

“Does he get angry at your mom too?” Murph persisted. “You know, like he does with you?”

“Mama cries a lot.”

Murph, feeling oddly shaken, placed his hand on Mickey's shoulder. “You're here now, Mickey,” he said reassuringly. “It's okay. Things will be different.”

They sat there a while longer, talking and looking out through the shroud of dusk at the countryside as it slipped away from them in irregular waves, an almost ghostlike series of slopes that crawled quietly toward the wasted expanse of land that lay just before the distant town. Murph wondered again silently, as he engaged the boy in small talk about this and that, if he had indeed made a mistake—if maybe he was asking too much. “He's a babe in the woods, Artie,” Matheson warned him after meeting Mickey for the first time. “The jackals will tear him apart.” Somehow, those words meant more to him now than before. In between his colloquial exchanges with this naïve boy, Murph listened to the wind, high in the trees, and thought for a moment that he could hear whispers of disapproval. Mickey, lost in thoughts of home, heard different sounds—the screams of his maniacal father, the sobbing of Molly, and the safe, playful grunting of the pink-and-black porker he called Oscar.

The next afternoon, wisps of cottonlike clouds stretched across the azure canvas of a high sky. The sun showered the manicured diamond at Borchert Field with cascading rays of golden yellow, and the redolence of spring danced gleefully on a warm breeze. It was a beautiful day for baseball.

The Brewers faced off against the Rangers of Spokane. The game was not fraught with intense rivalry rooted in previous battles, nor did a single game played this early in the season have any real postseason implications. But the skipper of the Rangers—a haunting demon from Murph's past—altered the daily face of things and made Murph want this game just a little more than usual.

Chip McNally was such a smug, surly son of a bitch. Always was. The only thing that had changed since their playing days together was the hint of gray around his temples.

“So, Murph,” he said sarcastically as he limped awkwardly up to home plate to exchange lineup cards, “I see you guys are really ripping it up these days, eh?” He flashed a toothy grin, then discharged a thin stream of tobacco juice just in front of Murph's feet.

“Don't wet your Skivvies, gimpy,” Murph fired back. “You just worry about yourself.”

The game was a real barn burner. The Rangers put up six runs in the top of the first inning, only to see the Brewers answer with five of their own, highlighted by a prodigious grand slam off the bat of Woody Danvers. The next few innings followed a similar pattern, with both teams exchanging runs in the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth frames. The capacity crowd was getting its money's worth.

By the time the seventh-inning stretch rolled around, and each spectator had stood up, yawned, and sung a few bars of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” the teams had together used eight pitchers. The Rangers were content to let their fourth hurler, Billy “Rubber Arm” Bradley, go the rest of the way. He was the Ranger workhorse. The guys always joked about the resiliency of Bradley's arm. He could throw one hundred plus pitches in a game, then pitch horseshoes with the guys, split a cord of wood, pick at his banjo, and be good to go the next day if needed.