Текст книги "The Bazaar of Bad Dreams"

Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

‘Guns?’

‘His biceps. And he’s standing beside a muscle car with the hood up. Now, is it still a dirty joke?’

‘I … I don’t know.’

‘Neither do I, not for sure, but my gut tells me it’ll pull the plow. But not yet. The cutline still doesn’t work, you’re right about that, and it’s got to, because it’ll be the basis of the TV and ’Net ads. So play with it. Make it work. Just remember the key word …’

Suddenly, just like that, I know where the rest of that damn dream came from. It snaps into place.

‘Brad?’

‘The key word is hard,’ I say. ‘Because a man … when something’s not working – his prick, his plan, his life – he takes it hard. He doesn’t want to give up. He remembers how it was, and he wants it that way again.’

Yes, I think. He sure does.

Billy smirks. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

I manage a smile. It feels godawful heavy, as if there are weights hanging from the corners of my mouth. All at once it’s like being in the bad dream again. Because there’s something close to me I don’t want to look at. Only this isn’t a lucid dream I can back out of.

This is lucid reality.

After Billy leaves, I go to the can. It’s ten o’clock, most of the guys in the shop have offloaded their morning coffee and are taking on more in our little break room, so I have the shithouse to myself. I drop my pants so if someone wanders in and happens to look under the door he won’t think I’m weird, but the only business I’ve come in here to do is thinking.

Four years after coming on board at Andrews-Slattery, the Fasprin Pain Reliever account landed on my desk. I’ve had some special ones over the years, some breakouts, and that was the first. It happened fast. I opened the sample box, took out the bottle, and the basis of the campaign – what admen sometimes call the heartwood – came to me in an instant. I ditzed around a little, of course – you don’t want to make it look too easy – then did some comps. Ellen helped. This was just after we found out she couldn’t have babies. It was something to do with a drug she’d been given when she had rheumatic fever as a kid. She was pretty depressed. Helping with the Fasprin comps took her mind off it, and she really threw herself into the thing.

Al Peterson was still running things back then, and he was the one I took the comps to. I remember sitting in front of his desk in the sweat seat with my heart in my mouth as he shuffled slowly through the comps we’d worked up. When he finally put them down and raised his shaggy old head to look at me, the pause seemed to go on for at least an hour. Then he said, ‘These are good, Bradley. More than good, terrific. We’ll meet with the client tomorrow afternoon. You do the prez.’

I did the prez, and when the Dugan Drug VP saw the picture of the young working woman with the bottle of Fasprin poking out of her rolled-up sleeve, he flipped for it. The campaign brought Fasprin right up there with the big boys – Bayer, Anacin, Bufferin – and by the end of the year we were handling the whole Dugan account. Billing? Seven figures. Not a low seven, either.

I used the bonus to take Ellen to Nassau for ten days. We left from Kennedy, on a morning that was pelting down rain, and I still remember how she laughed and cried ‘Kiss me, beautiful’ when the plane broke through the clouds and the cabin filled with sunlight. I did kiss her, and the couple on the other side of the aisle – we were flying in business class – applauded.

That was the best. The worst came half an hour later, when I turned to her and for a moment thought she was dead. It was the way she was sleeping, with her head cocked over on her shoulder and her mouth open and her hair kind of sticking to the window. She was young, we both were, but the idea of sudden death had a hideous possibility in Ellen’s case.

‘They used to call your condition “barren,” Mrs Franklin,’ the doctor said when he gave us the bad news, ‘but in this case, your inability to conceive could be a blessing. Pregnancy puts a strain on the heart, and thanks to a disease that was badly treated when you were a child, yours isn’t strong. If you did happen to conceive, you’d be in bed for the last four months of the pregnancy, and even then the outcome would be dicey.’

She wasn’t pregnant when we left on that trip, and her last checkup had been fine, but the climb up to cruising altitude had been plenty rough … and she didn’t look like she was breathing.

Then she opened her eyes. I settled back into my aisle seat, letting out a long and shaky breath.

She looked at me, puzzled. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. The way you were sleeping, that’s all.’

She wiped at her chin. ‘Oh God, did I drool?’

‘No.’ I laughed. ‘But for a minute there you looked … well, dead.’

She laughed too. ‘And if I was, you’d ship the body back to New York, I suppose, and take up with some Bahama Mama.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’d take you, anyway.’

‘What?’

‘Because I wouldn’t accept it. No way would I.’

‘You’d have to after a few days. I’d get all smelly.’

She was smiling. She thought it was still a game, because she hadn’t really understood what the doctor was telling her that day. She hadn’t – as the saying goes – taken it all the way to the heartwood. And she didn’t know how she’d looked, with the sun shining on her winter-pale cheeks and smudged eyelids and slack mouth. But I’d seen, and I’d taken it to the heartwood. She was my heart, and I guard what’s there. Nobody takes it away from me.

‘You wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘I’d keep you alive.’

‘Really? How? Necromancy?’

‘By refusing to give up. And by using an adman’s most valuable asset.’

‘Which is what, Mr Fasprin?’

‘Imagination. Now can we talk about something more pleasant?’

The call I’ve been expecting comes around three thirty. It’s not Carlo. It’s Berk Ostrow, the building super. He wants to know what time I’m going to be home, because the rat everybody’s been smelling isn’t in 5-C, it’s in our apartment. Ostrow says the exterminators have to leave by four to get to another job, but that isn’t the important thing. What’s important is fixing what’s wrong in there and by the way, Carlo says no one’s seen your wife in over a week. Just you and the dog.

I explain about my deficient sense of smell, and Ellen’s bronchitis. In her current condition, I say, she wouldn’t know the drapes were on fire until the smoke detector went off. I’m sure Lady smells it, I tell him, but to a dog, the stench of a decaying rat probably smells like Chanel No. 5.

‘I get all that, Mr Franklin, but I still need to get in there to see what’s what. And the exterminators will have to be called back. I think you’re probably going to be on the hook for their bill, which is apt to be quite high. I could let myself in with the passkey, but I’d really be more comfortable if you were—’

‘Yes, I’d be more comfortable, too. Not to mention my wife.’

‘I tried calling her, but she didn’t answer the phone.’ I can hear suspicion in his voice now. I’ve explained everything, advertising men are good at that, but the convincing effect only lasts for sixty seconds or so. That’s why you keep hearing the same ads and slogans over and over again: A little dab’ll do ya. Save time, save money. Pepsi, for those who think young. I’m lovin’ it. Breakfast of champions. It’s like driving a nail. Driving it right into the heartwood.

‘She’s probably got the phone on mute. Plus, the medication the doctor gave her makes her sleep quite heavily.’

‘What time will you be home, Mr Franklin? I can stay until seven; after that there’s only Alfredo.’ The disparaging note in his voice suggests I’d be better off dealing with a street weirdo.

Never, I think. I’ll never be home. In fact, I was never there in the first place. Ellen and I enjoyed the Bahamas so much we moved to Cable Beach, and I took a job with a little firm in Nassau. I shout Cruise Ship Specials (‘The Ride is the Destination!’), Stereo Blowout Sales (‘Don’t Just Hear It Better, Hear It Cheaper!’), and supermarket openings (‘Save Under the Palms!’). All this New York stuff has just been a lucid dream, one I can escape at any time.

‘Mr Franklin? Are you there?’

‘Sure. Just thinking. I’ve got one meeting I absolutely can’t miss, but why don’t you meet me in the apartment around six?’

‘How about in the lobby, Mr Franklin? We can go up together.’ In other words, I’m not giving you a head start, Mr Advertising Genius who maybe killed his wife.

I think of asking him how he believes I’d beat him to the apartment and get rid of El’s body – because that is what he’s thinking. Maybe murder is not at the very front of his mind, but it’s not all the way in back, either. Husband-murders-wife is very big on the Lifetime Channel. Maybe he thinks I’d use the service elevator, and stash her body in the box room. Or maybe dump it down the incinerator chute? DIY cremation.

‘The lobby is absolutely okey-fine,’ I say. ‘Six. Quarter of, if I can possibly make it.’

I hang up and head for the elevators. I have to pass the break room to get there. Billy Ederle’s leaning in the doorway, drinking a Nozzy. It’s a remarkably lousy soda, but it’s all we vend. The company’s a client.

‘Where are you off to?’

‘Home. Ellen called. She’s not feeling well.’

‘Don’t you want your briefcase?’

‘No.’ I don’t expect to be needing my briefcase for awhile. In fact, I may never need it again.

‘I’m working on the new Po-TENS direction. I think it’s going to be a winner.’

‘I’m sure,’ I say, and I am. Billy Ederle will soon be movin’ on up, and good for him. ‘I’ve got to get a wiggle on.’

‘Sure, I understand.’ He’s twenty-four and understands nothing. ‘Give her my best.’

We take on half a dozen interns a year at Andrews-Slattery; it’s how Billy Ederle got started. Most are terrific and at first Fred Willits seemed terrific too. I took him under my wing, and so it became my responsibility to fire him – I guess you’d say that, although interns are never actually ‘hired’ in the first place – when it turned out he was a klepto who had decided our supply room was his private game preserve. God knows how much stuff he lifted before Maria Ellington caught him loading reams of paper into his briefcase one afternoon. Turned out he was also a bit of a psycho. He went nuclear when I told him he was through. Pete Wendell called security while the kid was yelling at me in the lobby and had him removed forcibly.

Apparently old Freddy had a lot more to say, because he started hanging around my building and haranguing me when I came home. He kept his distance, though, and the cops claimed he was just exercising his right to free speech. But it wasn’t his mouth I was afraid of. I kept thinking he might have lifted a box-cutter or an X-Acto knife as well as printer cartridges and about fifty reams of copier paper. That was when I got Carlo to give me a key to the service entrance, and I started going in that way. All that was in the fall of the year, September or October. Young Mr Willits gave up and took his issues elsewhere when the days turned cold, but Carlo never asked for the return of the key, and I never gave it back. I guess we both forgot.

That’s why, instead of giving the taxi driver my address, I get him to let me out on the next block. I pay him, adding a generous tip – hey, it’s only money – and then walk down the service alley. I have a bad moment when the key doesn’t work, but when I jigger it a little, it turns. The service elevator has brown quilted movers’ pads hanging from the walls. Previews of the padded cell they’ll put me in, I think, but of course that’s just melodrama. I’ll probably have to take a leave of absence from the shop, and what I’ve done is a lease-breaker for sure, but—

What have I done, exactly?

For that matter, what have I been doing for the last week?

‘Keeping her alive,’ I say as the elevator stops at the fifth floor. ‘Because I couldn’t bear for her to be dead.’

She isn’t dead, I tell myself, just under the weather. It sucks as a cutline, but for the last week it has served me very well, and in the advertising biz the short term is all that counts.

I let myself in. The air is still and warm, but I don’t smell anything. So I tell myself, anyway, and in the advertising biz, imagination is also what counts.

‘Honey, I’m home,’ I call. ‘Are you awake? Feeling any better?’

I guess I forgot to close the bedroom door before I left this morning, because Lady slinks out. She’s licking her chops. She gives me a guilty glance, then waddles into the living room with her tail tucked way down low. She doesn’t look back.

‘Honey? El?’

I go into the bedroom. There’s still nothing to be seen of her but the milkweed fluff of her hair and the shape of her body under the quilt. The quilt is slightly rumpled, so I know she’s been up – if only to have some coffee – and then gone back to bed again. It was last Friday when I came home and she wasn’t breathing and since then she’s been sleeping a lot.

I go around to her side and see her hand hanging down. There’s not much left of it but bones and strips of flesh. I gaze at this and think there’s two ways of seeing it. Look at it one way, and I’ll probably have to have my dog – Ellen’s dog, really, Lady always loved Ellen best – euthanized. Look at it another and you could say Lady got worried and was trying to wake her up. Come on, Ellie, I want to go to the park. Come on, Ellie, let’s play with my toys.

I tuck the reduced hand under the sheets. That way it won’t get cold. Then I wave away some flies. I can’t remember ever seeing flies in our apartment before. They probably smelled that dead rat Carlo was talking about.

‘You know Billy Ederle?’ I say. ‘I gave him a slant on that damn Po-TENS account, and I think he’s going to run with it.’

Nothing from Ellen.

‘You can’t be dead,’ I say. ‘That’s unacceptable.’

Nothing from Ellen.

‘Do you want coffee?’ I glance at my watch. ‘Something to eat? We’ve got chicken soup. Just the kind that comes in the pouches, but it’s not bad when it’s hot.’ Not bad when it’s hot, what a lousy slogan that would be. ‘What do you say, El?’

She says nothing.

‘All right,’ I say. ‘That’s all right. Remember when we went to the Bahamas, hon? When we went snorkeling and you had to quit because you were crying? And when I asked why, you said “Because it’s all so beautiful.”’

Now I’m the one who’s crying.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to get up and walk around a little? I’ll open the windows and let in some fresh air.’

Nothing from Ellen.

I sigh. I stroke that fluff of hair. ‘All right,’ I say, ‘why don’t you just sleep for another couple of hours? I’ll sit here beside you.’

And that’s exactly what I do.

For Joe Hill

Yeah, it’s about baseball, but give it a chance, okay? You don’t have to be a sailor to love the novels of Patrick O’Brian, and you don’t have to be a jockey – or even a bettor – to love the Dick Francis mysteries. Those stories come alive in the characters and the events, and I hope you’ll find a similar liveliness here. I got the idea for this tale after watching a postseason playoff game where a bad call resulted in a near riot at Atlanta’s Turner Field. Fans showered the field with cups, hats, signs, pennants, and beer bottles. After an umpire was bonked on the head with a pint whiskey bottle (by then empty, of course), the teams were pulled from the field until order could be restored. The TV commentators moaned about poor sportsmanship, as though such ventings of disgust and outrage had not gone on at America’s ballparks for a hundred years or more.

I’ve loved baseball all my life, and wanted to write about the game as it was in a time when such energetic demurrals, accompanied by declarations of ‘Kill the ump!’ and ‘Buy him a Seeing Eye dog!’ were considered a valid part of the game. A time when baseball was almost as smashmouth as football, when players slid into second base with their cleats up, and collisions at the plate were expected rather than outlawed. Those were days when the reversal of a call based on a TV replay would have been regarded with horror, for the umpire’s word was law. I wanted to use the language of those earlier ballplayers to summon up the texture and color of mid-century sporting America. I wanted to see if I could create something that was both mythic and – in a horrible way – sort of funny.

I also had a chance to put myself in the story, and I loved that. (My first paying gig as a writer was as a sports reporter for the Lisbon Enterprise, after all.) My sons call that sort of thing ‘metafiction.’ I just think of it as fun, and I hope that’s what this story is: good old-fashioned fun, with the last line cribbed from a great movie called The Wild Bunch.

And watch out for the blade, Constant Reader. It is a Stephen King story, after all.

Blockade Billy

William Blakely?

Oh my God, you mean Blockade Billy. Nobody’s asked me about him in years. Of course, no one asks me much of anything in here, except if I’d like to sign up for Polka Night at the K of P Hall downtown or something called Virtual Bowling. That’s right here in the common room. My advice to you, Mr King – you didn’t ask for it, but I’ll give it to you – is, don’t get old, and if you do, don’t let your relatives put you in a zombie hotel like this one.

It’s a funny thing, getting old. When you’re young, people always want to listen to your stories, especially if you were in pro baseball. But when you’re young, you don’t have time to tell them. Now I’ve got all the time in the world, and it seems like nobody cares about those old days. But I still like to think about them. So, sure, I’ll tell you about Billy Blakely. Awful story, of course, but those are the ones that last the longest.

Baseball was different in those days. You have to remember that Blockade Billy played for the Titans only ten years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, and the Titans are long gone. I don’t suppose New Jersey will ever have another Major League team, not with two powerhouse franchises just across the river in New York. But it was a big deal then – we were a big deal – and we played our games in a different world.

The rules were the same. Those don’t change. And the little rituals were pretty similar, too. Oh, nobody would have been allowed to wear their cap cocked to the side, or curve the brim, and your hair had to be neat and short (the way these chuckleheads wear it now, my God), but some players still crossed themselves before they stepped into the box, or drew in the dirt with the heads of their bats before taking up the stance, or jumped over the baseline when they were running out to take their positions. Nobody wanted to step on the baseline, it was considered the worst luck to do that.

The game was local, okay? TV had started to come in, but only on the weekends. We had a good market, because the games were on WNJ, and everyone in New York could watch. Some of those broadcasts were pretty comical. Compared to the way they do today’s games, it was all amateur night in Dixie. Radio was better, more professional, but of course that was local, too. No satellite broadcasts, because there were no satellites! The Russians sent the first one up during the Yanks–Braves World Series that year. As I remember, it happened on an off-day, but I could be wrong about that. What I remember is that the Titans were out of it early that year. We contended for awhile, partly thanks to Blockade Billy, but you know how that turned out. It’s why you’re here, right?

But here’s what I’m getting at: because the game was smaller on the national stage, the players weren’t such a big deal. I’m not saying there weren’t stars – guys like Aaron, Burdette, Williams, Kaline, and of course the Mick – but most weren’t as well known coast-to-coast as players like Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds (a couple of drug-swallowing bushers, if you ask me). And most of the other guys? I can tell you in two words: working stiffs. The average salary back then was fifteen grand, less than a first-year high school teacher makes today.

Working stiffs, get it? Just like George Will said in that book of his. Only he said it like it was a good thing. I’m not so sure it was, if you were a thirty-year-old shortstop with a wife and three kids and maybe another seven years to go before retirement. Ten, if you were lucky and didn’t get hurt. Carl Furillo ended up installing elevators in the World Trade Center and moonlighting as a night-watchman, did you know that? You did? Do you think that guy Will knew it, or just forgot to mention it?

The deal was this: if you had the skills and could do the job even with a hangover, you got to play. If you couldn’t, you got tossed on the scrapheap. It was that simple. And as brutal. Which brings me to our catching situation that spring.

We were in good shape during camp, which for the Titans was in Sarasota. Our starting catcher was Johnny Goodkind. Maybe you don’t remember him. If you do, it’s probably because of the way he ended up. He had four good years, batted over .300, put the gear on almost every game. Knew how to handle the pitchers, didn’t take any guff. The kids didn’t dare shake him off. He hit damn near .350 that spring, with maybe a dozen ding-dongs, one as deep and far as any I ever saw at Ed Smith Stadium, where the ball didn’t carry well. Put out the windshield in some reporter’s Chevrolet – ha!

But he was also a big drinker, and two days before the team was supposed to head north and open at home, he ran over a woman on Pineapple Street and killed her just as dead as a dormouse. Or doornail. Whatever the saying is. Then the damn fool tried to run. But there was a county sheriff’s cruiser parked on the corner of Orange, and the deputies inside saw the whole thing. Wasn’t much doubt about Johnny’s state, either. When they pulled him out of his car, he smelled like a distillery and could hardly stand. One of the deputies bent down to put the cuffs on him, and Johnny threw up on the back of the guy’s head. Johnny Goodkind’s career in baseball was over before the puke dried. Even the Babe couldn’t have stayed in the game after running over a housewife out doing her morning shop-around. I guess he wound up calling signs for the Raiford prison team. If they had one.

His backup was Frank Faraday. Not bad behind the plate, but a banjo hitter at best. Went about one sixty. No bulk, which put him at risk. The game was played hard in those days, Mr King, with plenty of fuck-you.

But Faraday was what we had. I remember DiPunno saying he wouldn’t last long, but not even Jersey Joe had an idea how short a time it was going to be.

Faraday was behind the plate when we played our last exhibition game that year. Against the Reds, it was. There was a squeeze play put on. Don Hoak at the plate. Some big hulk – I think it was Ted Kluszewski – on third. Hoak punches the ball right at Jerry Rugg, who was pitching for us that day. Big Klew breaks for the plate, all two hundred and seventy Polack pounds of him. And there’s Faraday, just about as skinny as a Flav’r Straw, standing with one foot on the old dishola. Couldn’t help but end bad. Rugg throws to Faraday. Faraday turns to put the tag on. I couldn’t look.

The little fella got the out, I’ll give him that, only it was a spring-training out, as important in the great scheme of things as a low fart in a high wind. And that was the end of Frank Faraday’s baseball career. One broken arm, one broken leg, a concussion – that was the score. I don’t know what became of him. Wound up washing windshields for tips at an Esso station in Tucumcari, for all I know.

So we lost both our catchers in the space of forty-eight hours and had to go north with nobody to put behind the plate except for Ganzie Burgess, who converted from catcher to pitcher not long after the Korean War ended. The Ganzer was thirty-nine years old that season and only good for middle relief, but he was a knuckleballer, and as crafty as Satan, so no way was Joe DiPunno going to risk those old bones behind the plate. He said he’d put me back there first. I knew he was joking – I was just an old third-base coach with so many groin pulls my balls were practically banging on my knees – but the idea still made me shiver.

What Joe did was call the front office in Newark and say, ‘I need a guy who can catch Hank Masters’s fastball and Danny Doo’s curve without falling on his keister. I don’t care if he plays for Testicle Tire in Tremont, just make sure he’s got a mitt and have him at the Swamp in time for the National Anthem. Then get to work finding me a real catcher. If you want to have any chance at all of contending this season, that is.’ Then he hung up and lit what was probably his eightieth cigarette of the day.

Oh for the life of a manager, huh? One catcher facing manslaughter charges; another in the hospital, wrapped in so many bandages he looked like Boris Karloff in The Mummy; a pitching staff either not old enough to shave or about ready for the Sociable Security; God-knows-who about to put on the gear and squat behind the plate on Opening Day.

We flew north that year instead of riding the rails, but it still felt like a train wreck. Meanwhile, Kerwin McCaslin, who was the Titans’ GM, got on the phone and found us a catcher to start the season with: William Blakely, soon to be known as Blockade Billy. I can’t remember now if he came from Double or Triple A, but you could look it up on your computer, I guess, because I do know the name of the team he came from: the Davenport Cornhuskers. A few players came up from there during my seven years with the Titans, and the regulars would always ask how things were down there playing for the Cornholers. Or sometimes they’d call them the Cocksuckers. Baseball humor is not what you’d call sophisticated.

We opened against the Red Sox that year. Middle of April. Baseball started later back then, and played a saner schedule. I got to the park early – before God got out of bed, actually – and there was a young man sitting on the bumper of an old Ford truck in the players’ lot. Iowa license plate dangling on chickenwire from the back bumper. Nick the gate guard let him in when the kid showed him his letter from the front office and his driver’s license.

‘You must be Bill Blakely,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘Good to know you.’

‘Good to know you too,’ he said. ‘I brought my gear, but it’s pretty beat up.’

‘Oh, I think we got you covered there, partner,’ I said, letting go of his hand. He had a Band-Aid wrapped around his second finger, just below the middle knuckle. ‘Cut yourself shaving?’ I asked, pointing to it.

‘Yup, cut myself shaving,’ he says. I couldn’t tell if that was his way of showing he got my little joke, or if he was so worried about fucking up he thought he ought to agree with everything anyone said, at least to begin with. Later on I realized it was neither of those things; he just had a habit of echoing back what you said to him. I got used to it, even sort of got to like it.

‘Are you the manager?’ he asked. ‘Mr DiPunno?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m George Grantham. The kids call me Granny. I coach third base. I’m also the equipment manager.’ Which was the truth; I did both jobs. Told you the game was smaller then. ‘I’ll get you fixed up, don’t worry. All new gear.’

‘All new gear,’ says he. ‘Except for the glove. I have to have Billy’s old glove, you know. Billy Junior and me’s been the miles.’

‘Well, that’s fine with me.’ And we went on in to what the sportswriters used to call Old Swampy in those days.

I hesitated over giving him 19, because it was poor old Faraday’s number, but the uniform fit him without looking like pajamas, so I did. While he was dressing, I said: ‘Ain’t you tired? You must have driven almost nonstop. Didn’t they send you some cash to take a plane?’

‘I ain’t tired,’ he said. ‘They might have sent me some cash to take a plane, but I didn’t see it. Could we go look at the field?’

I said we could, and led him down the runway and up through the dugout. He walked down to home plate outside the foul line in Faraday’s uniform, the blue 19 gleaming in the morning sun (it wasn’t but eight o’clock, the groundskeepers just starting what would be a long day’s work).

I wish I could tell you how it felt to see him taking that walk, Mr King, but words are your thing, not mine. All I know is that back-to he looked more like Faraday than ever. He was ten years younger, of course … but age doesn’t show much from the back, except sometimes in a man’s walk. Plus he was slim like Faraday, and slim’s the way you want your shortstop and second baseman to be, not your catcher. Catchers should be built like fireplugs, the way Johnny Goodkind was. This guy looked like broken ribs and a rupture just waiting to happen.

He had a firmer build than Frank Faraday, though; broad in the butt and thick in the thighs. He was skinny from the waist up, but looking at him ass-end-going-away, I remember thinking he looked like what he probably was: an Iowa plowboy on vacation in scenic Newark.

He went to the plate and turned around to look out to dead center. He had blond hair, just like a plowboy should, and a lock of it had fallen on his forehead. He brushed it away and just stood there taking it all in – the silent, empty stands where over fifty thousand people would be sitting that afternoon, the bunting already hung on the railings and fluttering in the morning breeze, the foul poles painted fresh Jersey Blue, the groundskeepers just starting to water. It was an awesome sight, I always thought, and I could imagine what was going through the kid’s mind, him that had probably been home pulling cow teats just a week ago and waiting for the Cornholers to start playing in mid-May.

I thought, Poor kid’s finally getting the picture. When he looks over here, I’ll see the panic in his eyes. I may have to tie him down in the locker room to keep him from jumping in that old truck of his and hightailing it back to God’s country.

But when he looked at me, there was no panic in his eyes. Not even nervousness, which I would have said every player feels on Opening Day. No, he looked perfectly cool standing there behind the plate in his Levi’s and light poplin jacket.