Desperation Road(66)

“I said you don’t stand there and stare at fastballs.”

Cody reached down and picked up some dirt and rubbed it between his fingers.

“Come on up one day and we’ll work on it.”

“I don’t need no help.”

“That ain’t what it looks like to me.”

The first base coach was some college kid home for the summer and he turned to Larry and said give the kid a break.

“You mind your own goddamn business.”

The kids in the dugout mumbled to one another.

He drank some more. The heat and the liquor getting to him. He wiped at his damp face. Said something to himself.

“Where’s your momma?” he asked.

The umpire in the field moved a few steps closer to first base.

“Where’s your damn momma?”

“I ain’t talking to you.”

“I bet you are.”

“No I ain’t.”

“Shit,” Larry said to the dugout. “Boy won’t talk to his own daddy. That’s some bullshit.” Half the kids nodded. The other half shied away to the other end of the dugout. And then Larry set his cup on the ground and he opened his wallet and he took out a twenty and he told the dugout that the first one to bring him a bat could have it. The first base coach told them not to move but when he turned again to the game a longhaired kid grabbed a bat and brought it over to the end of the dugout and handed it to him through a space between the roof and fence. Larry stuck the twenty through to him.

He walked back to his drink. Picked it up and finished it and it burned and burned. And then he slammed the bat across the top of the chainlink fence, sending a ping across the ballpark and the umpire and the coaches and the kids in the field and the kids in the dugout and the people in the stands and the men smoking all looked down the right field line at the man with the bat. He raised the bat and hit the fence again and then he yelled I bet you’ll talk to me now goddamn it.

Everyone stood still. Then the field umpire began to walk across the infield toward Larry and Larry waved the bat at him and said come on over here and see. He brought the bat down again across the top of the fence and he called out for any of them to come on over here and see. Come on and take it from me if you want it. Come on over here and fucking find out. Play fucking ball. The pitcher looked at the umpire and the umpire told him to go ahead and they started again.

When the cops arrived five minutes later he was standing in the same place. The game had gone on and he hadn’t made another sound but he held the bat in his sweaty hands. Ready. He felt their eyes heavy on him and the kids had kept to the far end of the dugout. Away from the man with the bat. The longhaired kid had split with his twenty bucks before the coach could get his hands on him. They arrived in two cars and there were three of them and they approached in the way that one approaches a wild animal. Hands at their sides. On the tips of their feet. Larry had seen them pull into the parking lot and he thought about what he would do when they got to him. Thought about Cody’s momma and what she would say when she heard about this. Two of the cops looked like they might have lived in a weight room. Short but stout as anvils and they didn’t look like they were going to take any shit.

“Swing at fastballs,” he yelled across the infield to his son who was sitting in the dugout. And then he turned and swung at the three of them and on the second swing and miss he staggered and one of the stout cops charged before he could gather himself to swing again and then they were on him and they shoved his face in the dirt and their knees in his back as they pulled his arms behind and cuffed him. They yanked him up and his lip was busted and the blood and the dirt and the spit and the sweat ran down his chin and neck. They took him along the walkway with little kids standing off to the side as if they were watching some grotesque parade and when they shoved him into the back of the police car he fell over on his side and he didn’t even bother to try to sit up.





45


WALT SAT AT ONE END OF THE BAR AND MADE DAMN SURE TO TALK with Earl enough so that Earl would remember him being there. He wanted somebody to see him because later on when he told Larry that he had been out and that’s why he didn’t get the message and that’s why it had taken him so long to get down there he wanted there to be others to back him up. He wanted to stay on the right side of the fight for as long as he could.

He kept one eye on the clock above the bar, trying to decide when it would be safe to go and get Larry.

Not yet.

He hadn’t liked the way it felt with the shotgun on him. And he had been shaken by the way Larry talked as they drove away from Russell’s house that first night. Point a fucking gun at me, he said. Go ahead and point a fucking gun at me and see what happens. When are they gonna learn? When? You tell me. When are they gonna learn you do not fuck with me? Go ahead and point it. Put it right on my head. Right here. Right here on this spot between my eyes. I swear to God somebody’s gonna learn. Point a fucking gun at me. He was all over the road as he went on. Spit coming out of his mouth. Finger pointing at the windshield then at Walt then back at the windshield. Think that shit scares me? That shit don’t scare me. Point a fucking gun at me. Go ahead and keep on fucking with me and see what happens. Goddamn everybody thinks they got something. Don’t they? Think they got something they just got to do. Got to do or it’s gonna goddamn kill them. Got to go fucking drive around fucked up and top a hill and kill somebody. Got to go do it. Ain’t worried about what might happen ’til it happens. Got to. Got to fuck around. Don’t matter it makes me look like a dumbass. Got to. World might stop spinning if I don’t go fuck around. Got to have it oh please God yes right there got to have it. Don’t think about shit else but keep on fucking with me. Everybody. Please keep on. You’ll find out. Hell yeah you’ll find out. I bet he thinks it’s funny right now but hell no it ain’t gonna be funny next time. Next time I take that gun out of his goddamn hands and shove it down his goddamn throat. Son of a bitch points a fucking gun at me like he rode into town on a white fucking horse. He owes me and you and Jason and he knows it. Goddamn it keep on.