The Fan

4

“… and so in a Freudian sense, Bernie, the catcher is the father, and the son is the pitcher. It couldn’t be more obvious, once you know the psychoanalytical lay of the land.”

“Fascinating, Doc. Running out of time here, absolutely fascinating, I love this stuff, but if what you’re saying is true, what’s the bat and ball represent?”

“The bat I don’t think I need to spell out. The ball symbolizes the family gene pool.”

“Gene pool?”

“In the form of ejaculate.”

“Meaning?”

“Semen, Bernie. The male fluid.”

“Wow. Wish we had more time. Thanks for being on the JOC.”

“You’re-”

“That was Dr. Helmut Behr, author of Three Dreams and You’re Out: Freud, Jung, Baseball. We’ll be back with all the scores from last night, and the morning spring-training roundup. Don’t go away.”

Gil, waiting at a red light, turned down the radio, dialed Everest and Co. on the car phone, got through to the purchasing VP.

“Sorry about that screwup yesterday, Chuck,” he said. “The weather…”

The VP was silent.

“So when can we get together? Can’t wait to show you our new Iwo Jima line. Heard about it?”

“No.”

Gil glanced down at the catalogue, lying on the seat. “Iwo Jima Experience, the full name. We’re taking on the Japanese head to head.” Gil waited for the VP to say something. When he didn’t, Gil said, “Any chance you’re free this afternoon?”

He heard pages riffling. “Tied up until the eighth,” said the VP. “Two-thirty.”

“The eighteenth, you mean? The eighth was last week.”

“Eighth of April.”

“Next month?”

“Got it.”

“But we always-”

“Taking another call. Bye.”

“-meet monthly,” Gil said to a dial tone.

Someone honked at him. Green light. He drove through the intersection, fishtailing on an icy patch. The asshole honked again, or maybe another asshole, and Gil honked back.

Make your quota, you son of a bitch. How was he supposed to do that without the monthly order from Everest and Co.? In his anger, Gil pictured himself doing all sorts of things-banging the steering wheel, yelling at the top of his lungs, sideswiping the car in the next lane. He turned up the radio.

“What have you got for us this morning, Jewel, besides a nice suntan?”

“No suntan, Bernie. Do you find melanoma attractive? The big news down here was the arrival in camp yesterday of high-priced free agent Bobby Rayburn-”

“Norm says the phones were lit up all day.”

“As well they might be. It was only batting-practice pitching, but let me tell you something, he looked prodigious. He’s got that textbook swing everybody talks about, but what you really don’t appreciate until you’re up close is the tremendous power he generates. The ball comes off his bat like a firecracker. Sid Burrows was positively beaming, and beaming is not the natural state of Sid’s face.”

“And that’s an understatement. Did you get a chance to talk to him?”

“Rayburn? Briefly, Bernie. Contrary to some reports, he seems very approachable.”

“What did he say?”

“I can play that interview if you like.”

“Okay. Before we open up the lines.”

Gil dialed FANLINE.

“Do you feel under any special pressure because of the big contract this year, Bobby?”

“No.”

“But what about the fans?”

“What about them?”

Gil got a dial tone. Someone picked up. “Fanline,” he said. “Hold the-” He shouted: “Fifteen seconds.” He lowered his voice slightly: “Name?”

“Gil.”

“Calling from?”

“Car phone.”

“About?”

“Rayburn.”

“Know the format? Bernie’ll intro you and-hang on. Just a-putting you through…”

“Let’s take a few calls. Gil on the car phone.”

“… now.”

“Hi, Gil.”

“Am I on?”

“You’re on the JOC.”

“Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you fine, Gil. Mind turning down your radio?”

Gil turned it down.

“Much better. What’s on your mind?”

“Bet you guys are eating crow today.”

“How’s that, Gil?”

“Based on the way you were running down Rayburn yesterday.”

“Easy now. I was in Atlantic City yesterday.”

“Your pal Norm, then.”

“What’s your point?… Hello? You still there?”

“Why are you guys so negative all the time? I guess that’s my point.”

“Negative? I’m a well-known Pollyanna in this business. The thing is, good people-”

“Then why get on Rayburn before the season’s even started?” Gil began a second sentence, “If you were as good at your job as he is at his, you’d be-” but stopped when he realized he was listening once more to a dial tone. He turned the radio back up.

“-isn’t a religion, for God’s sake. It’s not the Catholic church. Or the Protestant church, for that matter, or the Jewish synagogue, or the Muslim mosque. What am I leaving out? The Buddhist shrine? Temple? Baseball’s none of that. It’s just-”

The car phone buzzed, and Gil missed whatever baseball was.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Gil?”

“Who’s this?”

“Figgy.”

“Oh.”

“Was that you? On the JOC?”

Gil laughed, embarrassed.

“You shit disturber,” Figgy said. Then came a long pause that cost them both money-Gil could hear that Figgy was on his car phone too. “What’re you doing right now?” Figgy said.

“Working.”

“Oh,” said Figgy. Pause. “Thought we might meet somewhere.”

“Can’t.”

“How about tonight? At Cleats.”

“I’ll try,” Gil said.

He swung onto a ramp, walled in on both sides by snow crusted like burned marshmallow skins. Expressway traffic was heavy. Gil didn’t mind. He liked challenging the 325i. He stepped on the gas and headed south, changing lanes frequently to pass, being passed by no one, listening to the JOC. Twenty or thirty miles past the city, beyond the suburbs, traffic thinned. Fog flowed in from the sea, first in little tongues through the bare trees, then in high-banked tides. The 325i took over; Gil slumped a little behind the wheel.

Hanging onto a one-run lead against the Tigers. Bases loaded. Two out. Bottom of the twelfth. Pease, the cleanup hitter, at the plate, waggling his huge black bat. Boucicaut comes out for a conference, pushing up his mask; sweat streaks make war-paint patterns on his dusty face. There’s a dusky hint of mustache over his upper lip.

“Just throw strikes,” he says, handing Gil the ball.

“What do you think I’m trying to do, you idiot?”

Boucicaut stares at him. “Got any gum?”

“No.”

Boucicaut pulls down his mask, trudges back behind the plate, squats. Gil glances into the dugout. No one is moving, no one is coming to get him, although that would be fine with him. Gil takes a deep breath, looks at nothing but the round shadow in the center of Boucicaut’s black Rawlings, tries to ignore his elbow, sore inside and out. “Just imagine a pipe from you to the catcher,” his father always said, “and fling the ball down that pipe. It’s simple.”

Gil flings the ball down the imaginary pipe. Pease turns on it, catches it square, rockets it down the third-base line, foul. Gil’s next two pitches are in the dirt, both blocked by Boucicaut. He takes another deep breath, thinks he hears his father calling from the stands, “C’mon, Gil,” but that isn’t possible, since his father’s in the hospital.

The next pitch just misses the outside corner.

“What’s the count?” Gil calls.

The umpire holds up his fingers. Three and one.

Gil stares into the shadow in Boucicaut’s mitt, goes into his windup, comes over the top with all his strength. As he lets go, he hears the sound of paper tearing, feels pain like hot barbed wire being drawn through his elbow. Pease hits this one over the fence, foul.

The umpire tosses Gil a new ball, holds up his fingers. Three and two.

Gil rubs the ball in his hands, checks the still dugout. Waiting for his elbow to settle down, he walks around the mound. He knows he can’t throw the ball past Pease. He considers his curve. Can’t trust it, not on a full count; can’t even throw it, not with his arm like this, not with the prospect of what he would feel the instant after. That leaves the change-up, which he doesn’t have, and the knuckler he fools around with on the side and has never thrown in a game.

He plants his foot on the rubber, grips the ball with the tips of all four fingers and his thumb. The knuckler. Pease waggles his bat. Gil winds up, puffing out his chest as though he were reaching back for a little extra, and fires.

In the movies, everything happens in slow motion after that. In life, it happens so fast, the swing, the miss, that Gil isn’t sure it’s all over until Boucicaut, charging out with his arms open wide, knocks him on his back and jumps on him.

Absolute fact; except perhaps for the part about believing he’d heard his father’s voice.

The wind had risen, driving away the fog. Gil checked the speedometer, saw he was doing ninety, eased off. Boucicaut. A rock. He’d had his best years with Boucicaut.

Gil crossed the bridge onto the Mid-Cape. He had it almost to himself. The wind blew across the highway but didn’t bother the 325i at all. Gil loved the way it handled, loved its smell. He remembered the car payment, due tomorrow, and the years of car payments still to come. He was adding his debts in his mind when he came to the exit, circled off the ramp, and headed for the shore. Couldn’t give up the wheels; without wheels, you were dead.

Gil drove past a village green, a stone church, and a seafood restaurant, boarded up, and onto a road with a PRIVATE sign posted at the entrance. He stopped at the gatehouse.

An old man came out, dressed in a pea-green army coat too big for him.

“Renard,” Gil said. “To see Mr. Hale.”

The old man ran his finger down the page on his clipboard, nodded, raised the barrier. Gil went through.

The road cut across a golf course to the sea, followed it for a few hundred yards, past three or four big houses and up a bluff. Another big house stood on top of the bluff, its windows beaten gold in the sunlight. Gil parked in the driveway, took the bowie and the thrower from the glove compartment, wrapped them in a chamois cloth, and walked to the door, the wind snapping at his pant legs. He rang the bell.

The door opened. A uniformed maid looked out. Her black eyes went to the point of the bowie, sticking out of the chamois.

“Renard,” Gil said again. “To see Mr. Hale.”

She led him across the marble floor of the entrance hall, along a corridor lined with oil paintings of lighthouses, sailing ships, whaling boats, and into a library. It overlooked a gazebo, where Mrs. Hale stood at an easel, and the sea, breaking on the rocks below.

Mr. Hale was sitting by the fire, oiling a basket-hilt rapier. He rose, holding up glistening hands. “I won’t shake,” he said, “but how about a pick-me-up?”

It was early for that. “Only if you are,” Gil replied.

“Why not?” Mr. Hale gestured out the window, where the wind was whipping the tops off the whitecaps. “Need something warming on a day like this.” Mr. Hale shivered. He wore thick gray-flannel pants and a wool sweater with an embroidered golfer on the front; the fire crackled behind him.

Hanging the rapier on the wall, he went to the drinks table and returned with two heavy crystal glasses, half filled with Scotch. “You take it neat, if I remember?”

The truth was Gil didn’t drink Scotch, preferred tequila if it came to hard liquor. While Gil was wondering whether to request it, or perhaps a beer, Mr. Hale added, “Meaning no ice.”

“I know that,” Gil said, taking the glass; it felt oily in his hand.

“Of course you do.” Mr. Hale raised his glass. “Here’s to cold steel.” They drank. Mr. Hale watched Gil’s face. “That’s more like it, n’est-ce pas? ”

“Yeah.”

Gil expected that Mr. Hale would now invite him to sit. Instead he asked, “How’s business?”

“Up and down.”

Mr. Hale, sipping his drink, peered over the top of his glass. “How do you like the work, Gil?”

“Fine.”

“You know the product,” said Mr. Hale. “That’s your strength.”

Gil waited for Mr. Hale to say what his weakness was. While he was waiting, he drank some more. Mr. Hale didn’t reveal Gil’s weakness. Looking down at the bundle in Gil’s hand, he said, “What have you got for me?”

Gil laid the chamois on the drinks table, unwrapped it. Mr. Hale went for the bowie at once. He picked it up, one hand on the pommel, one on the point, held it to the light. The damascene whorls shimmered on the blade.

“My God,” he said, “he was an artist.” He gulped down half his drink, then plucked a book from the shelves, leafed through, read. After a minute or two, he looked up and said: “Fifteen hundred.”

“It’s worth a lot more than that, Mr. Hale.”

“Gil. You’re in sales. There’s what it’s worth, and what it’s worth to me. You must have learned that by now.” His bleached-out eyes met Gil’s. “Seventeen hundred.”

“Two Gs.”

“Seventeen fifty, Gil. Don’t push it.”

“Eighteen.”

Mr. Hale drained his glass. “Nice seeing you,” he said.

“All right,” Gil said. “Seventeen fifty. What about the thrower?”

“Not interested in throwers, not even his,” said Mr. Hale. “Ugly little buggers. No character.”

He picked up the bowie, moved to the wall opposite the fireplace. It was lined with built-in drawers. He took out a key, unlocked one, opened it. Bowie knives, but not his father’s, gleamed on blue velvet. They were Randalls, Gil decided, just as Mr. Hale said, “Oops,” locked the drawer, unlocked another. In this one lay a dozen of his father’s bowies, all tagged with dates purchased and amounts paid. Gil recognized three he had sold himself. Mr. Hale laid the new one on the velvet, then took out his checkbook.

“Would cash be a possibility?”

Mr. Hale stared at him for a moment before saying, “If you like.” He took down a framed photograph of a long-ago Radcliffe fencing team with an unsmiling and very young-looking Mrs. Hale in the center, and exposed a wall safe. Then, hunching over, he spun the dial and opened it. Gil saw a stack of bills inside, two or three inches high. Mr. Hale glanced back over his shoulder. Gil turned away.

He gazed down into the drawer at his father’s knives. He recognized one, a classic bowie with a curving stag handle, even remembered some hunter’s pickup bumping up their dirt road, and his father hurrying from the forge in his leather apron to examine the deer in the back. Gil picked up the knife, studied the tag. Mr. Hale had bought it from a doctor in Oregon five years before, paying $4,500.

Mr. Hale came forward with a wad of bills in his hand. He smiled at Gil, took the knife. “A beauty, isn’t it?”

“His first one-hundred-dollar knife,” Gil said. His father had drunk a sixpack or two in celebration, while Gil did his homework at the kitchen table in the trailer and a blizzard blew outside.

“You don’t say.” Mr. Hale laid the knife in the drawer, closed it, turned the key. He held out the money.

Gil didn’t take it. “Big spread between forty-five hundred and seventeen fifty,” he said.

Mr. Hale said nothing.

“They’re both mint.”

“There are other factors, as well you know,” said Mr. Hale “Are you welshing on me, Gil?”

Gil wasn’t in a position to. He took the money, and since he had to do something to get back, counted it out in front of Mr. Hale. Seventeen hundred-dollar bills and one fifty.

“All there?” asked Mr. Hale.

Gil nodded.

Mr. Hale moved him toward the door. “Decide to part with something else, you just give me a call.”

Gil stopped, his back to a huge painting of a naval battle. He had nothing left to part with. “Tell me something,” he said.

“If I can.”

“What do people like you make a year?”

“What a question.”

“Millions?”

“People like me? Millions?”

“Five or six million.”

Mr. Hale laughed. “Don’t be silly. Nobody honest makes that kind of money.”

“Bobby Rayburn does.”

“Who’s he?” Beyond Mr. Hale’s picture window, the wind caught a scrap of paper and carried it up, up, and out of sight.

Gil drove back off the Cape and over the bridge. After forty or fifty miles, he stopped by the side of the road for a piss. He was just unzipping when a cop pulled up behind him, got out of his car.

“Some problem?” the cop said.

“No,” Gil told him, trying to remember if Mr. Hale had freshened his drink and, if so, how many times. All the cop had to do was ask for his license, get a whiff of his breath, and then hours of bullshit would follow.

“You’ll find sanitary facilities at the next exit,” the cop said.

Gil got back in the car. The cop glanced inside. The thrower lay on the passenger seat, wrapped in the chamois cloth. Gil drove off at a moderate pace, took the next exit, stopped at a gas station. Inside the men’s room, he strapped the thrower to his right leg.

Just outside the city limits, Gil remembered the ball game. He turned on the radio in time to catch the bottom of the first. Primo singled up the middle and Lanz grounded into a fielder’s choice. Rayburn was stepping into the batter’s box when Gil dipped into the tunnel, losing reception. Traffic in the tunnel was stop and go; when Gil reached daylight, the inning was over.

Gil drove to the box office. The man in the watch cap was at his post, leaning against the brick wall under the GATE B sign. Gil got out of the car.

“Lookin’ for tickets?” the man said, not appearing to recognize him.

“The two behind home plate, Opening Day.”

“One fifty,” said the man. “Each.”

“You were down to two seventy-five for the pair yesterday.”

“I wasn’t even here yesterday.”

They looked at each other. Gil realized he was tired of everyone else having the whip hand-O’Meara, Garrity, the VP at Everest, pink-faced patricians like Hale, blotch-faced scum like this scalper: they all knew how to cut a piece off him. Gil felt the weight of the thrower on his leg. It was comforting.

“A’right, a’right,” said the scalper. “You got the two seventy-five?”

“I’ve got two fifty,” Gil said. “That’s what I’ll pay.”

“You jerkin’ me around? Two seventy-five, and it’s your lucky day.”

They looked at each other some more. Gil remembered a little of what he knew about knife fighting. The thrower could be used for stabbing, but stabbing wasn’t so easy if an opponent knew what he was doing. Slashing was better. Even a piece of junk like the Iwo Jima Survivor would do: hit the pavement, roll, come up slashing through the sinews at the back of the knees. Never done it for real, although he’d practiced for years with his father, using rubber knives in the clearing behind the forge, and his father had done it for real, more than once, with the Rangers.

“You in a coma, buddy, or what?” said the scalper.

“Let’s see the tickets.” Gil examined them. Right section-BB, seats 3 and 4; right game-Game 1, Opening Day, April 8, 1:00 P.M. He handed over the $275 and walked away, checking the tickets once more. The printed price was $18.50 each.

Gil had a baconburger and fries at Cleats. Figgy was already there. He’d had a few. Gil had a few with him. They watched a spring-training game from Arizona on the big screen.

“Gil?”

“Yeah?”

“Do me a favor?”

“Like what?”

“I could use a couple hundred, tide me over. Going out to Connecticut this weekend to check things out.”

“What things?”

“Friend of a friend of mine makes fishing rods out there. Looking for a rep. I’ll be able to pay you back in a week, two weeks tops.”

“You’re a city boy. What do you know about fishing rods?”

“I’ll know enough by the weekend. I’ve been reading up. Besides, selling is selling.”

They ordered another round. Gil watched some kid stretch a single into a double, slanting into the bag with a perfect hook slide. A memory came to him, of a game long ago, maybe against the Indians. He’d been on first base, taking his lead, when-

“So how about it?” said Figgy.

“How about what?”

“Couple hundred.”

On the screen the pitcher spun around and fired to the shortstop, sneaking in behind the kid at second base. The umpire made a hammering motion with his fist. The kid jogged off the field, head down.

“It’s not like I’ve got any job security myself,” Gil said.

“You kidding? Your name’s on the catalogue. They’ll never can you.”

“My father’s name,” Gil said. “And don’t be so sure.”

Figgy took a deep breath, blew it out. “How about a hundred and fifty?”

Gil realized that for once he had the whip hand.

“What are you smiling about?” Figgy asked.

“Nothing.” Gil was all set to say no to Figgy when he remembered the Lifesavers. “I can spare fifty. That’s it.”

Figgy took it, and left soon after. Gil stayed until the game was over, then watched Baseball Tonight and SportsCenter before driving home.

Gil lay naked on his bed, except for the thrower, still strapped to his leg. He listened for Lenore upstairs. Once he thought he heard her moan. It gave him an erection. He wondered if she was up there with another man, then decided he had imagined the whole thing. She was sleeping, or working the late shift, or at her sister’s. He considered a quiet trip upstairs, a quiet knock on her door. He stayed where he was. He didn’t like to go to her.

Gil turned off the light. The last thing he saw was Richie’s picture, on the dresser.

Time passed. He drifted in a dark and pleasant fog, close to sleep, playing a little catch with Bobby Rayburn. Bobby was impressed; he could tell.

All at once, Gil sat up, snapped on the light. He got out of bed, picked his jacket off the floor, fumbled for the tickets.

Game 1. April 8. 1:00 P.M. His appointment with the VP at Everest and Co. was for two-thirty, the same day.