[AGL] Poem-a-day

[Michael Eisenstadt]

good story well told with the big lie at the end:

"has seen . . . the blonde and blue-eyed bringer of truth,
who will not easily be forgiven."


On 3/16/2014 2:53 AM, Byron Allen Black wrote:

> I recently jined up with poemhunter.com <http://poemhunter.com>. Most 

> of what they offer is either woefully inept (members' poems) or stuff 

> I already know (Robinson Jeffries for instance).

>

> But today's offering from a guy I never heard of is a zinger. And 

> kindly note that I personally have never given a shit about baseball:

>

>

>

>

>

> *Body and Soul*

>

> Half-numb, guzzling bourbon and Coke from coffee mugs,

> our fathers fall in love with their own stories, nuzzling

> the facts but mauling the truth, and my friend's father begins

> to lay out with the slow ease of a blues ballad a story

> about sandlot baseball in Commerce, Oklahoma decades ago.

> These were men's teams, grown men, some in their thirties

> and forties who worked together in zinc mines or on oil rigs,

> sweat and khaki and long beers after work, steel guitar music

> whanging in their ears, little white rent houses to return to

> where their wives complained about money and broken Kenmores

> and then said the hell with it and sang Body and Soul

> in the bathtub and later that evening with the kids asleep

> lay in bed stroking their husband's wrist tattoo and smoking

> Chesterfields from a fresh pack until everything was O.K.

> Well, you get the idea. Life goes on, the next day is Sunday,

> another ball game, and the other team shows up one man short.

>

> They say, we're one man short, but can we use this boy,

> he's only fifteen years old, and at least he'll make a game.

> They take a look at the kid, muscular and kind of knowing

> the way he holds his glove, with the shoulders loose,

> the thick neck, but then with that boy's face under

> a clump of angelic blonde hair, and say, oh, hell, sure,

> let's play ball. So it all begins, the men loosening up,

> joking about the fat catcher's sex life, it's so bad

> last night he had to hump his wife, that sort of thing,

> pairing off into little games of catch that heat up into

> throwing matches, the smack of the fungo bat, lazy jogging

> into right field, big smiles and arcs of tobacco juice,

> and the talk that gives a cool, easy feeling to the air,

> talk among men normally silent, normally brittle and a little

> angry with the empty promise of their lives. But they chatter

> and say rock and fire, babe, easy out, and go right ahead

> and pitch to the boy, but nothing fancy, just hard fastballs

> right around the belt, and the kid takes the first two

> but on the third pops the bat around so quick and sure

> that they pause a moment before turning around to watch

> the ball still rising and finally dropping far beyond

> the abandoned tractor that marks left field. Holy shit.

> They're pretty quiet watching him round the bases,

> but then, what the hell, the kid knows how to hit a ball,

> so what, let's play some goddamned baseball here.

> And so it goes. The next time up, the boy gets a look

> at a very nifty low curve, then a slider, and the next one

> is the curve again, and he sends it over the Allis Chalmers,

> high and big and sweet. The left field just stands there, frozen.

> As if this isn't enough, the next time up he bats left-handed.

> They can't believe it, and the pitcher, a tall, mean-faced

> man from Okarche who just doesn't give a shit anyway

> because his wife ran off two years ago leaving him with

> three little ones and a rusted-out Dodge with a cracked block,

> leans in hard, looking at the fat catcher like he was the sonofabitch

> who ran off with his wife, leans in and throws something

> out of the dark, green hell of forbidden fastballs, something

> that comes in at the knees and then leaps viciously towards

> the kid's elbow. He swings exactly the way he did right-handed

> and they all turn like a chorus line toward deep right field

> where the ball loses itself in sagebrush and the sad burnt

> dust of dustbowl Oklahoma. It is something to see.

>

> But why make a long story long: runs pile up on both sides,

> the boy comes around five times, and five times the pitcher

> is cursing both God and His mother as his chew of tobacco sours

> into something resembling horse piss, and a ragged and bruised

> Spalding baseball disappears into the far horizon. Goodnight,

> Irene. They have lost the game and some painful side bets

> and they have been suckered. And it means nothing to them

> though it should to you when they are told the boy's name is

> Mickey Mantle. And that's the story, and those are the facts.

> But the facts are not the truth. I think, though, as I scan

> the faces of these old men now lost in the innings of their youth,

> it lying there in the weeds behind that Allis Chalmers

> just waiting for the obvious question to be asked: why, oh

> why in hell didn't they just throw around the kid, walk him,

> after he hit the third homer? Anybody would have,

> especially nine men with disappointed wives and dirty socks

> and diminishing expectations for whom winning at anything

> meant everything. Men who knew how to play the game,

> who had talent when the other team had nothing except this ringer

> who without a pitch to hit was meaningless, and they could go home

> with their little two-dollar side bets and stride into the house

> singing If You've Got the Money, Honey, I've Got the Time

> with a bottle of Southern Comfort under their arms and grab

> Dixie or May Ella up and dance across the gray linoleum

> as if it were V-Day all over again. But they did not

> And they did not because they were men, and this was a boy.

> And they did not because sometimes after making love,

> after smoking their Chesterfields in the cool silence and

> listening to the big bands on the radio that sounded so glamorous,

> so distant, they glanced over at their wives and noticed the lines

> growing heavier around the eyes and mouth, felt what their wives

> felt: that Les Brown and Glenn Miller and all those dancing couples

> and in fact all possibility of human gaiety and light-heartedness

> were as far away and unreachable as Times Square or the Avalon

> ballroom. They did not because of the gray linoleum lying there

> in the half-dark, the free calendar from the local mortuary

> that said one day was pretty much like another, the work gloves

> looped over the doorknob like dead squirrels. And they did not

> because they had gone through a depression and a war that had left

> them with the idea that being a man in the eyes of their fathers

> and everyone else had cost them just too goddamn much to lay it

> at the feet of a fifteen year-old-boy. And so they did not walk him,

> and lost, but at least had some ragged remnant of themselves

> to take back home. But there is one thing more, though it is not

> a fact. When I see my friend's father staring hard into the bottomless

> well of home plate as Mantle's fifth homer heads toward Arkansas,

> I know that this man with the half-orphaned children and

> worthless Dodge has also encountered for the first and possibly

> only time the vast gap between talent and genius, has seen

> as few have in the harsh light of an Oklahoma Sunday, the blonde

> and blue-eyed bringer of truth, who will not easily be forgiven.

>

> *B H Fairchild*

>


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