BLOOD TRANSFUSION
1959
Dad and Mom got
into a savage argument that erupted at the dinner table a day after my act of
cowardice. Every point he made was shoved down his throat with barbed venom.
Finally he grew so exasperated and enraged that he fired a fork at her, and it
made a direct hit, sticking in her tender bicep. Mother stared at him coldly
and pulled it out, calmly walked out of the dining room, but not before telling
him in an arctic tone of voice to “pack his bags and get out of the house.”
Susie ran from the table, shrieking.
This was a first;
he’d never touched her, and she’d never booted his ass out. He packed a bag and
moved into a shabby motel in Compton .
The relief of tension in the house was instant. We were at last calm. Mom made
a show of being happy, but I knew things couldn’t go on like this, especially
when cousin Bob, Dad’s right hand man at the store, came by to inform us Dad
was a mess and would probably get in a fight over a traffic altercation and end
up in jail if Mom didn’t take him back. He was so irritable in the store he was
driving everybody crazy, working 70 hours a week
A week into his
absence I was sitting on the porch still moping over my craven display when Dad
drove up in his Rambler wagon, bounced over a curb and back down into the
gutter, coming to a crooked stop. Mother was instantly on the porch, hands on
hips, looking cross. The shot-gun door opened and Dad fell out onto the strip
of grass separating the sidewalk and curb and, on his hands and knees, vomited
profusely into the gutter. I walked over to stand near him as neighbors piled
out of their homes to observe the toughest, most famous guy in town resemble a
skid row drunk. It was a Saturday afternoon. I’d never seen Dad this drunk
before. I’d seen him happily lit with his baseball pals, but never like
this—never.
While I stood
over him, he peered up, and muttered. “Yer motha, she knows everything! Never
wrong. Shit.” He spewed out bits of vomit, hiccupped several times. “Go tell
yer motha I’m comin’ home. That’s my house, too. I goddam worked for it. I paid
for it. I won’t be a goddam mouse in my own house!”
He sat up,
holding his head. He tried to rise but teetered and I held him up. He smelled
foul. I hoisted him by the armpits and dragged him like a 6 foot heavy bag
toward the front door of our house. Mother and Susie stood on the porch looking
like executioners. They turned away abruptly and made sour faces as I grunted
and pushed past them, hauling Dad. I got him into the house and led him to the
bathroom where he puked some more in the toilet. Then he sat on the side of the
tub.
“All I do is
work!” He shouted. “And I’M the goddam villain. I’m no wife beater.
I’m not Black Bart!”
I’m not Black Bart!”
Doors slammed. I peeled off his
sweat-drenched, vomit-sprayed shirt, pulled off his shoes, then his pants. He
stood, wavering, and I caught him as he slipped out of his boxer shorts and led
him to the shower. I got him in the shower. I turned on the cold spray full
blast and savored his shuddering cries. I handed him a tooth brush with paste.
“In case she ever
kisses you again, Dad.”
“Very funny.”
I kept an eye on
him so he didn’t collapse in the shower and cut himself to ribbons on the glass
door. After more of his howling and growling, I got him out, tossed him a
towel. He wrapped it around his waist and I led him toward the bedroom, where
mother and Susie packed a bag and skittered past us and out of the house,
headed for gramma’s. Dad collapsed face first on the bed and was immediately
snoring loudly through a thrice broken nose. I was stuck with Black Bart.
----------------
Next morning,
late, Dad was too hungover to eat. He stood in the kitchen drinking coffee, his
face doughy and stubbly, eyes bloodshot.
“You know your
father’s no drunk,” he told me. “Your mother knows it, too. She knows she’s
gotta go pretty far to me fork her.” He belched. “Anyway, thanks for taking
care of your old man.” He stared at me for a long time, appraising me with
those bad eyes. “Now,” he said. “Go get the bag of balls. We’re gonna hit.”
We hauled the
gear to the Roosevelt rock pile as churchgoers
returned for yard work, stood with garden tools to observe us. I knew I was in
for SOME thing as we warmed up, both of us humming the ball pretty good, like
burn-out. He wore his grim game face. Then he grabbed a bat and said he was going
to hit, because he was to play in an Old Timer’s game at Dodger Stadium before
a Dodger game. Last year, down in San Diego , he
hit a 385 foot homer at Westgate
Park
I tossed some
normal BP and he pulled half a dozen ropes into leftfield. He waved the bat at
me and implored me to throw harder. I did. He laced two balls that nearly took
my head off. “Harder!” he shouted, a superior smirk on his mug, digging in. I
wound up and fired one up and in and he tomahawked it, the ball soaring and
curving over the heads of some young neighborhood kids who began shagging in
the outfield. God, could he hit!
“KNOCK ME DOWN!”
he bellowed, waving his hand at himself, taunting. “Come on, bird-boy!”
I fired a medium
fastball and instead of ducking he took it on the shoulder and snarled at me.
“That all you got? My my, the mosquitoes are biting early this year, aren’t
they, bird-boy…? Goddam mommy’s boy!”
I fired a ball as
hard as I could before he could get set and he took it on the backside; then
tossed the bat at me like a spinning propeller and I jumped over it. Then he
was striding toward me. “Now you hit.” He said, eyeing me like somebody he’d
like to punch.
I took my stance,
preparing for a duster. He made me wait; then lobbed a big slow curve down the
middle for a strike, and when I froze and took it he jeered and then before I
could get set he quick-pitched me a fastball inside which I fouled off. He
loaded up and I rifled the next pitch into left field. Then he planted one in
my backside, a hummer. I refused to acknowledge the bruising sting. Then he
side-armed one at my ankles and I jumped over it and went down on my ass while
he horse-laughed, holding the ball, flipping and catching it, in his glory.
“Ready to hit,
birdie?”
“Fuck you! Bring
it on!” I jumped up, dug in.
He was so happy,
happier than I’d seen him in some time, needling, competing, confronting, like
he was playing again, and not working his ass off in his shithouse and driving
all over hell and back, even if he was his own boss and making way more money
than he’d ever made in baseball.
I rifled three of
his fastballs into leftfield before he dusted me. I made sure to hug the plate
and took a low outside curve ball and ripped it up the middle and nailed him on
the foot and he went down in a heap and sat on the mound cursing and grimacing
in pain. I waved my bat at him, “Get up old man, knock me down with your weak
shit. I OWN you!”
He stood and
grabbed balls from the bag and began feeding me fastballs, one after another,
and his tricky off-speed curving drop, and I hammered everything. Something had
busted loose in me. I wanted him to hit me. I wanted the pain. I was so
relaxed, felt outside my skin looking in instead of inside looking out; an
exhilaration and sureness coursed through my blood. My stroke was simple,
level, compact, quick, a perfect extension of my father’s swing, the swing I’d
learned and copied from him, even adopting his mannerisms of touching the plate
and digging in and pumping the bat twice before laying it on my shoulder while
I eye-balled the pitcher, and I realized, as I hammered out line drive after
line drive with violent precision, that the demented man on the mound was part
of me and I was part of him, that indeed we looked the same, smelled the same,
and the same wild Russian blood ran through our veins, and that no matter what
happened from here on out we were one and the same and I could not escape him,
whether I liked it or not. I must deal with it.
Finally, panting
for breath, bent over at the knees, he looked up and grinned at me as balls
came rolling in from the kids shagging in left field. He walked toward me,
flipped me his glove. “Look, you know making the pivot at second you never let
the baserunner intimidate you, I don’t give a fuck who he is, you hit the
sonofabitch between the eyes with the ball when he comes in high, and I
guarantee he’ll never come in high again, unless he wants a hair-lip or a new
nose.”
Dad grimaced as
he talked. No doubt because of his toe. “You let these kids hit now. Pitch to
‘em.” He smacked me hard on the shoulder and set off toward the house, limping
badly; neighbors, out in force, looking on. When I got home an hour later,
mother was back. They were in the bedroom, Dad face down on the bed, icepacks
under his toe and on his back, mother massaging his neck. An ugly purple welt
was on his backside. Mother looked up at me as I stood in the doorway. She
shook her head, but there was a glimmer of accepting good humor in her eyes.
“You two,” was all she said.
(Next Sunday
installment: “A Near racial riot at Cressey
Park
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