Michael Bishop

Brittle Innings

Prologue

After pursuing him a week (half my annual vacation from the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer), I caught up with Danny Boles on a blustery day in early April at a high school in eastern Alabama. I knew I’d found him because his fabled motor home-he called it Kit Carson, a sly allusion to his job-was parked on the asphalt above the school’s ram-shackle athletic complex.

I pulled in next to the RV, climbed out, and peered through the driver’s-side window. An empty fast-food sack and an old ruled notebook lay on the front seat. I tried the door. It was locked. From the ball field came the faint chatter of two or three players and a coach’s blistering shout, “Come on, you guys, talk it up!”

Although not quite five in the afternoon, a twilight chill had begun to creep over the tilled red clay beyond the collapsing rail of the center-field fence. A red-shouldered hawk, hungry or curious, sailed above the clay. I watched it as I heel-walked down the slope looking for Boles.

In that puny weekday crowd, he stood out plainly enough. There were aluminum bleachers on each baseline, but Boles leaned on the fence midway between first base and the right-field foul marker, a metal pole topped by a limp blue pennant. He wore faded dungarees, scuffed loafers, and, as if it were July, a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt. A wispy-haired and frail-seeming man, Boles rested his arms on the fence and studied the talent on the field. Most folks would have supposed him some player’s grandfather.

Aping nonchalance, I strolled past the first-base bleachers, tiptoed around Boles, and took up a place beside him. I hesitated to interrupt his scrutiny of the earnest kids scattered across the field. I also hesitated to confess my real business, for Boles had a reputation as a hater of newshounds.

When that dull half-inning had concluded and the teams began lackadaisically changing places, I said, “Mr Boles, you’re a hard man to track down.”

He squinted at me as if I’d jabbed him with a stick.

“If not for your RV,” I said, gesturing toward the parking lot, “I might’ve kept going. This is the umpity-umpth town I’ve visited in the past five days.”

Boles’s squint unclenched. His eyes grew a size or two, his irises like tiny pinwheels. April sunlight turned his jug-handle ears translucent. Although it looked as if I could knock him over with a string bean, Boles intimidated me. Why? The sleeves of his flamboyant shirt came down to his elbows, giving him the look of a frail gnome with a bad haircut. Maybe it was his rep that daunted me, or the hint of flint in his close-set eyes.

Almost indifferently, Boles looked away. A between-innings pitching change had taken his attention. A long-armed black kid, with a fullback’s thighs, took the mound and hurled incandescent heat during his warm-ups.

Sadly, with a batter at the plate, the kid’s performance was high, wide, and ugly. He walked the first two batters to face him, struck out a wild swinger, walked a third kid, struck out a second hitter on a dozen pitches (including several that would have been sure tickets to first if the batter hadn’t foul-tipped them), and came irreparably unglued when a blooper to right center rolled to the fence for a bases-clearing double. He shied his next pitch into the hitter’s ribs, then stalked around the mound muttering and banging his glove against his thigh.

“If he just had some control,” I said.

The manager signaled for the right fielder and the distraught black kid to swap positions.

Only then did Boles look at me again. “That’s where he shoulda been playing to start with. He’s a pitcher like the Incredible Hulk’s a doily maker.”

Although his look scalded, Boles’s voice unnerved me most. I’d forgotten that several years ago, during an operation for throat cancer, he’d had his vocal cords removed. Today he spoke with the help of an amplifying device, a kind of cordless microphone, held to his throat above the Adam’s apple. The sound from the amplifier was intelligible enough, but mechanical in tone. Listening to him, you got the feeling that his rubbery face masked the shiny features and the artificial vocal apparatus of a robot.

“Who the hell are yvu, anyway?”

“Sorry, Mr Boles.” I tried to recover. “A sports writer.”

“Yeah? Who for?”

“The Columbus papers. Columbus, Georgia.”

Boles nodded and pocketed the microphonelike gadget.

“I telephoned your home in Atlanta a few weeks back,” I said. “I want to do a major profile. A full-length book. Your wife said she’d relay the message. In the meantime, she advised me to look for you at high school games up and down the Chattahoochee Valley. She said we should have a face-to-face about the feasibility of the project.

“Sir,” I added.

Boles put a finger to his lips. In a sudden sweep, he moved it to mine. He wasn’t here to jawbone; if I wanted his cooperation, I had better knock off the kibitzing. The scoreboard in left field said that this game was only four innings along. How many innings did high school teams play? Seven? Nine?

Despite a windbreaker and woolen slacks, I had Himalayan-size goosebumps, while Boles, tanned and stringy in his Hawaiian shirt, seemed primed for another four to six innings.

Surprisingly, he lasted only two more feeble ground-cuts, then limped away from the fence toward the parking lot, gesturing at me to follow. He didn’t look back. Never mind his hitch-along gait, he made good time. At his RV, he keyed open the driver’s door.

“The game wasn’t over,” I said.

He turned around, his amplifier to his Adam’s apple. “At this level, it’s not games that matter. It’s players. I don’t have to wait for meaningless overall outcomes to sort the stumblebums from the racehorses.” He said outcomes, even with his flat mechanical voice, as if it were a disease. “Sides, you were getting itchy to leave. Weren’t you?”

“Yessir.” It didn’t embarrass me to say so. The April twilight had rolled down on us like a corrugated iron door.

Boles said, “Go around back. I’ll open up for you. We’ll have us a nip and chew the fat.”

In less than a minute, he’d admitted me to the boudoir-kitchen-sitting-room of his motor home. We sat across from each other in a cramped table booth that undoubtedly opened out, at night, into a spine-deforming bed. From plastic cups, we sipped Early Times Kentucky whiskey. Kit Carson’s interior, redolent of hamburger grease and lime-scented aftershave, felt airtight and stuffy. Its warmth, and that of the booze, made Boles’s filmy shirt seem almost practical. I shed my windbreaker.

“I let you find me,” Boles said.

“How so?”

“Usually, on the job, I park this rolling flophouse where the competition aint likely to see it.”

“The competition?”

“Other scouts. They know my rep. They figure if I’m tooling around a certain neighborhood, I’ve scented a prospect, maybe even another MVP.”

I wasn’t above buttering him up. “You’ve signed over forty big leaguers, haven’t you?”

“Forty-six. So I don’t let the competition see Kit. I park behind a gym, a dumpster. Sometimes I drive a renter.”

“You abandon Kit Carson?”

“Else guys’ll poach. I’m only out here today”-waving his cup at the parking lot-“cause I knew you’d throw in the towel if you didn’t find me in a year or two. Right?”

“Why’d you want me to find you? Are you ready to talk?”

“I’m ready to retire. Talking may be the way to fatten up the goose that’ll let us do it in comfort.” He smiled. “Or the only way to clear my head.”