FROM ALMOST anywhere in town, in one direction or another you can see open prairie. For my taste too much is made of the great western expanses and their powers to shape the rural consciousness. I have no quarrel with what is common, only with what is thought to be. Someone, I forget who, once told me about a Polish sailor who for some reason was travelling across Saskatchewan and though he spoke little English managed with gestures and nouns to express his clichéd observation that the wheatfields were like the sea in that they moved in waves and rolls. This sort of story gets retold because even farmers who’ve never been to sea have long believed they could but for their roots as easily be fishermen, and for that matter Christ’s first-chosen disciples might as easily have been farmers and Christ himself might have walked on wheat rather than water, which after all isn’t so remarkable in Saskatchewan at certain times of the year. But that’s the original Polish-sailor story, and every such tale ever told to me that I accept as true for a long time afterward, and eventually recall without knowing its origin, I consider a Polish-sailor story. The stuff of personal apocrypha. Too many Polish sailors and we are left not with a lovely view but with a view of the view, a degree of self-awareness that removes us from the landscape, or turns us into multi-eyed aliens who see in every direction at once but can’t drink from a bottle or pet a dog. When I start to think this way I go into the hills or bounce around the gym until I work up a sweat. I then remember only my surfaces, and so reclaim the immediate world of them.
I lace on my baseball spikes and look out at the empty diamond and grandstand that mark the west edge of town. I mean to make something of the last few hours of otherwise wasted Tuesday sunshine, most of my day so far having been spent in sleep and the states orbiting it. The honest labour of an overnight exam-grading binge gave way to the disagreeable combination of drink and a methodical analysis of the drawings on the animal skin in Alan’s basement. I made notes, but from today’s perspective, though they begin well enough, they seem to become a touch too clever, connected to nothing outside themselves, and now as I wait for the Bucks to show for practice—they always need extra bodies—I take them from the dash and read them over again:
This is from my rendering of what is on the skin. The skin itself I’ll consider a winter count calendar, probably of a Plains tribe (Sioux? Blackfoot?)
Most of the figures are immediately identifiable, from what I know, from what I have gathered
horse = the year of their appearance?
deer
fortified lodges = the year they were built
calumet exchange (white man suggested by hat)
hoof prints = horse stealing
a tally of graves (those killed in battle?)
celestial events?
gun
pemmican hung to dry = a good buffalo year
raven
tipi
Other figures are variations on these or else are uninterpretable. There are 74 pictures altogether
I’m troubled most by an “I” shape. What is it a picture of? My interpretive instincts get in the way here by leading me to Roman numerals and English pronouns. And my knowledge that this is a story in the collective first person. Check if I have drawn this accurately
The spiral should likely be read inside to outside, like the spiral calendars of the Toltecs. It should not be read while driving
Insiders who help us interpret what we see are called “informants.” Like spies. Is there any way of knowing if they’re double agents?
The spiral should not be read while drinking. Q: Where is all this water coming from? A: The ice inside the glass has beaded the outside and the beads have run together and dripped. Note: It’s taken me years to notice this phenomenon
Which proves I’m over my head with any problem requiring deep thought. So why not bead my brow tonight and throw out my first arm of the year?
At the moment all that matters is a Rawlings infielder’s glove with an “Edge-U-Cated Heel” (the swampishly named Wade Boggs model), bought for less than eighty dollars two years back when I came out of a ten-year retirement and actually played a season with the Bucks. And the shoes (black Nikes, never polished) and the Bucks team cap and even the protective cup I’m wearing. My talents as a third baseman are that I have quick hands and for some reason was born with an arm capable of throwing a ball through the shell of a Quonset hut. In fact every year I could throw four balls this hard, but then my shoulder and elbow get all humble and my arm becomes useless for two months. My weaknesses are that I can’t hit a curveball and can barely see a fastball. Tonight is my season.
My last year with the Bucks was intended as therapy. Having played half-seasons for two summers while I was in university, I thought I knew what I was getting into, but at that time the Bucks were a winning team and a happy one. Happy teams are all alike, but unhappy teams provide us a more accurate metaphor for our existence: loss breeds desperation breeds extremity breeds violence breeds violence. At first we lost close games and no one was too discouraged because our Americans hadn’t yet arrived, but that year we had a bad shipment. Everyone’s favourite was Tim, an unassuming kid from somewhere in the west who seemed genuinely pleased to be here. As is the lot of nice guys, his fastball didn’t move and he was shelled all season long. We invited him back the next year only because he converted to middle infield and the unpaid local players consistently won money from him in poker. The other imports were an alcoholic who disappeared after a road game in Regina and was next reported in Los Angeles, and a drawling redneck named Don who pitched twice a week and began each game with a beanball to the leadoff hitter. There were many brawls that year but no one was killed. We won four games, lost fourteen.
But numbers alone, as sports analysts say, do not tell the whole story. As embarrassing practice ran into disgraceful game a sort of nihilism grew over us, eclipsing even the light usually surrounding the buckle-up farm boys used to the occasional bad yields and unhappy prospects. Eldon and I actually had serious if short discussions about the point of it all, not just baseball but everything. We all drank and shook our heads a lot. The whole process was stupefying. I’m just thankful I never once suggested there were lessons to be learned from our circumstance. In the end all we had were practical measures. Look inward and find some small thing to love (in my case a ground-ball hit to my left) and commit to it. And chew Red Man or bubble-gum because it’s hard to be anguished while doing so.
Two trucks I can’t recognize from this distance are stopped on the highway north of me, the drivers leaning out and talking to one another. They both turn into the ditch and ride up into the fairgrounds, making their way here, and then decide to make a race of it and cut across a little-league diamond, leaving much of it hanging a few feet in the air. They’ve taken direct aim so I duck inside my cab and close the door to avoid the dirtstorm. They skid to a stop on either side of me. Even before the light is back I can recognize the driver on my right by his cackle howl. It’s Two-Four Wright, as always with his spaniel mutt Randy in the passenger seat. In the other truck are Keith Sidoryk and Stew Gates, who opens his door smiling. “Drought,” he says.
“Hey Toss,” Two-Four yells, “who’d we give up to get you?”
“Gave up on the season,” I say. Keith hasn’t said anything but waves and smiles. He wasn’t on the team when I last played, in fact was in high school at the time. When everyone’s ready Keith hauls out the equipment bags from the bed of his truck and we start playing catch.
“If anyone asks, we did our Windsprints,” says Two-Four.
Within ten minutes the rest of the team has straggled together and Two-Four has recounted his uneventful and deflationary previous evening in “Party D.” Eldon has actually co-ordinated the search groups under letter designations. I find myself nodding a lot, disbelief no longer a functional response to the world.
I wonder who among the players I don’t know are kids from places nearby and who are Americans. Eldon calls everyone together and introduces us to the two imports he collected just last night from the Saskatoon airport.
“Michael Lacousiere comes to us from Georgia,” he explains. A tall kid in white spikes doffs his cap and glances at everyone, looking squarely only at the short, dark-skinned man standing next to him, who turns out to be mystery American number two. Lacousiere whispers something and laughs but the short man seems to ignore him.
Eldon continues, “And John Murphy is from Arizona, and both of them claim they can play infield and pitch, though we don’t know that yet”—our turn to laugh, but they don’t look worried—“and our other import won’t show for ten days so it’s nice to see Toss out here to carry us over. You men who don’t know Toss can call him Boom-Boom.” No laughter.
During hitting practice a group of us shag in the outfield. I drift near Eldon and he tells me he’s a little worried because Lacousiere is a smartass and Murphy doesn’t seem to like him, but Murphy doesn’t say much and that may mean something too. “He’s a Navajo Indian,” says Eldon. “I’d never guessed from the name.” If troubles are brewing, it hasn’t effected their swings. Lacousiere laces line drives to all fields and Murphy launches six or seven balls well over the left-centre fence.
No sooner do I secure a position at deep third than Wingnut Peters, a dead-pull hitter, steps into the box to take his cuts. The first four balls are hit right at me and three of them go through to the outfield, where Gunner Lawson and his cousin Gerald start to hoot and jeer. “Get outta the chute.” “It’s chewing you up. Don’t make me watch.” The chatter is of course part of the fun, but it doesn’t remove the possibility of imminent death if I don’t sharpen up. A nasty good luck transforms my flight reaction to a fight instinct when Lacousiere calls from shortstop, “Back home they call you a fetal boy.” He smiles at me. What an asshole. I cheat to the left and manage to steal a couple of balls from him. After Gunner lays down his bunts he goes through a simulated at-bat and Lacousiere moves to second to practise his double-play pivot. By this time I want the ball, determined that nothing will get by me and if I get a chance I’ll gun Lacousiere in the teeth. The count is two and one and for some reason I know the ball is coming my way on the next pitch. It’s hit to my left. I sweep it up and pass it to my right hand in one motion, and then, while stepping towards the target, I unload.
There goes my arm.
Lacousiere catches the ball at throat level and relays it to first while turning a beautiful pirouette. He is grace without manners, one of those first impressions you know will last a long time.
“Nice throw,” he says.
“Nice shoes,” I say.
“We got something in them two.” There are no lights over the field so practice ends at medium dusk. I sit exhausted, looking through my windshield and the backstop screen, trying to see a single and unbroken third base line. Stew and Eldon lean on my truck.
“Murphy looks good,” I concede. “He seems to mean business.”
“The other guy too. How bad a guy could he be if he plays like that?” Stew does his logical best. I nod for him.
“We’ll see you two at the party then? It’ll be a real bang-up time.” Eldon leers.
“Which two and which party?”
“I thought you’d know about it. There’s a party tomorrow night at Earl Shavers’. Marleen said Karen knows. Didn’t she tell you?”
“Her plans don’t seem to include me at the moment.” To their credit neither of them raises his eyebrows at this news, but as I put the truck in gear Stew pats me on the shoulder and it means more than it should, coming from someone I’m not especially close to. Then he says, “See you, stud buddy,” burning off any bonding residue.
Over to Cora’s house to see if she has a flash Polaroid. Though it’s dark she’s standing in her garden mumbling at her plants. I don’t intend to stay long but feel ridiculous in two-tone cowboy boots and grey sweats, so I head upstairs and change into some cottons. I make it out back again in time to help her roll up a garden hose onto an old wheel rim we’ve mounted onto the back of the house. My right arm feels like it’s trying to change species.
“We’ve got one somewhere if the flash still works. That’s two or three cameras ago.” She frowns at the hose. “The tomatoes needed a good soaking.”
“I’ll take your word for it. I can’t see them. How’re the bedding plants?”
“They all took pretty well but everything looks nervous to me this year. The third generation of drought-grown plants can probably smell rain five hundred miles away.” As if on cue a wind kicks up and blows shut the latch gate in the neighbour’s yard. Though it’s full dark now we both instinctively look west to see what’s brewing. The windstorms last summer literally blew some buildings away, some people too if you count the farm families that went the way of their topsoil. There are clouds but no lightning. Only the flies amassed on the back screen door promise rain. I get a beer from the fridge as Cora goes into her room to shut a window.
“You know something we never do any more is barbecue. Why don’t we plan one for next week?” I ask.
“Did you say barbecue?” She returns and sits with me at the table. “Perry claims he doesn’t like them. That’s his excuse for not going to his class reunion on July first. I think it’s nice they invited him. I mean he didn’t graduate so they didn’t have to, but he got an invitation and then got moody. I told him not to be a spoilsport, which you probably think is unkind. It’s not.”
“Do you want me to get on him about it?”
“Would you? I should’ve asked before now. It might be too late anyway.”
“I’ll remind him he owes me some favours.” I could also remind him he owes me money from the last time I sat in on a game of High Chicago, in that he’s not the kind to distinguish between clean debts and corrupt ones.
I can smell the approaching rain and could feel it in my knee too if my legs weren’t already aching. The moments before rain are as close as we can get to making the physical world a minded thing. This apart from hallucinatory wanderings. If I’m left alone in a certain chair in a certain room my focus invariably moves to the same spot time after time, and I imagine seeing on the wall or ceiling or cupboard door the movement of any number of figures, usually human. The perspectives are sometimes my own and other times those of a tv or movie shot. On Cora’s yellowed lily wallpaper I often see a few seconds of hockey from the centre-ice camera, but now there is only pattern on paper on wall. All those moments I catch myself in my father’s postures, those attitudes of his I hadn’t realized I’d taken notice of until I assumed them. Fingertips to forehead, with thumb under cheekbone. Whenever was he still enough to make this impression? But then memory asks little of time.
“Do you know that it doesn’t bother him to swear in front of me any more? Today he came home at lunch and said, ‘You won’t believe the f-ing story that’s going around now.’ It disturbed me so much I almost didn’t hear the story.”
“Did it have something to do with an animal carcass, by any chance?”
“Something like that.”
“Are you telling me you were more disturbed by his language than by the slaughter, or are you trying to find a way to ask me what I know?” This is a cruel device but the direct approach still has its uses. Perry wouldn’t have volunteered the dynamite rumour and my guess is she hasn’t heard it. She scowls and I continue, “I’m just prodding you, Cora. Perry hasn’t done a good job of softening you up for me. You know better than to worry about him, though I don’t remember when it’s ever stopped you.”
“A mother’s concern is my prerogative. But what would I need softening for?”
“It’s just a few things have lined up against me lately and now I can feel this latest round of misinformation moving in.”
“Apparently the evidence is.”
“The evidence was ten miles from me.”
“That was earlier. This morning someone found a carcass on the east island. Some people would call that your back yard.”
“I’m sure they are.”
“Yes, well, that’s what’s got him so upset. For a while it went around that you were the one who found it. Now most people are saying it was someone from across the river. Not that it makes any difference.”
“I can see how it might make a lot of difference depending on the rest of the details. But these things don’t cling to me much any more. They shouldn’t bother Perry either. Tell him he has to learn how to laugh at bad intentions. It’s the only appropriate response.”
“I don’t agree with you there.”
“But that’s what he needs to think.” A moth beats against the plastic shade of the ceiling fluorescent. “At his age. Now let’s hunt up that camera.”
What unruly truths live inaccessibly beyond our best efforts at straightening the record. Cora’s last words as I go out the door. “Those boots don’t go with what you’re wearing. Not that anyone cares.”
The night turns gothic with overhead lightning and a gutter-flood of rain that washes over the high-speed wiper blades flashing me the street at the pace of a frenetic metronome. After four blocks to the cop shop I pull into the driveway and park behind a blue and white cruiser. Inside, Hall is spooning himself a bowl of soup. Upon seeing me he smiles and sweeps his huge hand invitationally in the direction of a chair opposite him.
“That’s an impressive rain,” he states.
“Thank you.”
“I wasn’t giving credit.”
“No one does any more.”
He pushes the bowl away, dabs his mouth with a paper serviette. “There’s no need for horseplay. I thought I already made that point.”
“Not everyone agrees with you. Some think horseplay’s exactly what we’re lacking around here.”
“Well, I hope you’ve done your best to convince them they’re wrong.”
“I suggested he apologize and Dewey said no. There’s another letter in next week’s paper.”
“Well, son of a.… Excuse me.”
“Naturally.”
“Our deal involved you getting the job done, not just trying to.”
“I didn’t try that hard.”
“You don’t think I’ll arrest you, Mr. Raymond?”
“You seem to have faith in community policing. I wonder why you don’t work all this out with Dewey directly.”
“We’ve spoken a little, as you no doubt know.”
“We don’t conspire quite that much. What’s he say?”
“He’s about as easy to talk to as you are. You’re both a couple of … you both avoid straight answers.”
“You’ve got me wrong, corporal. I’m a big fan of the truth, just like you. It’s just I’m willing to believe the truth might be bigger than I am. You can’t straighten someone out if they weren’t straight to begin with.”
“But you can certainly twist people around. Me and my two officers can’t keep hold of everyone who’s decided to go shoot up the river valley.”
“You don’t blame Dewey for these animal findings?”
“If you bother to trace the source of those tales, they’ll take you to the meat counter at the Co-op store.”
“There weren’t even any carcasses?”
“Of course not. How come in this town the plain truth can’t get two steps into daylight without getting shot up?”
“Don’t complain. Your next station might have alot of inbreeding. Have the Coca May contacted you?”
“They must have. I get flagged down in the street ten times a day by people asking what I know.”
“They’re just amusing themselves. No one really believes there’s a monster out there.”
“Then why does the valley sound like a free-fire zone each night?”
“Exactly. That’s what I mean about the big truth.”
“Well listen here, then.” He rises and addresses me in the voice of something other than a national institution. “The big truth you might like to know is that I’ve had more than one call from people who say they’re on the school board and want me to confirm or deny a certain explosive rumour about you.”
“You blew up your evidence in a gravel pit.” I smile agreeably.
“I don’t need evidence to do you damage. I can tell stories too. I just shine one up and roll it out into town and see what happens.”
“I wish I could help you, corporal. Someone might get hurt out there, but nothing I do is going to keep the town from hunting down whatever we’re afflicted with.”
“Maybe not, at least until someone catches the damn thing and strings it up in public so we know it’s safe here again. I guess that’s what they’ve set out to do,” he says.