CAVEMAN
“I want a cigarette so bad,” Dad said, “I can taste it.” He pulled up his T-shirt sleeve, ripped the nicotine patch off his shoulder, and stuck it on the dashboard. “I don’t know why we wear these darn patches,” he said. “They don’t do a thing for me.”
As he reached above his sun visor and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, I spotted the death-skull tattoo on his arm where the patch had been.
“I want one of those,” I said, and pointed at it.
He glanced at his shoulder and frowned. “That’s one patch that’s never coming off,” he said, and shook a cigarette toward his lips.
“Maybe I can get a tattoo of a patch and then I’ll never have to change my meds again,” I said, joking around.
“Well, I’ve about had it with this patch business,” he
said. “This is what works for me.” He lit the cigarette and inhaled. “Sometimes the disease is better than the medicine. You know what I mean? When I was working down in Panama, a doctor gave me some kind of anti-malaria pills and said, ‘Now don’t use them unless you have to, ’cause they’ll probably kill you before they cure you.’”
I wanted to talk about tattoos but he was already talking his talk. I knew I should listen because that’s how you get to know someone when you haven’t spent a lot of time together, but other things were on my mind. I was thinking that being away from Mom made me feel different. Like there was one Joey for Mom and a different Joey for Dad and that I was becoming two Joeys. Mom’s Joey didn’t want a tattoo but Dad’s Joey did.
“Dad, have you ever felt like two people at once?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. Instead he exhaled and said, “You know, I never had much interest in kids. But after my last arrest I had to do community service, and the coaching opportunity was way better than picking trash on the side of the road with a bunch of jittery winos, so now I’m the coach of a team of Police Athletic League kids. You know, local kids who if they didn’t play ball might get into a little summer trouble. So you shouldn’t be afraid of them.”
I wasn’t afraid of them. I was sort of afraid of him.
He was already a criminal. “Why were you arrested?” I asked.
He turned and smiled at me, then turned away and flicked his cigarette butt out the window. “The usual charge,” he said. “Stupidness. Just plain old stupidness.”
“Really?” I said, unsure. “I thought you had to do something stupid to be arrested. Not just be stupid.”
“Well, that’s true,” he said. “I did something stupid.”
“What?”
“I bit a man.”
“You mean like a dog?”
“Yeah, pretty much just like a dog.”
“Where’d you bite him?”
“The nose,” he said, and held the tip of his reddish nose, then rubbed it between his thumb and finger like he was polishing it.
“Wow!” I said, squirming in my seat. “Wow! Do you know why I was kicked out of school and sent to special-ed school?”
“No,” he said. “What Pigza stupidness did you do?”
“I accidentally cut off a girl’s nose tip with a pair of scissors. I was running with them and tripped over her and just snipped a tiny bit of her nose off. Can you believe that? Did you trip too?”
“Nope,” he said, and lit another cigarette. “I didn’t trip. I flipped. I was in a bar and a guy snatched my beer and drank it all down and I got so mad I just
grabbed him by the ears and bit his nose before he could pull away.”
“You mean yours wasn’t an accident?” I said, and I kept looking at his sharp yellow teeth as if he were the Big Bad Wolf.
“No,” he replied. “Nope. You know, Joey, I know you want to have long father-to-son talks with me, and it’s not that I don’t want to have long talks with you but you have to realize I really only want to talk about the future with you. Not the past. My past is not good, Joey, so I don’t have the good ol’ days to feel all warm and fuzzy about. My past, like the nose thing, gets sort of scary and ugly, and to tell you the truth I’d just rather have, you know, the new times to talk about. The now times. I’d rather just show you Storybook Land and play baseball and work on making new memories.”
“Don’t you even want to talk about what happened with Mom?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “Definitely not. Because the worst thing I ever did was mess your mom up and it just makes me feel sick to think about it.”
“But I was awful to her too,” I said. “Like, a million times. And she forgave me each and every time.”
“Well, we may have that nose problem in common, but not the Mom forgiveness deal. She won’t have a thing to do with me,” he said.
“Grandma told me it was your secret dream to have a family again,” I ventured.
“Grandma can’t keep a secret,” he said. “She’s yappier than Pablo. Sure, I might have said that. But then after I have a few beers I’m liable to say anything—I’m one of those drinkers that for every bottle of beer I empty, I fill it back up with tears.”
We pulled into the Police Athletic League ball-field parking lot, which was right behind the backstop.
“Dad,” I said, smiling. “I think we just had our first back-and-forth conversation.”
“I’m sure we’ll have more,” he said, looking out onto the field, and I could tell he was already distracted. He pulled his patch off the dashboard and slapped it back onto his shoulder, then swung his door open. “But for now, we have a game to play, and I have to knock these kids into shape. Why don’t you take a seat in the dugout and just watch while I get some drills going.” He went around to the trunk, opened it, and pulled out a big bag of bats and balls.
“About tonight,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll be playing, but don’t feel bad. You’ll be the new kid on the team and I have to use the regulars, but if I get a chance I’ll put you in so keep an eye on the game.” Then he reached out and tousled my hair with his hand and I loved it. Loved it more than anything he had said.
Suddenly he yelled out over his shoulder at the team. “Okay, you slackers, pick up the pace! You don’t want to be losers for your entire lives, do you?” Then he began hitting sharp ground balls in their direction which scattered them like pigeons.
After a few minutes of feeling out of place over nothing in particular I began to entertain myself as best I could. I got a pen out of the car and drew a skull tattoo on my shoulder. I took out my shoelaces and relaced them in the fancy way Dad had his laced. Some kid had left behind a bag of peanuts and I took a few and opened them up while I whistled “Peanuts” from the Tijuana Brass tape. I shoved a peanut up one nostril and covered the other with a finger. I snorted as hard as I could and the peanut blasted from its hole like a rocket from a bazooka. I fired a few at Dad as he trotted by and one of them hit him in the back of the neck and he slapped at it like it was a bug.
I had just shoved a peanut up my nose when a tall red-haired woman in a baseball uniform walked into the dugout with a big equipment bag slung over her shoulder. For a moment I thought Mom had snuck up on me. “So,” she said, and dropped the bag on the bench which kicked up a cloud of dust, “are you the new ringer Carter told me about?”
“I’m not sure,” I said with my voice buzzing like a kazoo because of the peanut vibrating in my nose. “I haven’t played yet, so I don’t know.”
“Well, you can’t take the field until you have the right equipment,” she said. She unzipped the bag and reached into it, and while she did that I fake-sneezed the peanut into my hand.
“Bless you,” she said.
“Thanks,” I replied. “Want a peanut?” I held it out toward her on my palm. It looked a little slimy
“Did that come out of your nose?” she asked, and squinted at me with her hands on her hips. “Your dad does the same thing. He puts them up his nose and shoots them out at people. But usually he has a few drinks first. Have you been drinking?”
“No,” I said. “Never. But Dad and I do have a lot in common.” I tossed the peanut over the fence. “Never mind about the snack,” I said, and rubbed my hands together. “I was just trying to be polite.”
She shrugged, then pulled a jersey out of her bag. “I believe this is for some kid named Pigza.” She handed it to me.
I unfolded it. On the tar-black front was printed STEEL CITY SPORTS in thick yellow ink, like what they use on highway lines. I turned it over. J. PIGZA was printed across the back above a big number 17. “How did you know this was my lucky number?” I asked.
“I have some inside information,” she said, and nodded toward Dad, who was scolding some kid for loving his mother too much.
“And you’ll need a cap too,” the lady said. She reached into the bag and handed one to me. S.C.S. was sewn onto the front in shiny gold thread. “And cleats. Are these the right size?”
They were. “Yes,” I said.
Then she pulled out the best thing I had ever seen. It was a black sweatband with a yellow number 17 on it. “That’s not for your wrist,” she said to me. “I understand you have a little buddy—you can slide this around his belly.”
“This is so cool,” I said, and just stared at it. “Pablo will love it.”
“Now put your jersey on,” she said. “You can’t get into the game without an official PAL jersey.”
I yanked my shirt up over my head like it was covered with red ants. I put on my jersey and smoothed it against my flat belly and breathed in the rubbery smell of the lettering.
“You need baseball pants,” she said. “Carter forgot to tell me.”
I looked down at my jeans.
“You can wear what you have on, but to look really sharp you have to get the matching pants. What waist do you wear?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
She leaned forward and put her thumb on my belly button, then kept reaching around me until she got
some measurement. “Skinny,” she said. “You need to fatten up a bit.”
“Like Hansel?”
“In a way,” she said. “It’s just if you play the game you need a couple extra pounds. I think your Dad is going to have to put you on a large-pizza-a-day diet.”
I grinned. I loved pizza. “Extra cheese and extra vegetables!” I sang like I was ordering one over the phone.
“Your wish is my command,” she sang back, and pulled a phone out of her pocket and dialed. “Hello. I’d like to order a pizza for delivery Yeah. Extra cheese and extra vegetables. Yeah. What?”
Dad was yelling at some kid to pay attention or else he’d bury him up to his neck and use his head for second base. She held her hand over the phone and hollered, “Hey, Carter. Shut your trap! I’m ordering a pizza.”
Dad turned around with his mouth open.
“That’s right,” she said. “Put a sock in it.” Then she returned to the phone. “The PAL field over by Clemente Memorial. Yeah. Steel City Sports. Cash. Okay.” Then she hung up.
“By the way,” she said, and stuck out her hand, “I’m Leezy Fiddle, the sports store sponsor for your team and the gal that keeps your dad from going around the bend every game day.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
“I’ll be seeing more of you,” she replied. “Right now, I better go chill down the coach before his head pops.”
Dad was threatening to wrap masking tape around some kid’s eyes and make him “play by instinct! Like a freakin’ Luke Skywalker!”
Leezy walked over and stood behind him. She was taller than he was and slapped the brim of his cap down over his eyes. He whipped around like he was going to fight, but by then she was trotting into the outfield to catch fly balls.
When the game began Dad started out all calm and helpful, but I knew it wouldn’t last because watching him was like watching a big version of my old wired self. He gathered all the players around him. “Okay,” he said, “we can whip these guys. We can show ’em who the losers are. We can win this easy and get back into second place. Now, let’s play ball!”
Then he twisted the game ball into the pitcher’s glove. “Virgilio, just throw heat. That’s all it takes. High, hard heat. The last time they slaughtered your change-up. This time only heat. Got that? Nothing fancy. Remember, a cannon doesn’t need a curve or a slider or a fork ball—it just does one thing well—it fires heat. Now go out there and show them you got a cannon for an arm.”
Virgilio silently nodded along until Dad slapped him
on the back, and then he ran toward the mound as if he had been shot out of a cannon.
“Batter up,” the umpire shouted the moment he finished sweeping off home plate.
Immediately Dad started pacing back and forth and shouting at the other team’s players. “No batter!” he yelled. “Batter’s got a limp stick!”
Virgilio leaned forward and sort of threw an overhand lob.
“Ballll,” mooed the ump.
“Ball on what planet?” Dad hollered.
The catcher threw the ball back to Virgilio harder than Virgilio had thrown it at the plate. I hadn’t played before but I knew the pitcher should be throwing harder than the catcher.
“Now show him the cannon!” Dad roared at Virgilio. “Put some smoke on it!”
Virgilio threw the same slow pitch.
“Ballll two,” the umpire called.
Dad jumped into the air. “Ball?” he shouted. “A Seeing Eye dog knows that’s a strike.”
On Virgilio’s next pitch the batter slammed the ball into the outfield for a double.
“I said throw heat, Son. Heat!” Dad screamed. “This isn’t T-ball.”
The next batter hit a double and drove in the first batter. The following batter cracked one up the middle
and Virgilio skipped out of the way and fell onto his side.
“Come on,” Dad groaned. “Show some bad intentions out there on the mound. Imagine you are throwing a brick through your teacher’s window.”
It must have been a heavy brick in Virgilio’s mind. He lobbed it in there and the kid hammered it over the fence.
“Ouch,” Leezy said, and winced. She got up off the bench to try and calm Dad down because he was hopping from foot to foot while calling Virgilio and the umpire a bunch of names and the coach on the other team was yelling back that this was a family activity and for Dad to “watch his language” or he’d report him to the front office. By then Leezy had her arm around Dad and I was glad she was bigger than him and she began to steer him around by his head like he was a calf she was going to wrestle to the ground and tie up with a rope.
By the time Virgilio got out of the inning we were down seven runs. He took a seat at the end of the bench and pulled his jersey up over his head and didn’t move a muscle until he had to pitch again. At the end of the fourth inning we were down fifteen to zip.
“Okay, Pigza,” Dad said, and tossed me the ball. “Show them what heat means.”
“Me?” I said.
“Yeah, you,” Dad replied, and he pulled me to one
side. “One thing before you take the mound,” he said. “I have to give you my special ‘pitchers only’ pep talk.” He put his arm around me and walked me away from the other players. “Okay,” he continued, “this is all you ever need to know about baseball. It is a game as old as the moment men went from animal to human and started hating each other. It comes down to this a caveman with a stick versus a caveman with a rock. And you are the caveman with the rock. Remember, the rock rules. The rock is always in control of the situation. The caveman with the stick can’t do a thing as long as you control the rock. Now, get out there and show him who the superior caveman is.” Then he slapped me across the butt and before I knew it I was trotting out to the mound and I had no idea what I was going to do.
As I cut across the grass infield a kid in the other dugout yelled, “Mystery pitcher!”
I was a mystery, and I liked it. I stood on the mound and looked out at both dugouts and all the people sitting in the stands. Half of them wanted me to mess up, and half of them wanted me to succeed. It was about the same as being back in school, where some of the kids were hoping I’d get better and the others just wanted me to do something screwy to drive the teacher nuts and stop the lesson.
I always had people rooting for me both ways. I didn’t realize it was preparing me for baseball.
“Okay,” the catcher yelled. “Put ’er in here,” and he punched his glove with his fist to give me a target. The batter was ready so I just reared back and threw one as hard as I could, and you could hear the clang of the ball as it hit the umpire right in his wire mask.
“Ball one,” the ump croaked as he staggered back and adjusted his mask.
“That’s my kid who threw that heater!” Dad hollered as he swung his arms over his head. Then he cupped his hands around his big mouth and yelled at the other coach. “Watch out for my kid! He’s a caveman.” Then he turned to me. “Show ’em what you got, Pigza!”
My next pitch kicked up the dirt around the batter’s feet and he danced all the way to the backstop. From that moment on I knew he was afraid of me. I was the caveman with the rock and all he could do was stand there and wait while I squinted in at the catcher as if I couldn’t see far enough to tie my shoe. My third pitch hit the catcher in the knee and he toppled over in agony I was getting closer. Then I reared so far back that my hand nearly touched the ground and I sprang forward and threw a smoker right down the middle.
“Strike!” the ump called out.
Once I got the target lined up the batter didn’t have a chance. I struck him out on two more pitches. Then I threw six more pitches and we were out of the inning. It was pretty easy for me, and when I trotted off
the field Dad was beaming and his canoe smile was sailing the seven seas.
“Awesome heat,” he said. “You blew them away, caveman. You crushed them. Wow! Now give me five,” and he held his hand palm out.
I wound up like I was pitching and slapped his hand as hard as I could, which must have stung him a lot harder than it did me because I knew it was coming.
“Now you give me five,” I said, and held out my hand. By the steamed look on his face I knew he wanted to really get me back, and when he swung his hand down full-force I pulled mine away at the last second. He lunged forward and lost his balance and stumbled for a few steps before he grabbed the chain-link fence and held himself up.
By then I was doubled up and howling with laughter like a spotted hyena, and Leezy and a bunch of the guys who saw what I had done were laughing too and Dad just had to bite his lip and settle down. I could tell he didn’t think it was funny at all, but I thought it was one of the funniest things I had ever done. I looked over at the team and I could tell they liked me after they saw their crazy coach get tricked by his own kid. I always had a way of getting people on my side.
“I’ll get you back,” Dad said, trying not to sound too mean, but his face was red. “You watch yourself.”
“Sorry,” I said in a small voice.
“Enough fun and games,” Dad said, once he had
pulled himself together. “We’re down fifteen runs. If we don’t score some runs this inning the ump will call the game short because we’re getting blown out. So let’s show some backbone. Get out there and hit some balls hard.”
The first batter was a tall kid with a small face named Defoe who stood like a praying mantis at the plate. He struck out. But the second guy got a base hit. The next guy walked. The next guy walked. The bases were loaded and the next guy struck out without ever taking a swing.
“Oh, for the love of Pete!” Dad yelled at the kid when he scuffed back to the dugout. “What were you doing up there? Meditating?”
Suddenly everyone was looking around. “Next batter,” the ump yelled over at Dad.
“Joey,” Dad said, and smiled at me because he was still waiting to get me back. “You’re next. Now show ’em you’re double trouble. A pitcher and a hitter. Come on. Score some runs and save us from feeling like a bunch of losers.”
“I’ve never hit before,” I said.
Virgilio held out his bat. “Use this,” he suggested, “before your dad uses it on me.”
“Don’t listen to him,” I whispered to Virgilio. “His own mother even says he’s all mouth.”
I went out to the plate and stood with my toes touching the edge of it.
“You better stand back a foot or so,” the ump said, “or that guy will drill you.”
I stepped back and waited. I saw the pitcher wind up. I saw the white ball leave his hand and I swung. I hit nothing.
“Strike one,” the ump cried.
Then I swung again. “Strike two.”
And I swung again. “Strike three. Game over.”
I didn’t even get close. And when I got back to Dad he said, “It looked like you were chopping wood out there.” Then he kicked the dirt like he was trying to leave a bruise on the planet.
“I tried my best,” I said. “I told you I never did it before.”
“I’m sorry,” he replied. “I’m just a little intense sometimes. I want to win for a change.”
“Hey,” said Leezy, and I swear I saw her reach out and twisty-pinch Dad on the back of his arm like she was turning his intensity dial down. “Great pitching. An awesome debut. If this were the big leagues you’d already be talked about as the rookie of the year.”
I smiled at her and would have just stood there forever with a silly grin on my face, but suddenly the pizza delivery truck pulled up and a guy ran out looking lost. Leezy waved to him. “Over here,” she hollered. “You’re right on time to feed the next Nolan Ryan.”