I FOUND RON at the fronton, watching the pelotari warming up. Ron sat about halfway back, but there wasn’t a soul in front of him.
“How goes it, Mr. Bennett?”
He looked up at me and blinked hard, like he’d been a million miles away.
“Discover anything?” I said.
Ron shook his head as I sat down. “I have just walked through pretty much every area that took my fancy,” he said. “There might be some big boys out there for show on the casino floor, but there’s nobody gives a hoot outside that. I just waltzed into the locker room behind the jai alai here. A janitor even gave me a wink.”
I shook my head, and we turned to look at the court. Julio was rotating his arm over, whipping the ball against the granite wall.
“This used to be quite the place, you know,” said Ron.
“You’ve been here before?”
Ron let out a soft snort. “I used to come to the fronton all the time. I met my first wife here.”
“You don’t say.”
He nodded. “Back in the late seventies, boy this was the place to come. The one down in Miami was bigger; that was amazing. But even here in West Palm. People used to come from the island, slumming it in West Palm, just to be seen at the jai alai. Everyone who was anyone was here. President Ford was here once, famous sportsmen, celebrities.”
He turned and pointed at the darkened box behind us. “See there? That was the skybox where the celebs sat, the ones that didn’t want to mingle with the common folk. But that was the thing about the jai alai. It didn’t matter whether you were famous or not, rich or poor. Everyone came, all together.”
He smiled at the thought, and I saw the silver hair and sun-bleached face go back in time.
“There was a restaurant up in the box, with a chef from some five-star place. Really good food. I met Janice here in the stands.” He looked at me. “She was so young and so full of life. The pace of the jai alai had nothing on her. Anyway, I proposed in that restaurant. Just a kid I was, asking the love of his life for her hand.”
“And she said yes?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” He let out a laugh and slapped my shoulder. “There was a dress code, did you know? Everyone looked so smart. Jackets, ties, cocktails dresses, the whole nine yards. Everyone was so beautiful. The seats here were bleachers back then. They reached high up to the back, not floor level like they are now. Rows of hats all the way up and cigar smoke that clung to the ceiling like a fog. On a big night there could be ten thousand people in here. Now the fire department would never allow it.”
He looked around the empty seating area. “Even if people still wanted to come.”
“There’s something I don’t get,” I said. “So Julio there. Why does his playing jersey say twenty-five on the back but four on the front?”
Ron nodded. “Twenty-five is his player number at the fronton. He’s always that number. But four is his position in the order of play. That can change every day.”
I nodded, and we sat listening to the ball echo off the wall.
“That sound, the pelota, brings back memories.”
“The what?”
“The pelota, the thing they’re throwing.”
“I just thought that was a ball.”
Ron shook his head. “No,” he said, looking around as if searching for something. “I wonder if they’re still here.”
Ron stood and waved for me to follow. We edged along the row of seats, then out to an open area where some of the pelotari were stretching. I got a few smiles and nods, which I returned. We wandered around the back of the skybox to an open door. A set of tight stairs led up, and Ron just started up as if it were his house. They were steep, almost like a ladder. At the top, Ron stopped and knocked, then entered.
We stepped into a room that must have doubled as a time machine. Two men sat in front of a swamp cooler, and an old television replayed a Roseanne episode that neither of the men looked at. Each man must have been sixty, but they were as different as people get. One man was thin and bore some Asian heritage, maybe Filipino. He had an ageless face, tanned hard, with a toothless smile. He was hand weaving the scoop-like baskets that the pelotari attached to their hands to fling the pelota at the wall. The other man, larger, with olive skin and a heavy brow, was Spanish at a guess. He appeared to be making the balls, or pelotas. The laugh track went off on the Roseanne episode and the men both laughed, apparently at the laugh track, not the gag.
“This man is making the cesta, the basket they use to catch the pelota,” said Ron. “He hand cuts these reeds, and then shapes and weaves them into the scoop shape.”
I watched the old man at work, scraping at a long thin reed with a piece of broken glass. Then Ron drew my attention to the other man.
“He is making the pelota,” he said. “They’re made from rubber, latex and goatskin.”
“I wouldn’t have thought there would be much call for pelotas these days,” I said.
“Well, each pelota only lasts about twenty minutes before it cracks. And they’re worth about a hundred bucks apiece.”
“Wow, makes golf look cheap,” I said.
We stood watching the men for a time. There were all kinds of metal implements hanging on the walls. It looked like a torture chamber. But the men seemed content to work in silence, with mostly their hands and cut glass. Ron tapped my shoulder, and we wandered out and back down the stairs.
“That was something,” I said.
Ron nodded as we made our way back to the seating.
“So what happened?” I said. “If this game was such hot stuff, how did it end up like this?”
Ron let out a sigh and sat, eyes on the brightly lit court. “Lots of things I guess. More competition for sure. The NBA arrived, the MLB, even NHL. All big sports with TV coverage. ESPN doesn’t even show jai alai on its Internet channel. Plus there was the big strike.”
“The big strike?”
“Yeah, back in eighty-eight. A huge players’ strike. It went on for three years, more or less. A lot of bad blood, inferior players came in, and the crowds walked out. NBA had just started a team in Miami in eighty-eight, and the Marlins brought Major League Baseball to South Florida in ninety-three.”
“Hard to believe in less than thirty years it’s become this,” I said, looking around the near-empty stands as the announcer warmed up and the first two players took the court.
“Believe it,” said Ron. “It’s the way of the world. Nations never think they’ll change, empires never think they’ll fall, but they always do. Sports are the same. It doesn’t take too much to see it happening. Take football. NFL is the most popular game in the country by a mile, in terms of viewers and supporters. But it has faced strikes before, and they hurt it. Well imagine a big strike—a season or two off, or with lesser players. Then add in rule changes, because of all the head clashes and suspected brain damage. Suddenly, the game has less appeal and people take their support elsewhere. Football is already dropping in terms of participation. Soccer is booming.” He shrugged. “The way of the world.”
“Well, it sounded like a good time, while it lasted.”
Ron smiled. “It was the best time. I’ll never forget it. Neither will anyone who was there. It was just one of those times, one of those places.”
Again he looked into middle distance and drifted away. I wondered if he was thinking about being young, of having his whole life ahead of him, of crowds and noise and the crush of youth. Of young love and asking a girl for marriage for the first time, and the life ahead, and of all that meant.
Ron drifted back and turned to me. “What about you?. Mr. Almondson, was it?”
“Mister is actually Ms. And quite the package at that.”
“Did you keep your mind on the job?”
“About as much as usual, but she seems like a smart operator. I’m not surprised you found the security wanting. It was the same in the admin area. She says she’ll tighten that up, so we’ll see. I think the players will be safe enough, at work at least.”
We watched the performance for a while, listening to the pelota crack on the granite walls and echo around the room like a memory. Then I turned and saw Lucas ambling into the fronton. He nodded in our direction.
“Is that Lucas?” said Ron.
“Yup.”
“What’s he doing up here?”
“We have to see a man about a bet,” I said, pulling a cell phone out of my pocket and sending a text message to a number I didn’t know.