Plan B for the Middle Class (9 page)

Inside an hour later, I had mastered the Waltz, the German Polka, the Lindy, the Stroll, the Pony, and the Southern Austrian version of the Minuet. I had really let myself go. My teacher was a lovely fragrant woman with a faint mustache. Her name was Hanna, and for a heavy woman, she was light on her feet.

I was living it up! She taught me the Tango (the dance of the year, she said) in fifteen minutes. It was during that lesson that I realized that I liked the heat of her damp face against mine and the feel of the little loaf of flesh around her waist (though I only felt it from time to time after she corrected my right-hand position on her back: thumb straight up along the spine).

Now I'm going to tell you something. During my lessons, the ad with the Taj Mahal in it et cetera softly flashed in my mind with every beat of my tooth and finally I
LET MYSELF GO,
as it had instructed me (see what I mean!), and I asked Hanna to marry me.

Her face beamed red under the little sheen of sweat and her mustache rose in a sweet smile that I took as the very definition of happiness!

Was I wrong!

So, we got married and it wasn't until I drove Hanna home that I had one of those realizations that men have once or twice in a lifetime: I was already married! What would I tell Doreen?

I was smart enough to sneak Hanna into the basement, an apartment she loved, and I left her there unpacking her suitcase and record player. Upstairs Doreen was on her hands and knees waxing the floor! Oh, I felt like a cad! But I decided the best thing would be to tell the truth, come clean, honesty is—after all—the best policy.

I would simply tell Doreen about the ad and how it had led me to marry someone else. Doreen was sure to understand.

I started at the beginning. A mistake. I took the ad out of my jacket pocket, where I had folded it after quietly ripping it out of the magazine in the dentist's office, and showed it to Doreen. Before I could go on about the Waltz and how the Sherbet Shuffle is just a variation on the Stroll and, incidentally, how I had married a large dance instructor who was right now humming happily in the basement, before I could explain any of it, I saw Doreen go into a kind of trance there on her hands and knees.

And then—wait until you get this!—she got up, dropped the sponge, smiled a spacey smile at me, and left the house. I couldn't figure it out. I thought perhaps she had seen me sneaking Hanna into the basement. But, no. Then I saw the answer. I stood there in the new wax which was barely dry, doing an abbreviated cha-cha-cha (it never hurts to practice), and I saw that I had inadvertently laid the ad
sideways
for Doreen and—examining it closer (cha-cha-cha)—I could see a whole other message in the reflection pond of the Taj Mahal. The ad was like one of those records you play backward to hear messages from the devil. Sideways in the reflection pond of the Taj Mahal, it said:

Luckily I was already on my subliminal message (cha-cha-cha) or this one would have given me a bad ride too. I ran to the window, but our old Datsun was halfway down Butternut. As the first strains of the Bossa Nova beamed up through the newly waxed floor from Hanna's record player, I thought, “There goes Doreen. I've lost my wife!”

But, as you already know, I had another.

As it turned out, I saw Doreen one more time. It was about a week later and I was awakened from an afternoon nap by what I first thought was an electrical shock, but what turned out to be my L-9 molar, which left untreated was pretty hot by now. Anyway, the television was on a weekend sports program, and I saw our Datsun zip through the screen. Well, that sat me up. It was the “Tour de l'Univers” from Budapest to Sacramento, and the cars were galloping right along. I saw the Datsun several times, and noted with rue the car's name painted across both doors:
BEAUTIFUL MEMORY.
In one close-up I recognized Doreen at the wheel. She had a helmet on, but I could see her smiling.

I could hear Hanna downstairs with some of her students, moving around to the music: “Come on, baby, do the twist!” And I was kind of smiling sadly about how my life had turned out, and I wasn't really watching the television commercial, which showed a house burning up while people in blankets discussed insurance.

And then: KA-BANG! In the flames I saw the message clearly, the last subliminal message before arriving here. In the bright orange of the fire danced the words:

Hey, it's not so bad here at Fort Bragg. I feel a little funny, being the oldest recruit by twenty years. A lot of the kids call me
sir.
But I've organized a little group in the barracks, and I've already taught them the Hustle, the Mississippi Three Step, and the Grand Rondalay. I miss Doreen and Hanna, but I did leave Hanna the house, and I read in
Sports Illustrated
that Doreen has a good fast support team that can change a tire in seven seconds.

So, my life has changed, but who knows, the Army may help. Be all you can be, that's my motto. Boot camp is tough, but Fort Bragg is real nice. We don't have time for magazines or television, and listen: the dental care here is tremendous.

T
he very first time it happened with Sunny Billy Day was in Bradenton, Florida, spring training, a thick cloudy day on the Gulf, and I was there in the old wooden bleachers, having been released only the week before after going o for 4 in Winter Park against the Red Sox, and our manager, Ketchum, saw that my troubles were not over at all. So, not wanting to go back to Texas so soon and face my family, the disappointment and my father's expectation that I'd go to work in his Allstate office, and not wanting to leave Polly alone in Florida in March, a woman who tended toward ball players, I was hanging out, feeling bad, and I was there when it happened.

My own career had been derailed by what they called “stage fright.” I was scared. Not in the field—I won a Golden Glove two years in college and in my rookie year with the Pirates. I love the field, but I had a little trouble at the plate. I could hit in the cage, in fact there were times when batting practice stopped so all the guys playing pepper could come over and bet how many I was going to put in the seats. It wasn't the skill. In a game I'd walk from the on-deck circle to the batter's box and I could feel my heart go through my throat. All those people focusing on one person in the park: me. I could feel my heart drumming in my face. I was tighter than a ten-cent watch—all strikeouts and pop-ups. I went .102 for the season—the lowest official average of any starting-lineup player in the history of baseball.

Ketchum sent me to see the team psychiatrist, but that turned out to be no good, too. I saw him twice. His name was Krick and he was a small man who was losing hair, but his little office and plaid couch felt to me like the batter's box. What I'm saying is: Krick was no help—I was afraid of him, too.

Sometimes just watching others go to bat can start my heart jangling like a rock in a box, and that was how I felt that cloudy day in Bradenton as Sunny Billy Day went to the plate. We (once you play for a team, you say “we” ever after) were playing the White Sox, who were down from Sarasota, and it was a weird day, windy and dark, with those great loads of low clouds and the warm Gulf air rolling through. I mean it was a day that didn't feel like baseball.

Billy came up in the first inning, and the Chicago pitcher, a rookie named Gleason, had him o and 2, when the thing happened for the first time. Polly had ahold of my arm and was being extra sweet when Billy came up, to let me know that she didn't care for him at all and was with me now, but—everybody knows—when a woman acts that way it makes you nervous. The kid Gleason was a sharpshooter, a sidearm fastballer who could have struck me out with two pitches, and he had shaved Billy with two laser beams that cut the inside corner.

Gleason's third pitch was the smoking clone of the first two and Sunny Billy Day, my old friend, my former roommate, lifted his elbows off the table just like he had done twice before and took the third strike.

It
was
a strike. We all knew this. We'd seen the two previous pitches and everybody who was paying attention knew that Gleason had nailed Billy to the barn door. There was no question. Eldon Finney was behind the plate, a major league veteran, who was known as Yank because of the way he yanked a fistful of air to indicate a strike. His gesture was unmistakable, and on that dark day last March, I did not mistake it. But as soon as the ump straightened up, Sunny Billy, my old teammate, and the most promising rookie the Pirates had seen for thirty years, tapped his cleats one more time and stayed in the box.

“What's the big jerk doing?” Polly asked me. You hate to hear a girl use a phrase like that, “big jerk,” when she could have said something like “rotten bastard,” but when you're in the stands, instead of running wind sprints in the outfield, you take what you can get.

On the mound in Bradenton, Gleason was confused. Then I saw Billy shrug at the ump in a move I'd seen a hundred times as roommates when he was accused of
anything
or asked to pay his share of the check at the Castaway. A dust devil skated around the home dugout and out to first, carrying an ugly litter of old sno-cone papers and cigarette butts in its brown vortex, but when the wind died down and play resumed, there was Sunny Billy Day standing in the box. I checked the scoreboard and watched the count shift to
1
and
2
.

Eldon “the Yank” Finney had changed his call.

So that was the beginning, and as I said, only a few people saw it and knew this season was going to be a little different. Billy and I weren't speaking—I mean, Polly was with me now, and so I couldn't ask him what was up—but I ran into Ketchum at the Castaway that night and he came over to our table. Polly had wanted to go back there for dinner—for old times' sake; it was in the Castaway where we'd met one year ago. She was having dinner with Billy that night, the Bushel o' Shrimp, and they asked me to join them. Billy had a lot of girls and he was always good about introducing them around. Come on, a guy like Billy had nothing to worry about from other guys, especially me. He could light up a whole room, no kidding, and by the end of an hour there'd be ten people sitting at his table and every chair in the room would be turned his way. He was a guy, and anybody will back me up on this, who had the magic.

Billy loved the Castaway. “This is exotic,” he'd say. “Right? Is this a South Sea island or what?” And he meant it. You had to love him. Some dim dive pins an old fishing net on the wall and he'd be in paradise.

Anyway, Polly had ordered the Bushel o' Shrimp again and we were having a couple of Mutineers, the daiquiri deal that comes in a skull, when Ketchum came over and asked me—as he does every time we meet—“How you feeling, kid?” which means have I still got the crippling heebie-jeebies. He has told me all winter that if I want another shot, just say so. Well, who doesn't want another shot? In baseball—no matter what you hear—there are no ex-players, just guys waiting for the right moment for a comeback.

I told Ketchum that if anything changed, he'd be the first to know. Then I asked him what he thought of today's game and he said, “The White Sox are young.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Especially that pitcher.”

“I wouldn't make too much out of that mix-up at the plate today. You know Billy. He's a kind that can change the weather.” Ketchum was referring to the gray preseason game a year before. Billy came up in a light rain when a slice of sunlight opened on the field like a beacon, just long enough for everyone to see my roommate golf a low fastball into the right-field seats for a round trip. It was the at-bat that clinched his place on the roster, and that gave him his nickname.

“Billy Day is a guy who gets the breaks.” Ketchum reached into the wicker bushel and sampled one of Polly's shrimp. “And you know what they say about guys who get a lot of breaks.” Here he gave Polly a quick look. “They keep getting them.” He stood up and started to walk off. “Call me if you want to hit a few. We don't head north until April Fools' Day.”

“I don't like that guy,” Polly said when he'd left. “I never liked him.” She pushed her load of shrimp away. “Let's go.” I was going to defend the coach there, a guy who was fair with his men and kept the signals (steal, take, hit-and-run) simple, but the evening had gone a little flat for me too. There we were out to celebrate, but as always the room was full of Billy Day. He was everywhere. He was in the car on the way back to the hotel; he was in the elevator; he was in the room; and—if you want to know it—he was in the bed too. I knew that he was in Polly's dreams and there he was in my head, turning back to the umpire, changing a strike to a ball.

The papers got ahold of what was going on during the last week of March. It was a home game against the Yankees and it was the kind of day that if there were no baseball, you'd invent it to go with the weather. The old Bradenton stands were packed and the whole place smelled of popcorn and coconut oil. Polly was wearing a yellow sundress covered with black polka dots, the kind of dress you wear in a crowded ballpark if you might want one of the players to pick you out while he played first. By this time I was writing a friendly little column for the
Pittsburgh Dispatch
twice a week on “Lifestyles at Spring Training,” but I had not done much with Billy. He was getting plenty of legitimate ink, and besides—as I said—we weren't really talking. I liked the writing, even though this was a weird time all around. I kind of
had
to do it, just so I felt useful. I wasn't ready to go home.

It was a good game, two-two in the ninth. Then Billy made a mistake. With one down, he had walked and stolen second. That's a wonderful feeling being on second with one out. There's all that room and you can lead the extra two yards and generally you feel pretty free and cocky out there. I could see Billy was enjoying this feeling, leaving cleat marks in the clay, when they threw him out. The pitcher flipped the ball backhand to the shortstop, and they tagged Billy. Ralph “the Hammer” Fox was umping out there, and he jumped onto one knee in his famous out gesture and wheeled his arm around and he brought the hammer down:
OUT!
After the tag, Billy stood up and went over and planted both feet on the base.