Scott Heim: Mysterious Skin

I leaned across a table lined with clipboards. On each page, two columns were labeled NAME and AGE. I had to choose from the Junior Division’s twenty-two different teams. “Pick the one that’ll win you the trophy,” Mom told me. She was shitfaced drunk. A puny kid, his ear sprouting the wire from a hearing aid, pointed at her short pink skirt. If I’d been alone with him, I would have crushed the hearing device in my fist.

I chose the Hutchinson Pizza Palace Panthers. One, because their uniforms were snazzy-a crudely drawn cat leaping from a blue and white pepperoni pie. Two, because I thought the sponsors might treat the team to free pizzas after games. “Your coach’s name is Mr. Heider,” the balding man behind the sign-up booth said. “He’s only been coaching a year, but he’s got an enviable record already.”

The man handed me a folded baseball jersey and matching pants. The number ninety-nine was emblazoned on the jersey’s back. “I have to drag that old Polaroid from the closet,” Mom said. She knelt, nearly falling at the feet of the circle of kids, and focused a make-believe camera. “Smile, baby.”

Practice started one week later at a teeny baseball diamond even dwarves would feel stifled on. The fence behind home plate displayed tatters and gouges. The infield’s mud hadn’t yet dried, and a musky odor of rain choked the air. Horseflies buzzed around my head.

Coach Heider lined us up. He wore a white T-shirt, blue sweatpants, an A’s cap. I noticed the bushy sand-colored mustache that curled at his lips’ corners. I’d been thumbing through Mom’s Playgirl almost daily, and I’d started to daydream those mustached and bearded cowboys, lifeguards, and construction workers clutching me, their whiskers scratching my face.

I had told Mom I wanted to look tough, so she had darted to the local Salvation Army store and United Methodist Thrift for wristbands and a used pair of rubber cleats. She also bought the black sunblock most major leaguers smeared below their eyes. I wore the bands, the cleats, and the sunblock to that first practice. My teammates watched me as if I might unsheathe a knife.

Coach squinted at the new troupe of Panthers, searching for defects. His gaze paused on me. Desire sledgehammered my body, a sensation I still wasn’t sure I had a name for. If I saw Coach now, say across a crowded bar, that feeling would translate to something like “I want to fuck him.” Back then, I wasn’t sure what to do with my emotion. It felt like a gift I had to open in front of a crowd.

He told us to announce our names. We obeyed, and he repeated them, scribbling in a score book. “Bailey, Thieszen, McCormick, Varney…” He spoke with a German accent. “Lackey, Ensminger…” When he rolled his r’s on “Porter,” my teammates silently mouthed the same name. I was younger than most of them, which made me want to try harder. I wanted to impress Coach Heider.

The players hit ten baseballs each. Coach stood at the pitcher’s mound, poised like one of the gilded figures I’d noticed on trophies in the Chamber of Commerce hall. He cocked back his arm and pitched. Most kids hit ground balls that barely left the infield or, worse yet, struck out. I’d never seen many of them before, but I could tell they were poor excuses for players. Coach must have mirrored my feelings. “Come on.” Disgust cracked his voice. “Concentrate, watch the ball, swing like you mean it.”

My turn. I gritted my teeth and tried to form a synthesis of a few major league idols. I.e., I’d seen the Reds’ Joe Morgan twitching his right arm before taking a swing, pistoning his elbow as if pumping blood into his biceps. I mimicked the gesture. Coach Heider grinned. His first pitch lobbed toward me, and I smacked a line drive to left field.

After practice, Coach shepherded us into the dugout and began a pep talk from the center of our huddle. He summarized his initial reactions. I might as well brag. It appeared I’d be the team’s star player. My fielding was as topnotch as my hitting, so Coach positioned me shortstop. “And McCormick, I think we’ll bat you cleanup. We need the home runs.” He said the word as if it had three syllables. When he leaned over to pat my shoulder, I noticed a cluster of moles like spatters of chocolate on his neck.

A man walked toward the team carrying an expensive-looking camera. Coach lined us in two rows beside the dugout, and I got the privilege of standing in back, next to him. “This is for our records,” the photographer said. “Say cheese. No, say yogurt.” The numbskulls on the team laughed, and he snapped the picture.

“Refreshments served,” Coach said. The fifteen Panthers fractured the posed configuration and rushed toward his station wagon, most running faster than they had all day. Coach opened the back door to a cooler filled with cans of flavored sodas. I fished around its icy pond and came up with a peach Nehi.

The parents began arriving after the two hours had finished. Mom drove Alfred’s pickup to the ball diamond. She had started a job at an IGA grocery store on Thirtieth Street, and she’d bought an extra house key for me. She strung it onto a thin silver chain and slipped it over my neck. “Now, let me meet that coach of yours.”

Coach jogged toward us. He held a baseball in one palm. He took off his cap and brushed it over the sweat on his forehead. His hair was blond and thinning.

“Mr. Heider, I’m Neil’s mother.” They shook hands. “I have a full-time job and don’t know that many other moms. I was wondering if there might be a system where another Little League mom could drive my son home after games. We live on Monroe Street.”

“No problem,” Coach said. He looked down at me, then scrutinized Mom, as if decoding her eyes’ primal secrets. “I do this sort of thing all the time.” He pointed toward his car. “That’s what station wagons are for. Any time Neil needs a ride, he’s got it.”

I imagined sitting in the front seat, his leg brushing mine as his foot touched the accelerator. “That’s some ballplayer you’ve got,” Coach Heider told Mom.

“He’s mine, and I love him.” She held my hand as if it were money.

Coach lobbed me the baseball. “Here’s the one you nearly whacked over the fence.” A grass stain on its leather resembled a screaming face. “It’s yours to keep, your trophy.” He touched his thumb to the black line of sunblock on my cheek. He glanced at his thumb, winked at me, then looked back to Mom.

The arms of our backyard’s apricot tree drooped with wormy fruit. Three swings and a slippery slide stood under the tree. I never used them. The poles were striped pink and grayish white like candy canes, and 6411 North Monroe ’s previous tenants had painted clown faces on the plastic swing seats. Sparrow shit peppered the slide. Years later, Mom would ask a neighbor to tear the whole set down, and I’d realize I never did slide or swing on the thing.

As it turned out, Mom got more use from the set than me. The night of that first practice, I heard her and Alfred. His voice kept slurring things like “Jesus Priest” and “Christ above.” After a while, I figured out his words weren’t coming from Mom’s bedroom but were creeping into my open window from the backyard.

I knuckled the crust from my eyes, crawled from bed, and peered out. The violet bug light crystallized everything in its somber, rheumy glow. Something that looked like a bat whirled figure eights above the tree. An empty bottle of Beefeater gin sat beside Mom’s portable eight-track tape player in the grass beside the porch. I could hear Freddy Fender’s voice crooning the melody of “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights.”

Alfred slumped in the center swing’s seat. Mom hovered over him. His shirt was pulled to his neck; his pants, to his ankles. Her hands bustled in his lap. Alfred’s cowboy hat had fallen off, and hair curled from his head in wisps, as lacy as the silk that covers an ear of corn. His body swayed back and forth, lazy and gin-seduced. His bare feet smashed apricots into the lawn. “Christ,” he said again, drawing out the vowel in unison with the eight-track tune’s schmaltzy crescendo.