Dan Wakefield - Going All the Way - A Novel

Sonny remembered Belzoni from the teams at Shortley. He was never a star, seldom made first string, and when you thought about it his main talent was in looking good on the football or baseball field or the basketball court. There were always guys like that, and Sonny kind of got a kick out of them. In baseball they never could hit worth a damn but were terrific chatter guys—C’mon-babe-c’mon-boy-c’mon-Pete, throw it in there baby throw it past him babe way to go keed. In basketball they weren’t good shots but were fancy dribblers and liked to pass behind their backs. In football they were the guys who always patted the lineman on the ass and yelled a lot of defensive warnings and pointed all over the place, but they seldom tackled anybody. But you needed guys like that. They made everybody feel better, and they looked like All-Americans.

Belzoni only went to Butler one semester and then joined the Naval Reserve and went to work at Allison’s automotive and airplane plant. He worked the night shift and played on the company’s semi-pro baseball team, the Allison Jets, which gave him an extra something every week during summer, though Peachie claimed he put it all back in beer. He was getting something of a belly on him, which was especially noticeable because he wore his pants down around his crotch. He still had a crew cut, and walked in a real pigeon-toed stride, and mostly hung around the house in an old pair of khakis and some sweat socks, drinking beer and scratching his belly and belching a lot. On his nights off he hung out with the boys, hitting the Tropics Club and the Topper and the Red Key. At least he said it was the boys, though Peachie suspected there were some girls, too. She’d confided to Gunner that once last year Belzoni came home with a case of the crabs that he said he must have got off a toilet seat.

“She must have been some toilet,” Peachie told him.

Peachie was nobody’s fool.

The front room was littered with toys and kids. The baby, a little girl named Babs, was squawling in the playpen, and little Bud, Jr., who was around four years old, was playing soldiers with a little towheaded boy named Richard who lived next door. Peachie was in her faded blue jeans and a scruffy man’s shirt with the sleeves rolled up, washing the inside of the windows. She said to go on back to the kitchen, she’d be there in a jiffy.

Belzoni was in the kitchen with his sweat-socked feet up on the table, drinking a Weidemann’s and listening to a Cubs game on a portable radio. He popped a couple of beers for Sonny and Gunner, and even though they said they weren’t hungry, he poked around in the icebox and brought out a bowl of some leftover potato salad, stuck a fork in it, and set it on the table next to where he propped his feet. He turned the ball game down a little so it was easier to talk.

“So,” Gunner asked, “how’s the ball club doin’? You guys burnin’ up the league?”

“Be serious, man. We lost our only pitcher who could get the fuckin ball over the plate. Remember Bo Begley?”

“Pitched for Manual-Tech?”

“Yeh, he even got a tryout with the Dodgers. Well, he got his fuckin pitching hand caught in a fuckin lathe last week. Lost two fingers.”

“Jesus,” Gunner sympathized, “what a break.”

“Put us up shit crick without a paddle,” Bud said. “Last night we got our ass cleaned by Link-Belt, fourteen-five.”

“That’s rough,” Gunner said. “But what about Begley?”

“Like I said, he lost two fingers. No good to us now.” Belzoni belched, rubbing his stomach reflectively, and said, “Unless he could work on some kind of knuckle ball. Maybe he could develop a knuckle ball of some kind.”

Sonny felt himself rubbing his hands together, checking on his fingers. When he heard stuff like that, he got very nervous and checked to see if his own parts were in place. Peachie came in, got herself a beer, and pulled a chair up to the table with the guys.

“You taking the summer off?” she asked Gunner.

“I dunno. Trying to figure my next move.”

“You staying in Naptown?” Bud asked.

“I dunno. Doubt it.”

“Nina’ll have a conniption fit,” Peachie said, “if you don’t settle down here.”

Gunner got kind of red. “She’ll live,” he said.

“Man, if I were you,” Belzoni said. “Loose as a goddam goose, nothing to tie you down—”

“Don’t daydream,” Peachie said.

“I was just sayin’ if I was Gunner, for Chrissake. If I was, free like that, I’d get my ass to the Coast.”

“California?” Gunner asked.

“You bet your sweet ass. Sun and sea, sea and sand. The Good Life, brother. Southern California.”

“What the hell,” Gunner said, “what’s stopping you? ”

“You bastard!” Peachie said. “My own brother. I’m stopping him, that’s who, me and those two kids of his in there.”

“Hold it, Peach, I didn’t mean he should cut out on you. I meant the whole bunch of you go.”

“Just pick up and leave?” she asked. “Just pack up and go to California, just like that.”

“Why not?” Gunner asked.

“Why not,” she mimicked. “Money’s why not, for one thing. What’re we going to use for money? Sell the kids?”

“Whatya s’pose they’d bring?” Bud asked.

“Shut up, you bastard.”

“For Chrissake, Peachie,” Gunner said, “you think they don’t have money in California?”

“Maybe they do, people who already live there.”

“Oh, and you don’t think they let anybody else earn it?”

“Earn it how? ” she shouted. “Picking up driftwood?”

“See,” Bud said, “you can’t reason with her.”

Gunner rubbed hard at his forehead, and said, “Listen, Peach, thousands of people go there all the time, they go there and get jobs and buy houses and live in California.”

“Hell, yes,” Bud said, “it’s Opportunitysville. Anyone’ll tell you that.”

“We live here ,” said Peachie, “in Indianapolis.”

“There isn’t any law says you have to,” Gunner said.

“There isn’t any law says we have to leave, either.”

“But why do you have to stay?” Gunner asked.

“It’s home,” she said. “It’s where we live.”

“I’d sure like to try that surfing,” Bud said.

“I know what you’d like to try,” Peachie said. “You’d like to try those blondes on the beach, that’s what you’d like to try.”

Bud let out a belch.

“Seriously, Peach,” Gunner said, “there’s nothing stopping you. Why not try the Coast for a while? If you don’t like it you can always come back.”

“What’re you, the California Chamber of Commerce?”

“I just don’t like to see people tie themself down when they don’t have to.”

“Wait’ll you get a family, then you tell me all about how free you are.”

“I will,” Gunner said. “I’ll wait. To get a family.”

“What’re you gonna be, a bum or something?”

Belzoni got up and scratched under his armpit. “Don’t listen to her,” he said. “Play it loose. Hey, I gotta get dressed. Take it slow, guys.”

“We better get moving,” Gunner said.

He got up and Sonny followed him to the door. Peachie stood there with her arms crossed, like she had to restrain herself from wringing Gunner’s neck.

“Thanks a lot,” she said, “for putting that bug up his ass about California.”

Gunner started to say something and then he stopped himself and just said, “See ya, Peach,” and loped to the car. Sonny hurried along behind him, not wanting to look back at Peachie in the door.

After Gunner started the car, Sonny reminded him they forgot to take pictures of the kids.