John Domini - Highway Trade and Other Stories

He didn’t notice an odor. What struck him was the sound, the echo; it terrified him. A whistle, a plea, a moan, a wail.

He jerked his head back. Still there was no one in the place except the fish, going crazy in their tank.

BRO HAD JUST FOUND his good season groove, the groove where you got the big flies and the deep shots, when his brother Sly was kidnapped. The news didn’t seem to register. The call came from his mother while the team’s equipment manager was in the motel room with him. One minute Bro was arranging to have a video made of his swing, and then without so much as changing his tone of voice: “What’d you say? Where’d he go? Mama who, who…” Then while he got the facts straight, the equipment manager standing there brought to mind the old Richard Pryor line, looking stupid was white folks’ natural expression. In fact Bro found that what he wanted most was to get off the phone and hurt the man.

He let his mother know he wasn’t alone, he roughed his way past the guilt by using the word “ofay.” He told her goodbye and then sat more upright between the stiff motel pillows. His younger brother Sly, he told the equipment man. Last seen outside a hardware store in a mall south of Newark. They figured kidnapped because they’d found his Air Jordans, the ones with Sly-y-y on the trim. The laces had been cut and the shoes thrown in a dumpster.

It hurt the man, yes. His jawline went through changes and his eyes were too large. But when he shouldered his duffle bag, the manager came up with one of those lame and useless Oregon sweetie pie smiles. Uh-oh. By tomorrow or the next day, everybody on the team would know.

Alone, Bro remained planted. Waiting, waiting, his long spine flat against the wall. Eventually it came to him that he should call his mother back. The receiver felt heavy and the dialing was difficult, the whole instrument just the opposite from ten minutes before.

It helped when he learned, over the next two-three days, that his trouble gave the entire organization the numbs. Of course he expected the team to keep it from people on the outside. But what he got was amazing, some kind of multiplication dance in slo-mo. First the ones in charge here in Salem said they didn’t know what Angels policy was, they’d have to call the lawyer up in the majors. Then Bro had to call the lawyer up in the majors himself, and he said he didn’t know what Angels policy was either. Plus everybody kept going back to the same word, personal . Bro wondered what kind of a person they had in mind, putting guys through such a runaround. It took the owner the better part of a week to come and tell him face to face that Salem couldn’t pay the airfare. Up with the big club it would be different of course, he said. The big club would assume the expense for this kind of personal matter.

Terrible timing, too. The owner had arrived when the locker room was full, everybody suiting up for b.p.

“Hey, I’m just a guy who sells farm tools. I can’t handle round-trip all the way back to New Jersey.” He’d hiked one foot up onto the bench next to Bro, one flashy damn boot that somehow he’d found income enough to handle.

“The way you’re hitting now,” he said, “they’ll probably move you up to Sacramento in no time anyway.”

Bro went into his Mau-Mau glare. “If you gonna fly,” he said, “it cost the same from Sa-cra-men-to.”

And he didn’t take his eyes off the owner till the man had backed into a mop and bucket. Big Guernsey face all stitched up in another of those smiles. It had the effect Bro was after, a couple of the other guys were openly snickering.

The last thing he needed was to have this trouble throw off his rep around here. Especially since every time he called home, every day after his roommate headed for the park, the talk with his mother always left him so out of touch he could hardly say where he’d been between when he’d hung up the phone in the motel and when he’d started to pull on his cleats in the clubhouse. He came to work in a dry-eyed Twilight Zone. He wished this had happened while they were on the road; acting like a zombie was natural on the road. Worse, the woman did it to him with sweetness. Even now, when the guys stopped by his locker after the owner had gone — high five, low five, Bro that was bad —he was glad they couldn’t hear how soft and easy his mother came on.

Bro believed he knew how her mind was working. He recalled his father, a heavy-handed whiskey beard who’d run off when his mother was pregnant with Sly. He figured she didn’t want to make the same mistake twice. All through the week’s home-stand, she’d begin the conversation by asking how he’d done the night before. When he finished reeling off the latest she’d say something like: Oh well you got to stay there, then. And she’d remind him that she had his sisters. Even then, all she’d say was, They a godsend. She never told him straight out that Toola had come from Baltimore as soon as she’d heard the news. That kind of thing was up to Bro to figure out for himself.

By Thursday he was asking the local guys if they knew a place where he could work out privately. Somebody with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes offered a church lot, but Bro knew there’d be strings attached. He kept asking, patient with the standard joke — Gee Bro, I’d let you use my ID , but.…He’d noticed long ago that in Oregon they mostly didn’t have black kids. But these locals were walk-ons, your basic marginal talent. He never much liked cutting them down.

Then once he’d found a place and started taking his hacks (at least he’d been able to pry loose a couple pieces of club equipment), it got him nowhere. He set up in the middle field of three empty hundred-yard stretches side by side, some private college layout. Not a Christian in sight, nor some doofus cowboy with the nerve to call himself an owner. Nonetheless it was as if Sly and the rest of Bro’s family were still as much in place as the batting tee and the webbing that caught his shots. In fact once he broke a sweat the magic of the groove returned, everything became concentrated in the tension of the grip against his callouses, in the crack as he got hold of the ball and the thut as it was snared in the rubberized net. Other than that he had room only for the fantasies, rocking out as usual from just behind his eyes, the announcer’s tinny hype and the crowd’s vacuum roar and the whole stadium going wild with flags and paper airplanes for 360 degrees round the silent mountain horizon. When Bro spoke there was no echo. Even the weather was vacant, perfect. He’d gone into this streak just as the rain-outs ended, and now the air was so clear that when he finished his workout, all the way across an adjacent field Bro could pick out a man from Building & Grounds.

Another black man, in fact. That as much as his cart and shovel made Bro think Building & Grounds. He hooked his fingers in the cage and squinted. The brother wore a Walkman. He appeared to be laughing and he shuffled his feet viciously; he was dishing lime onto a row of plants, each scoop so heaping and brilliant that Bro was certain it would burn the roots. He realized his own rush, his workout rush, was gone. Still he kept staring till his sweat chilled and he had to start his cleanup just to get the blood circulating.

Sunday, the one day game during the week. Families in the stands and a little more media. Bro was still rocking Godzilla, he could feel it the first time he stepped inside the foul lines. When he got his third hit of the afternoon — a deep, deep fly, way over the Valley Homes sign in right — it became obvious to him that working out alone was only more of the same. It was part of the problem, stonewall stonewall. Just, after the game, how was he supposed to deal with three reporters at once?