JULY 1972
I suppose with every loss there is gain. The extra ticket meant my mother could attend the game with us and that we’d only need one hotel room. We pulled out early that Wednesday morning and I looked up the road toward Jesse’s, wondering what she was doing and if her heart was aching like mine. I wanted my mother to get to know her and not judge her. I wanted to sit next to her and watch her react to the game and see her swim in the pool.
When we pulled up to Dickie’s place, he was sitting on a ratty duffel bag as tall as he was. My father tossed it in the trunk and Dickie jumped in.
“You planning on staying a few extra nights, Dickie?” my dad said.
“No, sir, just want to be prepared.”
“How are you, Dickie?” my mother said, filing her nails.
“Good.” He smiled. “Lookin’ for a breakthrough.”
“Did you bring your swim trunks?” I said.
“My mom gave me a pair of my dad’s. They’re a little big, but I can tie them tight.”
We started out in the crisp morning air, a fog lifting from the hills. When we hit the interstate, my dad glanced back. “So your father is in Vietnam?”
“Yes, sir. First Cav.”
“I’ll bet you’re real proud of him,” my mother said.
“Yes, ma’am. Keeping us safe from the Communists.”
“Things seem to be winding down, from what I hear on the news,” my father said. “Have you heard when he’s coming home?”
“No, sir, but my mama and me have our fingers crossed. I mean, in a Christian sort of way.”
My father looked in the rearview and I could see a crinkle of a smile on his face. My mother turned and gave him a look that I interpreted as a warning to change the topic of conversation.
“This has not been a popular war,” my dad continued. “But I want you to know we appreciate your father’s sacrifice and the sacrifice you and your mother are making.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The talk of Vietnam brought my brother to mind and as we settled in for the long ride, we played some games Ben and I would play on trips to the beach in the summer. We’d count the number of air conditioners we saw sticking out of houses and then try to find the alphabet on road signs and license plates.
“Sure wish Jesse could have come,” I said kind of low to Dickie. “It would have been fun to go swimming and to the game.”
He nodded. “Yeah, won’t be as much fun. But it’s probably for the best. Her mama’s not well.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
Dickie shrugged. “Coughs a lot. My uncle had the black lung after working in the mines. She kind of sounds like that. Rattling when she breathes.”
“I’ve never seen her. I’ve just heard her talking to Jesse and Daisy.”
“I’ve only seen her a couple of times. Jesse don’t like people going into her house.”
“Why not?”
Dickie looked away. “I expect it’s because of how it looks. Their furniture is the stuff other people toss out. Sometimes we pass trash by the road and Jesse’ll say, ‘Wonder if we could get that to my house.’ They get by. And Mrs. Woods is real pretty.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, there’s not much to her, but you can tell she was beautiful once. My daddy taught me about the mother principle.”
“The what?”
“The mother principle. He said if you get interested in a girl, look at her mother, ’cause that’s what she’ll look like in twenty years.”
My mother and father had not turned on the radio or any of their music. They were looking straight ahead, but my mother’s neck was red.
“I’ve thought about it and it works,” Dickie said.
“Does it work with fathers?”
“I expect it would. If you was a girl interested in a guy and wondering how he would turn out, look at his daddy.”
I looked at my father’s receding hairline and the crow’s-feet by his eyes and wondered if I would look like him in thirty years. And I wondered if sons are destined to become like their fathers in other ways.
Dickie picked up the black case that held my parents’ eight-track collection. He unlatched the hook and studied the names of the artists, mostly classical music. He pulled out one and held it up. It was an essential collection of music by Wagner, including my favorite, “Ride of the Valkyries.”
“Is this Porter?” Dickie said.
I tried not to laugh. “No, Wagner is a German composer,” I said, pronouncing the W as a V. I handed the eight-track to my father. “You’re thinking of Porter Wagoner.”
“My mama likes ‘Burning the Midnight Oil,’” Dickie said.
Dickie watched in fascination as the eight-track engaged with a clunk and the speakers filled the car with horns and strings. My father rolled his window down, stuck his hand out, and wove back and forth like we were flying. Dickie laughed and asked to hear the song again when it was over. My mother told my father to stop weaving, that she was getting carsick, but when he played it again, he repeated the maneuver. After Wagner, my dad put in the 1812 Overture. Dickie didn’t recognize it until a few minutes in just before the cannons sounded. He said he’d heard that on TV during a July Fourth celebration.
My mother put in her favorite, the “Blue Danube” waltz, and it felt like Dickie was getting his first taste of culture. He listened to the music enveloping us and smiled.
“It sounds like we’re riding on the ocean, don’t it?”
We exited the interstate and took the back way over a big hill, finally coming to some dirty streets with redbrick buildings and lots of stoplights. The Ohio River was nearby and across it the Queen City, Cincinnati. Older black men walked along the street and I couldn’t help staring. This didn’t look much different from some parts of downtown Pittsburgh. Dickie sat forward and I wondered what he was thinking but didn’t ask.
Once we checked into the hotel, I grabbed the key and opened the door to our room and turned on the air conditioner full blast. This was always my job when we went to the beach. It rattled and blew the curtains. Dickie found a metal box with a coin slot mounted by the beds and asked what it was.
For your comfort and relaxation, the sign said, Magic Fingers. Try it—you’ll feel great. There was a slot to put in a quarter that would vibrate the bed.
Dickie put a quarter in but nothing happened. He was about to put another one in when my parents suggested we go for a swim. Dickie dressed in the bathroom and I put on my trunks and kept my white T-shirt on. Dickie was in the water before the gate closed and I eased in. My father sat in a lounge chair and watched. There were three other families there with children. One girl was a little older than us and wore a skimpy bikini, and I tried not to stare.
“Why don’t you take your shirt off?” Dickie said from the other side of the pool.
“I don’t want to get burned,” I lied.
“You guys are going to be hungry soon,” my father said. “I’m going to get some food. No running, okay?”
We watched him leave and I tried again not to stare at the girl. Dickie found a beach ball and we batted it. I spiked it and the thing flew straight at the girl, landing by her with a splash.
“Sorry,” I said.
She frowned and threw it in my general direction, then got out and toweled off, the water dripping from her bikini bottoms. I wondered what Jesse would look like in a bathing suit.
The girl left and I realized all of the people in the pool had gotten out.
“Looks like dinner’s being served,” I said.
“Nah, they got out because of me.”
“Why would they do that?”
Dickie dipped his head as if anyone with half a brain could understand. “All those people were white. They got out because they think I’ll dirty up the water.”
“I’m still here.”
He hit the beach ball to me and we swam, if you could call it that. We both tried to float but had to touch our feet on the bottom to get to the other side. We had a contest to see who could hold his breath the longest. Then Dickie found a life preserver that said, For emergency use only and sat in it with his hands behind his head, squinting into the sun.
“What if you could put on a pair of glasses and see everything?” he said.
“I saw glasses in a catalog that let you see through people’s clothes,” I said.
“I’ve seen those. I don’t believe it. They don’t cost enough to really work.”
I hadn’t thought of the cost, only the possibilities of X-ray glasses.
“I’m not talking about girls in their underwear or somebody’s liver pumping out bile,” Dickie said. “What if you could see all the way to a person’s soul? What if you could see what makes that person who they really are? See all that happened in their life. The good and bad and every little thing that makes me different from you.”
“What would you call them?”
“I don’t know, but they’d be a gold mine.”
“Soul glasses,” I said.
“That could work. Too bad Jesse’s not here—she would come up with a name. What do you think she’d say about them?”
I thought a minute. “Maybe she’d say that most people don’t want to see inside a person’s soul. They judge by what’s on the outside. It’s easier to look on the outside than to really look on the inside.”
“That sounds like Jesse all right.”
“There’s a verse in the Bible that talks about that.”
“Preacher boy in the pool,” Dickie said and rolled off the life preserver and sank.
“No, seriously,” I said when he bobbed to the surface. “Man looks on the outside but God looks at the heart.”
“He won’t need my glasses, then, will he?”
My father returned and called us in from the pool. I was ravenous and so was Dickie. We ate boiled ham and American cheese sandwiches on white bread with mustard. We put sour cream and onion potato chips on a paper plate and ate potato salad with plastic spoons, with powdered donuts for dessert, and no king was ever more satisfied. We didn’t drink much pop at home, but my mother had iced some Dr Pepper and diet Faygo in a cooler. There was a talk show on TV and we watched and ate, sitting on the Magic Fingers bed that didn’t work. When the news came on, my father said it was time to leave.
We walked the suspension bridge and I hesitated, remembering what had happened in Gallipolis. I looked up to see if maybe the Mothman was sitting there, but looking up made me unsteady. I didn’t want Dickie to think I was scared, so I forged ahead, carrying my glove close. I couldn’t help looking down through the steel grate at the murky water. The stadium sat in the distance like some giant flying saucer ready for takeoff. My father talked about going to games at Crosley Field, which was being torn down at the time, but I kept measuring my steps and thinking what I might do if the bridge collapsed.
We passed vendors selling peanuts as we neared the stadium and I smelled stale Hudepohl. Dickie stuck close to my mother as we passed men playing “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Cigarette and cigar smoke filled the air.
A black man yelled, “Hey, Pirates,” and pointed at my hat and smiled. “You guys gonna lose, little man! Big Red Machine gonna beat you tonight!”
I smiled and kept walking.
There is no feeling in the world like walking into a baseball stadium for the first time and seeing the green field, the white lines, the brown dirt at each base, and the colorful seats. I looked at Dickie when we got inside and saw his mouth drop.
We climbed to oxygen-deprived heights in the red seats. When the Reds came out of the dugout, Dickie said they looked like ants with numbers on their backs. My glove wasn’t necessary after all, but I felt more comfortable holding it. I thought of Ben.
The Reds had won 5–0 the night before, so I was glad we didn’t have tickets to that game. I looked to right field but Roberto Clemente wasn’t there, and when the Pirates’ lineup was announced, his name wasn’t called. Mazeroski and Clemente were the two players left from the World Series champs in 1960. I told all of this to Dickie, but he was more interested in the popcorn my mother had bought.
I drank in the atmosphere and cheered in vain. We lost 6–3 and the Reds fans around us didn’t hold back from rubbing it in as we walked home.
There were two double beds in the hotel room. My mom and dad slept in the one nearest the bathroom and I climbed into the other, exhausted. We watched the recap of the game on the news and it was surreal to see the action close up. Dickie said he was fine sleeping on the floor, that he could use his duffel bag as a mattress, but I told him, “You can sleep up here with the rest of us white people.” He laughed at that.
My parents turned on Johnny Carson, but Dickie was gone as soon as his head hit the pillow. Even when my dad dropped one of the soda cans in the cooler, Dickie slept right through it, snoring loudly. I had a harder time going to sleep. There was something about being in enemy territory and watching my team lose that made me ache for Three Rivers. I went over the game, inning by inning, wondering if Clemente would be in the lineup the next day. Steve Blass was supposed to pitch, so that meant we were sure to win.
The next morning my mom and dad woke us and took us to a restaurant. Dickie poured as much syrup on his pancakes as Walter Cunningham at the Finch house, but I had the good sense not to ask what in the sam hill he was doing.
We checked out of the hotel and drove over the bridge and parked at Riverfront. My father complained about the price of everything. There was no Clemente in the lineup, but I thought we might be able to see him if we went closer to the field.
“You think we can get an autograph?” Dickie said.
We climbed down to the lower level, but the ushers turned us away when they saw our tickets. We only got close enough to see Richie Hebner’s back.
Salvaging one game in the series wouldn’t be great, but it would be a lot better than losing three in a row. The Pirates got ten hits in the game and Al Oliver went three for four, but Gary Nolan held us scoreless and the Reds eked out two runs off Blass. Another loss.
“We should get Jesse a souvenir,” Dickie said as we passed a gift shop on the way out.
My mother frowned.
My father said, “Good idea, Dickie. What do you think she would like?”
Everything had Cincinnati printed on it, which turned my stomach. “Maybe one of those bobbleheads for Daisy,” I said.
It was a bittersweet drive home. The time had gone so fast, and I didn’t want it to end. About an hour from home Dickie, who must have felt the same way, devised a plan. He suggested we take the leftover ham and cheese from the cooler up the hill behind my grandmother’s house and camp out that night. Dickie’s father had left a real Army tent and Dickie knew how to set it up. We’d sleep under the stars, build a fire, and watch the sun come up.
My father looked at my mother. When she didn’t object, he looked in the rearview and said, “If Dickie’s mom says it’s okay.” It almost made the series sweep of the Pirates bearable.