Shayla Muldoon

*** In this story there is testament to perhaps the worst of all human sins -- bigotry. There is racial language and jokes (the n-word is not used), along with some sensuality.

June 21, 1991 --

The players, suffused with a lean muscularity, crouched around the diamond, fielding grounders bounced to them by the largest of them all. When each of the infielders glided toward their respective ground ball, they flung it back in the direction from where it came. The ball slapped into the glove of the gargantuan first baseman, crackling around the stadium.

“Hey, hon,” Jason said, “See number 21 there for the Twins? Big, tall guy at first base?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, the pulsating heat just about driving me to sleep. Then I saw number 21 and woke up. Damn. Is that how they grow baseball players these days? “You mean the good-looking guy down there? Real muscular and all, cute ass? That fine-looking thing? Is that who you’re talking about?”

My husband chuckled and shoved me on the shoulder, a playful smile on his face. This joshing around about other beautiful men and women had become like a form of foreplay for us. Somehow it made us grapple for each other even more when the time came. He snuggled up to me real tight, even though it was hotter than hell. I didn’t mind at all. Not one bit, nosiree.

He looked at me and gave me a wink. “Yep, that’s him,” a chuckle threatening to turn into a full-fledged roar.

“What about him?” Like I didn’t know. He’d only talked about number 21, Will Childs, the Minnesota Twins’ twenty-three-year-old rookie first baseman for what seemed like the last two weeks, on a constant loop, since Will called and told Jason that the Twins would be in KC for a three game set, starting on June 20. He went on about how he was hitting, I don’t know, like .328 with eleven homers and forty-two RBIs, which my husband dutifully explained to me was how many men Will had knocked in during his at-bats. He explained this really obscure baseball fact to me like I was five, even though I had been a Cubs fan since birth. Me, just sitting on my daddy’s lap on the porch listening to the radio broadcast from the Windy City and WGN, 720-AM.

Ah, those days. There might as well have been no one else in the world but me and him and Lou Boudreau’s static-y voice telling us to “Kiss it goodbye!” when a Cub, maybe Leon Durham, my favorite, or Bill Buckner, sailed it out of the park, Daddy and I exchanging high-fives hard enough that I’m surprised it didn’t rip our skin off. Honestly, the Cubs were terrible back then, but we didn’t care. They were our Cubs.

“What about him?” Jason said, faux incredulousness settling on his face, handsome and ruddy, and those olive orbs of his that in most mortals were simply called eyes. That mouth, capable of setting my entire body aflame. And with that same mouth, the one capable of twisting me into the most sensuous of knots, he broke into my sultry thoughts with one of its many capabilities: speech. “Surely, you are aware that we are meeting him after the game, right? At the team hotel?”

“Really? Oh, right. I remember now. You’ve mentioned it just a time or two or sixty-seven in the past couple of weeks. Something about y’all playing ball together on some little pick-up team?”

He narrowed his eyes to a wink and shot me a wry smile, the dimples in his cheeks becoming even more pronounced. Oh, God, would tonight never come? What a beauty he was. I put my hand on his thigh and squeezed, his smile growing ever larger. He knew the score and not just the present score -- Royals 3, Twins 2.

Anyway, let me calm myself down. It’s a long time until that hotel room.

So, just a little back story. Jason and Will had played travel ball together while they were each in high school (Jason a senior and Will a freshman). They attended different schools, but a friendship was forged through the fire of competition nonetheless. The two of them had promised each other through the cock-eyed optimism of youth that whoever reached The Show first would call the other and show him the town when they got close by. Put the life of a real major leaguer on full display. Of course, it was soon after that Jason shattered his left knee. And, well -- we still have a beautiful life. Sometimes though, especially when we listened to the Royals (radio baseball was like a drug I needed -- I couldn’t help it), I could see him flinch at the crack of the bat, like a line drive was coming straight at him and he was dashing into left-center ready to spear that rocket just before it hit the ground.

My life -- our shared life -- was good. Better than good -- exquisite, even. Jason, the most successful and handsome of all the Mutual of Omaha insurance agents in Lincoln. Me -- chasing my own dream. Been saving my pennies, turning them into dollars, but it hasn’t happened. At least not yet. Mr. Giles, God rest his sweet soul, had tried to sell me his pharmacy, where I was mostly happily employed. This was a couple of years before he passed away, but the timing wasn’t right. Maybe it will be one day.

The sunshine continued to bake as we sat dead centerfield about ten rows back. Kansas City was around three hours from Lincoln, where we had lived for the past two years, me as a pharmacist at one of the six Kohlls Drugs on the south side, and Jason pitching insurance. He studied sports management at the University on the weekends. That dream, like most of our dreams, had never quite been extinguished. Maybe years from now, he sometimes told me, instead of going all out for that screamer in center field, he could help sign the center fielder who did that, maybe a future All-star. Who knew? Who knew anything in this life?

The game rocked along, following its own basic script -- three outs, three strikes, nine innings -- that allowed for plenty of improvisation along the way -- a tossed manager; a pitcher kicking divots in the mound, trying to stave off the inevitable; the beautiful ballet of a 6-4-3 double play. The Royals went up 3-2 in the sixth on a majestic home run off the bat of Danny Tartabull, my new favorite Royal, having taken over from George Brett.

Then, top of the eighth, Will came up, runner at second. Jason and I stood up and cheered. I’m sure we were quite a sight, all decked out in our Royals gear and cheering to beat the band for the enemy. I could feel the weight of the fans’ stares on our backs. I was almost certain it was because of our inopportune raucousness, and nothing else, right? Right?

“Who the hell y’all cheering for?” a voice rang out.

Jason turned around and flashed that megawatt smile: “Will’s a friend of ours. What can I say?” He faced the field again and sat.

And then from behind us: “Maybe you need a better class of friends, pal!” The voice, a reedy whine, rang out from the packed outfield seats, seeming to travel with lightning speed around the arena. I was sure that the man’s comment was referring to Will, right? We chose to take it as that, but you never knew. He could just as easily be talking about me (after all, interracial marriage was still rare enough to elicit a silent -- and sometimes not so silent gasp -- from even the most cosmopolitan crowd), but we decided to go along in ignorance and to re-focus on Will. Jason’s only response was to grasp my hand more tightly, both of our hands resting on my thigh.

“Go, Will! Hit it up here, buddy!” Jason said.

“Yeah, Will! Knock the black off her,” the voice rang out. Peals of laughter rang out at the wittiness of this fully-sloshed, half-witted fool. I could feel Jason’s body tense up a bit, wanting to confront this third-rate Andrew Dice Clay.

“Don’t!” I whispered this admonition, but with enough urgency that I hoped it came through to Jason like a shout. His grip on my thigh tightened to an almost uncomfortable degree.

“Can’t find you a white girl, ya pussy? Ain’t man enough, huh? We know her kind ain’t too picky,” the man continued, itching for a fight. I silently begged Jason not to scratch that itch.

“Hey, cowboy,” a female voice chimed in. “Take a good look at me. I’ll give you a ride around the world, boy. And we’ll make a stop in every port, if you know what I mean. I promise you’ll like it.”

“Shut up, woman,” the man replied. “I’m all the man you need.”

“But not all I want,” she said.

“Ah, sit down and shut up,” the man said, a nervous tic in his voice, like he thought Jason might take her up on the offer.

Then he started in on me.

“Hey, bitch, how many young’uns you got? Six? Eight? Better keep an eye on her, man, they don’t much get into staying with the same feller.” He screeched as if he’d just cracked the world’s funniest joke. Jason’s hand continued to form a vice grip on my thigh.

And now I caught a glimpse of the other man, jean shorts, straining at the middle, pale, spindly legs, glorious evidence of the farmer’s tan of which his face and neck bore further proof . His tattered T-shirt betrayed a globular belly, the bottom of which poked out beneath the shirt. His mouth was in a tight, angry line, like we’d intruded upon his enjoyment of Royals baseball, perhaps the only thing in his life that brought him any happiness whatsoever -- his one yearly trip to the park ruined by us race-mixers.

Then I heard a sound like a pine tree being felled to the ground in one clean hack! My head whipped around, just in time to see a fly ball soar majestically toward centerfield. The crack, still washing over the crowd, was clear evidence that Will had lined up that pitch on the bat’s sweet spot. The baseball landed halfway up the dark green tarp draped over an area of the center-field bleachers. I’d only heard of a few players that hit it that far, Bo and George, Canseco, Griffey, Jr., maybe a few others. I’d never seen it in person.

“Well, he did it. Your friend, I mean,” the man said. “Whatcha gonna do to pay him back, bitch? Get on your black knees?”

Jason flung himself up out of his seat and climbed up the stairs, all six-feet-five of him, muscles rippling, ready to hand out a whipping to that fool, and any others who dared stand in his way.

“Come on up here, big boy!” the woman said, standing in front of the man like she was some white trash fortress. “Ooh-wee! I want me some of that fine ass.”

“Ma’am, my mom and dad raised me to be a gentleman to ladies,” Jason said. “But I’m not sure that applies to you.”

“What the hell do you mean by that? Watch how you talk, boy,” said the man, “or I’ll come down there and rip your teeth out and feed them to your woman there like they was chitlins.”

Jason was undeterred by his threat. “If your mama could hear you talk, I’ll bet she’d be right ashamed of you.”

“Don’t you talk about my mama, boy, God rest her soul. You don’t know shit about her. And she sure as hell didn’t like her kind.” He motioned at me hard.

“None of her kind?” Jason said, or hissed, rather. I drew in my breath hoping his next move wouldn’t involve removing parts of Carl’s face -- like his eyes or nose, some of the more essential parts. Please, Jason, please. I started up the steps -- to do what, I didn’t know.

“You’d best get back to your seat, girlie,” the woman said, standing, eyebrows arched, hands on hips, daring me to take another step, just itching to mix it up.

Jason twisted his head around. “Don’t worry, hon. Me and my friends here are just having a nice sociological conversation.” He turned his gaze back to the pair. “We just seem to come at it from different points of view. I don’t drag my knuckles on the ground, for instance.” Confusion screwed up their faces. I doubt they were used to insults that didn’t involve a torrent of curse words.

“Well, Deanna,” Carl said, turning his head to look at whom I supposed was Deanna. “We’re just having a conversation. Yeah, okay. Right you are. And now it’s done. So, why don’t you just turn around and go to your seat and take your girlfriend, or whatever the hell she is, back with you? She could be a two-bit hooker for all I know. Now, get the fuck out of my face.”

Jason’s fist tightened, clenched so hard that his hand turned crimson. Through barely parted lips, he said, “She’s my wife. And you should thank her, because she is the only reason that I haven’t ripped you apart -- yet. For some reason that I cannot fathom, but that I deeply respect, she wants your nose to not be turned into a piece of loosely flapping hamburger meat. So I’ll do as she wants. I hope you enjoy the rest of your afternoon.”

“Pussy,” was his only response. Jason, his fists drawn, made a quick move toward the man, who jerked backward in return, losing his balance and falling back into his seat.

Jason couldn’t hold back a little smirk. “Now, I think my wife and I will go back and watch the rest of this ballgame, if you don’t mind. Sir, ma’am.” He tipped his cap and turned back to me and smiled. Like a ray of sunshine, it filled my body with an unfathomable warmth.

The woman snorted so hard I was pretty sure I could see a spray of snot exiting her nostrils.

“Well okay, then, pretty boy. Guess we won that one,” she said. “Come on, Carl. I think this game has about lost its charm for me, anyway.”

“Yeah. Right.”

Carl straightened his John Deere cap, grasped Deanna’s hand (more for balance than out of affection, it appeared), and moved away from his seat with all the dignity his drunken ass could muster. Deanna cooed in his ear.

“C’mon, baby. C’mon. I’ll make you feel better in a little bit when we get back to the room.” She looked back at us once more, a sneer and a strange piteousness fighting for dominance over her face. I couldn’t help but feel almost sorry for her. Almost. Then the middle finger came, and any charitable feelings I had directed toward her were obliterated.

We sat down again, intent on the field, the pitcher kicking at the mound, trying to elicit the last spark of life from his dying fastball and flat curve, seemingly all his mojo zapped away by Will’s blast. When I tuned in to the nuts and bolts of the game, I saw Black players, Hispanic players, white players, all working toward a common goal, giving high fives, and other more raucous exhortations for the lithe, powerful athleticism that each of them drew upon. At least on that field, on each day of that long slog of a season, the players stuffed down any prejudices they might have held, team above all. I looked back at the spot vacated by Carl and Deanna and felt sadder than sad, a small catch in my throat. They were only human after all, bound together and constricted by their prejudices.

The Twins beat our Royals 4-3. Will recorded the last out, spearing a blue screamer off the bat of Harvey Lightner, a light-hitting second baseman, who would enjoy no more than a cup of coffee in The Show. Will’s catch was a feat of skill and timing. Diving to his left and snatching the ball out of the air, he held it aloft as he flounced to the ground, showing the ump it was a clean catch. Game over just like that.

Jason looked over at me and smiled. God, that smile! Then, the smile dropped just as suddenly off his face and an intense soberness took over.

“Do you feel like dinner tonight? Because if you don’t, I can meet him and explain why.” After all that shit earlier, he left out, but that phrase hung on every word.

“Are you kidding?” I kept my voice low and even, knowing that what I was doing was just a bit cruel. The blood started to drain from his face, and I couldn’t keep up the charade. “And miss a chance to meet an honest-to-goodness real major league ballplayer. And a cute one at that. You think a couple of dickheads like Carl and Deanna could keep that from happening? What time is it? Dinner?”

Relief flooded his face, and it returned to its former ruddy glow. A chuckle escaped his lips. “He said about 8:30 in the hotel bar. Hmmmph. I should have known better. My girl ain’t nothing but strong.” Then, in a whisper that I could barely make out: “I love you, Shayla.” Like it was nothing but fact, a conscious decision, not one dictated emotion.

“You, too,” I said, louder. “Let’s go back to the hotel.” And we did.