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  URBAN BLIGHT

  Molly’s daily headache seemed worse in the stillness of the early morning air. From atop the narrow terrace just outside their temporary apartment, she sipped her coffee and watched as the streets below pulsed with the callous detachment of the morning rush to duty. People pushed their way through crowded sidewalks, bound to the unforgiving call of schedules, and a line of automobiles, all with pressing purposes, snaked their way through the daunting maze of concrete buildings, protesting with intermittent horn blasts—courtesy of impatient hands.

  She frowned as she recalled with some difficulty the sights and sounds that adorned her former sunrise routine. Where was the bevy of prairie warblers, buzzing and whistling as they foraged in the brush, poking in and out of the lower branches of her favorite row of pitch pines with playful determination? What about the distant dance of bottlebrush grass, the distinctive inflorescence of spikelets swaying softly, rhythmically, to the gentle breath of the awakening meadow just across the way? Or the kiss of the welcoming sun, its warming rays slanting through the giant oaks that lined the modest dwelling she had come to love so dearly? It was all so foreign now.

  Maybe it was worse because Arthur had been gone for so long. She had lived through spring training last year with relative ease, never once entertaining the sort of angst and malaise that presently plagued her. As she sipped from her ceramic mug, she could only conclude that everything was different—completely and all at once, and that was the problem.

  Even Mickey, who had not really occupied her chambers of worry for quite some time, was on her mind. The boy continued to find solace in the guiding hands of both Murph and Lester, and he was genuinely excited about playing in the Bee Hive in front of thousands of New England’s most ardent baseball worshippers. He had come a long way from tossing apples into a barrel on the farm in Indiana, and even Mickey, with his limited scope and sensibility, could recognize the extraordinary circumstances that defined his present position.

  Still, Molly worried. She worried what people were saying, what they were thinking, and how they would treat her special boy. She also worried each time either Mickey or Arthur shared with her another incident that, in her opinion, placed her boy in peril.

  The most recent of these moments occurred right after they returned from spring training. A few of the Braves’ veterans, including catcher Walker Cooper, outfield corners Tommy Holmes and Sid Gordon, and first baseman Earl Torgeson, invited Lester and Mickey to join them one night for their ritualistic bar crawl through the heart of historic downtown Boston, where they would spend hours eating, drinking, and shooting the shit in some of the most historic pubs and taverns in the area. Lester was a little more than surprised by the invitation, especially since Cooper, his main competition all spring, was the one who extended the overture.

  “Hey, country boy,” the catcher said shortly after they arrived back in Bean Town. “Why don’t you and your special friend join us tonight for a little R & R? A little something we like to call the Dead Man’s Walk.”

  Cooper had not been so welcoming of Lester from the beginning, but after a spring that saw Lester outplay the aging backstop in every facet of the game, it was clear that he was feeling the pinch and had resigned himself to the fact that he had probably lost his job to the younger, much heralded Lester Sledge.

  “That’s mighty kind a ya, Coops,” Lester said. “But I ain’t so sure you really mean it now. After all the stuff that gone down all spring. I may be a colored boy from the sticks, but I ain’t stupid.”

  Cooper laughed and put his hand on Lester’s shoulder. “Listen, son. I’ve been around the game a long time. And I can read the writing on the wall. What it says is that you are just a little bit better than old Coops here. So I’m done holding out, Lester. Get it? It’s cool. No more. I’m just happy to still be here. When you get to be my age, you don’t hold out. No, sir. Holding out’s a young man’s game. When you get to be my age, you just hold on.” He paused, put out his hand, and the agreement was sealed. “That’s not to say I ain’t gonna try my best to delay you a bit.”

  Mickey was there too. He had mildly protested when Lester asked him to join the others, but after several minutes of trying to explain all of the reasons why it would not work, he found it easier to simply acquiesce. Now he was sitting by himself, hands folded, his mind a polluted pool of anxiety. He was never so out of place as he was in these types of situations. All he could do was sit and wait. Lester had told him that he’d be right back, but he had been gone a good twenty minutes and there was no sign of him anywhere.

  So he sat and looked around. Through a hazy veil of smoke, he noticed with tepid curiosity a girl sitting on a stool not far from his, coat on her lap, hands busy with her keys. Her back was resting up against the lip of the bar. He instantly became entranced with her hair—soft, sandy-brown ringlets that cascaded down both sides of her face and across both shoulders. He tried not to smile. It reminded him of the water in Williston’s Creek back home—the way it would swirl in neat, tight circles, spinning like a series of tops as it slid effortlessly across the large, jutting stones that protruded here and there.

  Although she remained seated, her eyes wandering from face to face through the smoky, dimly lit air, he could tell that she was taller than most girls he had seen before. This time he did smile. He hated how his own size always presented yet another barrier to cross when talking to the fairer sex. He hated leaning down all the time to hear what was being said.

  He sat and continued to stare, his heart an instrument of unsteady beats, studying the pattern of her pale blue dress. He liked the tiny yellow flowers that were stitched in symmetrical rows across the front and struggled with the burgeoning impulse to get up and run his fingers over the fabric. He was sure it would be soft. But in all the excitement, images of the last time he saw someone this beautiful began littering his brain, all but destroying the rapture. It was an awful recollection. He had been sitting all by himself that night at The Bucket when she approached him. It was the first time he had ever really spoken to a girl. It was all too much. A beautiful young thing, caressing his back, kissing his face with soft, full lips, whispering wonderful things in his ear.

  “You are just the cutest ballplayer I have ever seen, Mickey,” she’d said. “Just adorable. Do you want to see how cute I am? Hmmm? Or maybe you’d rather just feel for yourself.” It all happened so fast. She had told him that she wanted to take a walk with him in the cool night air. He was enthralled that she had any interest at all. They strolled for a while, hand in hand, eyes fastened to the full, glowing moon and the glinting constellations all around.

  “Ever just sit, Mickey, and look up at the stars?”

  He shook his head, too busy with the joy of her presence to answer.

  “My mama, she and I would sit outside on an old blanket sometimes and just stare at the stars for hours,” she said, her voice cracking. “I used to be able to spot ’em all. Andromeda, Orion, the Big Dipper. I knew them all.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? What do you mean why, silly? Because they’re there.”

  “I never spent no time watching stars,” he said absently. “I don’t suppose my pa would like it very much.”

  Her body gave a nervous jerk. Through the chilly summer air, she heard a faint, faraway sound that quickly died.

  “That’s a shame, Mickey. My mama used to say that God’s promises were like the stars—the darker the night, the brighter they shine. I think about that sometimes.”

  A mild buzzing, nervous and uncontrolled, was in his ears. He turned his head and swallowed hard. She looked as if she was going to cry. Face-to-face with an unannounced emotion, she had no words. She breathed in the night air and shook her head as if to rattle the troubled thoughts from her mind. Then she grabbed his arm and pulled him behind a service station.

  “Enough with the stars. I think we would have more fun back here.”

  He remembered Murph explaining how the gir
l had lured him outside so that three of Lefty’s boys could jump him—that it was all just a ruse and that she had no genuine interest in him. He still couldn’t decide what hurt more—the beating he took or the sting attached to the realization that he did not matter to the girl.

  He was still wrestling with the two scenarios when the new girl, the one with the sandy curls, got up suddenly from her seat. In her haste, she did not realize that something had detached from her key ring and fallen to the floor. It was soft and white and oddly familiar except for the silver loop and chain affixed to the top.

  The bar was bristling with activity. Off in the shadows, a couple kissed softly. There was a group in the opposite corner arguing over a faded dartboard while others struggled to engage in conversation as the waves of juke box music collided with frivolous banter and peals of laughter. But Mickey was undeterred. He was off his stool the second the girl’s object hit the floor. He bent down to retrieve the wayward item and held it in between the index finger and the thumb on his right hand for several seconds, caressing the soft white fur with thoughtful deliberation. He liked the way it felt but it made him sad. The comfort and familiarity of the texture continued to wane as he considered the process by which such an item could be fashioned; he shuddered at what was most certainly the gory details. Who would do such a thing? And why? His mind had just begun to apply the possibility of that same horror touching Duncan and Daphney when he was roused from his nightmarish stupor by a voice, soft yet firm.

  “Um, I think that belongs to me.”

  His whole body jerked suddenly, as if he had just been awakened unexpectedly from a dream. She was looking at him through a few sandy wisps of shiny silk with her hand extended in his direction. He could not move.

  “Excuse me,” the girl said, pointing to his right hand. She was smiling but seemed as though she was in a hurry. “I think that belongs to me. I dropped it by accident.”

  He was still frozen. She was even taller than he originally thought, and she smelled like the lilac bush he used to hide beneath as a boy when Clarence was in the midst of one of his tirades.

  “Uh, do you think I could have that back now?” she continued. “I’m leaving in a few minutes and I need to have my good luck charm. Not that it’s doing all that much for me and all but, hey, you never know.” She laughed uncomfortably.

  Mickey continued to manipulate the white fur between his fingers as she spoke but relinquished the talisman with a notable degree of concern when the girl extended her hand even further. “Don’t know why folks is always saying that a rabbit’s foot is lucky,” he said just as the girl was about to walk away. “I reckon that it’s a whole lot luckier when you have a whole rabbit attached to it.”

  The girl turned her head to the side in quizzical fashion and smiled. “Yeah, I guess you might be on to something there,” she said. “Four feet has got to be luckier than just one.”

  Mickey frowned. “No. Rabbit’s feet are not lucky, miss. That’s not what Mickey was saying. Rabbits are lucky, or what I mean to say is that people who have rabbits are lucky. Like me. I have two rabbits. Duncan and Daphney. Duncan is a boy and Daphney is a girl. Duncan is tan but has a little patch of white on his chest and belly and Daphney is all white. They are my friends. Sometimes when I—”

  “Rabbits?” she asked.

  “Yes, miss. Duncan is a boy and—”

  “Well, uh, okay—Mickey, is it? Okay, Mickey. I understand. You’re probably right. I get it. I did not want to—”

  “What’s your name, miss?” he asked.

  She abandoned the former path of her thoughts for a moment. “Jolene,” she said. “My name is Jolene.”

  Mickey’s furrowed brow announced his sudden confusion. “I don’t reckon Mickey has even heard that name before. I know Joanna Dugan and Joanie Mitchell and my mom has a friend who is Leanne Bronson and she has a friend Leena something. Don’t reckon I know her other name. Mickey only met her one time. I even knew a farmer who had a cow he called Jolinda. She were real skinny for a cow. And had a funny lookin’ tail. Too short for a cow. Jolinda was her name. But I never ever heard of someone with a name like—”

  “Okay, okay, Mickey,” she said, drumming her fingers against her cheek. “Yeah, I get it.” She was all at once distant and maudlin as she slipped seamlessly into one of those awful reminiscences. It was the summer of her twelfth year. Her family was spending their typical two weeks on the Jersey Shore at her father’s friend’s home, something she had grown to loathe. Despite the beauty and liberating call of the ocean, her visits to their summer getaway were tinged with moments of merciless ridicule and judgment, all at the hands of the girls with whom she was forced to “live” with for the duration of those fourteen days. Her plaintive cries were uncompromising and painfully real but never heard.

  “Please, Mama, I don’t want to go back there again,” she had pleaded, tears streaming down both sides of her face. “Everyone there is so mean.”

  Her mother was staring out at the ocean, her eyes fixed on a pair of seagulls floating on some driftwood just beyond the breakers.

  “Stop it, Jolene,” she admonished. “That’s nonsense. Mr. and Mrs. Carey open their home to us every summer, and this is how you act?”

  “But the girls tease me and make me feel bad, Mama,” she continued. “I feel so bad.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, turning her head to face her daughter. “What do you mean they tease you?”

  The waves pounding the rocky shore sounded like the roll of distant guns. Suddenly Jolene’s head seemed too heavy for her shoulders. Her whole body slumped.

  “They call me names, Mama,” she said.

  “What names?”

  “Jo Jo Hippo,” she whispered softly. It was even more horrifying coming from her own lips.

  “What? What did you say? Pick your head up when you speak. That’s part of your problem, girl. I can’t ever hear a damn word you say.”

  “They call me Jo Jo Hippo,” she repeated. “They say I’m ugly and fat and they make fun of me. All the time. And they laugh. They say you had to make up a name for me because I’m too ugly for a normal one. And that I belong pulling a plow or something. Please, Mama. I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  Her mother’s eyes returned to the ocean. She frowned when she saw that the seagulls were no longer there. “Look, Jolene, we’ve been through this before. You’re different from the other girls. You’re bigger and maybe not as ‘girly’ and frilly as the others. But it’s okay. You have to learn to live with it. It’s life. Not every girl is cut out to be prom queen.” Jolene’s eyes flooded as her mother continued to pour her own fears and dissatisfaction over the young girl. “I have told you a thousand times life ain’t fair. It just ain’t. And I am sorry about all of this, including that name of yours. I don’t like it anymore than you do but it was the only way for me and your father to agree.”

  Years later her mother’s words still stung.

  “I guess my name sums up my life,” she explained to Mickey. “My mama wanted to call me Josephine but my daddy’s mom’s name was Eileen. He had his heart set on that. Story has it they fought about it for more than a while. Couldn’t decide. So they came up with Jolene. Near as I can figure it’s not even really a name. And neither one of them is really happy with it. So now I’m just this girl with the name that nobody really likes or understands.”

  Mickey’s face softened. He leaned toward the girl and placed his hand on her shoulder.

  “I like it, Miss. And I like your hair. But killing rabbits for their feet is not nice, Miss Jolene. Animals is just like people, only animals—they’re always nice. Like in my favorite poem, ‘Silver.’ It’s all about dogs and mice and fish. I love that poem. I don’t reckon Mickey ever had a fight with an animal. And I’ve had a lot of animals, Miss. I had me some pigs, chicks, a horse, two roosters, a lamb, a cat, and rabbits. I told you about them. All of my animals are my friends. They can understand things and they
have feelings just like other folks. One time, not too long ago, my pig Oscar—”

  “Look, I’m sorry, Mickey,” she said, slipping one hand into the arm of her coat. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m not a big fan of these crazy things either. Not really anyway. My brother gave it to me. He’s superstitious. All baseball guys are. Said it always helps him and that I need all the help I can get.” She paused a minute when she caught a glimpse of herself in the glass of one of the picture frames just behind Mickey. Her shoulders sagged.

  “I suppose he’s right.”

  A palpable awkwardness settled between them.

  “Okay then,” she finally said. “Well, it was nice talking to you, Mickey. Maybe I will—”

  “Mickey’s a baseball guy too and I ain’t superstitious one lick,” he said. “My mama and Mr. Murphy and some of the guys, sometimes they say that I act a little crazy and all—you know, all weird and stuff, especially when I am preparing before a ball game and all. But I ain’t ever had no good luck charms before.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “So you’re a baseball guy, huh?” she asked, pulling the lapels of her coat closed. “Well, maybe I’ll see you around sometime. I have to go right now, but we can talk some more. Sometime—you know, about animals and things.” She smiled and nodded. “I kinda like the way you see things, Mickey.”

  It was the girl’s comment—“I kinda like the way you see things, Mickey”—that set Molly off after Mickey told her all about the meeting.

  “This is what I’m talking about, Arthur,” she said. Her ability to speak calmly collapsed under the weight of her anger and concern. “I cannot have people, especially girls, suggesting things to Mickey and placing him in situations which he is unable to handle. He comes home and tells me all about this girl, excited and all, but he has no idea what he is getting into. He has the mind of a little boy, Arthur. A little boy. This whole thing can only be trouble for him.”