Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [16]
We stopped at the cabin back near the parking lot to sign a guest book resting on a pulpit near the front door. As we walked to our car, I heard a low, breathy whistle behind us.
“Jesus Christ,” said a voice ringing with frogs. “Bill Lee was here!”
I spun around to find a disheveled park ranger staring at my autograph. He stood troll-short and feather-thin, with matted, shoulder-length red hair, a flimsy dirty-blond beard, and wild, bloodshot gray eyes peering at us from under the brim of a Smokey the Bear hat. Scabs had crusted in the corners of both nostrils.
Anyone could see that this man’s diastolic pressure had soared dangerously high. He lifted his head and revealed the face of a dog tick, red and bloated after sucking too much blood. He could not stop fidgeting. Clearly, here was yet another DNA mishap who had somehow eluded all of God’s quality controls before escaping to this haven far beyond the reach of any responsible recall process.
I stuck out my hand. “That’s right,” I said, “Bill Lee was here. And I’m me.” The ranger wrapped his arms around my waist in a bear hug that revealed considerable steel considering his size.
“I’m Bill Calvin, “he hollered, “and I’m your biggest fan in the whole world. The Red Sox are my team. I’m a New Englander, ya know? Come from Maine. Worked on a boat, ya know? I was the captain.”
“Well, sir,” I said, “you certainly are a long way from port.”
As it turned out, my Red Sox teammates and I shared some responsibility for that. Bill had helmed a fishing vessel back in 1975 when he sailed into Boston to watch us take on the Cincinnati Reds in the sixth game of the World Series. As every Red Sox diehard knows, rain delayed that meeting for three straight days. Bill spent most of them getting wasted on boilermakers in a local pub, waiting for Fenway Park to dry. Each day his boat remained anchored in the harbor, the swordfish in his hull ripened a bit more. By the time we finally played, no one would buy that reeking cargo. “I lost my haul, my job, and fifty thousand dollars,” he told me, “but it was worth it just to see Fisk hit that game-winning home run. Fuck the fish and the money. I’ll have that memory with me forever.”
With his captain’s bridge yanked from under him, Bill became a full-time wanderer. He drove down to Florida, canoed all the way to Mexico, and hiked across the border into Texas. Bill stopped in Silver City long enough to start an affair with a Native American lap dancer. The two of them did not emerge from her bedroom for three weeks and might have frolicked longer if they had not run out of food, booze, and pot. Bill headed to Fort Worth to restock their provisions only to wake up in a Mobile, Alabama, jail three days later with no idea how he got there. Turned out the police had arrested him on a DWI.
Bill spun this abridged version of his life story in about two minutes flat, jabbering faster than a cattle auctioneer. Fans often corner me to relate how some game I played altered their lives. Bill’s tale sounded more interesting than most, so I didn’t mind chatting for a bit. Still, we had to go.
“But you can’t leave,” Bill sputtered, “not without seeing the hot spring. Let me show you where it is.”
He walked back in the direction we had just come from, only this time he had us squeeze behind a large rock formation overlooking a plateau. Sure enough, we saw the spring, bubbling low like the water you boil an egg in with a layer of steam rising off the surface.
Once Bill left, Pam and I dropped our clothes and dipped naked into the swirling water. The temperature of the spring had climbed to 102 degrees. Hot tub cozy. All we needed to complete our pleasure was a bottle of champagne chilling on the side and a mirrored ceiling. There was no one around unless you counted the spirits of Geronimo and Cochise. No one, that is, except for the bald eagles circling overhead, sizing up my pecker as if it were an appetizer from a Steak and Brew shrimp bar. It would be