Slide - Kyle Beachy [80]
When the second week of August came around, so did the Cardinals. They began hitting the ball with a ferocity that caught the rest of the league off guard: opposing pitchers shook their heads and spoke of mistakes, how they were made to pay. Dinkers fell for singles, gappers stretched to doubles, and hit-and-runs found holes where fielders would have been. We passed Houston and were catching the Cubs.
The city, in turn, was gathering the only real energy it knew. We all began to BELIEVE. Small flags fluttered from hoods and trunks of cars, posters appeared in the windows of businesses. Go Cards!! Local supermarkets ran specials on hot dogs and pork steaks. By this point the salt lines on my hat were whiter than the team's logo.
Stuart called with an invitation to a night game against the Mets. I made what I considered a pretty solid joke about maybe he had dialed the wrong number, and he said, “Five minutes.” The rolling ad pulled into our driveway, a filthy shadow of its former promotional radiance. There was mud caked into places I didn't fully understand how mud could get. I opened the door to an interior scarred with cigarette pocks and a deep, deliberate-looking slash across the lumbar. Marianne was not in the car.
“It's really good to see you, Stubes.”
“Stop right there. No talking in the ad. The ad has become an experimental silent zone.”
“You're serious.”
He raised his hand from the wheel to quiet me. I nodded and fastened my seat belt.
We arrived at a stadium that was all crowd and cheer. We shuffled among the throng of strangers and their infectious feeling of community, men and women sharing random high fives while beer spilled over the rims of big plastic cups. The panoply of red was about your sense of pride and your sense of place, and pretty much compulsory.
I had to wonder how long Stuart and I would go without speaking. It was a loaded silence that gave me the impression there was a reason he'd brought me here tonight. When we found his father's seats six rows back from the visitors’ dugout, I held my big fresh Budweiser and turned a slow rotation to take in the growing crowd. These people were St. Louis, all of them, regardless of how long they drove to get here. These guys over there, sure. Those guys. And the women two sections above us, in the hats. Them. The center-field jumbotron blinked the message The New West County: If you're not there, why be anywhere?
I asked my friend who it was that had written about being in but not of.
“Heidegger,” he said. “Among others. Sit down. You're making people nervous.”
Two innings passed without further conversation. Stuart flagged down an ancient black man lugging his tub of beers and hollering Cold beer here! so it had five syllables. The man poured like a true professional of his craft, one old scarred hand overturning two cans at once, a system of angles and air pressure and perfect foam. Stuart paid and the old man continued up the stairs, hollering into the clamor.
We went two more innings before Stuart broke our silence.
“Edsel came by the other day.”
“Oh man, you should have seen it. I've never imagined that guy failing at anything. But these businesspeople at the bar the other night didn't even blink in his direction. And once I saw it happen it was suddenly so clear. He's as human as the rest of us. Your buddies Dickbrain and Shitmouth were there also.”
“Matt and Eric mentioned that you were extremely rude. That on top of the way you treated Marianne at the fair was enough for me to start to wonder what was happening to you. Then came Edsel, with his photographs.”
He took a long sip of his beer before setting it down. He reached into his pocket and removed a small