The Big Bounce

Bob grinned as he braked, looking back through the rear window. “The bachelor quarters.” He let Ryan out, saying, “Remember, now-”

Ryan walked back toward the shed. He heard the pickup starting off and a moment later heard the squeal of brakes as it stopped again, but Ryan didn’t look around. He’d seen enough of the hot dog and heard enough of him and as far as he was concerned, Bob Jr. was gone forever. He opened the door of the shed and went into the mildew-smelling gloom of the place. It had once housed machinery or equipment; now there were newspapers spread over the dirt floor and the papers covered with pieces of burlap and an old straw rug. Three of them had lived in here. Now Billy Ruiz and Frank Pizarro could have it to themselves. He was glad they weren’t here.

With the door open the first thing Ryan saw was the picture of himself on the wall clipped from the Free Press and pinned there between Al Kaline and Tony Oliva: Ryan holding the bat and Luis Camacho on the ground. The caption said:

MIGRANT WORKER HITS CREW LEADER FOR RAISE

A difference of opinion resulted in Jack C. Ryan putting the wood to Luis Camacho, crew leader of a group of migrant cucumber pickers from Texas this month working in the fields of Michigan’s Thumb area. Luis Camacho has been hospitalized. Ryan has been arraigned on a charge of felonious assault and is awaiting examination.

And something else about the guy making the movie who happened to be there, but Ryan didn’t read the rest. He took off his shirt going over to his cot. His soap and safety razor were on a wall shelf; he picked them up in one hand, laid a towel over his shoulder, and went outside again.

The pickup was still in the road. Bob Jr. was out of it, beyond the front end and standing at the driver’s side of a dark green Lincoln convertible pointing this way. Ryan had never seen the car with the top down before or- walking past the truck now-he had never seen it this close. Before, it had always been a dark green car in the distance trailing dust. In the field they would straighten up over the cucumber plants; somebody would say, “There goes Mr. Ritchie,” and they would stare after the car until it was gone.

Coming up past the truck, he got a good look at Mr. Ritchie-not a bad-looking guy, about forty-five, sun- glasses and a high, tan forehead, his dark hair starting to go. Then he was looking at the girl next to Mr. Ritchie with the big round Audrey Hepburn sunglasses; she was reading the Sunday funnies and as Ryan watched her she moved her dark hair away from her face with the tip of one finger: straight dark hair and long, down past her shoulders. She looked young enough to be Mr. Ritchie’s daughter, but for some reason Ryan knew she wasn’t.

Mr. Ritchie and Bob Jr. were watching him and now, one hand on the doorsill and the other on his hip, Bob Jr. gave a little side-motion jerk of his head to call Ryan over. He could hear music coming from the Lincoln convertible and off beyond them in the elm shade he could see the priest in green vestments and the people kneeling before the card-table altar.

Bob Jr. said, “Mr. Ritchie wants me to remind you you’re not needed around here anymore.”

“I’m going as soon as I clean up.” He was aware of the girl looking up from the funnies on her lap, but he kept his eyes on Bob Jr. Then, when Mr. Ritchie spoke, he turned a little-with the towel over his shoulder and holding the end of it in front of him-to let the girl see his arm, the slim brown muscle bunched tight against the side of his chest.

“You’re not a picker, are you?” Mr. Ritchie asked him.

“Not until a few weeks ago.”

“Why’d you join them?”

“I needed something to do.”

“Weren’t you working in Texas?”

“I was playing ball for a while.”

“Baseball?”

“Yes, sir, that’s what you play in the summer.”

Mr. Ritchie stared at him. “I understand you’ve been arrested before,” he said then. “For what?”

“Well, one time resisting arrest.” Ryan paused.

Mr. Ritchie said, “What else?”

“Another time B and E.”

“What’s B and E?” the girl said.

He looked right at her now, at the nice nose and the big round sunglasses and the dark hair hanging close to her face.

“Breaking and Entering,” Bob Jr. said.

The girl kept her eyes on Ryan. She said, “Oh,” and again brushed aside her hair with the tip of one finger, a gentle, almost caressing gesture.

She would be nineteen or twenty, Ryan decided: slim and brown in white shorts and a striped blue and tan and white top that was like the top of an old-fashioned bathing suit, sitting there with her ankles tucked under her and moving the funnies now so Ryan or Bob Jr. or anybody who wanted to could see her nice tan legs.

“We’re taking the boat out,” Mr. Ritchie was saying to Bob Jr. “We might leave it at the beach place, I don’t know.”

Bob Jr. straightened. “Right. I’ll have it picked up if you do.”

“I’ll be going back to Detroit about four thirty. You can check on the boat anytime after that.”

“Right,” Bob Jr. said. “You’ll be back Friday?”

Mr. Ritchie was looking at Ryan. “We don’t mean to keep you, if you want to pack and get going.”

“I didn’t know if you were through with me,” Ryan said.

“We’re through.”

“Just remember,” Bob Jr. said.

Ryan kept his eyes on Mr. Ritchie. “I was just wondering, you said you were driving to Detroit-”

“What’d I tell you!” The curled brim of Bob Jr.’s cowboy hat jutted toward him. “I said now. You know what that means? It means you leave now. This minute.”

Ryan felt the girl watching him. His gaze shifted from Mr. Ritchie’s solemn expression and he gave her the Jack Ryan nice-guy grin and shrugged and, just as he saw her begin to smile, walked off toward the washhouse.

When he came out into the sunlight again, shaved, cleaner, feeling pretty good, the convertible and the pickup were gone. He glanced over toward the elm shade at the priest in green vestments and the people kneeling before the card-table altar and he felt a little funny going by with his shirt off. He wanted to hurry, but he made himself take his time. Hell, he wasn’t in church. If the priest wanted to use this place as a church, that was up to him. Faintly, far away, he heard the words “Sursum corda” and the deeper sound of the people responding “Habemus ad Dominum.” The priest did not speak Spanish and the people had persuaded him, weeks before, to say the Mass in Latin. “Gratias agamus Domino, deo nostro,” the priest said.

Dignum et justum est. Ryan heard the words in his mind. He had about fifteen minutes to get out while they were still at Mass. Some of the people who had become his friends would stand out in the sun talking to him forever if he let them. He didn’t see Marlene Desea but decided she must be over in the elms. It would be just as well he didn’t see her. He hadn’t promised Marlene anything, but he didn’t know what he’d say to her and he’d probably end up telling her he’d be down to San Antonio to see her and a lot of crap like that. He didn’t worry about Billy Ruiz or Frank Pizarro. He didn’t give them a thought until he saw Pizarro’s panel truck, a blue ‘56 Ford turning purple and rusting out along the under edge of the body and wheel housings.

They were waiting for him inside the shed, Billy grinning at him with his awful teeth and Frank Pizarro stretched out on a cot in his boots and sunglasses.

Billy Ruiz said, “Hey, Frank, look who’s here.”

Pizarro was looking directly at Ryan; still he raised his head a little, acting it out. “Man, just in time, uh?”

“Like he know what we found,” Billy Ruiz said.

“Sure,” Pizarro said. “He got a nose for it.”

Ryan spread open his canvas suit-pack on his cot. He put on a clean shirt and stuffed everything else he owned into the bag.

“He think he’s leaving,” Pizarro said. “We better tell him what we found.”