“I like it back here,” Elliott said.
“Lotta people like it out front where everyone can see them.
Real Hollywood, right? I’m not into that.”
“Don’t blame you,” Jesse said.
He knew Jennifer liked him to talk around industry people.
“I’m a blue-collar guy, you know, Jesse. I make pictures.‘’
Jesse had never heard of any picture that Elliott had But he didn’t pay much attention to movies. He they were boring, except for westerns. Of which weren’t many new ones. Taffy came back with the The waitress brought them another round of
Elliott said, “Lemme tell you a little more about this
Jenn.“
Jesse took a long pull on his scotch and soda, feeling the thrust of it down his throat, waiting for the good feelto follow… In Oklahoma City he turned northeast, St. Louis. He was in the central time zone now. He remember listening to Vin Scully broadcasting the from St. Louis, right at suppertime. It was as if he
St. Louis, the ballpark glowing in the close summer the Mississippi running past. Bob Gibson, past his but still ferocious.
Bake McBride, Ted Simmons. It ‘: how he knew much of the country: Scully’s effortless from Wrigley Field and Three Rivers and Shea and
County Stadium, a kind of panoramic linkage under
· . dark skies of the Republic. He’d
listened to Vin Scully his life. Vin Scully was authority, containment, cer-Vin Scully was home. He reached St. Louis in the afternoon with the rush-hour traffic clogging the inter-He crossed the Mississippi and pulled off the inter-and found Busch Stadium, near the river. In front, statue of Stan Musial. Jesse sat in the car for a moment stared at the statue.
“Stan Musial,” he said.
Jennifer would never have understood. Maybe no one who had not played. The feel of it. The smell of the the way the skin of the infield felt under your spikes. way your hands and arms and upper body felt when hit the ball square, on the fat part of the bat. Maybe had to have played to hear the oral poetry of chatter and heckling, the jock humor that lingered at the poles of arrogance and self-effacement, the things umpires said every time they defended a call, the things the first baseman said every time, out of the corner of his mouth, while he watched the pitcher, if you reached, first on a lucky blooper.
They didn’t know that when you were in the field waiting for the pitcher to throw, or that when you were at bat trying to pick up the spin of a curve ball, you didn’t hear the crowd or the coaches or anyone else. They didn’t know that you were in a place of silence that seemed unregulated by time. Though they were men and they often spent time in the company of men, Jennifer’s friends didn’t have any feel for men in groups. Many of them seemed more at ease with women… after a cocktail party in the interests of Jennifer’s career they had a fight about it.
“Why were they so boring?” Jennifer said.
“They don’t know anything that
matters,” he said.
“They are successful people in the.
business,” Jennifer said.
“Nobody in the business knows what
matters,” Jesse had said.
“For Christ’s sake, they talked with you about baseball all night.”
“They don’t know anything about
baseball,” Jesse said.
“They just knew the names of a bunch of players.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Jennifer said.
As he left St. Louis it began to rain, spitting at first, and then more of a steady mist. He stayed the night in a motel in Zanesville, Ohio, and when he came out to the car in the morning it was still dark after sunrise and the rain was coming steadily. He pulled into the Exxon station next to the motel, a half block from the interstate ramp. Most people weren’t up yet in Zanesville.
The empty roadways gleamed in the rain reflecting the bright lights of the gas tation, He pumped his own gas and when he went in to bought himself coffee and two plain donuts in the convenience section. The man behind the counter had a shiny bald head and a neat beard. He wore a crisp white shirt with the cuffs turned back and there was a small tattoo on right forearm that said “Duke” in ornate blue script.
“Early start,” the man said.
“Long way to go,” Jesse said.
“Where you heading?”
The man made change automatically, as if his hands did he counting.
. “Massachusetts.”
“Long way is right,” the man said.
“Never been there
