Tim Pareti

Ernie’s Bleachers

Tim Pareti

Baseball? It's just a game as simple as a ball and a bat, yet as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes.

—Ernie Harwell

Prologue

A late autumn wind swept away smoke trailing from a Lucky Strike cigarette that dangled on the lips of Eddy Pareti. He had dropped off his mother, brother, and sister in front of Murphy’s Bleachers, and parked his brother’s Cadillac in a lot across from the tavern where the Sinclair gas station had once been. He and neighborhood kids threw snowballs at its green dinosaur logo so many years ago.

Eddy couldn’t smoke in the tavern, so he stood outside and shivered in the cold. There was a time a guy could smoke anywhere except in a church or at school. He hunched his shoulders and took another drag and exhaled. It had been years since he’d been back to the old neighborhood. He had once known every nook and cranny, every shortcut through the gangways and alleys where he and his friends would play kick the can with an old Hills Brother’s coffee can or hit a sixteen-inch softball in a game of line out until dark. He could feel the rattle in his bones every time an El train would rumble blocks away like distant thunder.

His eyes shifted to the tavern that his father had built. It was once a place where everyone from mobsters to cops, from bookies to ball players, from politicians to war widows, rubbed elbows. Bets were wagered, and World War II was won. Suitors proposed. Gals wrote Dear John letters with gauzy tears at the back booth. Lifelong friendships were forged. Gin filled the emptiness of sons and husbands lost at Anzio or Guadalcanal. Eddy had seen it all as a kid, the pain and happiness like the sweet sting of a Negroni cocktail.

Those were different times.

He walked around to the side of the tavern with the spryness of a manager popping out from the dugout to argue a call at home plate. At seventy, Eddy spent most of his time on the golf course. He was scratch golfer, and earned walk-around money on bets against well-heeled Floridians who acted as if they played on the Senior Tour.

He glanced around. It was the middle of the day on a Saturday and not a kid in sight. They were probably inside pecking away on their computers, he thought.

Eddy shook his head and puffed on his smoldering square. He blew a smoke ring as he studied the bleacher’s entrance of Wrigley Field across the street. A skinny kid could probably squeeze through that gate like he had done a thousand times. He squinted up at the back of the Cubs scoreboard that loomed behind center field, and above the intersection of Waveland and Sheffield. He smiled. At least, that was still the same after all these years. And so are the Cubs, in the cellar of the National League again.

The last time the Cubs made it to the October classic was the year he thought he was ready to take on the world.

Top of the First

Eddy Pareti sat on his bed with a baseball bat resting on his lap. He tossed a rubber ball in the air and caught it with his right hand. He kept an eye on the rusty El track a few feet from his window, waiting for the train to make his escape.

The radio blared from the front room on the other side of the third-floor flat. It was a Zenith Stratosphere, a fifty-inch-tall console with three speakers. If the Wrigley Field loudspeakers ever broke the Stratosphere would be a good replacement, Eddy thought.

The radio announcer, Arthur Godfrey, soaked the apartment with his smooth and avuncular voice that seeped through the plastered walls and closed oak door of Eddy’s bedroom.

“Between the innocence of boyhood and the dignity of manhood, we find a delightful creature called a boy. Boys come in assorted sizes, weights, and colors, but all boys have the same creed: to enjoy every second of every minute of every hour of every day and to protest with noise…”

“Ernie, turn down that radio! We’re not hard of hearing—you are,” yelled Eddy’s mother, Margaret. Her shrill voice sounded to Eddy like a cat screaming in the throes of death.

“Leave me alone, Marge. Let me read my paper in peace.”

“It’s too loud, Ernie. I can’t hear myself think.”

“Mothers love them, little girls ignore them, older sisters and brothers tolerate them, adults ignore them and heaven protects them. A boy is truth with dirt on his face…”

High heels clicked across the hardwood floor, charging down the long hallway. The rushed rhythm of the steps echoed with the urgency of a prison guard.

The radio’s volume lowered. “Ernie! It’s early in the morning. Eddy is still sleeping. The neighbors can hear it.”

A newspaper rustled, and muffled feet thumped on a thick rug.

“Son of a pup! Marge, don’t touch the radio.”

Godfrey’s voice blasted the flat again.

The volume lowered, and a few seconds later, it rose to earsplitting decibels.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Ernie, I can’t take this anymore. I’m leaving you.”

“He is not much for Sunday school, company, school, books without pictures, music lessons, neckties, barbers, girls, overcoats, adults, or bedtime…”

“Did you hear me, Ernie? I’m leaving you and taking the kids with me. I know you can hear me.”

“Go ahead, Marge. Maybe I can get some peace and quiet around here for once.”

“A boy is a magical creature. You can lock him out of your kitchen, but you can’t lock him out of your heart. You can get him out of your study but not out of your mind…”

“You are impossible!” Margaret screamed.

Heavy footsteps stomped to the front door; its hinges groaned as it opened. The door slammed so hard it sounded like a car had backfired in the front room. The walls shook and dishes clattered in the cupboard.

“When you come home at night with only the shattered pieces of your hopes and dreams, he can mend them all like new with the two magic words: ‘Hi, Dad.’”

Eddy lobbed the ball in the air again. He caught it and cocked his head sideways to listen. A grinding rumble like pealing thunder grew louder as if a storm were speeding closer. The windows rattled and trophies vibrated on his dresser.

Eddy jumped off his bed and stepped over clothes that had been flung on the floor. He shoved the ball in his pocket, positioned the bat handle under his right arm, and cracked open his bedroom door. He peeked down the hallway. The coast was clear. He stepped into the kitchen like a runner creeping off first base and tiptoed across the linoleum floor. Godfrey had ended his monologue. Swing music boomed out of the Stratosphere and pulsated against the walls of the flat.

Eddy opened the back door and flew down the porch, two steps at a time, each step echoing in the cramped stairway. He held the bat close to his body, making sure it didn’t clang against the wall or stairs. The bat was a Rogers Hornsby Louisville Slugger, a gift from his parents last year on his twelfth birthday.

The train roared past, giving Eddy cover for his escape. Living across from the El had its advantages; his parents couldn’t hear him sneak out of the house, especially his dad, whose hearing was so poor he couldn’t hear the crack of a home run ball if he was standing behind home plate. The Stratosphere helped too.

He’d be in trouble for sneaking out, but all he could see was the light at the bottom of the stairs, and it was pulling him toward it.

He charged out of the stairway and into the chilly April morning air that smelled of soot and car fumes. A damp Lake Michigan breeze blew through his jet-black hair, cowlicks sprouting in every direction like wild weeds. He raced through the parking lot, gravel and glass crunching under his gym shoes, and stopped at the end of the alley on Waveland Avenue.

Cigarette butts, paper cups, and hot dog wrappers littered the street. A trail of glass shards that looked like sparkling flakes of ice were scattered across the sidewalk. Someone had busted a beer bottle; the jagged edges of its neck took the shape of a knife.

Eddy drew cold air into his warm lungs and exhaled. Breath vapors swirled in odd shapes, disappearing into the battleship gray sky, the same color of back porches in his neighborhood.

Two men in navy uniforms wobbled past as if they were walking on a swaying boat deck. They didn’t notice Eddy, his fingers fumbling around in his jacket.

Eddy pulled out matches and a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes he’d stolen from his dad’s tavern, Ernie’s Bleachers. He clinched the bat between his knees, hunched his shoulders, and lit a match. He cupped his hands around the flame and held it to the cigarette, sucking life into it. The tip flared an orange ember. He shook the match and flicked it in the street.

A stream of smoke escaped Eddy’s mouth and curled into the air. His eyes locked on the navy men who were stumbling away. Were they fighting the Japs or the Nazis? His head swiveled the other direction. He squinted as he took a slow puff at his cigarette and studied the bleacher’s entrance of Wrigley Field, a wild pitch away from his Greystone three-flat and his family’s tavern.

He exhaled and gazed up at the scoreboard, a monumental shrine plopped down into the middle of his neighborhood, soaring above all other buildings. Its rectangular sign read, Chicago Cubs, in white letters emblazoned on a navy-blue pennant inside a lead gray background. He wondered why the letters of Cubs were capitalized. Sister Mary Edmunds would rap his knuckles with a ruler if he capitalized every letter in a sentence. He knew to capitalize names and places and the first word in a sentence even though he was the worst reader in class and failed most spelling tests. In fourth grade, Sister Lucy Roberts read aloud in class a letter he wrote about his dog, Fuzzy. The nun noted how Eddy wrote bog instead of dog. He was embarrassed.

He had lived across the bleacher’s entrance all his life and never gave the Cubs sign any thought. Ya gotta lot to learn, kid, he could hear his dad’s booming voice lecture him about life after he finished yelling at Eddy about his backward spelling.

Eddy puffed away on his cigarette. His body shifted from foot to foot, and his brown eyes darted around like a gambler searching for some action. His eyes landed on his dad’s tavern. It was opening day. Within hours, thirsty and hungry fans would pack inside Ernie’s Bleachers ordering hamburgers, hot dogs, French fries. And it was Eddy’s job to cook the food. Maybe that’s all he’d ever be good for, armpit jobs, he thought. He knew he’d never make it to college like his older brother and sister would. Bobby and Florence were in high school earning straight A’s and endless praise from his parents, relatives, neighbors and teachers.

Should he go inside and work? What’s the worst thing his parents would do if he skipped out on opening day? Yell at him? Big deal. He was used to it. Take away his allowance? He didn’t need it. He had other ways of making money. His parents worked the tavern on busy days without his help. They can do it today, a voice in his head said. You can’t let your friends down. They’re waitin’ on you.

A gray catbird meowed in a sugar maple tree next to Eddy. He glanced up expecting to see a cat but instead a songbird hopped and sidled on a branch, mewing like a cat. It must be one of those birds that migrate north in the summer except this one came early, Eddy thought. The bird flicked its rusty-colored wings and meowed once more. It launched into the air, its wings to its side, and, like a bullet, flew over the right field wall and dive-bombed into Wrigley Field.

Eddy took another drag but didn’t inhale. His mouth formed an O, and with a slight cough, he tried to blow a smoke ring. What came out was a wavy wisp of smoke in the shape of a half circle. The smoke expanded, rose, and vanished into a formless cloud, swept away by the cold wind. It was an improvement.

Across the street, the train closed its doors at the Addison stop and screeched northward, snaking its way between buildings of brick, concrete, stone, steel, and glass. A car horn beeped, startling Eddy. He spun around and ran east on Waveland, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

Eddy ran everywhere. He ran to the corner store, to the newspaper stand, to his friends’ house, to Cubs Park, and to his uncle’s gas station that wasn’t a gas station but a hangout to scalp tickets and gamble. His pace was that of a home run trot around the bases, cocky, confident, and purposeful.

As he passed under the El tracks, a black blur scurried across the sidewalk in front of him. Eddy jumped back, his eyes sweeping the shadows under the El, searching for the rodent.

Flecks of faint light filtered through the gaps in the tracks, splashing dull rectangular specks below. Shade from the El blanketed the alley and backyards of brick bungalows that soon would be packed with parked cars. Rusted rows of rivets raced up steel girders that shed flakes of peeling white paint. Corroded trash barrels and pigeon droppings dotted the gritty landscape.

Life under the El was a creepy dark underworld, a rough and rugged region where sidewalk people didn’t go. A no-man’s-land where men fought for dibs to park cars, drunk Cub fans pissed behind steel beams, or bums dug through trash looking for God knew what. It was also a refuge for rats. Lots of them.

There it was. A rat the size of a small cat, sniffing around a trash barrel. Its scaly tail stretching the length of a foot-long hot dog. It was the biggest rat he’d ever seen, and he’d seen plenty of rats, especially when taking out the garbage. It was a chore he hated most and couldn’t wiggle out of it no matter how hard he begged his parents. He’d kick the trash can and with a stick lift the lid. Rats would screech and scratch at the bottom of the can. But sometimes there were so many packed inside that dozens would jump out two feet in the air and scurry in every direction like gamblers scrambling out of a house during a police raid. They’d let out a high-pitched squeak—skreek, skreek—as they climbed up the brick wall of his apartment, claws scraping on mortar. Some would fall and whizz past his feet. His brother, Bobby, said their teeth never stop growing, and they could chew through metal, concrete, and brick. They could even swim through sewer pipes and pop up in the toilet.

Eddy picked up a rock the size of a baseball and whipped it at the rat. The rock ricocheted off the trash can with a ping. The rat scampered under a rotted wooden fence and escaped into the backyard of a bookie joint.