Mozark Wilson had designed the wheelchair ramp that led up to the porch
of his trailer in exact enough terms for Glenn Walters to build it with
his unskilled hands in an afternoon. The two had known each other since
the fourth grade when they played on the same baseball team, the Unicorns.
The team was organized by a Yankee that had moved to Tatum from somewhere
in Michigan to start up a chapter of Young Life at Rebel Academy. It was
supposed to be instructional in nature, with the emphasis on "sportsmanship"
rather than winning. Besides Glenn and Mozark, the team consisted of kids
with parents that wouldn't let them have sweets or made them go to Mount
Salus Christian School or eat veggie burgers. Had it been today, most of
them would have probably been home schooled. Although the emphasis wasn't
supposed to be on winning, Glenn secretly harbored the belief that, if given
the chance, he would be a star. Maybe a pro scout would come by, invite
him for a tryout with the Braves. Better yet, maybe Coach Whitey Brown or
Cathy Richmond, the best coaches from the Dixie Youth League, would see
him sliding hard into bases or catching pop flies or even hitting a line
drive and invite him to join the Dixie Major League Reds or Senators.
It took the Yankee
Coach a few months to realize that the Young Life chapter just wasn't going
to fly in Mississippi. He had done his best to get in with the kids at the
academy, even going so far as dressing up for Spirit Week just like the
high school seniors. On button, badge, and bandanna day he had come to the
school with his hair slicked back, a pretend cigarette pack in the sleeve
of his white tee-shirt and blue jeans rolled up. He thought it was 50's
Day. The Unicorns were a product of this man's boredom and misguided idealism.
Like most of his players, he held out hope that the team would be some kind
of small miracle, the whole so much greater than the sum of its parts that
it brought a tear to the eye, became the stuff of legend. Of course, this
didn't happen.
The culmination of
three months of practices that Glenn's father had called "nothin but grab-ass"
was an exhibition game with the champions of the Dixie Youth National League,
the mighty Reds. The Reds were coached by Whitey Brown himself. Their players
were predestined for athletic greatness with names like Buzzy Richardson,
Trey Tullis, Kyle Killingsworth and Danny Ray something-or-other. The Unicorns
had names like Montgomery, William, and Louis. They wore an assortment of
mismatched tee-shirts, jeans, and socks. Only one kid had cleats. A couple
had to share the same glove. One of the Unicorn moms had brought caps for
the team- faded reddish one-size-fits-all jobs that she had fitted on top
with white cotton-stuffed fabric, twisted in what she imagined to be like
the spiral of a unicorn horn and six inches long. The team donned the caps
and trotted out onto the field, cool as possible. Before they had thrown
the first mock grounder from first to short, a lone voice from the Reds'
dugout said "Penis." Another: "Heads." The two alternated: "Penis. Heyadds.
PEE-NUS. HEYADDS." Then others joined in. "Penis-heads. Penis-heads. PENIS-HEADS!
PENIS-HEADS!" Before long it evolved into a three-syllable chant, with each
member of the Reds having his own part.
Infielders: "PEE!"
Outfielders: "NUS!"
Pitchers: "HEADS!"
"PEE!"
"NUS!"
"HEADS!"
"PEE!"
"NUS!"
"HEADS!"
The game was even
worse. Mozark was the only Unicorn to even reach first base. Whitey Brown
had protested when he stretched a single into a double by virtue of the
speed of his home-made wheelchair, constructed of welded steel and powered
by a 7 horsepower lawn mower engine, capable of topping 20 miles an hour.
There was no protest when Mozark entered the batter's box in the top of
the third with the score 37-0 in favor of the Reds. He knew what he had
to do. He smashed a line drive into the left-center field gap and set the
wheelchair to full throttle. He ignored his coach's warning to stop at second
and headed for third at top speed. The crowd gasped as he swerved outside
the baseline and headed for the Yankee coach. In an instant the man was
in a bloody heap beneath the two hundred pound weight of Mozark's wheelchair.
The game came to an unofficial end as Mozark exited the field with a flurry
of cuss words aimed at his teammates. "Football is one thing, but white
boys is supposed to be able to play baseball. Y'all is some sorry motherfuckers!
Sorry motherfuckers!"
Glenn passed Mozark
on his bike as the two rode home. Mozark's wheelchair had run out of gas
and he sat on the side of the road, sweating and crying. "Sorry motherfuckers.
Sorry motherfuckers!" He repeated each time one of his teammates passed
him in an air conditioned car, many of them proudly wearing the Unicorn
hats, smiles on their faces. Glenn was not offended by Mozark's tirade.
He knew it was true. He surprised himself when he turned around to help
his stranded teammate. Using the ubiquitous ingenuity of the poor, the two
scavenged a clothesline from a nearby backyard and tied it to the seat of
Glenn's bike, then strung it through both arms of Mozark's wheelchair. Glenn's
legs burned as he towed Mozark the three miles to his house in the black
part of Tatum, known as Fish Town. Mozark's mom invited Glenn to stay for
a feast of fried chicken, cornbread, and black-eyed peas with pepper sauce
and the two became friends that day.
By age 14 they were
the only two boys at the public school, white or black, that were in the
right grade. Dateless, they spent the night of senior prom together shooting
out streetlights with a pellet gun and drinking Colt 45 malt liquor. Glenn
was the only white person that Mozark had ever told about sometimes eating
chicken feet and fried clay. Glenn had amended his uncle's story about eating
possum and potatoes and how greasy it was and made it his own, so that Mozark
wouldn't feel like he was abnormal for eating those things. Their friendship
was not indestructible - there is no such thing - but was like a levee built
on shared experience and too big to be eroded much in this lifetime or five
others. They had hated each other for a few days after the Rodney King verdict,
but had dropped the matter and never again mentioned the words spoken in
haste when Mozark's mom passed away later that same week. Glenn had been
the only white person at the funeral and had helped carry the casket to
the modest grave dug in the cold Mississippi clay. Mozark had spent hours
tutoring Glenn in math and was more pleased with Glenn's "B" in chemistry
than he was with his own A.
The two sat this day,
as they had hundreds of times before, on the porch of Mozark's trailer,
sipping forties of Colt 45, the porch shade and slight breeze making the
summer heat tolerable.
"So what are you gonna
tell your parents? That you just quit?" Mozark had to raise his whole body
with his forearms in order to properly fix his gaze on Glenn. He did this
whenever he meant business. Glenn did not answer. "How do you know this
girls is even telling the truth? Those pictures she sent you may have been
from 10 years ago. She may be big and fat by now. Those pictures may not
even be her. She may even be married or something. Have four or five kids."
Mozark punctuated his statement with a gulp of malt liquor. Glenn had no
satisfactory answer. Quitting his job didn't even make good sense to him.
"I just know I've
got to get out of here and this girl is as good an excuse as any." Glenn
took a swig to counter Mozark's and a distant smile came over his face.
"I brought you somethin." He produced a small square package, crudely wrapped
in colored newspaper from the Sunday comics, and handed it to Mozark. It
was J.R. Richard's rookie baseball card, the prize of Glenn's collection.
Mozark held it for a moment, not comprehending the meaning of this gesture.
"Where did you get
this? Is this your J.R. Richard rookie?"
Glenn took in his
friend's joy. Mozark contended that Richard was better than any pitcher
besides Satchel Paige - better than Koufax, better than Nolan Ryan - and
that he would have won more than 400 games had he not had a stroke. "It's
yours now. I've been meaning to give it to you on the right occasion." Mozark
studied the back of the card, adjusting the distance from his eyes so that
he could focus on the small statistics.
"You see what I've
been telling you all along? Look at 1980. The man was struck down in his
prime. He had no equal. Would have won more games, but he was playing for
the damn Astros. A team that started out as the Colt .45's." Mozark raised
his drink as if to make a toast and the two polished off the malt liquor.
They sat in silence as the sun sank beneath the pines, the first neon yellow-green
flashes of fireflies accentuating the brief, calm intermission before bullfrogs
and Katy-Dids add a dimension of sound to the approaching darkness. Not
flying, simply buoyed by the humid Mississippi summer air, the creatures'
random motion and absence of sound so incongruent with their visual effect
that they become nightly affirmations of magic.
"Mozark, what's the
difference between lighting bugs and fireflies?"
Aeons ago fireflies
were as agile as miniature hummingbirds, able to hover and dart with amazing
speed, their lights dim, small and confined to a tiny portion of the tail.
But their preoccupation with the opposite sex caused them to hopelessly
devolve, their bodies built around an organ for attracting a mate, an endeavor
more important in the evolutionary scheme of things than aerodynamic flight.
Creationists contend that Lucifer himself concocted the potion responsible
for the cold, bioluminescent light emitted by the creatures - a light one
hundred times more efficient than anything Edison could create- and convinced
the first male to ingest it with the promise of finding true love. Hence
the name of the chemical, luciferin. No matter the origin, the result is
the same- the males live for two years underground before evolving from
larvae, then spend a week or less in perilous flight, consigned to a body
designed by Orville or Wilbur Wright, not God, to mate only once before
being devoured by the object of their desire. And they never even see it
coming.
© 2006
Brad Wurm
