Free Dirty Rice by Gerald Duff

later.
    So when the man next to where I was getting my clothes changed spoke to me, I thought first before I answered him. “You looked real good out there today. You had good stuff,” he said to me. It was the man with his hair turning gray and with the good-sized belly, the one who’d been huffing and puffing so hard during that running Dutch had made us do first thing. I hadn’t noticed him much during practice except to see that he was with the pitchers and catchers when that bunch was all clumped up together. I’d heard Dutch call him Harry.
    â€œI appreciate you saying that,” I said back to him, looking down at my hands like I was interested in something about them. “I was lucky, I reckon.”
    â€œI remember when I was that way,” the gray haired fellow said. “Lucky. That’s a nice thing to have to say about the way you done something, idn’t it?”
    I nodded.
    â€œYeah, I remember pitching good enough at times that I’d have to tell folks it was just luck that I did that,” he went on. “Said something else, and I’d been bragging.”
    I could see where he was headed now. “I saw you with the pitchers and catchers today,” I said, figuring that wouldn’t give him any leeway to think I was stepping somewhere I shouldn’t be.
    â€œThere come a time, though, for me when I found myself taking credit for what I’d done. Or explaining away why what I hadn’t done was something I couldn’t have done in the first place. No man could’ve done it, I’d tell them. I got to where I’d argue the point, you understand.”
    â€œArgue?” I said. I was feeling an itch start up on the back of my neck, just below the hairline, and beginning to move down my back.
    â€œArgue, yessir. And let me tell you, pitcher, when you find yourself not having to say when you done good that it was just luck, you have passed a milestone. The road is getting clearer ahead of you, and now you’re able to see where it’s going and where you’re headed.”
    â€œI been on lots of different roads getting here to Rayne, Louisiana,” I said. “I wouldn’t have guessed it’d be so many.”
    â€œAt the beginning, it’s always so many roads you can’t count all of them. Take one, it’s a surprise. Take a different one, it’s a different surprise on it. But you know what, pitcher?”
    â€œNo sir,” I said, looking at him now. He had combed his hair and straightened the clothes he was wearing.
    â€œThe more roads you take, the less there is to take, and the straighter all of them get. It gets easier and easier to know where you’re going the longer you travel. Finally it’s just one you’re on. Now that ain’t true for you. Hell, you got lots of roads to go down, to pick from, straight and crooked, wide and narrow. For a long while yet. I’d put money on that.”
    â€œAll right,” I said. “I’ll keep what you said in my mind.”
    â€œYou don’t need to do that,” he said. “Yet. Don’t never listen to a relief pitcher. What’s a relief pitcher got to say to you that you need to hear? Nothing. Right?”
    â€œCome on, Gemar,” Dynamite Dunn said, walking up, “let’s go get something to eat at the diner.”
    â€œI ain’t got any money to do that. I got to eat at Miz Doucette’s,” I said. Standing next to Dynamite was the Cuban. “I believe you going to be staying in the same room with me at Miz Doucette’s house,” I said to him. “That’s what Dutch said. You been over there yet?”
    â€œNuh uh,” the Cuban said. “Dutch done told me you was going to take me over yonder. You ready to go?”
    Mike Gonzales wasn’t no Cuban, of course. I’d thought he wasn’t when I first saw him running laps. Coushatta County was where the Alabamas