Free Black Maps by David Jauss Page A

that I want to know why you aren’t throwing the goddamn ball. His face is close to mine the way he get with a umpire who make a lousy call. I look down and say from somewhere My wife she leave me and my little girl is gone away. Jesus H. Christ he say then and touch his left arm which mean bring in the lefty. Then he say You’re under suspension Sanchez now get your sorry ass out of this park and don’t come back until your head is on straight. I don’t want to see you or hear you or even smell you until then is that clear. I just stand there and listen to him, I can’t even nod. Everything I live for is disappearing into nothing, I am becoming like a zero, and I am sad but somehow all of a sudden I am so much of nothing I am gone away and I’m there but not there too and where I am is so peaceful I want almost to cry. I want to tell Coach about this place, I want to tell everyone, but there are no words there so I only smile at him. He look away then mad and cursing but still I smile so happy.
    And I am still smiling when Parisi come in to take from me my no-hitter and make me a nobody who can not go to home or stay where he is without shame. I am holding the ball and everything have stop and I am so happy and I love everybody even Coach and the fans booing and Whitey Herzog who keep me from being in The Bigs so long and Antonio who steal my wife maybe. I love everybody so much I feel like I am dead and looking down on everybody from heaven, not a man anymore but a angel with no sadness or pain or anything, just love. But then Coach take the ball away from me and give it to Parisi. He take the ball away, he take everything away, and I am standing there waiting and alone and there is no sign.

B RUTALITY
    It was late on a dark, moonless night, and they were driving home from a party at their friends’ house on the other side of the city. Although they had been married for almost twenty years, Elliot still loved Susan very much and found her attractive. At the party, he’d glanced at her across the room, and the way she crossed her legs when she sat down made him desire her. Now he was anxious to get home so they could make love. He thought she must be feeling the same way, for her hand was resting on his thigh and she was looking at him while they talked.
    They were talking about their friends’ little boy Joey, who had kept running in and out of the living room with a toy machine gun, pretending to shoot everybody. He had laughed like a crazed movie villain while he sprayed the room with bullets, the gun’s plastic muzzle glowing a fiery red. At first, everyone laughed too, but after the fourth or fifth time it stopped being funny. Finally, his father lost his temper, spanked Joey fiercely, and sent him crying to his room. Then his mother apologized to the guests. It was his grandmother’s fault, she said; every time she came to visit, she brought him a gun. He had a half-dozen in his toy box, most of them broken, thank God. But the next time she visited, they were going to tell her they were opposed to children playing with guns. They would have told her earlier but they didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
    Elliot and Susan had married during the Vietnam War and, like many parents then, didn’t buy toy guns for their son. But Elliot had played with guns when he was young, and now he was telling Susan about the rifle his father had carved for him out of an old canoe paddle. “I loved that rifle,” he said, as he drove down the deserted street past the sleeping houses. It had been almost as long as a real rifle, and he had worn it slung over his shoulder wherever he went the summer he was nine. Even when his mother called him in for supper, he wouldn’t put it away; he had to have it propped against the table in case the Russians suddenly attacked. As he thought about the rifle, its glossy varnish and its heft, he moved his hands on the steering wheel and could