Chapter 2: Suicide Squeeze

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfSkMzC6GBg

“Was that ear-arm-nose-brim?” whispers Ronki after calling time-out and meeting Coach Q halfway up the third base line.

“Nose after arm means bunt, Einstein,” he hisses with hands cupping his mouth to muffle the code. “Now get that bat on the ball because Reid’s heading home on the next pitch.”

“Suicide squeeze?” questions Jo from the bench. “The feller don’t even know thar’s no stealin until she throws it in softball.”

“Yeah, and we need both those runs to beat the frickin’ Woman’s College,” adds Toni Valenti from the on deck circle.

__________

The two Gibson-Henrys had been sibling schools when birthed by Methodists before the Civil War. The happy family was separated in the 1930s by a nasty divorce from the church in order to qualify for Carnegie Foundation funding. Admission of women to the men’s college in the early seventies ended any semblance of civility between Magnolia and Danville, especially for the competing female sports teams.

The night before the first game I had scarfed a bag of chewing tobacco from Q’s office while finishing the team laundry in the Old Gym.

“Hey big guy!” startled me as I snuck across the fountain plaza toward Alma Wood dormitory.

“MG, I nearly stained my shorts,” I gasped. “What are you doing in there?”

“Mon nom de famille, c'est La Mer après tout!”

“Speaking of names, why MG if you’re Marie-Josee?”

“Silly man, J sounds like G in French,” she laughed, waving her arms in the cold water to splash me.

“Hey!” I immediately regretted shouting, leaping back to avoid the spray.

“Hé, c’est une anguille ici,” she screamed, scrambling out of the fountain with water streaming down her long legs.

“The American eel is a catadromous fish born in the Sargasso Sea but living in rivers before returning to salt water to breed,” I blurted, reverting to facts in the face of those legs.

“PEENT…PEENT” from overhead made us both jump. I was about to toss the bag and run when we caught a glimpse of a night hawk darting through the dome of light from the fountain’s lamp post.

“Are you going to Jo’s?” I asked, recovering enough to salvage the encounter.

The side door to the old three-story brick building was propped open by a wad of paper in the latch. I was about to knock on Jo’s carved oak door when it was thrown open to reveal half the team lying around in various stages of nightclothes.

“Hey big feller, d’ya git the goods?” she shouted before reaching over to turn down the turntable volume.

“Virginia’s finest,” I replied, handing over the pouch and sitting back against the heavy door.

Jo took one look at the bag and leapt up, slamming it down into the trash can as she kneed me aside and stormed out.

“What crawled up her and is eating its way out?” laughed Toni, crab-walking over to the can with her squat frame hidden in flannel pajama pants, her thick red hair spilling over the shoulders of an oversized KISS t-shirt.

“I’ll find out,” offered Ronki, her smooth face creased with a furrowed brow as she lithely stepped over our legs in her blue jean cut-offs and headed down the hall. “You guys go right on ahead.”

“Here’s to the new coach!” toasted Toni, pulling open the foil top and holding up the pouch for MG.

“One does this in the mouth?” asked our French relief pitcher, taking a big whiff and staring down into the moist leaves with amusement in her emerald green eyes.

“Jest a pinch between yer cheek and gum,” drawled Shawna Drachman, imitating a TV commercial as she tossed her long blond locks out of her lean face. “Then you suck and spit.”

“So Januzzi, I’ve got an important question for you,” Toni said before squirting a stream of brown juice into a ceramic Homer Laughlin mug someone had lifted from the cafeteria. “On a hot summer night would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?”

“Will he offer me his mouth?” I dutifully replied with the second line of a song from the new Meatloaf album.

“Seriously though, Zo, what do you think of the Q Ball?”

“This rookie fireballer led Tidewater with 107 K’s and is vying for a spot in the bullpen,” I replied, repeating the back of his 1965 New York Mets baseball card. “Too bad he blew out his shoulder before ever getting into a game at Shea Stadium.”

“I betcha the bastard didn’t have to shave his legs before games?” lamented Shawna. “Those skirts you guys gave us suck the big one.”

“You wax, no?” asked MG incredulously.

     The girls laughed their way down to the basement bathroom for a French lesson, leaving me alone in Jo’s room. I stood up to leave and was hit by a wave of nausea and dizziness as the nicotine reached my central nervous system.

“How the hell do they play on this stuff?” I mumbled as I stumbled back to my dorm room.

__________

Ronki steps back into the batter’s box and assumes the hitting position with her left hip toward the mound and the bat held up and back as if ready to swing. We’re down one run with runners on second and third base and one out in the bottom half of the seventh and last inning. The Woman’s College pitcher steps back into her windup and slings her body forward. Just as the ball leaves her fingertips, Sue Reid takes off from third toward home.

Ronki jumps around to face the pitch. The ball is heading for her face so she ducks and reaches the bat up.  She misses and the ball slaps into the catcher’s mitt.

“Strike three!” calls the home plate umpire.

Sue leaps into a hook slide on the inside of the leftfield foul line. The catcher dives to reach her big mitt across the corner of the plate. Sue skids past on her left side, her right hand brushing across the glove before skimming the plate.

“You’re out!” yells the ump, and our first game is our first loss.

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