Turning Stone
Turning Stone
Scott Palmieri
The payphone rang just past 8:30 in the morning, echoing in the stairwell and down the hallway, piercing past the heavy dorm doors, rousing every Knight on the second floor who wasn’t off to their part-time job, though no one rose to answer. Lockwood, the team’s center fielder, whose room was closest to the phone, served as the unofficial secretary, but he was on his long morning run across the Hobart campus, and the lengthy series of rings inspired only the hopes of each sleeper that the incessant noise would stop.
The call was coming from Corey Bike, who should have been in bed a few doors down, not Turning Stone Casino, where he had been all night. The ringing stirred Mitch Beauford, whose room was at the opposite end of the hallway. Better rested than the others, Mitch had not joined the casino caravan the night before. A strict Baptist, the backup outfielder neither drank nor gambled, disqualifying him from most postgame nightly activities that summer in Geneva, New York. That, and most couldn’t stand him.
Bike, the Knights’ first baseman, hoped between each ring that a voice would emerge, but a stretch of silence kept stretching, so he pressed the phone plunger.
“Shee-yit!” said Mitch, in his heavy southern accent as the phone rang again. He sat up, shirtless in his mesh shorts, the window fan blowing warm air with another hot late June morning. Pushing himself up, Mitch staggered to the door, but then a couple beats of silence sent him back to bed. It was his morning off from the Geneva Public Library, where he shelved and checked out books, a reprieve for his supervisor Patti Henderson, who had to shush Mitch more than any of the patrons, his gift of gab at checkout making him popular among some of the clientele but raised eyebrows from the senior citizens at the long tables where they stretched the New York Times and Geneva Times, spooled in long wooden newspaper sticks.
As Bike’s second call failed, for the first time, he felt some semblance of panic. There were still eight hours before he had to be at Geneva Stadium, but because he often kept to himself, surfacing in the dorm one day, disappearing the next, hitching a ride to the ballpark with one Knight one game and another the next, there was a good chance no one would notice his absence until his batting practice group trotted in from shagging in the outfield to take their swings. And then the questions would lead to the realization that the last time Bike was seen was at Turning Stone.
Coach Davy was already in a foul mood, not only because of the Knights’ 0-10 record but from his early dismissal two nights before. In Utica, the home plate umpire’s inconsistent strike zone put his winless frustration over the edge, the Knights doomed to lose again, a called strike three on Gaffney in the eighth inning, leading Davy to scream, “Awful! Just fucking awful!” and the ump to lift his face mask with his left hand and make an invisible throw with this right. “You’re gone!” The Knights had never seen Davy snap this bad, his tantrum ending when he dragged the dugout’s large plastic trash barrel and plopped it on home plate. “Here, I’m done puking in it! This is for your garbage strike zone!” Even worse was the top of the ninth when a modest rally came to a halt when Coach Sweeney, who hadn’t coached third in decades, put himself in the pathway of Tucci rounding towards home, sending them crashing together into the grass. Tucci stumbled up and then back down, tagged out before he could reach the plate.
Someone would have had to tell Davy that Hummel assumed, when he left the casino with his sedan and the crew of quick losers, that Bike was with Camgemi, who assumed the opposite and drove his pickup truck home with the winners and those who took longer to lose. Shortly after their departure, Bike crossed the invisible line that separates ease and concern after his third tour of the casino floor and second lap of the large parking lot. The two cars of Knights had left without him.
Bike’s wont for wandering was just as much to blame. One night, after going 0-4 at the plate, he refused a ride from the stadium back to the dorms, a five-minute drive exchanged for a twenty-minute walk. At Turning Stone, after blowing his modest kiddie at Blackjack, he peeked over the shoulders of his teammates at the slots and roulette table, but then he strayed from the casino carpet, ending up past the clothing and jewelry shops before he stopped at the Oneida Tribe’s Cultural Center. Though the tiny museum was closed, he could see, through the glass, shelves of chipped clay pots, sandal brown baskets still tightly woven, and skeletal utensils. And in its own case, a worn wooden stick, labeled “Longball,” the tribe’s game from centuries past that included hitting a ball with a bat-like stick and running across a narrow field, a kind of forerunner to baseball.
When Bike realized his predicament, he found a bank of payphones on the outside wall of the main building- it was still a few years before the commonplace cell phone. But when he picked up the receiver, questions arose as he replaced the receiver to its original spot. How was he paying for the call? Where was he calling? He could dial 411 and get the campus main number, but no one would answer at this hour. He would have to wait until morning. And if he could somehow get his call through to the dorm payphone, then he would have to hope that someone would answer and come get him.
Bike went back inside and toured the casino again, sleepy billows of cigarette smoke haloing the tables he drifted past. Meanwhile, the rest of the Knights had returned to the Hobart dorm. Some fell into the common area on the bottom floor, where the one working television lived, among the large burlap cushions on the merciless compressed wood couches. Mitch was there, watching a rerun of Law & Order, turning down the volume as a few settled in.
“How’d ya do, boys?” Mitch asked, craving a conversation.
No one wanted to open the door to one of Mitch’s rambling ready-made anecdotes, which, in this case, would have featured his Uncle Bern, who, one night at the Pensacola Greyhound Racetrack, after several beers and several losses, leapt over the guardrail chasing after the pack of frantically galloping dogs before getting tackled on the track by security guards, earning himself a night in a holding cell and a redemptive morning vision of Jesus Christ. A few Knights murmured about their losses while Camgemi grabbed the remote from the large square coffee table. Mitch, happy to be among them, didn’t protest even though the show’s killer was about to buckle on the witness stand.
“I’ll tell you what. If you come home with your shirt on, it’s a good night, I guess.” No one responded, and no one noticed Bike’s absence.
With hunger setting in, Bike drifted back out through the automatic doors to a gas station he could see in the distance. Despite the panic that would have set in for most, with the uncertain night ahead, Bike knew he would be all right, an internal reassurance that fortified him in Geneva and for his entire life. In his long walks, his mind could always keep him occupied. On this one, he thought of the Longball bat he had been gazing at in the casino museum. He liked thinking that he might have been walking the same grounds where those games were played. He liked thinking of the endless causes and effects, that maybe, if those ancient games led to baseball, then a long and winding path started and led Bike to baseball, too, and to playing in this upstate New York wood bat league and even to this walk, which allowed him to take in a vast dome of starry darkness. Had he ever seen this many stars?
Passing Lucky Liquors before the Savon gas station, the only sounds, besides the hum of the cicadas, were his footsteps on the gravelly side of the road and the occasional swoosh of cars buzzing past him. The large red “8” of a Super 8 motel glowed in the night sky and grew larger as he neared the drag. His Blackjack losses would have covered a room, but instead, he lingered in the gas station mini mart, among the shelves of snacks and magazines, sensing after ten minutes that the clerk was glancing at him more and more, suspicious of his motives at this late hour despite Bike’s clean-cut look. Emerging from the night, after finishing his walk, the ice cream sandwich, and iced tea, Bike reentered and toured the remaining casino grounds, learning every detail about the place including its history, chiseled into the plaque at the base of a large slow spinning faux granite rock. The sign revealed the inspiration of the casino’s name, as the Oneida Tribe hoped this casino would be a “turning point” in their heritage and economic independence.
The sun was up for about an hour when Bike awoke on a couch in a hallway between the hotel and casino, the sound of the large turning stone’s fountain soothing him into a deep nap. He was awakened by a security guard, who upon learning Bike’s story, walked him to the hotel’s front desk. There the morning manager offered Bike the check-in desk phone and flopped open a phone book. An automated message told Bike that the Hobart campus operator wouldn’t answer until 8:30, so he waited with a muffin and coffee in drowsy peace at the Wampum Café, courtesy of a voucher from the empathetic manager.
With the dorm payphone number from the campus operator, it was Bike’s third attempt that sprang Mitch up and out of his door, determined to answer. Mitch’s voice was the most recognizable on the team, rising sharply from the bus seats or careening off the locker room walls before and after the games. His trademark opening of a sentence, “I’ll tell you what” became fodder for the first murmurs, inspiring a couple of the Knights to set an Over-Under before one of the games, a sudden cheer coming from the corner of the dugout in the eighth inning when those who chose Over, set at four and a half, pulled it out when Mitch congratulated Lockwood on a nice catch.
“I’ll tell you what, no one else in this league is gettin’ to that ball, Lockwood!”
Bike knew that Mitch would immediately say yes when he asked him for a ride, which he did. Bike sat relieved in the lobby, now brushed in the full morning light, older patrons shuffling in for buffets, the nearby tinkling glitz of the slot machines coming to life.
Bike’s love for quiet contemplation allowed him to survive the night, but it would make him dread the hour-and-fifteen-minute drive home with Mitch. No two people could have been more different. Mitch, who hailed from the Florida panhandle, was once accused by Barton of getting hit in the head with the full pan, when Barton saw him race across the Hobart quad with a spear he had fashioned from a tree branch, chasing a squirrel that had slipped through the broken screen in Mitch’s window frame, clawing through his bag of ranch-flavored potato chips. Bereft of any sense of irony, Mitch endured banjo twanging from teammates, invoking the film Deliverance, or whistles of Dixie when his car rolled into Geneva Stadium’s parking lot, a reference to the Dukes of Hazzard car, the General Lee. On bus rides, someone would inevitably test the emergency window, setting off a loud, long ring and someone to yell, “Ah, c’mon Mitch!” which triggered his same exasperated response, “Guys, it isn’t me!”
Bike, a Stoic, introspective New Englander, succeeded in avoiding uncomfortable conversations, but what now? What of this car ride ahead of him? He wanted the rescue, but, exhausted by the night, he feared the relentless Mitch. This would be his last round of suffering for his teammates’ accidental abandonment. Had he been sitting in Hummel’s chair at the Blackjack table, he would have had a winning streak to keep him from drifting, and he would now be in his dorm room bed instead of watching the dawn come in Syracuse.
He and Mitch could talk about that night’s game against Elmira, though mentioning the Knights’ 0-10 start would be unpleasant, and baseball during that summer season, as a general topic, was frustrating for Bike, the only respite was his recent two-hit performance in Utica, the modest boost of morale leading him to accept the invitation to Turning Stone. Bike had a sweet lefty swing that hadn’t found its groove in Geneva, but he was a great fielder, a first baseman who could save his fellow infielders and their imperfect throws. Beyond that, baseball suited Bike well for the long stretches of boredom and uncertainty—the frequent spaces—the endless pregame rituals, the long bus rides home, the pitching changes, the rain delays—the limbo between moments of significance.
Mitch, too, had been struggling in this first month. In a recent home game against Cooperstown, with the Knights down a run in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and the tying run on third, Mitch, about to step up to bat, took one more hard warm-up swing, and, as told later by Camgemi and verified by Norris, said in quiet determination, “Time to be a hero,” Mitch’s neck and generous chin clenched as he slammed the knob of his bat to the ground allowing the heavy doughnut to slide off onto the on-deck circle and marched to the batter’s box. He struck out on three pitches.
These thoughts of Bike vanished as he saw Mitch’s Chevy Malibu swing in front of the main entrance.
“I’ll tell you what, I couldn’t believe it when you said where you were!” said Mitch.
“Yeah, well, what are you gonna do? Thanks for coming to get me,” said Bike.
“Ah, man. You bet. Happy to do it. Had to get up anyway.”
“Well, thanks, man. You saved me.”
Bike hoped to say nothing more. With Garth Brooks playing from Mitch’s tape deck, Bike only had to offer a few “hmms” and “aahs” and “rights” as Mitch related a long story about getting lost in the woods as a boy. Bike was in and out of sleep, somehow aware of the moments where he had to offer these obligatory reactions, but as with the night, the ride went quicker than he thought. Bike thanked Mitch again as the two separated in the hallway.
“Hey, I’ll make sure I come get you before I go to the park.”
“Sounds good, thanks again, Mitch.”
For the rest of Mitch’s day, he stopped every Knight he could find to tell them the story, and for once, they were interested, especially the casino crew, all of whom had the same reaction, both shocked and brimming with laughter, leading to a small ovation when Bike entered the locker room. After catching up on sleep, he was ready to take it in stride.
“Thanks, boys. Let’s never do it again sometime.”
As the team dressed for the game, Mitch told the story again, how close it was that Bike would never have been there.
“He’s right. Mitch is my hero,” said Bike, as he pulled the pieces of his uniform from the laundry bin. Some had never heard Bike speak.
After the game, Bike would have the floor again, as he unbuttoned his wet jersey, the shirt soaked by his teammates, who dumped over his head the large orange water cooler, when he untied the game with a single in the bottom of the ninth, the sweet swing connecting a line drive up the middle, the most unlikely of finishes, driving home the Knights’ winning run for their first win of the season. And of all people, it was Mitch, having pinch run for Norris, who whipped around third to score and slide home, then sprinting out to Bike among the celebrating Knights.
Enjoying the strange feeling of victory, the team lingered a bit by the dugout, signing autographs for some of the children who waited, a ritual that had faded from their opening day, when there was more hope for the season and more hands offering pens and programs. The players started drifting into the locker room, a sense of jubilance among each other, as Davy and Sweeney tucked into the coaches’ office to rehash the win and discuss the next day’s pitcher, both of them hoping this would finally be the turning point they were waiting for.
It was at least for Mitch, who received less ribbing the rest of the summer, fewer banjo plucks, less Dixie whistling. As the team dressed, Mitch slapped Bike’s back, who was popping his head through a clean T-shirt, the celebratory shower still lingering on his skin. Mitch gave Bike a ride back to the dorm and a ride to the park every day thereafter. Bike never forgot Mitch’s kindness and, on the short rides, didn’t mind the company of someone who didn’t expect him to speak. Years later when Mitch found him on social media, Bike accepted his friend request once again. That night in Geneva, in the stadium parking lot, a smitten Mitch started his Malibu, the engine growling as a sudden burst of illumination struck him, as if his first breath of irony.
“I’ll tell you what, Bike, think of this. I drove you home, and then you drove me home!”
Scott Palmieri is a professor of English at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. His writing has been published in Sport Literate, Aethlon, Hobart, The Twin Bill, The Under Review, The Alembic, and The Result Is What You See Today: Poems About Running. He played baseball at Providence College and continues his love of the sport through writing, coaching, and playing, as long as his legs will allow, in a senior men’s league.
Andy Lattimer is a gay guy who lives in Southern California. He makes comics, most of which are about baseball. You can read them on his website, andylattimer.com
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