“No Make Up Date Announced”
By Robert Bletcher
April 12, 1997
Lake Erie's breath pushed a jumbled cornucopia of dark clouds and dusk into an ominously, silent concoction that crawled intently toward Jacobs Field. The collective will of the gathered threatened to bring up the tarp, but it clung to the infield like an umbrella trying to protect a coyote from an anvil.
From his seat in the right field mezzanine, Conrad Christenson examined the sky with squinted eye. The first weekend series of the season required winter gear, dedication, masochism. The heavens spat into his face.
Conrad sighed and lowered his eyes to the Travis Hafner bobblehead doll resting comfortably collectably, on his lap. He'd paid precious little attention to the promotional schedule when he'd rotely signed up for the mandatory 20-game season ticket package. He’d not intended to regularly battle the offspring toters for these disturbingly little lifelike talisman. But there he sat holding one.
Curious as to the source of the fuss, he opened the box, pried away the styrofoam and sat it in the palm of his hand. He smiled at what bobbleheads had become. In his day, the eight-inch nodders were face-maskless, rouge cheeked, cherubs in Browns sweaters projecting Aryan superiority and gridiron incompetence, or grinning red skinned, big-nosed wahoo-ian sambos. But this thing...this was something sure to produce fears in younger recipients that it might acquire malevolent consciousness.
“Pronk,” he muttered to himself.
Why the nicknames?
Connie had always had them, but never a one did he care for. The neighborhood kids had dubbed him the walking stick to his face, and the cock on heels behind his back. At nearly six feet four, but a whispery 145 pounds, either moniker hit its mark. He was socially more awkward than a black man driving through a small Ohio town, and as hesitant as a straight man browsing homosexual porn in an adult bookstore.
Conrad returned his attention to the threatening skies when his periphery, as it often did, revealed unwanted information.
An 11-or 12-year old boy clutching a hot dog dripping beautiful, brown stadium mustard enthusiastically planted himself on Conrad's left. A barrel chested, blue collar, mustachioed father, a sauced mother, and an innocent six or seven-year old sister took the seats to the left of the nether regions of Conrad's existence. He could feel the Chekov-ian worm of social interaction burrowing inside him.
“Kahhhnnnnn, Kahhhhnnnn,” Connie yelled in his mind, the sound echoing off the walls of his skull.
“Think we'll get it in?” the kid said.
Connie kind of bit his lip and swallowed.
“I think we will,” the overly enthusiastic youth said to no one.
Conrad swallowed and pulled the big, strong Pronk against his chest.
“Hope so,” he managed.
“We will. Got to. This is the only time Seattle is in all year, its opening weekend....got to.”
“That nice looking wiener you got there,” Connie said, physically attempting to retract the words as they fell from his mouth.
“Thanks. This is the best mustard in the world. I could eat it on a shoe, or maybe some dog shit or something you know?”
“Yeah I know.”
“Name's Brock, friends call me Fig,” the kid said, holding out a hand featuring mustard fingers.
“Fig?”
Conrad weakly shook the boy's hand while avoiding eye contact.
“Last name's Newton. I got used to it.”
“Conrad. Conrad Christensen. Double Cs.”
“Alright...two Cs,” Fig said, chomping off a bite of tube steak “It's really coming down out there now. Good thing we’re underneath a little. This here Pronk is my....21st, no, 22nd, no, actually, I think he's 23.”
“Twenty third?”
“Of these little bobble dudes man. I think they are pretty cool. Way better than the ones from probably back in your day huh? You probably got the Toby Harrah or Joe Charbeneau in a box somewhere right?”
“Yeah probably,” Conrad said, to himself. “These are a lot more...real looking.”
The wind burned white-hot cold down his neck into his skivvies. The ballpark was usually nirvana for those who embraced loneliness in a crowd, but not today.
Fig projected something genuinely innocent from those wide blue eyes underneath a blondish-red mop of hair that was going every which way from beneath an old school tribe ball cap. Of course, he also projected youthful self-confidence that existed entirely without merit.
“Yeah man, but they are kind of creepy real looking, the kind that might come alive at night and do that playing ball in the cornfield thing.”
“Yeah, that'd be cool. Uhhh..uhh....” Conrad chuckled. “Do you like...live with your parents and stuff?”
“Yeah man, but it's all good. Not old enough to breach yet. So how old are you? Sixty or so?”
Conrad smiled.
“Forty four.”
“Forty-four...” Fig repeated. The traditional algorithm took a moment, then automatically shifted the boy's body language into shared knowledge mode.
“So you haven't seen them win anything either,” he said softly, matter of factly.
“No.”
“Two years ago they were in it...,” Fig said.
“They didn't win it.”
“But they were in it, like for the first time since black and white. Almost won it.”
“But they didn't. Haven't won it since the forty-eight,” Conrad said emboldened by common ground. “They didn't win it. If you don't win it, it's like you were never there.”
Connie remained staring straight ahead toward the covered infield throughout the constipated exchange, hoping the combination of butt cheek clenching and indifference would send the kid on to the next thing.
“The curse of Rocky Colavito.”
Conrad's eyes widened and he turned his head, making eye contact. They looked at each other for a few seconds, maybe as many as six or eight.
“The Braves had too much pitching.”
“There's gotta be a reason they haven't won anything in like, a zillion years.”
Triggers were being pulled.
“There is,” Conrad said, wincing. “They haven't won four games in a World Series since 1948.”
“My Dad says everything happens for a reason.”
Conrad rubbed his forehead, staring doll-eyed at the green sponge of a baseball field. His temples were beginning to beat with hearts of their own. Words pressured the triggers.
“They've scored less runs than the teams they've played.”
Thunder gurgled through the clouds.
“I got a friend, Ben he's got leukemia, some shit like that.”
“Fig, watch your mouth,” Dad piped in through a mouth full of nachos.
To his credit, the kid ignored him completely.
“He's gonna die.”
Fig reached under his seat and brought up a tub of popcorn and scooped up a handful and buried his chin on his palm. The cold wind peppered them with frequent stinging drops.
Conrad's temples boomed and sunk under duress. There was dangerous pressure upon the triggers.
He looked at Fig who was one moment eating popcorn in the rain, then in the next instant, his skin began to slide off as if his skeleton had been unzipped. It fell away, melting and evaporating into nothingness. Featureless features replaced skin with skin tone colored skin, cheekbones were replaced by drawn on rouge, and a normal head attached to a neck by a normal spine was replaced with a slinky exposed glorious.
And it was spreading. Person by person, seat by seat, like a stadium wave, it was silently overtaking all of them. Except Conrad of course.
“You're thin, real freaky thin you know that?”
Conrad winced as the cranial pressure built.
“Have you figured out...why Ben is...sick?”
“My Dad says sometimes we're not meant to understand. Like why does it have to rain today, right now, of all days and times.”
“Why would that be?” Conrad muttered, almost to himself. “Rocky Colavito?”
Conrad's face sequenced up like a pug dog.
“Nah,” Brock laughed. “That only keeps them from winning. You know that two Cs.”
Conrad rubbed his temple with two hands and smiled slightly pointlessly.
“Who's your friend Fig?” Dad piped up.
“This is two Cs Dad.”
“Conrad Christensen,” Connie said, meekly extending his hand to caveman dad who when verbal, confirmed his capability of genetically ceding an embryonic world view.
“Nice to meet you Conrad. Isaac, Isaac Newton.”
“Really?”
“I got used to it,” he said, with a guarded hair lip smile.
“Nice to meet you,” Connie nodded. “The wife Juice?”
“This is my wife Juice. Nah, nah, just kidding,” Isaac said, laughing hardily. “She is half juiced though.”
“Isaaaaaccc,” she scolded, with a buzzed smile, playfully slapping an airy spring jacket.
“You know that Fowl Ball drink? That new fermented chicken drink? I think it started at Yankee stadium. Anyway, takes some getting used to. Don't it hon?”
Juice giggled through straw clenched teeth.
“Ah well. So, you think we'll get it in?”
“Not looking good.”
“Kid's a whiz isn't he there two Cs? Knows his baseball.”
“Sure does.”
Connie and Fig stared silently at a playing field assaulted.
“So Ben...he isn’t going to make it?”
Conrad squenced his face. He glanced at Fig without really looking at him.
“Nope. Figure there's gotta be a reason for it, though.”
The pressure in Conrad's head returned, mushing down on his triggers, hot and relentless. He knew he was going to get that answer.
“Really?”
“Course. Everything happens for a reason.”
Fig looked up at Conrad, then turned and looked back at the field. He ate popcorn and didn’t speak.Raindrops puddled on the tarp like blood in a paper cut. The rows of seats were half empty. The molted creatures had retreated to the dark recesses of the interior. The remaining human stragglers dotting the green seat landscape were swept up, row by row, mechanically masticated; reborn as plasticized, dehumanized, midasized, soul sucking spineless jigglers. Agreeable little anthropomorphized bobbelheads occupying spaces where people had been.
“We're going up underneath Fig,” the Dad said.
Dad was one of them. Connie saw it. The extended neck, the decidedly inhumanness.
“Be there in a second.”
The kid buried his hand in his popcorn palm. Conrad began to speak in spite of his strong desire to not utter a word.
“I saw a car accident once, ‘round this ten mile an hour curve in the middle of Amish country. This mini-van ended up a tin can crushed against the forehead of this massive ol' Oak."
The rain pattered on concrete.
“Only the little boy had any life in 'em when I walked up. He was up against the tree...gone. The mother's head was dangling on her neck, kind of like you all. Dad had eaten the steering wheel. The little boy, maybe he was six or seven, was conscious, and screaming. He looked at me with gut glass terror. Few minutes go by, maybe five, maybe ten, then....it just got real quiet.”
Brock had stopped chewing, and raindrops provided the soundtrack.
“My dad says sometimes we're not meant to understand.”
Conrad kind of bit his lip.
“No way to know for sure.”
“Yeah.”
The tarp water looked warm and full of wander wonder, but mostly....,it looked warm.
“I'm going to go the team shop.” Conrad said earnestly bewildered.
“Later two Cs.”
Manically, robotically Conrad headed up from the lower bowl of the ballpark, two, three, four stairs at a time, then down a flight or two where bipolar bounding dumped him like a super happy fun slide onto the main street of a ballpark. Beer, peanuts, hot dogs, grilled chicken, waffle cones, pizza, and salads. Each kiosk flew by the periphery like power poles alongside a country road.
As he reached the lower deck, the spring-loaded pogo sticks were thick as funny looking thieves. Those painted dots passing for eyes all stared through his chest and those half smiles shaped by molded lip knowingly smirked.
Conrad moved down the first base line portion of the park with walking stick speed. The periphery provided glimpse after glimpse down the tunnels to the seating area, providing unwanted information. In spurts, the outfield, the tarp, the scoreboard reading Weather Delay, blurred in and out of his side view.
The team shop and its dry warmth were in view as he flew past sections 138, 140, 142, down he first base line toward the home plate area.
As if the tunnels to the seating areas were enormous vacuums, Connie was sucked headfirst down toward section 150. He peeled off his wind breaker as he went, flung it behind him. As he reached for the snap on his 30-waist jeans, a blue coat materialized from the land of the weebles, bobbles, mcdieblers and tumblers.
“Excuse me,” the man in his 70s said, putting a halt sign in Conrad's direction where the tunnel met the seats. “Can I see your ticket please?”
Connie stared as this wrinkly wobbler, hobgobbler, bone knobbler.
“Puck sou fay?”
“Sir, have you been drinking this evening?”
Conrad snapped correct, per the manchurian candidate within that mandated a completed mission.
“Here's my ticket.”
The old man squinted as wind-blown rain slapped against his transparent plastic poncho dotted with chief heads.
“Well, this is in the outfield son.”
“You little soulless troll slimed up from the depths of Dante's circles, you and your hoards and multitudes?”
The ugliest bobble he'd seen all night quizzically cocked his head to the left. He had that, 'one more string of gibberish and I radio for security’ look.
“I'm sorry for goofing around with you there old timer. It was a game my kid and I were playing up there in Pronkville where our seats are. Our season tickets have always been out in the mezzanine. Not bad, good view, don't get me wrong, but unless I hit the powerball, they aren't ever gonna be down here.”
“Ohhh, ohhhh, I see,” the wheezer said as the 30 watter running the brain clicked and popped.
“I just wanna go down there and sit and look at the field for a few minutes, look at the ballpark up close. Come on, we're not gonna play tonight. It's pouring. Nobody will even pay any attention to me. I just want to have the view for a few minutes, even if it's pouring.”
“Ah, ok, yeah, I guess that'll be ok, but not for too long. People pay a lot of money for these seats.”
Conrad didn't see any people, just toys with springs offering up head offerings to the unseen bobblegod.
“Won't be long,” he said with a wink, patting the aging plastic man on his shoulder, while moving toward the field. “Not long at all.”
“Where's your kid?” the usher called after him.
“Oh, he'll be along,” Connie whispered under his breath. “He'll be along. It won't be long, 'fore he'll be along.”
He walked past the fifth row, fourth, third, second....to parallel with the dugout. He could sense the usher zombie had turned his hunger on others.
The scoreboard sparked, gleamed, then beamed in the dusk, with its arms of light raised in worship, thanking the heavens for the life-giving rain. The Cleveland skyline jutted three-dimensional against the make believe of the ballpark. It all smelled like rain and failure.
Conrad removed his Tribe lid and let it flutter to the concrete. He took off his sweatshirt and t-shirt, in a jumbled clump, as if he were molting. Naked to the waist with a fierce, black, howling, wind cutting across his back, he pulled down the zipper and stepped out of his jeans as if they'd been a moomoo. He tore away his tear away pantaloons.
As he squirmed over the green padded railing, it put an unnatural pressure on his sour stomach. His size twelves squished turf, and he was all stump and mushrooms except for his Chuck Taylor's slogging toward home plate.
The ball cracked ash, shooting him out of a Derringer toward first base. Connie could still run a little bit. His long legs and light weight gave him a water bug glide, hydroplaning along the tarp. As he rounded first, he gazed toward Pronkville and let the wind whistle through his teeth. The little ballpark giveaways, those demon haunted idols, they were all smiling now.
Connie's breathing labored. He could feel the yellow slickered security guards closing in, but he was determined to stretch it into a double. He let go of his corporeal anchor and with arms of light stretching out and upward, thanking the heavens and the ballpark, for the life-giving, soul-crushing rain, he dove headfirst into second base.
“Awwww...my balls,” he groaned as water splashed into his face.
He could hear the faint wooshing of the Bobble-nation springing head erections and vibrating like four-cylinder cars with the air conditioning running. It was an awe-inspiring conglomeration of a Roman Colosseum of appendageless toys.
“Was I safe? Was I safe?”
There was no answer from the large black cop threatening to snap Connie's spine with a couple of hundred pounds of body weight.
“Come on man,” Conrad yelled back over his shoulder. “Easy Entragian.”
The other cop dug the cold metal cuffs into his wrists and together the law enforcing toys brought him to his feet to a mock cheer of approval from plastic noggin land.
“You the man, you the man,” Conrad screamed in the general direction of Pronkville. “You the man. Yeah, fuck yah, you the man.”
“You're the man. Come on buddy, let's go.”
“Yeah, fuck yeah.”
Conrad ceased his mild resistance to his removal from the playing field, letting his new escorts nudge him toward the dugout and a date with the court system. As they were about to help him duck his head underneath the overhang, the PA thundered, its auditory authority forcing all three to slow, then stop completely.
“Ladies and gentlemen this evening's game has been postponed due to inclement weather,” the voice boomed and echoed off the empty seats. “At this time, no make up date has been announced.”
Conrad grimaced, suddenly aware he was naked and cold.
“No make up date announced,” Connie whispered to one of his captors. “That's always the case. Hey, answer me this big man, was I safe?”
“It was too close for me to call pal,” the black cop said. “We'll have to look at the replay.”
“The ball may have beat me to the base, but I slid around the tag.”
Connie smiled as he headed nude with shoes into the visitor's dugout.
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