The Robins of Iverhill: Chapter 18 – The Pond

NOTE: the following story, which will be serialized on this blog, was originally written in 1985 as my senior project in creative writing at Hamilton College. 25 years later, it has been updated. New chapters will appear Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. Previous chapters are listed with hyperlinks below.

PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1 – THE NEW MAN
CHAPTER 2 – ROOMMATES
CHAPTER 3 – UNWANTED RETURNS
CHAPTER 4 – OPENING DAY
CHAPTER 5 – RESULTS
CHAPTER 6 – CONFIDENCE
CHAPTER 7 – BUS RIDE
CHAPTER 8 – ARRIVAL IN BARK CREEK
CHAPTER 9 – BRAWL
CHAPTER 10 – BEDSIDE
CHAPTER 11 – DISCOVERY
CHAPTER 12 – RELEASE
CHAPTER 13 – THE CONTRACT
CHAPTER 14 – DOUBLEHEADER
CHAPTER 15 – THE REPLACEMENT
CHAPTER 16 – OUTFIELD THROW
CHAPTER 17 – APARTMENT

My name is Eugene Raveler.  I am the starting center fielder for the Iverhill Robins, and right now I’m sleeping in my car.

Everything hurts.  My body.  My pride.  My will to succeed.  I just encountered every man’s worst nightmare – finding that at least two or three of your past girlfriends have encountered each other – and are comparing notes about you.  And the conversation isn’t including words like “He’s the best lover I ever had,” or “I would drop my husband in a heartbeat if Gene Raveler was available.”

No, the group encounter ended with me getting hit by various purses, kicked in my privates, and sleeping out here in my car because Treasure kicked me out of my own hotel room.

I gotta get some sleep.  Big game tomorrow against Cherry Mills.  They’re all big games as we get closer to the playoffs.  Cherry Mills has been the worst team in the IBA for as long as I’ve played for Iverhill.  Yet they play in a much better ballpark and their fans pack the place every game.  We’re currently in second place and I can’t give tickets away for a Robins home game.

Me.  Eugene Raveler.  The Robins’ career leader in home runs, runs batted in, and batting average.  I’m Iverhill’s living Triple Crown.

And here I am, stuck sleeping my Oldsmobile outside the team hotel.  July nights in upstate New York are cold.  Don’t let anyone tell you differently. I gotta get some sleep.  I lock my car door and roll the driver’s side window open just a crack, to let cool fresh evening air in my car.  Always smells like pine trees in Iverhill.  I noticed that smell the first time I came to this town. I like that smell.

It was 1967.  I had a few runs with other teams in other leagues, and someone told me about this team in upstate New York, in a small Adirondack baseball league where stars were nurtured.  I played here.  I won batting titles.  I hit home runs.  I signed autographs.  I signed game programs for kids, and signed other things for the ladies.

Always the ladies.  I sometimes dream about leaving this sport and getting married and settling down.  It won’t happen.  I’ll be in a baseball uniform until the day I die.  Maybe they’ll bury me in one.

Sleep drifting in.  The smell of pine trees floats away, and a smell of water … a smell from my childhood, when I grew up on a farm in a small Ohio town … I can remember.

And I saw myself, in my dream, as a young boy.  Seven or eight years old, tow-headed and tossing rocks into a pond nearby where I lived.  Sunlight in the sky.  Chirping birds.

And there was Mr. Germain.  He lived next door to my parents’ farm, he had a dairy farm of his own.  He often fished in the pond.  Taught me how to catch sunfish and crappies, taught me where to stand and not to make any noise or the fish would be scared away.

I would go fishing with him – especially on days when my parents were fighting.  I could hear them all the way from the pond, Mom complaining about my father’s drinking, Dad complaining about my mother’s poor home care.  Mr. Germain would take me fishing, to get me away from all that hostility.

One day we went to find a new fishing area, a pond a couple of miles from my house, a pond surrounded by trees and shade.  Mr. Germain said that there were big fish in this pond, and if I cast my line at the right time, the fish will leap right onto the hook.

I tossed my fishing line out to the water and started reeling the line back.

“No, no, throw it a little farther,” he said.  “Throw it out to the middle of the pond.”

He stood beside me and guided my hand, casting the line in a whipping motion.  The line  flew out to the water.  I reeled the line back in.  A tick and a nibble, but no catch.

“Try again,” he said.  He took my hand, and whipped the line back out.  This time he helped reel the line in, pulling and dragging and releasing as I held onto the fishing pole.

I don’t remember much from those days.  Just Mr. Germain showing me how to fish.  That’s all I remember.

But the dream continued.

I remember looking over to the side of the pond, there was a rustling in some small leaves. It looked like a tiny bird was trying to fly away. But he was just flapping his wings. Then stopping. Then flapping his wings again, but going nowhere.

I walked up to the bird, trying not to scare him any more than he already was. I knelt down to the bird. He had gotten tangled in some loose fishing line, which itself had tangled around the branches of a small bush. I took a small knife out of my pocket – the knife I used to remove fish hooks from caught fish – and carefully cut the fishing line away from the bird’s feet.

Five seconds after I cut the line away, the bird flew off. I had saved the bird. I felt good.

But then I remembered running. Running away from the pond, into the grove of trees.  Running to hide.  Running to get away.

Someone was chasing me.  Someone wanted to capture me.  Someone wanted to do things to me that I never thought people would do to each other.

I ran.  Ran as fast as I could.  Dodged tree stumps and slippery ground.

“Come back here, Eugene!” the voice yelled.  “There’s nowhere to run!  You can’t get away from me!”

I ran as fast as I could.  I dodged a tree branch that was hanging right at eye-level.  I skidded around fallen leaves on the ground.  The breath was choking in my throat.  But I couldn’t stop.  If I did, the monster would catch me. And the monster knew my name.  And he was getting closer.

“Eugene!  There’s nobody you can tell!  No one will believe you!! No one will believe you!!!” the voice cried out.

I kept running.  Where was Mr. Germain?  Where was he?  He could protect me from this monster.  Where was he?

I strained to remember. Where was he?

“Eugene!” The voice was right behind me.  I knew if he caught me… if he touched me…

“SLIDE! RIGHT NOW, GENE, SLIDE!!!”

Acting on instinct, I dropped into a feet-first baseball slide, my body actually slipping under the crawl space of some felled tree branches, sliding into a small ditch.

I hugged the muddy ground and lay very still.  I could see a pair of boots running toward my hiding spot.  I saw them run up to me – and run over the logs, and continue to run on.

“Stay put, Eugene,” I heard.  It was a different voice, the one that told me to slide.  “Don’t make a sound.”

I know that voice.  Of all the voices…

“Stay there.”  It was Mauntmaurency.

“What are you doing here, Monty?  You of all people?  And – for that matter – what am I doing here?  In this dream – a memory – what is it?”

“Too many questions,” the familiar voice replied.  “I’m trying to protect you from the demons that hunt for you.”

“What demons?  I was having a peaceful dream about going fishing as a kid with old Mr. Germain.”

“And how much do you remember about that?” Monty asked quietly.

“I just remember going fishing, that’s all,” I replied.

“You’ve blocked it out of your memory.  You don’t remember.”

“What’s to remember?  I went fishing with Old Man Germain back in Ohio as a kid, and now I’m running for my life and hiding under some logs and of all people, you’re in my dream!”

“This isn’t a dream, Eugene.” Monty replied.  And I noticed that he wasn’t using that weird effected country bumpkin ye olde english dialect.  He sounded more like someone who was genuinely concerned about me – for some reason.

“Okay, then you tell me what’s going on.”

“You ran because of something you saw Mr. Germain do.  You ran because of what Mr. Germain tried to do.  Tried to do to you.”

“What are you talking about, Germain was about 50 years old, the only thing he tried to do was catch fish.”

“You weren’t the only one, Eugene,” Monty replied.  “He took other kids on fishing trips, long before you were around.  And they all ran from him, too.  But he caught some of them.  And I don’t want to say what happened next.”

But I don’t remember sliding under these fallen tree logs.  I don’t remember that.  All I remember was going fishing with Germain… and that a few days later, someone told me he moved away and never came back.  And the rest of the time – I can’t remember.

I couldn’t see Monty – I was still under the tree – but I heard him as clear as if he was whispering in my ear.

“Eugene… I’m sorry.  You don’t remember because you were one of the boys he caught.  And you blocked it out of your memory – the horrible, disgusting things he did to you.  What you experienced, no seven-year-old should ever experience.  Ever.  Not you… not anyone.”

When Monty said that to me, my skin went cold.  I remembered.  I didn’t slide under these logs.  I tripped over them.  I landed face first on the ground, and I never saw what happened because the monster caught me and forced my face into the mud.  I never saw what he did to me… and a few minutes later, I felt nauseous and filthy and queasy.  My body felt like the dirt and mud and twigs on the ground were blending into my skin, like filthy earthy tattoos.  I felt like I wanted to set my body on fire and put it out with kerosene.

“Why?” I asked.  “Why are you showing me this?  Why?”

“This wasn’t your way, Eugene.  This wasn’t what was supposed to happen to your life.  You were going to lead a normal wonderful life and everything was fine.  And a horrible man did a horrible thing to you.”

“Stop showing me this.”

“No,” Monty said.  “Think about this for a second.  You need to know.  Did you ever fish again?”

I tried to remember.  I’m sure I fished since that day… but I couldn’t remember ever doing so.  I didn’t even remember where my fishing poles went.  Iverhill’s got four ponds and lakes within miles of Wilson Field, and I never visited any one of them.

“Your anger, Eugene, your rage, your desire to prove everybody was wrong about you, has been consuming you ever since that horrible day.  I’ve watched you for a long time, Eugene.  I saw your self-destructive life unfold.  Every time you have something going perfectly, you sabotage it.”

“You’re wrong.”

“You don’t do it intentionally, Eugene.  It’s in your subconscious.  I’ve been there.  And it’s not just the self-destruction.  Every time you hit that baseball, tell me what you see.”

I thought about it as I crawled out from under the fallen logs.

“It’s not just a baseball, is it Eugene?”

“Damn it, Monty, don’t do this.”

“You hit that ball like it’s someone’s face, don’t you Eugene?”

I slowly nodded.  Then I sat down on a tree stump and started wiping the dirt and mud off my face and arms.

“And every time you meet a woman… any woman… you feel like you have to prove something, don’t you?”

“Maybe,” I murmured.

“You have to prove that you are appealable to women.  That you’re not -”

“That I’m not.”  I could say the words slowly, but my mind was racing.  “That I’m not only wanted by dirty old men.”

I broke down.  It was over.  And Monty came over to me on the stump, and put his hand on my shoulder. I was so emotionally destroyed, and the only thing that gave me comfort was the words of someone who I wanted off the Robins and who I prayed would go away from Jenny McCarling.  And right now, he’s the only person I can even talk to about what I had blocked out of my memories.

And in the span of a few seconds, I went from my childhood self to an adult.  I was still in a dream state, but I was now wearing my Robins uniform.  And so was Monty.  Although I couldn’t recall what he wore when I was hiding under the fallen logs.

“He’s gone, Eugene,” Monty said to me.  “You don’t have to worry about him any more.”

“How do you know?”

Monty patted me on the shoulder.  “I just know.  And I know that you won’t be in pain any more.  And you can enjoy your life again. You’re as free as that little bird you saved. Cut the strings. Don’t let it hold you down again.”

And I heard what I thought sounded like tapping on a glass.  TAP TAP TAP.  And another voice.  “Gene!”

I woke up.  I was still in the car.  All by myself.  The rain had stopped.  I looked to my left.  Treasure was tapping on the driver’s side window of my Oldsmobile.

“Gene… come on inside.  You can’t sleep out there, you’ll wrench your back and you won’t be able to play.”

I got out of the car.  I could smell the aroma of pine needles again.  I was definitely  back in Iverhill.

And for some reason… some unexplained reason… I felt different.  Not better or worse… just different.