Tombstone

photo courtesy of Jaime Hunt. www.flickr.com/whatjaimesaid

[NOTE - THIS CHAPTER WILL NOT BE IN THE FINAL DRAFT OF THE HOOSECOWS. I DIG IT, BUT IT TOTALLY DISRUPTS THE NARRATIVE. FEEL FREE TO SKIP IT. IF YOU DO READ IT, IT'S LIKE GETTING A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA FOR FREE.]

Tombstone

Southeastern Minnesota

Now that professional baseball had made it abundantly clear he did not belong, Hank James all the free time he wanted to go on cemetery tours without reinforcing the nickname he hated, “Tombstone.” He had always cringed inwardly (outwardly, his face rarely showed any expression) when his teammates became uncomfortable to hear he made a hobby of collecting photographs of markers and memorials. They seemed to accept his behavior when they thought he was visiting only the last resting places of famous dead ballplayers, but when they found out he liked looking through all of the memorials, and that he took a lot of pictures and made a lot of notes in a small wire-bound notebook, they just shook their heads.

As his feet crunched through the snow, he could hear nothing but the echoes of those footsteps. This cemetery was tucked in behind a couple of farms that had once been a Minnesotan town, and he had only heard about it from another enthusiast who told him it had a heartbreakingly simple – and beautiful – memorial featuring a cherubic child statue. There were no people, and there was no traffic. The land had only slight dips of elevation, and beyond that was so flat Hank could see particles of snow lift off into the air and spin out, up, and float back down. Most of the snow had not been tracked up by anything bigger than a rabbit. If his former teammates were here, Hank wanted to believe they could see the same peace he saw, but he doubted they could.

The nickname had come in Triple A, when a player with a mouth so filled with chewing tobacco he looked like the slack-jawed yokel heard about Hank’s hobby for the first time.

“Shit,” Bart Ambrose said, “So you’re saying that when you’re not playing baseball, a giant ugly faced son of a bitch like you is stomping around with the dead folks like some kind of messed up cowboy ghost? Whatta they call you? Tombstone?”

And it stuck, just like that. Players loved it, probably because Hank did not like it, not at all. The fans loved it when they heard the press try to sneak it into interviews, only to be shut down time and time again. Bart only stayed with the team for a few more weeks before he got traded, but the nickname lived on.

Hank reached the gate of the cemetery to find it was snowed shut. He used his gloved fingers to undo the bit of chicken wire that was holding it shut in normal circumstances, and then he used the toe of his heavy winter boot to kick snow out from in front of the gate. He pulled on the gate to see if he could squeeze through, and when he realized he could not he kicked away snow again until he was able to get through the gate and into the cemetery.

His father used to come out with him on these winter trips, before the diabetes had made being out in the cold too dangerous.  Dad liked to see the old monuments in the snow, and he would always offer Hank a commentary on which ones were made well, and which ones were not. Sometimes he was able to find a symbolic meaning in the marker that Hank would have missed, perhaps signifying a child dying too soon or the occupation of the deceased.

Dad ran a funeral home in a northern Minnesotan town called Ranock, MN. Before that, Hank’s grandfather had run the funeral home. Hank would be taking it over if he hadn’t gone into baseball, but when his pops had seen he had the talent, he never did anything but encourage Hank to go for the major leagues. For a while, after Hank had started to make his name in the major leagues, it all seemed worth it. Now he was banned for life, Dad was retired, and some guy from Minneapolis had taken over the business and annoyed all of the locals, even though he just got there a year ago.

Hank saw that a large section of graves in the old cemetery were tall enough to be above the snow, and nodded slightly to himself. The trip would not be a waste. In fact, it looked as if there was just enough snow to add to the natural beauty of the photographs. He took a series of pictures of the cherubic angel and then made his way to each marker in turn, like a bee from flower to flower.

Looking up, he saw a man trudging toward him across the field. The man was just a dark walking stick figure on the horizon, but because the land was so empty and flat Hank could see the man coming ten or fifteen minutes before he would arrive at the cemetery. The wind picked up its pace until it let out a shrill whistle, and Hank watched as the man pulled his coat tighter around his neck.

Hank began to work faster at taking his photographs. He did not become careless, taking time to check lighting and focus. He walked in the same paths, so he wouldn’t mess up a future shot. Hank was pretty sure the man, who was now about five minutes away from the graveyard, would not ask him to leave the cemetery. Still, he did not like taking chances.

As his anxiety level grew, Hank started thinking about how he had been removed from baseball, which had been the spinal column of his entire life. It started with getting traded to a team with big hopes for him as a clean-up hitter, and it started with him hitting balls hard and watching them leave the yard. His fielding at third base was only average, and his speed was a little below that. He still struck out a lot, but it didn’t matter because he was hitting the ball like each homer was guaranteed, pre-ordained, and served up for him to blast it into the upper decks.

Then it ended when three other players got deeper into the cocaine they had been using for years. For some reason, the ferocity of their addiction became impossible to resist. Maybe they, like everyone else in baseball, were worried there would be a strike after all, and all of the money would go away. When the three players, two position players, and a relief pitcher, started getting even more paranoid, they tried to find a new place to hide their stashes. Hank had a reputation as being one of the game’s squeaky clean players, so they just kept putting vials in his locker like hopped up squirrels.

One day, Hank was reaching for a can of jock itch spray in the back of his locker and heard something clink behind him. It was after a game, and a local station recorded Hank reaching for it in a panic. If he was honest with himself, he knew at that moment it was a vial, but he couldn’t stop the panicked urge to hide the thing.

From there, he was a part of the witch hunt with the other three, and only one of them ever bothered trying to stand up for Hank’s innocence. By that point, everyone in the media was calling him “Tombstone” as they replayed the footage with him and the vial on the news. Hank avoided criminal prosecution, but got lumped in with everyone else when he was banned for life. The players all supported him, reminding him about Jim Bouton’s Ball Four and the amphetamines usage, but it didn’t matter. He had lost the focus of his life.

Other things crumbled, too. His marriage had been based on a little bit of love and a lot of friendship, but it hadn’t been doing well when he had been on the road. As he continued looking at the gravestones, he acknowledged that mistakes had been made on both sides, but his indiscretions were probably the greater sins. He wasn’t surprised when she filed divorce papers.

But that was what he had gone out here to avoid thinking about. Now, the man was working his way to the gate, and Hank could see he was tall and very, very skinny. His boots and coat had clearly seen years of usage. Hank could hear the man’s breath chuff out in gasps. He didn’t seem to be used to walking so far in the snow. Hank wondered how he got all of his farm work done.

Figuring he had just enough time to get one more shot in, Hank squared up his camera for another shot. He only had four left on this roll, so he had to make the shots count. The scarecrow man at the front gate was looking at the snow Hank had kicked away like maybe he should put it back.

When Hank zeroed in on the graveyard, he started to smirk. The name on the tombstone was also “Hank James.” Not Henry, as was more common (and also the name of an author whose books he had avoided in high school, even though they had that in common). He glanced at the dates and frowned, suddenly feeling every bit of the 10 degree temperature.

The date read 12-27-60 to 10-1-94. Not only was the last date from a day that hadn’t yet come, the whole grave looked too new in comparison to everything else. The corners and edges of letters had not been smoothed by time, and it bore very little sign of exposure to the elements.

There was a soft crunching of snow behind him, and Hank did not want the slim man to come talk to him anymore.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the man said. He talked in the stiff way men do when they’re trying to keep snot from running into their open mouths.

“Yeah,” Hank said. He noticed there was a whole row of tombstones like the one that had his name on it. He was sweating now, in the cold. He recognized the way his heart was beating as a wild panic, something he was used to fighting when he stepped to the plate in the late innings. This time, he was not able to keep himself under control. With hands shaking slightly, he took two pictures of the other newer graves. A few names jumped out to him, “Swede” and “Johnson.”

“You must be getting cold,” the strange man said. Hank had not yet worked up the courage to look at him. “I don’t like that cold anymore. It really follows me around all day long. Not for me!” the man said, sounding almost gleeful in his last words.

“I think I can be okay,” Hank said. He had phrased it awkwardly.

Hank turned to the stranger, and he swallowed hard to stay polite. The man was not from another world, but he did look ugly. He had a pale blonde beard that came in clumpy all over his pasty and pockmarked face. His blue eyes were very pale, and the yellow and brown patched pattern along his teeth and gums gave the man away as some sort of tobacco user. He had long, thin fingers he pulled out of pockets, and the nails were long and yellow at the tips of those. There was little else for Hank to see, as the man had a hood on over his tractor-logoed stocking cap.

“You don’t want to be going out on the road when it’s like this,” the thin man said, shaking his head like a child saying no. “Cold stays with you for too long.”

Hank took in a deep breath and tried to regain his composure. He looked away, but he found himself staring at the headstone that advertised his own death. He realized, with a sick flutter of fear in his chest, he was standing over the part where his body would lay. If it were October 10^th. If he were already dead.

“You could get sick,” the man said, looking very sick himself.

“I think I’m okay,” Hank said. He patted his chest. “I’m not one of those young punks anymore.”

The skinny man laughed hard at this, but he kept his cold hands in his pockets as he lifted his head up to laugh freely. His mouth opened more at this, and Hank could see there were quite a few teeth missing in there.

“Mind if I take a picture?” Hank asked. His sudden bravery was anything but brave. He had to do something now, or he would just let himself get pushed along over the snow by this ugly man.

“Nah,” the man said shyly. His childish behavior continued as he turned to face his opposite shoulder, cloaking his face. “I don’t really got a face for pictures.”

Hank nodded, and then immediately walked a few steps off of where his dead body could have been. He slung the camera down by his side and took a deep breath. The thin man got the hint and walked him to his car. The stranger even pushed open the gate for Hank to leave, even though it seemed like he might lose his balance or run out of breath at the same time.

“Sure you don’t want to come on back and warm up for a bit?” the man asked. “You don’t want to get sick.”

“I should be fine,” Hank said. He felt more secure now that he was near his truck. He set the camera on the hood for a moment and opened up the door. The man waved twice, like maybe the first time was just for practice.

“You can come back,” the stranger said. “Just keep an eye on the temperature.”

Hank thanked him and started up his car. With it running, he took of his coat so he could fit into the cab without feeling cramped. He tossed his gloves and hat into the passenger’s side and got his camera from the hood. The skinny stranger was walking away, each step looking like he might fall flat on his face.

Hank put the camera into the car and shut the door. Now, there were no pictures left. He hadn’t been able to use the viewfinder, and he had been forced into being sneaky, but he had managed to take a picture of what he hoped was his strange visitor. He couldn’t be sure until he developed the film.

(NEXT)