He Served
By Paul Teodo and Tom Myers
“YOU’RE PISSED.” Rosco fidgeted in his seat, eyeing The Buff, who pouted like a child when he heard anything he didn’t like. Rosco added, “Nothing wrong with upper deck.”
“Can’t see shit from here.” Buff crammed half a dog into his mouth, a chunk of grilled onions sticking to his bushy black beard. He licked mustard off his cigarette-stained fingers. “Nose bleeds. A buck a seat. Cheap ass.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers.” Rosco wanted to yank the words back. He knew better. He knew what was coming.
“Fuck you. I served.” Buff glared at his friend. “I ain’t no beggar.”
He did serve. Four years, in country. ‘Nam. Went in at one-eighty pounds. Got back, two years later he weighed three-seventy-four .The name fit.
“Bad shit, leave me alone,” he’d say when Rosco tried to talk to him about it. “And Jenna. How could she?”
Jenna hooked up with a swimmer behind Buff’s back before he enlisted. Buff nearly killed the guy. His old man, a former tackle for the Bears, fixed it: do time or the Army. Buff chose the Army. He wasn’t a gung-ho or ra-ra kinda guy. He needed a legal way to hurt somebody. “Maybe I’ll get to kill someone. Or someone will take me out.” He was sullen, scrambled, and hurting.
“It hurts when they dump you.” Rosco had tried to help.
Buff would look away, suck hard on a Camel, and try to conceal his tears.
Buff finished the dog, took a slug of beer, and asked. “What’s the count?”
“One and two, Forster’s got his number. Petrocelli’s good, but tonight he’s overmatched. Forster’s dealing. He’ll jam ‘em and K him.”
Buff turned back to Rosco. “I ain’t no beggar.”
“I know, man. Sorry.”
The two sat perched in the left field upper deck, barely under the roof overhang. Friday night, June 7, 1974. Sox-Boston.
They were roomies. Buff came begging, homeless, about six months after he got back. “I can’t live with the old man.” So they found a cheap walk up, third floor, front window overlooking railroad tracks. Buff slept on the couch while Rosco tossed a mattress on the floor in the tiny bedroom. Rosco knew it wouldn’t be easy. His roomie was no prize before he went in and now he was always ticking, ready to go off. Rosco was working a beer truck with a college degree in his back pocket. Buff had no job and wasn’t looking.
“On the fucking couch again?” Rosco shut the door and threw his coat on a chair. He was covered in sweat, hair matted and greasy, reeking of stale beer, hands cut and swollen. He was a “helper,” not a driver. The driver drove, drank, and stole. The helper crawled into the dank basements of taverns, cases of quarts perched perilously on throbbing shoulders, runaway flats of 24 packs stacked twelve-high on a dolly bumping down the dark narrow flight of stairs, mercilessly yanking at his lower back.
“Leave me alone.”
“What’d you do all day?”
“You ain’t my mother.”
“Rent’s due Friday.”
Buff nodded towards an envelope lying on the coffee table next to a smoldering ashtray.
“What’s that?” Rosco asked.
“My share.”
“You got money?”
“Just made some.” Buff took a drag off the Camel then a big swallow of a long neck. “I got ways.”
“You dealin’?”
Buff kept his eyes fixed on the sixteen-inch black and white Philco, showing the tail end of a stupid game show.
“Are you?” Rosco pressed. He’d had enough shit of his own with the cops not to have a roomie dealing.
“Golf clubs.”
“You don’t golf.”
“The old man’s.”
“Whatayou talkin’ about?”
“His spare set. He won’t notice. I’m good for this month.”
Rosco was right. Petrocelli couldn’t touch Forster and he punched him out easy, no problem.
“What’s that?” Buff pointed to the field, another Camel firmly lodged between two yellow fingers, and another Old Style in his other hand.
“What?” Rosco said, not looking where The Buff was pointing.
“That, down there. First base line.”
“I don’t see nothin’.” Rosco was used to brushing off The Buff when he tended to make big deals out of things that often went unnoticed by others.
“Look at the size of the schwanz on that horse?”
“The hot dog guy ain’t got a thumb.”
And “_That guy’s_ Charlie.”
“Smoke,” he said, struggling to stand. “Look.” He pointed with the Camel, ash blowing into Rosco’s face. “Smoke, for fuck sake!”
He was right. Black smoke billowed from the fist base side concession stand tunnel. Throngs of fans followed, flooding towards the field.
“Jesus, it’s a fire.”
“Who’s up next?” Buff asked, waving the hot dog guy over.
“Who’s up? The place is on fire.” Rosco grabbed him by his tattered Dick Allen jersey.
“Watch it. It’s Richie.”
“It’s rags. Can’t even read the name.”
“MVP.”
“He can play,” Rosco said, a scrap of Richie’s jersey dangling from his hand.
“Watch it! For Christ sake! The jersey.”
“Yeah.” Rosco was ready to leave.
The goggle-eyed inebriate must have been ordered to keep the crowd occupied while the fire department came to size up the situation and possibly even remedy the problem.
“I think Montgomery’s up.” Around ten beers Buff began to jump from thought to thought. “He sucks. Forster will punch him too.”
“The place is on fire. Fuck Montgomery. Let’s get outa here.”
“Ladies and gentleman,” a muffled voice echoed over the field. “We are experiencing a malfunction in the popcorn machine at the first base concourse level. The problem will be rectified soon. Please bear with us during our delay, play will resume shortly.”
“You!” Buff’s boom startled the guy one row up and a couple seats over, who looked like a cross between a bodybuilder and a motorcycle outlaw. “You!” Buff screamed again.
“What the fuck are you doing?”Rosco tried to calm his friend.
Buff waved his tenth Old Style at the guy and growled, “You got the time?”
The guy had a silver chain that dangled from his left front pocket to his right, perfectly outlining his brief-less testicles. He looked at The Buff, smiled, and yanked out a pocket watch the size of a hockey puck from his faded Levis and said, “ten… p.m., fat boy.” His droopy white walrus mustache did a lousy job of concealing his shit-eating grin.
Buff’s eyes flashed. His thick neck tightened, and his fists clenched.
“No, Buff. Not tonight.” Rosco, trying to play counselor to his roommate.
Buff sighed, took a deep breath, finished the Old Style and waved the beer guy over for another.
“You’ve had enough,” Rosco said, not wanting to have to bail him out again. The cops knew their address by heart.
Buff smiled back at the biker-body builder, flipping the Camel in his direction. “Thanks for the time.”
“Ten o’clock. Shit, it’s weird isn’t it? A freakin’ fire at the ball park.” Rosco tried to distract his friend.
“Thanks,” Buff said.
Rosco was confused, “For what?” Sometimes around a dozen beers Buff would get apologetic, then morose, stepping back from the edge.
“Everything.” He looked down at his foot grinding the beer soaked peanut shells into the filthy concrete. “Looking after my fat ass. Putting up with my shit. Fronting me the rent. Sox tickets.” He raised his Old Style, “ Everything.”
“Better than Cubs tickets.” Rosco tried to squeeze a smile out of him.
“Fuck the Cubs.” He spit, propelling a wad of green phlegm onto the sticky yellow railing, brown specks of tobacco flecked his teeth.
Buff was back, out from his drunken dangerous spiral.
“Everybody! Let’s sing a song. Let me hear you, a one, a two, a three.” Harry fucking Carey, the biggest drunk and whoremonger in baseball, blasted over the stadium. “When Irish eyes are….”
The goggle-eyed inebriate must have been ordered to keep the crowd occupied while the fire department came to size up the situation and possibly even remedy the problem.
“Harr-eee, Harr-eee, Harr-eee…,” the crowd roared.
Then the fucking organ, louder than an air raid siren, started up. Nancy Foust, the blonde bombshell organist serenaded the masses. Rosco vaguely recognized the tune. It made him think of his mother, slow, melodic. The old man trying to be cool, slow dancing next to the radio. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. Corny, stupid, but the drunks in the stands loved it. Even body-builder-biker was swooning with his two hundred-pound honey.
A fine drizzle began and Nancy hit the next song right on top of the fuckin’ head. Rosco recognized this one right off. He could sing the words: “Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone…” “Fire and Rain.” By the depressed, drug-addicted, nasal droner, James Taylor.
“This is nuts.” Rosco turned to Buff, smoke hanging dark and low over the field.
“We ain’t leavin’. This is history,” he slurred, thick tongued and sleepy. “History.”
Goose came on and closed the game out. Three up, three down. Sox won 8-6. It was midnight.
Rosco roused The Buff.
“What!” He awoke throwing punches.
“Game’s over. It’s midnight.”
“Who won?”
“We did. eight to six.”
“Goose come on?”
“Yep, slammed the door.”
“Knew it.” Buff closed his eyes and slunk back into his seat.
“Let’s go. For Chrissake!” Rosco was done.
“Nope.” Buff folded his heavy arms and dug deeper into his undersized seat.
“Midnight! It’s midnight.” Rosco grabbed his friend’s meaty arm.
“Look.” Buff pointed to the smoky sky. “Beautiful, like in ‘Nam.”
“You hate that shit. Brings back memories.”
“Not tonight. I’m with you.”
The sky flared with streaking lights. The heavens boomed. Sulfur filled the air. Midnight and the fireworks had just started.
“Can’t miss this.” Buff settled into his seat and waved over the Old Style man, who was supposed to be shut down for the night. “One for me and one for my buddy.” He pointed at Rosco, generous with his friend’s wallet. The thumbless beer guy popped two and slid them down the seats. “Keep the change,” Buff yelled. The vendor nodded, slipping a few crumpled bills into his pocket.
“Thanks.” The guy yelled back.
Buff slumped back into his green wooden seat. By the time the beer reached them, he was out.
Balancing two Old Styles, through the haze, Rosco looked down on his war-torn friend, twisted like a contortionist, in a seat not big enough for someone half his size, sound asleep, a Camel dangling from his cracked lips, crusted onions still decorating his black beard.
Rosco let him rest. He needed it. He had served.
The sky aglow, rockets shooting into the heavens, bombs bursting in air.
Harry, exhorting the crowd with drunken cheers from the loudspeakers.
The stadium lights slowly illuminated the stands. The Buff did not stir.
Finally, all had departed. Now, only the two of them, high up in the left field bleachers.
A buck a seat.
Smoke rested low over the field.
Still his friend did not stir.
He had served. He had served us well.