say hey, how's your day how's your night how's your life
Oh man. Last couple of days and the complications and the snow. The snow! I went to the bookstore today and it was still falling. It was all over the place. The sky all clean and white the way it gets, the sun out in the corner. Something else, man.
Spending all my time on the roof these days. The sidewalks and the back booth, the hallway. It's crazy. The Virginia skyline seems like an oxymoron but it's really not. No buildings in DC are allowed to be taller than the Capitol Dome, which is why we keep ourselves close to the ground, a low center of gravity and this city was planned by a French guy, you know. That's why there are traffic cricles everywhere you look, which is of course a military design of Napoleon's, because if all the major roads funnel through a circle, then the circle is the only thing you have to defend.
The statues of guys on horses are all going to the White House. One hoof off the ground means wounded in battle; two means killed. But nobody really pays attention to that rule anymore.
I am not, repeat am not regaining my initial seventeen year's old adoration for this city. Swear to God I'm not. I just know a lot of random facts, kay? And the snow. Well, the snow, sure. It's all still novel to me.
But listen, it's an East Coast winter and the right time to go to rock shows. Bright Eyes rocked so hard I almost had an anuerysm. Oh Conor Oberst. Why must you be so misunderstood and tortured? Why must you look nothing like your voice and be so freakin' hot it knocks Isaac Brock right out of a kid's mind. Ahahaha.
I don't know, man, I'm having a good couple of weeks. Everything's all complicated and busy and I can't really sleep all that well, and I got a cold that wakes me up every morning like a punishment, but things seem to be going all right.
I'm excited about going to Philly tomorrow. We don't even have to rent a car! Free transportation, free place to crash, I might actually save money on this trip. And I'll see three of my best friends from London whom I haven't seen since June. Jeez. The excitement, it really knows no bounds.
I wanna read my book until the sun goes down and it's time to go out for the night. I wanna be tired enough to sleep the night through by the time I crawl into my sleeping bag on the bedroom floor in Fishtown tomorrow. I think I got a good shot at it.
Marco Scutaro hit .335 in Winter Ball this offseason. What does a brother have to do to get a steady job in this game, man.
North
By Candle Beck
Mark Mulder is twenty-one years old when he goes to Canada. He’s got a giant duffle bag with his name and his parents’ address written neatly on the luggage tag, fifteen warm-up T-shirts with Michigan State or MSU printed across the chest, a good slider and a bad curve, and a Chicago White Sox baseball cap from the ‘80s with a lucky silver tack stuck in the brim. He’s set.
When you’re the number two draft pick and you go straight from college to Triple-A (a week ago he moved out of his dorm, a fucking week), shit gets pretty confusing pretty fast.
He gets introduced around even though everybody knows him anyway. He hears the same stupid jokes about the X-Files that he’s been hearing ever since that fucking show came on the air. He carries his teammates’ bags and buys drinks. He lives in a hotel, just because he’s got the money to do it and room service will bring him stuff until two o’clock in the morning. He starts drinking a lot of coffee. Starts taking two Advil every night, and then later, two more.
It does not escape his attention that he’s being watched.
There’s this whole thing about being the great left-handed hope of the Oakland Athletics, who have been little other than godawful for the past half-decade, but Mark Mulder can’t really pitch in Triple-A. Funny fucking joke, man.
*
He meets Tim Hudson on the first day. Which, really, fairly predictable. It’s hard to miss a guy like Hudson. Hudson is distracted, talking to one of the pitching coaches, and when their manager says, “Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and vice-versa,” he glances at Mulder, says, “Meetcha,” and then stops paying attention to him.
Hudson has been in the minors since ’97. When he got drafted, he wasn’t sure if he’d go as a pitcher or an outfielder. Motherfucker hit .396 at Auburn his senior year, a nice little bonus to his 15-2 record that season. It’s almost scary. On top of all that, he also actually graduated.
They become friends, eventually, because it can’t be avoided. Even guys you hate become friends in this game. It’s weird like that.
But Mulder doesn’t hate Hudson, that’s pretty clear. He follows Hudson around for a week or two until he realizes what he’s doing and puts an immediate stop to it. He steals a T-shirt from Hudson’s locker that says ‘Dixie’ on the front in faded blue letters, and wears it sometimes as an undershirt, tight like a second skin over his shoulders and turned inside-out so Hudson won’t see. He learns all about Tim Hudson, and wants to write crib notes on the inside of his wrist, in the dent of his elbow, places where he’ll never get caught.
Sometimes it takes Hudson a moment or two to answer when someone calls him Huddy. As it turns out, he’s been Timmy for his whole life up to two years ago, when he rolled into Class-A South Oregon already all the way grown up. Baseball gives nicknames even to guys that already have nicknames-it’s supposed to be endearing. Mulder squints and tries to imagine calling Hudson Timmy on a regular basis, but he knows he would just sound stupid.
Hudson, interestingly, is not at all self-conscious about his size. As he said to Mulder the second or third night of the season, “Well, you’re not self-conscious about being all freakily tall and scrawny, right?”
The guys rag Hudson a bit, especially when the players’ profiles come out and Hudson is listed at 6’1, it’s all he hears for about a week: “Who’d you sleep with, man, who’d you have to fuck to get that on your page?”
Hudson’s got it under control, though. He just looks back, all calm the way he gets, and says steadily, “I’m not short. I’m compact.”
That starts them off, throwing paper cups at each other, balled-up socks. Someone calls him Tiny Tim like he’s the first guy in history to be that clever, and now Hudson’s not short: “I’m travel-sized.”
Two days later, Hudson’s not short: “I’m space-saving.”
Eventually Mulder feels all right enough about his chances to holler at Tim one night, “You’re not short, you’re an action figure!”
And he’s briefly terrified that no one will laugh, no one will even smile and Hudson will look at him like, what the fuck kid, who told you that you could talk, but Hudson just tips his head back and laughs, and yells, “Yeah! I’m a G.I. Joe, motherfucker, watch out.”
Then everybody’s laughing, and hitting Mulder on the back, and Hudson’s grinning at him, looking like the king of the fucking world.
*
Hudson says to him on the bus one night, sometime when it’s black outside and they’re in line to cross the border, flags everywhere and liquid fluorescent lights, “Think maybe you woulda done better to go through the system, man.”
Mulder yawns into his hand. He’s got an ERA hovering near to five, though it’s barely April and the season still has the cellophane on it, and Tim Hudson is pretty much the only one who can say stuff like that and not be told to shut the fuck up.
“Think so?”
Hudson nods, looking very serious the way he does sometimes. His eyes keep flicking past Mulder to the pale-lit window, red and white rolling across his face.
“You get toughened up. You figure shit out.”
Mulder leans his head against the window, feeling it shiver from the engine, the faint smell of diesel. He makes a little smile at his up-close reflection. He looks good in car windows, train windows, bus windows. He always has.
“Toughened up, huh.”
Hudson is a pallid smear in the window, projected on a billboard, buzzed rust-brown hair and long neck. He says to Mulder with his voice going low like when he’s telling a joke, “I know you didn’t learn everything you need to at Michigan fucking State.”
As if Auburn is some hotbed of enlightenment. It’s in Alabama, for fuck’s sake. But Mulder lets Hudson say pretty much whatever he wants, which is strange and new. He just likes the accent. It’s fun to hear, like a cartoon walking into his live-action movie.
“Yeah, yeah, you think you’re all smart, what else do I need to know?”
Hudson doesn’t answer and Mulder tries to meet his eyes in the window, but it’s too blurred, it’s like trying to find the blue part of a cloud. He rolls his head so he can look around, and Hudson’s eyes are fixed on Mulder’s mouth.
Mulder blinks, and swallows, clears his throat uncomfortably. Hudson looks up, and smiles at him all slow and sharp.
“M’sure we can think of something,” and Hudson’s voice is even lower now, like a stereo speaker vibration.
Mulder thinks that it must be Canada, making people act all crazy and Canadian, but of course, by that time they’re past the border guards, back in their own violent country again.
*
So that’s when it does become an issue, momentarily, a couple of weeks later. Either Mulder’s height or Hudson’s lack thereof, something. Because Mulder gets down on his knees and his head still comes up to Hudson’s shirt pocket.
He says, “Oh, um,” eyeing Hudson’s shirt buttons and his hands on Hudson’s sides, hooked in his belt.
One of Hudson’s hands is on the back of his neck, his thumb curled around to Mulder’s throat, his splitter hand, and Mulder can feel the pressure increase on his pulse as Hudson tells him, “I fear for your neck, man.”
Mulder nods, and looks up. “This might go easier if you were down here.”
Mulder’s life has changed a lot in the past month.
He can’t pitch but he can do everything else. He can be whatever they need him to be, charming and confident even though he hasn’t yet won a game. They keep watching, keep nodding approvingly. They expect him to be ready for the majors early next season, maybe in September if the A’s aren’t in the race. But Michigan’s not even a very good college team, and it’s not really the same game, at this level.
He can even be worth Tim Hudson, for this first half season. When you’re a rookie, you’re allowed to make a couple of mistakes.
So he lets Hudson pull him into the bathroom at the bar, lets Hudson leave his room door unlocked when they’re on the road. Hudson gets a single because this is his third minor league season. It’s Mulder’s second month of playing baseball for a living.
The first time, Hudson said, “I got an idea,” and put his hand on Mulder’s leg. They were just watching television, it wasn’t even that big of a deal. Hudson moved closer and Mulder blinked at him.
Hudson was doing things to his throat and ear, his hand sliding up real slow like they had the rest of their lives, and Mulder sort of gasped, “You’re kidding me. Tim Hudson, my god.”
And Hudson grinned against his cheekbone, licked the corner of Mulder’s lip, and said, “Well, fuck, ain’t it always the last one you suspect.”
All right. So.
He’s sleeping with Tim Hudson. He’s here in Canada. It’s all really fucking odd.
Hudson focuses on the most unconsidered parts of Mulder. He draws a line with his teeth along every one of Mulder’s ribs, which still stand out in sharp relief like window blinds. He drags his thumbs up and into the hollows of Mulder’s hips, under the curve of bone where there’s a pressure point painful enough to make Mulder’s vision fuzz a bit, but he never tells Hudson to lay off. It never even occurs to Mulder to tell Hudson to lay off.
But, yeah. The bone-skin thing, the scrawny thing, the thing where Mulder’s 6’6 and weighs one-ninety soaking wet, Hudson seems to be quite a fan. Once, he says to Mulder, “Your arms, man,” sounding surprised, curling his fingers around the bend of Mulder’s elbow. Mulder doesn’t see what’s so special. They’re just his arms, like always, long and unhinged and flaring out into his hands.
It’s a lot of stuff like that, where Hudson will say something and Mulder won’t really understand. Hudson whistles tunelessly in the bathroom and yells to Mulder that maybe they should take on the finding-good-Mexican-food-in-Canada mission again, and Mulder has not yet lived in California, nor west of Chicago, so he doesn’t get what’s wrong with the Canadian Mexican food.
But he calls back his assent, sure whatever you want dude, and Hudson comes out of the bathroom, wiping the last of the shaving cream off his face and neck and leaving the towel around his neck. Hudson’s not wearing a shirt and there must be a draft in the bathroom because he’s got a scatter of goosebumps on his stomach and arms. Mulder watches him from the bed, biting his tongue.
Hudson makes a slanted grin. “Don’t give me that kinda opening, kid,” and Mulder would ask what the hell are you talking about and don’t call me kid, but Hudson’s tossing the towel onto the dresser and coming back to him and Mulder will be able to taste the green-chemical sting of shaving cream all night.
It’s not something he ever thought would happen.
But April rolls over into May, the season picking up steam and everything feels so much bigger, baseball itself has become this huge thing all around him, it’s every part of his day.
Hudson’s pitching exceptionally, as he has a tendency to do, and he’s in a good mood most of the time, he answers all of Mulder’s questions and shows him the right way to do stuff. No, the Comfort Inn does not have room service, no, you don’t have to haul the bags if the elevator’s broken, get a bellboy before you hurt yourself.
Hudson asks him at one point if he’s ever done this before. Mulder gets all offended, certain that his technique has been disrespected, and pushes Hudson flat on the bed for awhile. When Hudson isn’t breathing so good, Mulder says, “You calling me an amateur?”
Hudson laughs and there’s a whistle in the middle of it.
Mulder has done this before. Well. Not all of it. He’s never done the thing where you see the guy every single day, where you live down the hall from him half the time. He’s never done the thing where he knows the guy’s shoe size and what he likes to eat for breakfast.
He’s done the thing where him and his freshman year roommate didn’t get along at all, spent two months sniping and bitching at each other before the roommate finally put in for a room change, and the night before he moved out, the tension hit a perfect pitch and the roommate ended up in Mulder’s cramped twin bed, kissing him hard with teeth and pulling at Mulder’s pajama pants.
He’s also done the thing where he fucked around with another boy when he was in the Cape League, not even a player but a town kid, three years older than Mulder, who used to hang around the field and taught Mulder how to give a blowjob in the backseat of his car, of all the godforsaken places.
That’s the sum total of his non-straight experience, though, so he’s hardly an expert. But he can fake that, too, most times. He watches Hudson for his cues, he does all right.
He imagines that Hudson has been doing this ever since his own rookie year, knows it back and forth. He imagines that Hudson has been doing this since college, since high school, that Hudson has always had this figured out, always been the last suspected.
And Mulder has always been a quick learner. There’s some moment when Mulder catches Hudson’s elbow as he’s walking down the hotel hallway, pulls him into the little vending alcove, and sees Hudson smiling when his back hits the wall, sees Hudson licking his lips and starting to lift his head up. There’s some moment when Mulder is getting better at everything, and he’s ready to believe that this is his life now.
*
Tim Hudson has a fiancée waiting for him in California.
It kinda surprises Mulder. To say the least. He finds out by accident. They’re at some diner and Hudson is in the next booth over, just behind Mulder’s head. Hudson’s voice, at that dim frequency, locates a current all its own in Mulder’s mind, so Mulder can hear him through the din and the clank of the kitchen:
“Hell, man, I’m marrying a lawyer, I don’t think I need your guy’s number.”
Mulder thinks about it all through the mozzarella sticks and buffalo wings. He keeps trying to work it around to a place where it will have been a joke, find the context that makes it not what it sounds like.
But, well, he doesn’t have a whole lot of luck. Or any, really. Hudson wasn’t joking around. Which means that it’s true. Which doesn’t make a tremendous amount of sense.
Mulder goes to Hudson’s hotel room that night. It’s a few days into June, but still real early, still a bunch of time left.
Mulder leans back against the door, his hands behind him. Hudson grunted when he came in, but that’s been the only acknowledgement. Hudson is very involved in the Dukes of Hazzard rerun on the bad-static TV.
“So, I need some legal advice.” Hudson glances at him, releasing a huffing sound that’s half whatever and half shut the hell up.
Mulder makes a smile that’s all teeth. “Heard you were the one to talk to about that shit. You or your girlfriend, anyway.”
Hudson stares at the television for a minute longer, then sighs and mutes it. He sits back against the headboard and lifts his eyebrows at Mulder. “Yeah?”
It seems pretty self-fucking-evident to Mulder, but Hudson has always liked playing dumb. He likes being underestimated. Mulder angles his chin up.
“You mighta fuckin’ mentioned.”
Hudson shrugs. “It never came up,” he says blandly.
“It’s come up now, dude.” Mulder’s fairly proud of himself-he just sounds angry. Which is the way it should be.
Hudson doesn’t look too bothered by the whole thing, though, which absolutely is not the way it should be. He’s got his metal-blue eyes and a fair dark shadow across his face, and he tells Mulder casually, “Her name’s Kim. We met at Auburn, been together ever since then. She’s already got our place all squared away in Oakland. We’re getting married after I get called up. That about cover it, or you wanna know something else?”
Mulder frees one of his hands from behind his back and flaps it around, feeling stupid with dry eyes and his throat hurting. “How about what the fuck are you doing with me? That’s something I’d like to fucking know.”
The side of Hudson’s lip pulls up. “You know, you sound more like a kid when you cuss than you do any other time.”
“Fuck you,” Mulder snaps without thinking, and Hudson laughs. Mulder squeezes his hands into fists and presses them against his legs. Hudson keeps sneaking looks at the television, trying to figure out what the Duke brothers are doing now.
“Mark, I haven’t been doing shit with you, don’t you know that? Nothing that happens up here means anything.”
He looks over in time to see Mulder swallowing and blinking fast. Hudson’s expression gets weirdly affectionate. “Aw, kid.” Hudson shakes his head, half-smiling, and gestures at the patch of bed next to him. “C’mon over here and watch how southern boys do it, all right?”
Mulder, feeling about fourteen years old and dumb as a brick, goes over, and they watch the Dukes of Hazzard, photographs and baseball cards sticking out of Tim Hudson’s wallet on the bedside table, Tim Hudson’s shoulder hot against Mark Mulder’s arm.
*
Then Hudson gets called up.
That happens in June, too.
He comes crashing into Mulder’s hotel room, his Vancouver hotel room that he doesn’t have to share with anybody except the maids and the mini-bar guy. Hudson’s got an envelope in his hand with the America West logo on the outside, and Mulder knows right away.
It’s this incredible fast-motion night, Hudson yelling out the news and waving the plane ticket around, and then dragging Mulder out and meeting up with some of the guys, a bar, another bar, a late-night fast food joint, a bunch of goodbyes on sidewalks as cabs wait with their doors open, and then Mulder and Hudson are standing in front of Hudson’s building, his relentlessly small one-bedroom apartment just three flights up, and Hudson says, “You can stay if you want, but you probably shouldn’t.”
So Mulder stays. Ha. Fuck it.
Hudson gets up really early because he didn’t pack last night. He’s living out of a suitcase, though, just like Mulder, so it doesn’t take too long. When the walls are bare and the dresser top cleared off, he crawls back into bed and wakes Mulder up in the best way. Mulder remembers white plaster and the empty drawer hanging like a tongue out of the bedside table, and then his eyes burn with sweat and he lets them fall closed.
The airport shuttle comes, and Hudson pulls his jeans on, a sweatshirt with nothing underneath because all his T-shirts are packed, and leans over Mulder, most of the way asleep and twisting back into Hudson’s hand. Hudson says into his ear, “See you in a couple of months, kid,” and maybe kisses him or bites him or something (Mulder will never be sure which), and then leaves.
Mulder wakes up for good a few hours later. He eats the last of Hudson’s eggs for breakfast, and then just sort of wanders around the apartment for awhile, slowly gathering things that Hudson forgot to pack but that he’ll want when he gets there. He wonders who is taking over Hudson’s lease here-maybe Mulder could move in.
He gets to the ballpark that afternoon and sees the clubhouse manager tearing the strip of thick white tape, with Hudson’s name written in Sharpie, from off the front of Hudson’s locker. Mulder tries not to have that moment immediately become some giant symbolic signpost in his life, but he’s not sure how well he succeeded.
He sees Hudson sitting in the dugout on television that night, because the clubhouse in Vancouver gets the Bay Area sports station that shows A’s games. Some of Mulder’s teammates are there too, and they all hoot and applaud when Hudson is briefly shown, grinning and his hat pushed back, looking so perfectly at home it’s kinda heartbreaking.
*
Mulder continues to not pitch that well and continues to be able to do no wrong in the eyes of the Oakland organization. They talk about him in strangely aesthetic terms. His textbook definition of a pitch delivery. The mechanically pure cut of his slider. His good face, his perfect form, his pretty little pick-off move.
For a little while, he worries that the only reason he went to Triple-A first, do not pass go, do not collect tacky roadside souvenirs from the southwest, the only reason he’s here is because he so utterly looks like he should be. He is the spitting image of a major league pitcher. He’s a baseball card come to life.
They don’t talk about the actual results of his pitching, though, not the slipped grip on his change-up or the tell in how he slots his four-seam that everyone can pick up on after seeing it just a couple of times. They don’t talk about his record or his ERA or the stiffness that’s beginning to set in his back, this very very long year of his life.
Mulder watches Hudson on TV as much as he can, but he feels guilty and furtive about it, even when others are watching too. Hudson is having a rookie year so good it makes a person fear for the future. He was one strikeout away from breaking the record for K’s in a debut, and hey, just to twist the knife, he also picked up his first major league hit that same game, because it was interleague. It’s apparent that Tim Hudson and major league baseball were made for each other, there’s no other way to see it.
Mulder thinks about Hudson’s two and a half seasons in the minors, and wonders if he’s got the strength to get through two more years on his own down here. He doesn’t think so, not if the minors are gonna be like this, this kind of airless and fearful northern city, the walls of his hotel room, and the empty lockers in the clubhouse looking like knocked-out teeth.
Mulder won’t be called up this year, because the A’s are digging hard into second place and it’s not beyond comprehension that they make a run for it, and all the definitively clean sliders Mulder can throw aren’t going to convince Billy Beane that he deserves his shot yet.
After finding out that he won’t get to Oakland until next season at the earliest, Mulder comes down with a really bad cold, a flu even, because he has a fever and everything.
He spends two days in bed, and stumbles into the clubhouse blearily and hopped up on Contac and Robitussin, wearing three sweatshirts and a beanie because autumn has fought its way into British Columbia early, and he doesn’t want to relapse.
Everything looks slightly like a hallucination, and Mulder sees Barry Zito putting his stuff in a locker (not Hudson’s old one, because that shit never happens ‘cept in the movies), looking nervous and exhausted, deep hollows beneath his eyes that are from more than just one night of not sleeping.
Mulder sorta knew Zito was coming. They’ve been hearing about him since way back in the season. Zito started out in Visalia, Class A ball, but he was in Midland by July. They couldn’t catch up with him there, either, and in five months he’s gotten himself to Triple-A, which is five months longer than it took Mulder. Zito’s got the kind of stats that make him real easy to dislike.
Zito’s also younger than him, they’re Irish twins. Mulder didn’t consciously realize that they even allowed people younger than him pitch in Triple-A. All the other guys call him kid, but Mulder never does, because he's, honestly, he's not that fucked up, not yet.
They’ve met probably four, five times in the past, between the Cape League and the draftee ceremonies back at the beginning of the season. Mulder knows that Zito is basically the exact opposite of him, he doesn’t look anywhere near as good as he is.
In the dugout during the game that night, Zito comes over and sits by him and starts talking as if they were just interrupted five minutes ago. Not much is expected of Mulder, just his continued existence within earshot, and Zito is the good kind of scared, adrenalized and alive with it, Mulder can feel it coming out through his skin.
Mulder watches Zito take his bullpen session the day before his start and there is an unbelievable moment when it almost looks like Zito’s a better pitcher than Mulder, a better pitcher than Tim Hudson even, though of course that is impossible.
Mulder keeps an eye on Zito and notices the thumb-sized holes in the knees of his jeans, the chunk missing from his hair like some kid got to him with a pair of blunt-nosed safety scissors, the unexpected certainty in his face when he’s pitching.
Mulder invites Zito back to his hotel room to play video games and stuff one night. They sit on the floor at the foot of the bed and Mulder looks over at Zito with his face tilted up into the blue light, and thinks with relief that at least the season is almost over.
THE END
Spending all my time on the roof these days. The sidewalks and the back booth, the hallway. It's crazy. The Virginia skyline seems like an oxymoron but it's really not. No buildings in DC are allowed to be taller than the Capitol Dome, which is why we keep ourselves close to the ground, a low center of gravity and this city was planned by a French guy, you know. That's why there are traffic cricles everywhere you look, which is of course a military design of Napoleon's, because if all the major roads funnel through a circle, then the circle is the only thing you have to defend.
The statues of guys on horses are all going to the White House. One hoof off the ground means wounded in battle; two means killed. But nobody really pays attention to that rule anymore.
I am not, repeat am not regaining my initial seventeen year's old adoration for this city. Swear to God I'm not. I just know a lot of random facts, kay? And the snow. Well, the snow, sure. It's all still novel to me.
But listen, it's an East Coast winter and the right time to go to rock shows. Bright Eyes rocked so hard I almost had an anuerysm. Oh Conor Oberst. Why must you be so misunderstood and tortured? Why must you look nothing like your voice and be so freakin' hot it knocks Isaac Brock right out of a kid's mind. Ahahaha.
I don't know, man, I'm having a good couple of weeks. Everything's all complicated and busy and I can't really sleep all that well, and I got a cold that wakes me up every morning like a punishment, but things seem to be going all right.
I'm excited about going to Philly tomorrow. We don't even have to rent a car! Free transportation, free place to crash, I might actually save money on this trip. And I'll see three of my best friends from London whom I haven't seen since June. Jeez. The excitement, it really knows no bounds.
I wanna read my book until the sun goes down and it's time to go out for the night. I wanna be tired enough to sleep the night through by the time I crawl into my sleeping bag on the bedroom floor in Fishtown tomorrow. I think I got a good shot at it.
Marco Scutaro hit .335 in Winter Ball this offseason. What does a brother have to do to get a steady job in this game, man.
North
By Candle Beck
Mark Mulder is twenty-one years old when he goes to Canada. He’s got a giant duffle bag with his name and his parents’ address written neatly on the luggage tag, fifteen warm-up T-shirts with Michigan State or MSU printed across the chest, a good slider and a bad curve, and a Chicago White Sox baseball cap from the ‘80s with a lucky silver tack stuck in the brim. He’s set.
When you’re the number two draft pick and you go straight from college to Triple-A (a week ago he moved out of his dorm, a fucking week), shit gets pretty confusing pretty fast.
He gets introduced around even though everybody knows him anyway. He hears the same stupid jokes about the X-Files that he’s been hearing ever since that fucking show came on the air. He carries his teammates’ bags and buys drinks. He lives in a hotel, just because he’s got the money to do it and room service will bring him stuff until two o’clock in the morning. He starts drinking a lot of coffee. Starts taking two Advil every night, and then later, two more.
It does not escape his attention that he’s being watched.
There’s this whole thing about being the great left-handed hope of the Oakland Athletics, who have been little other than godawful for the past half-decade, but Mark Mulder can’t really pitch in Triple-A. Funny fucking joke, man.
*
He meets Tim Hudson on the first day. Which, really, fairly predictable. It’s hard to miss a guy like Hudson. Hudson is distracted, talking to one of the pitching coaches, and when their manager says, “Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and vice-versa,” he glances at Mulder, says, “Meetcha,” and then stops paying attention to him.
Hudson has been in the minors since ’97. When he got drafted, he wasn’t sure if he’d go as a pitcher or an outfielder. Motherfucker hit .396 at Auburn his senior year, a nice little bonus to his 15-2 record that season. It’s almost scary. On top of all that, he also actually graduated.
They become friends, eventually, because it can’t be avoided. Even guys you hate become friends in this game. It’s weird like that.
But Mulder doesn’t hate Hudson, that’s pretty clear. He follows Hudson around for a week or two until he realizes what he’s doing and puts an immediate stop to it. He steals a T-shirt from Hudson’s locker that says ‘Dixie’ on the front in faded blue letters, and wears it sometimes as an undershirt, tight like a second skin over his shoulders and turned inside-out so Hudson won’t see. He learns all about Tim Hudson, and wants to write crib notes on the inside of his wrist, in the dent of his elbow, places where he’ll never get caught.
Sometimes it takes Hudson a moment or two to answer when someone calls him Huddy. As it turns out, he’s been Timmy for his whole life up to two years ago, when he rolled into Class-A South Oregon already all the way grown up. Baseball gives nicknames even to guys that already have nicknames-it’s supposed to be endearing. Mulder squints and tries to imagine calling Hudson Timmy on a regular basis, but he knows he would just sound stupid.
Hudson, interestingly, is not at all self-conscious about his size. As he said to Mulder the second or third night of the season, “Well, you’re not self-conscious about being all freakily tall and scrawny, right?”
The guys rag Hudson a bit, especially when the players’ profiles come out and Hudson is listed at 6’1, it’s all he hears for about a week: “Who’d you sleep with, man, who’d you have to fuck to get that on your page?”
Hudson’s got it under control, though. He just looks back, all calm the way he gets, and says steadily, “I’m not short. I’m compact.”
That starts them off, throwing paper cups at each other, balled-up socks. Someone calls him Tiny Tim like he’s the first guy in history to be that clever, and now Hudson’s not short: “I’m travel-sized.”
Two days later, Hudson’s not short: “I’m space-saving.”
Eventually Mulder feels all right enough about his chances to holler at Tim one night, “You’re not short, you’re an action figure!”
And he’s briefly terrified that no one will laugh, no one will even smile and Hudson will look at him like, what the fuck kid, who told you that you could talk, but Hudson just tips his head back and laughs, and yells, “Yeah! I’m a G.I. Joe, motherfucker, watch out.”
Then everybody’s laughing, and hitting Mulder on the back, and Hudson’s grinning at him, looking like the king of the fucking world.
*
Hudson says to him on the bus one night, sometime when it’s black outside and they’re in line to cross the border, flags everywhere and liquid fluorescent lights, “Think maybe you woulda done better to go through the system, man.”
Mulder yawns into his hand. He’s got an ERA hovering near to five, though it’s barely April and the season still has the cellophane on it, and Tim Hudson is pretty much the only one who can say stuff like that and not be told to shut the fuck up.
“Think so?”
Hudson nods, looking very serious the way he does sometimes. His eyes keep flicking past Mulder to the pale-lit window, red and white rolling across his face.
“You get toughened up. You figure shit out.”
Mulder leans his head against the window, feeling it shiver from the engine, the faint smell of diesel. He makes a little smile at his up-close reflection. He looks good in car windows, train windows, bus windows. He always has.
“Toughened up, huh.”
Hudson is a pallid smear in the window, projected on a billboard, buzzed rust-brown hair and long neck. He says to Mulder with his voice going low like when he’s telling a joke, “I know you didn’t learn everything you need to at Michigan fucking State.”
As if Auburn is some hotbed of enlightenment. It’s in Alabama, for fuck’s sake. But Mulder lets Hudson say pretty much whatever he wants, which is strange and new. He just likes the accent. It’s fun to hear, like a cartoon walking into his live-action movie.
“Yeah, yeah, you think you’re all smart, what else do I need to know?”
Hudson doesn’t answer and Mulder tries to meet his eyes in the window, but it’s too blurred, it’s like trying to find the blue part of a cloud. He rolls his head so he can look around, and Hudson’s eyes are fixed on Mulder’s mouth.
Mulder blinks, and swallows, clears his throat uncomfortably. Hudson looks up, and smiles at him all slow and sharp.
“M’sure we can think of something,” and Hudson’s voice is even lower now, like a stereo speaker vibration.
Mulder thinks that it must be Canada, making people act all crazy and Canadian, but of course, by that time they’re past the border guards, back in their own violent country again.
*
So that’s when it does become an issue, momentarily, a couple of weeks later. Either Mulder’s height or Hudson’s lack thereof, something. Because Mulder gets down on his knees and his head still comes up to Hudson’s shirt pocket.
He says, “Oh, um,” eyeing Hudson’s shirt buttons and his hands on Hudson’s sides, hooked in his belt.
One of Hudson’s hands is on the back of his neck, his thumb curled around to Mulder’s throat, his splitter hand, and Mulder can feel the pressure increase on his pulse as Hudson tells him, “I fear for your neck, man.”
Mulder nods, and looks up. “This might go easier if you were down here.”
Mulder’s life has changed a lot in the past month.
He can’t pitch but he can do everything else. He can be whatever they need him to be, charming and confident even though he hasn’t yet won a game. They keep watching, keep nodding approvingly. They expect him to be ready for the majors early next season, maybe in September if the A’s aren’t in the race. But Michigan’s not even a very good college team, and it’s not really the same game, at this level.
He can even be worth Tim Hudson, for this first half season. When you’re a rookie, you’re allowed to make a couple of mistakes.
So he lets Hudson pull him into the bathroom at the bar, lets Hudson leave his room door unlocked when they’re on the road. Hudson gets a single because this is his third minor league season. It’s Mulder’s second month of playing baseball for a living.
The first time, Hudson said, “I got an idea,” and put his hand on Mulder’s leg. They were just watching television, it wasn’t even that big of a deal. Hudson moved closer and Mulder blinked at him.
Hudson was doing things to his throat and ear, his hand sliding up real slow like they had the rest of their lives, and Mulder sort of gasped, “You’re kidding me. Tim Hudson, my god.”
And Hudson grinned against his cheekbone, licked the corner of Mulder’s lip, and said, “Well, fuck, ain’t it always the last one you suspect.”
All right. So.
He’s sleeping with Tim Hudson. He’s here in Canada. It’s all really fucking odd.
Hudson focuses on the most unconsidered parts of Mulder. He draws a line with his teeth along every one of Mulder’s ribs, which still stand out in sharp relief like window blinds. He drags his thumbs up and into the hollows of Mulder’s hips, under the curve of bone where there’s a pressure point painful enough to make Mulder’s vision fuzz a bit, but he never tells Hudson to lay off. It never even occurs to Mulder to tell Hudson to lay off.
But, yeah. The bone-skin thing, the scrawny thing, the thing where Mulder’s 6’6 and weighs one-ninety soaking wet, Hudson seems to be quite a fan. Once, he says to Mulder, “Your arms, man,” sounding surprised, curling his fingers around the bend of Mulder’s elbow. Mulder doesn’t see what’s so special. They’re just his arms, like always, long and unhinged and flaring out into his hands.
It’s a lot of stuff like that, where Hudson will say something and Mulder won’t really understand. Hudson whistles tunelessly in the bathroom and yells to Mulder that maybe they should take on the finding-good-Mexican-food-in-Canada mission again, and Mulder has not yet lived in California, nor west of Chicago, so he doesn’t get what’s wrong with the Canadian Mexican food.
But he calls back his assent, sure whatever you want dude, and Hudson comes out of the bathroom, wiping the last of the shaving cream off his face and neck and leaving the towel around his neck. Hudson’s not wearing a shirt and there must be a draft in the bathroom because he’s got a scatter of goosebumps on his stomach and arms. Mulder watches him from the bed, biting his tongue.
Hudson makes a slanted grin. “Don’t give me that kinda opening, kid,” and Mulder would ask what the hell are you talking about and don’t call me kid, but Hudson’s tossing the towel onto the dresser and coming back to him and Mulder will be able to taste the green-chemical sting of shaving cream all night.
It’s not something he ever thought would happen.
But April rolls over into May, the season picking up steam and everything feels so much bigger, baseball itself has become this huge thing all around him, it’s every part of his day.
Hudson’s pitching exceptionally, as he has a tendency to do, and he’s in a good mood most of the time, he answers all of Mulder’s questions and shows him the right way to do stuff. No, the Comfort Inn does not have room service, no, you don’t have to haul the bags if the elevator’s broken, get a bellboy before you hurt yourself.
Hudson asks him at one point if he’s ever done this before. Mulder gets all offended, certain that his technique has been disrespected, and pushes Hudson flat on the bed for awhile. When Hudson isn’t breathing so good, Mulder says, “You calling me an amateur?”
Hudson laughs and there’s a whistle in the middle of it.
Mulder has done this before. Well. Not all of it. He’s never done the thing where you see the guy every single day, where you live down the hall from him half the time. He’s never done the thing where he knows the guy’s shoe size and what he likes to eat for breakfast.
He’s done the thing where him and his freshman year roommate didn’t get along at all, spent two months sniping and bitching at each other before the roommate finally put in for a room change, and the night before he moved out, the tension hit a perfect pitch and the roommate ended up in Mulder’s cramped twin bed, kissing him hard with teeth and pulling at Mulder’s pajama pants.
He’s also done the thing where he fucked around with another boy when he was in the Cape League, not even a player but a town kid, three years older than Mulder, who used to hang around the field and taught Mulder how to give a blowjob in the backseat of his car, of all the godforsaken places.
That’s the sum total of his non-straight experience, though, so he’s hardly an expert. But he can fake that, too, most times. He watches Hudson for his cues, he does all right.
He imagines that Hudson has been doing this ever since his own rookie year, knows it back and forth. He imagines that Hudson has been doing this since college, since high school, that Hudson has always had this figured out, always been the last suspected.
And Mulder has always been a quick learner. There’s some moment when Mulder catches Hudson’s elbow as he’s walking down the hotel hallway, pulls him into the little vending alcove, and sees Hudson smiling when his back hits the wall, sees Hudson licking his lips and starting to lift his head up. There’s some moment when Mulder is getting better at everything, and he’s ready to believe that this is his life now.
*
Tim Hudson has a fiancée waiting for him in California.
It kinda surprises Mulder. To say the least. He finds out by accident. They’re at some diner and Hudson is in the next booth over, just behind Mulder’s head. Hudson’s voice, at that dim frequency, locates a current all its own in Mulder’s mind, so Mulder can hear him through the din and the clank of the kitchen:
“Hell, man, I’m marrying a lawyer, I don’t think I need your guy’s number.”
Mulder thinks about it all through the mozzarella sticks and buffalo wings. He keeps trying to work it around to a place where it will have been a joke, find the context that makes it not what it sounds like.
But, well, he doesn’t have a whole lot of luck. Or any, really. Hudson wasn’t joking around. Which means that it’s true. Which doesn’t make a tremendous amount of sense.
Mulder goes to Hudson’s hotel room that night. It’s a few days into June, but still real early, still a bunch of time left.
Mulder leans back against the door, his hands behind him. Hudson grunted when he came in, but that’s been the only acknowledgement. Hudson is very involved in the Dukes of Hazzard rerun on the bad-static TV.
“So, I need some legal advice.” Hudson glances at him, releasing a huffing sound that’s half whatever and half shut the hell up.
Mulder makes a smile that’s all teeth. “Heard you were the one to talk to about that shit. You or your girlfriend, anyway.”
Hudson stares at the television for a minute longer, then sighs and mutes it. He sits back against the headboard and lifts his eyebrows at Mulder. “Yeah?”
It seems pretty self-fucking-evident to Mulder, but Hudson has always liked playing dumb. He likes being underestimated. Mulder angles his chin up.
“You mighta fuckin’ mentioned.”
Hudson shrugs. “It never came up,” he says blandly.
“It’s come up now, dude.” Mulder’s fairly proud of himself-he just sounds angry. Which is the way it should be.
Hudson doesn’t look too bothered by the whole thing, though, which absolutely is not the way it should be. He’s got his metal-blue eyes and a fair dark shadow across his face, and he tells Mulder casually, “Her name’s Kim. We met at Auburn, been together ever since then. She’s already got our place all squared away in Oakland. We’re getting married after I get called up. That about cover it, or you wanna know something else?”
Mulder frees one of his hands from behind his back and flaps it around, feeling stupid with dry eyes and his throat hurting. “How about what the fuck are you doing with me? That’s something I’d like to fucking know.”
The side of Hudson’s lip pulls up. “You know, you sound more like a kid when you cuss than you do any other time.”
“Fuck you,” Mulder snaps without thinking, and Hudson laughs. Mulder squeezes his hands into fists and presses them against his legs. Hudson keeps sneaking looks at the television, trying to figure out what the Duke brothers are doing now.
“Mark, I haven’t been doing shit with you, don’t you know that? Nothing that happens up here means anything.”
He looks over in time to see Mulder swallowing and blinking fast. Hudson’s expression gets weirdly affectionate. “Aw, kid.” Hudson shakes his head, half-smiling, and gestures at the patch of bed next to him. “C’mon over here and watch how southern boys do it, all right?”
Mulder, feeling about fourteen years old and dumb as a brick, goes over, and they watch the Dukes of Hazzard, photographs and baseball cards sticking out of Tim Hudson’s wallet on the bedside table, Tim Hudson’s shoulder hot against Mark Mulder’s arm.
*
Then Hudson gets called up.
That happens in June, too.
He comes crashing into Mulder’s hotel room, his Vancouver hotel room that he doesn’t have to share with anybody except the maids and the mini-bar guy. Hudson’s got an envelope in his hand with the America West logo on the outside, and Mulder knows right away.
It’s this incredible fast-motion night, Hudson yelling out the news and waving the plane ticket around, and then dragging Mulder out and meeting up with some of the guys, a bar, another bar, a late-night fast food joint, a bunch of goodbyes on sidewalks as cabs wait with their doors open, and then Mulder and Hudson are standing in front of Hudson’s building, his relentlessly small one-bedroom apartment just three flights up, and Hudson says, “You can stay if you want, but you probably shouldn’t.”
So Mulder stays. Ha. Fuck it.
Hudson gets up really early because he didn’t pack last night. He’s living out of a suitcase, though, just like Mulder, so it doesn’t take too long. When the walls are bare and the dresser top cleared off, he crawls back into bed and wakes Mulder up in the best way. Mulder remembers white plaster and the empty drawer hanging like a tongue out of the bedside table, and then his eyes burn with sweat and he lets them fall closed.
The airport shuttle comes, and Hudson pulls his jeans on, a sweatshirt with nothing underneath because all his T-shirts are packed, and leans over Mulder, most of the way asleep and twisting back into Hudson’s hand. Hudson says into his ear, “See you in a couple of months, kid,” and maybe kisses him or bites him or something (Mulder will never be sure which), and then leaves.
Mulder wakes up for good a few hours later. He eats the last of Hudson’s eggs for breakfast, and then just sort of wanders around the apartment for awhile, slowly gathering things that Hudson forgot to pack but that he’ll want when he gets there. He wonders who is taking over Hudson’s lease here-maybe Mulder could move in.
He gets to the ballpark that afternoon and sees the clubhouse manager tearing the strip of thick white tape, with Hudson’s name written in Sharpie, from off the front of Hudson’s locker. Mulder tries not to have that moment immediately become some giant symbolic signpost in his life, but he’s not sure how well he succeeded.
He sees Hudson sitting in the dugout on television that night, because the clubhouse in Vancouver gets the Bay Area sports station that shows A’s games. Some of Mulder’s teammates are there too, and they all hoot and applaud when Hudson is briefly shown, grinning and his hat pushed back, looking so perfectly at home it’s kinda heartbreaking.
*
Mulder continues to not pitch that well and continues to be able to do no wrong in the eyes of the Oakland organization. They talk about him in strangely aesthetic terms. His textbook definition of a pitch delivery. The mechanically pure cut of his slider. His good face, his perfect form, his pretty little pick-off move.
For a little while, he worries that the only reason he went to Triple-A first, do not pass go, do not collect tacky roadside souvenirs from the southwest, the only reason he’s here is because he so utterly looks like he should be. He is the spitting image of a major league pitcher. He’s a baseball card come to life.
They don’t talk about the actual results of his pitching, though, not the slipped grip on his change-up or the tell in how he slots his four-seam that everyone can pick up on after seeing it just a couple of times. They don’t talk about his record or his ERA or the stiffness that’s beginning to set in his back, this very very long year of his life.
Mulder watches Hudson on TV as much as he can, but he feels guilty and furtive about it, even when others are watching too. Hudson is having a rookie year so good it makes a person fear for the future. He was one strikeout away from breaking the record for K’s in a debut, and hey, just to twist the knife, he also picked up his first major league hit that same game, because it was interleague. It’s apparent that Tim Hudson and major league baseball were made for each other, there’s no other way to see it.
Mulder thinks about Hudson’s two and a half seasons in the minors, and wonders if he’s got the strength to get through two more years on his own down here. He doesn’t think so, not if the minors are gonna be like this, this kind of airless and fearful northern city, the walls of his hotel room, and the empty lockers in the clubhouse looking like knocked-out teeth.
Mulder won’t be called up this year, because the A’s are digging hard into second place and it’s not beyond comprehension that they make a run for it, and all the definitively clean sliders Mulder can throw aren’t going to convince Billy Beane that he deserves his shot yet.
After finding out that he won’t get to Oakland until next season at the earliest, Mulder comes down with a really bad cold, a flu even, because he has a fever and everything.
He spends two days in bed, and stumbles into the clubhouse blearily and hopped up on Contac and Robitussin, wearing three sweatshirts and a beanie because autumn has fought its way into British Columbia early, and he doesn’t want to relapse.
Everything looks slightly like a hallucination, and Mulder sees Barry Zito putting his stuff in a locker (not Hudson’s old one, because that shit never happens ‘cept in the movies), looking nervous and exhausted, deep hollows beneath his eyes that are from more than just one night of not sleeping.
Mulder sorta knew Zito was coming. They’ve been hearing about him since way back in the season. Zito started out in Visalia, Class A ball, but he was in Midland by July. They couldn’t catch up with him there, either, and in five months he’s gotten himself to Triple-A, which is five months longer than it took Mulder. Zito’s got the kind of stats that make him real easy to dislike.
Zito’s also younger than him, they’re Irish twins. Mulder didn’t consciously realize that they even allowed people younger than him pitch in Triple-A. All the other guys call him kid, but Mulder never does, because he's, honestly, he's not that fucked up, not yet.
They’ve met probably four, five times in the past, between the Cape League and the draftee ceremonies back at the beginning of the season. Mulder knows that Zito is basically the exact opposite of him, he doesn’t look anywhere near as good as he is.
In the dugout during the game that night, Zito comes over and sits by him and starts talking as if they were just interrupted five minutes ago. Not much is expected of Mulder, just his continued existence within earshot, and Zito is the good kind of scared, adrenalized and alive with it, Mulder can feel it coming out through his skin.
Mulder watches Zito take his bullpen session the day before his start and there is an unbelievable moment when it almost looks like Zito’s a better pitcher than Mulder, a better pitcher than Tim Hudson even, though of course that is impossible.
Mulder keeps an eye on Zito and notices the thumb-sized holes in the knees of his jeans, the chunk missing from his hair like some kid got to him with a pair of blunt-nosed safety scissors, the unexpected certainty in his face when he’s pitching.
Mulder invites Zito back to his hotel room to play video games and stuff one night. They sit on the floor at the foot of the bed and Mulder looks over at Zito with his face tilted up into the blue light, and thinks with relief that at least the season is almost over.
THE END