Dirty Rice: A Season in the Evangeline League

By Gerald Duff

In the midst of the Great Depression, minor league baseball thrives in small-town South Louisiana, where the Evangeline League, named in honor of Longfellow's heroine, draws hundreds to dirt fields and grandstands in places like Jeanerette, Abbeville, and Opelousas. In 1935 Gemar Batiste, a talented young pitcher from Texas, is recruited to try out

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press
• Release date: Feb 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781935754374

Gerald Duff

GERALD DUFF is a native of the Texas Gulf Coast, and has taught literature and writing at Vanderbilt University, Kenyon College, and Johns Hopkins University. The title story of Fire Ants won the Cohen Prize from Ploughshares Magazine, was cited in Best American Short Stories, and republished in The Editors’ Choice: New American Stories. His novels have been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Prize, an Edgar Allan Poe Award, an International eBook Award, and a Texas Institute of Letters Award. He has published two collections of poetry, A Ceremony of Light and Calling Collect, and six novels, including Indian Giver, That’s All Right, Mama: The Unauthorized Life of Elvis’s Twin, Memphis Ribs, and Coasters and Fire Ants from NewSouth Books.

Book preview

Dirty Rice

Praise for Gerald Duff’s Previous Books

Ironic and funny, with a finale that is as sad as it is hilarious, Indian Giver is a fine addition to the long shelf of coming-of-age novels.

– Christian Science Monitor

With his first novel, Duff creates an American Indian Catcher in the Rye. . . . Written with humor and irony, Indian Giver is a thought-provoking novel.

– Library Journal

Duff’s first novel [Indian Giver] is a rewarding debut.

– Publishers Weekly

Duff’s darkly witty novel That’s All Right, Mama diddles the language with the same rocking abandon as Elvis thrusting his pelvis. The tale is such a hunka, hunka burning hoot.

– Entertainment Weekly

A wildly funny, dead-on satire of the whole Presley phenomenon . . . a must for anyone who finds humor and absurdity in the Presley legacy . . . Gerald Duff has an unerring ear for Memphis dialect, and the book is worth reading for the dialogue alone.

– Washington Post

Fire Ants is a sterling example of the gifts the short story holds. Calling a short story writer a Southern Writer inevitably conjures up images of giants like Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty. Duff’s Fire Ants is a fine addition to the genre, and readers from North and South alike will find much to engage them in this stimulating collection.

– BookPage

Duff writes with such passion about his native land—the Texas Gulf Coast—along with other cities such as Memphis and Baltimore. These may be the only fire ants you’ll ever love.

– Southern Living

Dirty Rice

For the Alligator Point Fighting Mullets infielders Cliff, Dan, Jim, Roy, and Vereen and our manager Bobby.

And in memory of my uncle, Roderick Hookey Irwin, RHP for the Rayne Rice Birds, who led the Evangeline League in 1934 with 21 wins against 9 losses.

Where are the departed?

Men whose lives glided on like rivers

Darkened by shadows of earth . . .

Reflecting an image of heaven.

Evangeline

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Dirty rice is a spicy Cajun dish compounded from the king of grains and the rough-chopped innards of beast and fowl.

It is best eaten hot, eyes closed, no questions asked.

What to Eat in Louisiana

Cliff Probst

1935 Evangeline League Rayne Rice Birds Roster

Preface

by Stewart Dipple

on special assignment for the Great American Pastime Foundation

I first met Gemar Batiste when I got the assignment to write a piece on the Evangeline League, a class D baseball organization that had its heyday in the 1930s. The teams were located in Louisiana, in small towns like Alexandria, Crowley, Jeanerette, Rayne, Lafayette, and the like. I figured I’d play up the local color and see if I could hunt down and interview a couple of old boys who’d played a season or two in the league.

The Louisiana connection meant Cajuns, alligators, gumbo, hurricanes, bad government, bayous, gambling, and corruption, and I figured if I could find one or two old fellows who played in the league, I might be able to punch up the story and give it legs. After studying accounts of Evangeline League games and box scores in newspapers of the day, I came up with one name in particular, Gemar Batiste, listed at times as a pitcher and as an outfielder. I discovered him still around in his nineties, living in a retirement home in Annette, Texas. His ethnicity is called Native American today, but he would have been just an Indian back in the 1930s. I managed to get him to talk to me on record at length, and what he had to say follows. Aside from his stats as a player, I can’t vouch for most of his story.

He was a little hard to deal with, but once he got started, he had a lot to say about his time in the Evangeline League and baseball the way it was played then. He had some off-the-wall notions about the origins of the game and the part Native Americans played in inventing it, he was committed to expressing things in terms of folklore and stories about animals, and he didn’t care a bit about his audience. He was colorful and opinionated, though, and he had a lot to say about playing for the Rayne Rice Birds in the Evangeline League, now dead and gone. To illustrate what I had to deal with, I’ll quote something he said to me when I asked how a batter ought to conduct himself when he comes to the plate. I think it shows what I faced in trying to hold Gemar Batiste to the point, that being his experiences as a Native American baseball player in Louisiana during the Great American Depression between Black Tuesday of 1929 and the Second World War. He would not stay focused on the subject of minority presence in the Evangeline League, and he never was able to see himself as a representative of any kind of larger idea. Gemar Batiste would not listen to a reasoned argument. Here’s his response to my simple question about a man stepping up to the plate. You be the judge.

That’s an easy thing, coming to bat. You got to be ready, up on your toes. But you got to lay back and wait. You got to feel like your nerves is shot, but you got to be as easy in your mind as if you’re about to go to sleep at night after a hard day’s work. You got to hold the bat tight, but you got to let your fingers be real light on the handle. You got to want to make that pitcher pay for trying to get that ball by you, but you got to be like you don’t care a damn if he strikes you out. You got to expect the best fastball he can throw, but you got to be ready for the knuckler. You got to watch the ball so good when he lets it loose that you can see every thread on the seam, but you got to close your real eyes and see the ball with the ones behind your lids when the real ones are shut. Remember that, and act like that, and you’ll be able to make that trip to the next safe place every time you’re up.

1

baseball

When I first heard about the Evangeline League, there wasn’t no easy way for anybody outside the Indian reservation to get word to a one of us. The U.S. Mail was delivered to the agent’s office in the Village most days, all right, at least it was when enough of it stacked up in the post office in the county seat in Annette. And there was only one phone on the reservation, and it belonged to the Indian Agent.

So I didn’t learn about the Evangeline Baseball League in Louisiana by telephone for sure, and not by a letter with my name Gemar Batiste and the name of the Alabama-Coushatta Reservation of Texas on it as the address.

I was out behind the house where I lived with my father and mother and my brothers and sisters. I wasn’t old enough yet to live anywhere else, according to the United States government, nor was I married. Whenever one of us did get married to another one of us, the government put us on the list to move into a house of our own just as soon as they got one built. That might take a while, though, and that was before that Depression happened to the white folks and made them cut back on what money and old clothes and canned goods and used lumber and such-like they were able to send to the Alabamas and Coushattas.

I was about eighteen or nineteen at the time, and I sure wasn’t studying about getting hooked up for good with some girl and start waiting for a different house to move into. What I was doing that morning was throwing rocks up and knocking them off into the woods behind my father’s house, and I had just got all of one and sent it over the tree line of loblolly pines behind my father’s place. That counted in my game as a home run, and it cleared the bases of two runners I had already put on with singles, one man on third because I figured he had taken the extra base when I sent the line drive into the ditch just in the front of the tree line, and that had allowed him to go into third standing up.

The bat I was using was a good one, one I had made from a piece of hardwood. I’d wanted it to be ash, but I’d had to settle for oak. I had spent a lot of time on it, first with the axe, then knife, and finally by talking Felder Stump Water into letting me borrow that plane he used to make little bitty tomahawks to sell on Saturdays to folks in Annette.

But the bat was one of the best I’d ever made. It had good heft and balance, it was tough wood so it didn’t run much risk of splitting or shattering when I used it on creek bed rocks as close to the size of baseballs as I could find, and it was fairly new. It was still pretty smooth to the touch. It wasn’t all dented and beat up from my hitting rocks with it, like all of them finally turned out being.

I was feeling good after that homer. I shook my head back and forth, and thought I would sing out loud a little song I had made up about playing baseball all by myself. I looked around first to be sure none of my brothers and sisters were close enough to hear me sing it, and that’s when I saw that an automobile was coming down the dirt road that ran by our house, real slow like the driver was looking for somebody or some place in particular.

Everybody else in the house had heard it, too, and they were coming out to watch it go by, wonder who was in it and where they were going, how old the car was, who it belonged to, all them questions we asked when we’d see a car on the road. My brother Polk was the first one out of the door, and he came running up to stand beside me as the automobile moved real slow on that dirt road, the driver straddling the ruts left when the last big rain had come and softened that clay up.

The make of that car there is a Diana, Polk told me. See that naked silver lady with the bow and arrow riding on the front of the hood. That’s her, Diana. Watching cars go by on the Nation’s roads and the big highway that ran by it and knowing what each of them was by name and year was what Polk was most interested in. Today people would call giving that kind of full attention to something a hobby.

It was a lot more to Polk than what a hobby would be, though, knowing and understanding automobiles. It went way beyond that for him. It was serious to him to be able to know what each and every automobile was, where it came from, and what made it different from other ones. He was two brothers back from me in age, and I didn’t have any problem in listening to what he could tell when he would spot an automobile. He could talk to me as much as he wanted to about that, and I would let him.

I didn’t try to put away in my head the kinds of distinctions about automobiles that paralyzed Polk each and every time he saw one. Different people got different things bothering them, cluttering up their minds, filling their attention, making the time pass for them. Let them, I always figured. There’d come a time when it was their turn to listen to what I wanted to talk about, and so I’d build up a debt they owed me.

It’s a black car, I said to Polk, motioning for him to stand back so I could throw up another rock and see if I couldn’t keep the rally going in that inning I was working on. Some people think if you get way ahead in runs in a game early on, that you can relax and let the others just see if they can catch up with you. That’s a wrong way of thinking. I have seen that habit of mind too many times lead to you letting up and not putting the game away.

Think about it this way. Every run you score makes the other team have to score one more than that for them to beat you. It’s like two runs, that one run is, that they got to make up. If they match you run by run, you’re still going to win, if you got that one run lead. That’s why you can’t let up, and that’s why you got to keep every rally going as long as you can. You have got to stretch yourself every time, or you’re as foolish as a jay bird strutting around, trying to act like a crow.

Almost every car is black, Polk said. That ain’t nothing to say. The Diana was made in St. Louis, Missouri, and it’s one of the biggest and best ones there is. It ain’t going to be around no more, though.

Why not, little brother? That car looks to be in good shape. I don’t see no rust on it. Look how pretty and bright that paint is.

I don’t mean that car there. I’m talking about the company that made them. It’s out of business, the Moon Motor Company is.

What’s that mean, little man? I asked him. You’re not making sense this morning.

Wasn’t enough people wanted something as good as a Diana. They want something cheap. That was the problem for the company making that brand of automobile. It was too good to last.

Don’t worry your head none about it. You ain’t ever going to have a car to ride in.

Yes, I am, Polk said. Look. He’s pulling off the road and is fixing to stop.

Do you suppose he’s lost? Took a wrong turn off the highway?

The Diana automobile had stopped, and the driver turned off the engine. All you could hear was metal ticking in the sun. The door opened, and a man got out and started pulling and tugging at his clothes where they were binding him.

Hidy, the man said and walked around the front of the car, stopping beside the fender closest to us. Can I come in your yard?

I remember he was pretty short and a little fat, and he was wearing shoes like you would see on the white men going in and out of the courthouse in Annette on a weekday. Yessir, Polk said. You can step up into the yard. Can’t he, Gemar?

I nodded and the driver came up to us, sticking out his hand like the white man will do for you to shake it. Polk was glad to do that, but I just kept holding my oak bat.

Did he just call you Gemar? the white man said, pulling his hand back like he hadn’t offered it to me.

I nodded, and Polk spoke up. He’s my brother, Gemar, and I’m Polk Batiste. Our old man’s of the River Otter Clan, so that’s what we are. I admire that car you’re driving. Gemar, he don’t care nothing about automobiles. All he wants to do is think about baseball.

I’m in the right place, then, the white man said, taking his hat off and looking inside it like he had lost something.

You say your name is Polk? the man said to my little brother. Well, my name is Leonard Piquet, and I was born and raised in Louisiana. Do you know where that is?

Yeah, Polk said. That’s where the Coushattas first come from. Nobody makes no cars in that state.

I believe you’re right about that, Polk. Would you like to go sit in that Diana, take a look at the gauges and the gearshift? Put your foot on the clutch and brake?

Polk didn’t answer, just turned and trotted toward the shiny black car with a statue of a woman on the hood of it. Mr. Piquet and I watched Polk open the door to the car and get ready to get in by knocking his hand on the bottom of his feet to get the dirt off.

He’s a careful young man, Mr. Piquet said. Look at that. Would you believe it?

Polk studies on automobiles all the time, I said. He’s respectful.

That’s the best word for it, Gemar. You have nailed it, I do believe.

We both watched Polk ease into the automobile, and Leonard Piquet held out his hand toward me again. This time he was pointing at my bat, though.

You made that, didn’t you? Real pretty work. But it’s near as pretty as what you did in Diboll last week. And in Corrigan the week before. And Leggett and Holly Springs.

You go to baseball games? I said, moving my bat from my left to my right hand, so Mr. Piquet would know not to ask to hold it. Why?

I do like baseball. Like to watch it played, but I really go to all these games the lumber companies run because of business reasons. Up in Missouri and Illinois, I go to the games the mining companies put on. Wherever there’s an industrial league, I will find some business to transact. Or at least I’ll try to.

Do you buy and sell bats? I said.

No, I’m not in the equipment end of things. Identifying personnel, that’s what I try to do. Not full-time, of course. It’s just a sideline with me. I represent Brown Shoes in St. Louis full-time, but I like to keep my hand in other possibilities that come up now and then. A man has got to be open to new opportunities in this day and age. Let me ask you something. How old are you?

Pretty old, I said to this stranger, asking me a question nobody in the Nation would have answered.

Are you old enough to leave home?

If I wanted to leave home, sure I am. Are you looking for somebody to do some work for you?

No, I’m not in a position to offer employment to anybody. But what I can offer is a chance for you to try out to get hired to play on a baseball team. Are you interested?

Maybe, I said. Where is this team? I never heard of a company team paying people to play.

It ain’t a company team. It’s a professional team. Minor league, of course, but it’s a Chicago White Sox farm team, and it’s in Louisiana. Have you ever heard of the Evangeline League?

No. What does it mean?

It means Class D, and it means if you can get yourself to Rayne, Louisiana, by two weeks from now, they’d like to give you a look-see. Dutch Bernson is the man you’ll want to talk to when you get there.

Is it his team?

He doesn’t own the Rayne Rice Birds, no. You don’t have to worry about that, though, who’s got the money and the legal title and all that business end of things. Dutch is the manager. He’s the man. You ever had a coach before? Because that’s what a manager is like.

I’ve had people talk to me about playing the game, I said. I heard them talking.

Tell me you’ll show and I’ll send a telegram to Dutch to be expecting you. I can’t help you on expenses now, you understand. Money’s tight these days. Everything is pay as you go. It’ll be up to you to get there.

I told him I would, and let him shake my hand. I didn’t offer to let him handle my bat. I figured it had a few more hits left in it, and I didn’t want to risk somebody else touching it and maybe siphoning off some of what was still there. You’ve got to maintain respect for your tools, no matter what you’re asking them to do. That bat didn’t know it was just rocks it was driving off into the woods. It had a job to do, whoever was using it, and it’s not right to steal any of the hits that might be still in it.

Mr. Leonard Piquet talked a little bit more that morning, but I didn’t pay much attention to what he was saying, just nodding at him when he gave a sign he wanted something back from me. After a while he ran out of things to say, gave me a piece of paper he wrote that manager’s name on, and the name of the town where the Rice Birds baseball team played its home games, and ended up by saying he hoped he’d be seeing my name in the box scores of the Louisiana newspapers not too long from now.

What will you go by? he asked me, right before he had to get Polk to climb out from behind the wheel of that car.

Go by? I said to Mr. Piquet. What you mean go by?

What name are you going to use, if you get to play in the Evangeline League? That’s what I mean. Lots of players, old and young, have a good reason or two to rename themselves before they get put up on a roster.

I’ll use Gemar Batiste, I said. That’s the only name I got.

I was lying. I had another name, one that I got when I went through what it takes to become a man in the Alabama-Coushatta Nation, back when I came to be twelve years old. That name came to me in a dream, like it’s supposed to when you take that journey at that age into the Big Thicket and spend them days not eating and not closing your eyes to sleep and keeping that chunk of root under your tongue. You don’t come back from where you are in the Big Thicket to the circle of old men waiting at the center of the Nation until you dream your name with your eyes wide open. You have your real name, then, and nobody knows it but you. If you ever give it away, you never will be who you are and who you’re supposed to be.

I expect that’ll be just fine, using Gemar Batiste as your name, Mr. Piquet said as he got into his car to leave. You probably hadn’t got a reason yet to use an assumed one. And if you make it to the Rayne Rice Birds and do all right, people will call you what they want to, anyway.

They’ll call me by my name, I said. That’s the one I answer to.

Yeah, OK, Gemar, he said and laughed a little bit. Remember, you got two weeks to get there for the try-outs.

Polk and I watched until Leonard Piquet got that big black car turned around and pointed in the direction he had come from.

I tell you one thing, Polk said. That is a fine automobile. And you know what I did when I walked around it?

No, what?

I spit in my hand and rubbed it on that statue of Diana while y’all were talking and not looking at me. That’s what.

Why did you do something nasty like that? I said and picked up a rock to get ready to tend to the rest of the inning I’d been working on. What good did that do you?

Everywhere that car goes now, I’m right along with it. Part of me’s going to always be traveling with that machine no matter where it goes. I can think about that and know it’s true.

You’re crazy, I told my little brother. None of that means anything. None of it makes any sense.

He went back in the house then.

• • •

I thought long and hard about whether to take with me that new bat I had made when I got my stuff together to take to Louisiana. It wasn’t that dented up, and it felt good and right in my hands, but it would be hard to carry on the roads I’d have to travel, so I decided to leave it. They’ll have a bat for me to use there, I told myself, a brand new one. I don’t need an old homemade bat, so I’ll stick it up under the house where my brothers can’t find it.

All I’d be carrying was the tow sack and a paper bag that my mother had put some biscuits in, along with a couple of pieces of salt pork she had fried up for me. In my pocket, I had two dollars in change that Polk had made me take, money he had saved up from selling blackberries he’d picked. I didn’t want to take it, since I had a little bit of money of my own. I forget how much, but it couldn’t have been over three or four dollars, but if I didn’t let Polk give me his money, he’d be hurt. So I took it.

McKinley Short Eyes lived at a little place by himself between my father’s house and the big highway. All of the family of Bronson Batiste of the River Otter Clan were outside the house when I got ready to take off walking toward wherever I was going, all of them but the littlest one, my baby sister, Bluebonnet, who was inside taking a nap.

My family, I said, saying the proper words that we used back in those days to say good-bye. I will leave now, but I will hold you inside, and take you with me.

You are not leaving us, my old man said. We go with you wherever your journey might end.

That was the prescribed way to say it. Now my father could say a few practical things to the son about to leave home. He figured I’d be back soon, anyway. Where could you go that would let you feel like you could stay there? The reservation was always behind you, pulling at you and hanging on.

Now, Gemar, my father began, when you go to this baseball place where they’ll call you a rice bird, you have to understand a couple of things.

What, my father? I said.

These white eyes in Louisiana can’t be much different from the ones here in Texas outside the Nation. They’ll talk a lot, and they’ll expect you to look like you’re listening to what they’re saying. But they don’t care if you do or not. They’re just filling the air up with sound. You understand that?

I nodded, and he went on. Let them tell you how to do the baseball. Don’t argue with them with words from your mouth. If you need to disagree because what they tell you is wrong, do it with your tools. They’ll understand that.

I will depend on what I can do with my hands.

One last thing, then, my father said. They say they will give you money to work at what you think is play, what you like to do anyhow. I cannot believe they will do that, but you do. If they do give you money, don’t spend none of it on whiskey. You know what I’m talking about.

I told him I’d stay away from that, and in a little time I was walking away, down the dirt road that ran in front of the house of Bronson Batiste of the River Otter Clan toward McKinley Short Eyes’ place. I let Polk carry my tow sack as I had crawled up under the house and pulled out my good bat to bring along to Rayne, Louisiana.

I wasn’t surprised to see that McKinley Short Eyes was out in front of his house, sitting on the sawed-off stump of a live oak tree. He had his pipe stuck in his mouth, and a big cloud of smoke he had just blown out was hanging in front of his face. I couldn’t see the old man’s eyes for the smoke.

Gemar Batiste, he said, I knew you’d be coming by to see me today before the sun got up high. Who’s that with you?

That’s my brother, the son of my father Bronson Batiste of the River Otter Clan, and his name is Polk. I went on to ask him, How did you know I would be coming to talk to you today, Old Father?

I dreamed it two sleeps ago and then again last night, He took a long draw on his pipe. You were way off somewhere from the Nation, and you were wearing funny shoes. They had blades coming out of the bottoms of them, like knives, and everywhere you walked you left a mark cut in the earth of where you’d been. Anybody could track right where you’d walked. They were doing that and writing it down on paper where you’d been and how many steps you took along the way. You had that stick in your hands, that one you’re carrying right there, and you were having to swing at what they were throwing at you. Do you understand what I’m saying, Gemar Batiste?

Yes, Old Father, I said. I think you had a dream about me playing the baseball.

No, McKinley Short Eyes said, what you just said would be the easy way to talk about my dream. But it would not be right. It’s not just the baseball. That wouldn’t surprise me enough for me to dream about it.

I nodded.

No, it ain’t that easy, Gemar, the old man said. The baseball in my dream is the baseball you play, the way you can throw the ball by the other ones and hit it hard back at them when they try to throw it by you, but that’s not how the way I saw you dressed and carrying that stick works in my dream. I’ll explain it so even this boy beside you will be able to follow what I’m saying. Are you listening, boy?

Yes, Old Father, Polk said.

You know, Gemar Batiste, said McKinley Short Eyes, where this baseball, the playing of it now I’m talking about, came from, don’t you?

I nodded, and he launched into the story of how baseball had first come to the People.

From that Indian from some other nation, the one that showed up where the Alabamas lived before they came to Texas. That place, our first home, was where the state of Alabama is now. The white eyes took the name, and then told us that was all they wanted. We had to leave now, since they had done got the good out of us. But that’s another story. Before we left what they call Alabama now, this stranger showed up one year at the Corn Dance. Dressed funny. A strange headpiece on. Had a design worked into it with beads. Had rings punched into his ears. Wearing silver all over him, carrying a stick like what you got there, and a ball along with it. It wasn’t like any other ball we ever saw before. It bounced real high when you threw it against the hard ground, and when he hit it with that stick, it took off like a bird. Like a hawk, it would fly. We didn’t know what it was made of then, but now we do. You know what it was?

Yes, Old Father, I said, shifting my weight a little to let Polk know to keep his mouth shut. It was rubber.

It was rubber, McKinley Short Eyes said. He was from Mexico, see, called himself an Aztec, and they had rubber down there, come out of a particular tree, but we didn’t know it, that material. We didn’t have nothing that would give to the touch and then come back at you. Or bounce worth a damn. Now the whole world knows rubber. And he taught the young men how to hit the ball when it was throwed to them and run toward a safe place. If somebody out there waiting caught the ball that man with the stick hit up in the air before it landed, he was dead. If it was a grounder, they had to field the ball and try to hit him with it before he got to the safe place. You know all this. It’s what the white eyes picked up and changed it a little and named it baseball. They made the ball real hard, for one thing. You get hit with that, you know it. It’ll do a lot more than just sting, like that first rubber ball did. That’s baseball, where it came from.

They call it that, I said. Where I’m going to go play it.

What I’m worried about is what the baseball means in the dream. I mean when it ain’t just the thing it is, but it’s something that’s behind it, too. You know how the Nation’s old stories work. They’re good for something else, what they tell us about how to do and how to act and how to come out better than we were before we heard them. Ain’t that right?

Yes sir, Polk said, and I touched him on the head with my free hand.

You got to figure out my dream, then, the old man said. I didn’t tell you all of it, and I don’t want to. You don’t need to be no more scared than you are right now. But look out for these things. Listen, now. An animal whose ears you pull to try to get him to give you money. A man who doesn’t see you when he’s looking right at you. A woman that talks a language I ain’t never heard before. All that is hooked up some way with the baseball you play, the throwing and the hitting and the catching. I don’t know how. That’s your job to figure out. Nobody can do that for you.

McKinley Short Eyes stopped talking. His pipe had gone out. He had stopped looking in my direction, aiming his gaze instead on the tree line across the road from his house. He looked like he was all by himself.

Old Father, I said. Thank you. I will remember what you’ve said and I will work on figuring out how it will help me. I know it can.

I looked down at Polk, and we turned to walk toward the road leading to the way out of the reservation. As we reached the road and began to move away, McKinley Short Eyes called my name.

One more thing from my dream I ought to tell you, he said. You had a real nice picture of a bird on your baseball shirt, one like I’d never seen before. That was a good part of my dream. Think about that bird on your shirt as you travel.

I waved and walked on. After a few hundred yards, Polk asked me if there was something wrong with McKinley Short Eyes.

Other than being old and full of stories and not many people for him to tell them to any more, no, I said.

I’m going to start going to see him every day or so, Polk said. Listen to him talk some.

You do that, and write to let me know if he’s had any more dreams with me in them. But be sure to figure them out before you send me any letters.

You’re not worried about what he told you about his dream?

Naw, I said. Why should I be? It doesn’t mean anything. You go back to the house now.

I will, Polk said, giving me the tow sack.

I’ll send you a picture of a rice bird, I said, turning my back on my little brother and breaking into a trot. I knew if I could make it to the Carter Lumber Company railroad by nine o’clock I could climb on one of the log cars and ride the east bound to where the track ended in Woodville.

2

baseball

For the next few days or so, I spent the daylight hours sleeping in the woods and fields close enough to the L and N railroad to be able to get to it quick when the sun went down. I fed myself on cheese and crackers and sardines out of cans, goods I bought at stores in the towns where I’d stop in the daylight hours to rest up from the night rides I took on top of railcars. Those places had names like Crossroads and Coushatta and Natchitoches and Tioga and Alexandria and LeCompte and Opelousas and Church Point and Mire. Coushatta was a puzzle to me because of what it was named. It was in the wrong place and didn’t fit. And finally one town was named Lafayette. That was the place where I got off the train in the dead middle of the night, crawling down the side of a moving car filled with a load of something that smelled sweet like sugar burning.

That night it was time for me to get off the train for good because I had got to where I had to leave off riding and end up getting by foot to Rayne, Louisiana. There was a sign lit up with red and white lights, on a building with lots of automobiles parked in front of it and music coming from it loud enough to hear over the sound of the freight cars.

The instruments making the music didn’t sound like any I had heard before. Guitars, yeah, but something else, too. It put me in mind of the way the old men in the Alabama-Coushatta Nation would pound on the drums and the old women would chant the same words over and over during the Corn Dance, but it wasn’t made by drums or the voices of people saying the same thing again and again. It told anybody listening that the music would know when it had got to the place where it intended to be. It made you want to wait to hear it get there.

As the freight I was riding passed the building, I read the sign. The Heart of Evangeline Country, it said, Bon Soir Club d’Lafayette. I put my hand on my tow sack and touched the knob of my red oak bat. I was ready to crawl off from where I was and get to where I was headed.

Rayne was not on a main railroad line. I had asked an old man who sold me some sardines and crackers and a bottle of soda water in a little store back