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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book... “hello goodbye goodbye hello” Down in the Dirt (v132) (the October 2015 Issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

Order this writing in the book the Intersection the Down in the Dirt July - Dec. 2015 collection book		get the 318 page July - Dec. 2015 Down in the Dirt issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

The Ritual

Patty Somlo

    Billy got to thinking about the old days on a cloudy Wednesday morning, when he should have been working out a scheme to pull himself up from the hole. Sitting in his office, a ground-floor space with two wide floor-to-ceiling windows that looked directly across Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard at the new loft project in which he had sunk too much of his own money, Billy knew this was a mess he might not be able to talk or pray or scheme or borrow his way out of.
    For a time, Billy had done extremely well, buying up old rundown houses in the neighborhood, paying rock-bottom prices all in cash after the bank foreclosed. He made each place look nice without going overboard, selling for a handsome profit. Some neighborhood old-timers considered Billy a vulture for cleaning up off of struggling folks’ misfortune. None of them ever said this to Billy’s face, because before becoming a real estate investor, Billy Boggs had been a credit to the race. Billy Boggs had been a star.
    Billy Boggs had also been known as a superstitious ballplayer. Most of all, though, Billy “the Bomber” Boggs got famous for hitting home runs. Nobody cared if the Bomber seemed a little off. As long as he kept blasting pitches so high in the outfield guys didn’t know where the ball would come down, the Bomber could stand on his head and wiggle his toes for all the fans, commentators and coaches minded.
    Even in the days when he ran the bases quicker than lightening and slid into home plate before getting tagged out, the brown-skinned Boggs with the memorable large solemn eyes carried extra weight around. Now, when he spent most of his time sitting down, the pounds had crept up. Still in his early fifties, Billy needed to push himself up with both hands from sitting, like a man who had several decades on him. The worrying he’d done this past year as he watched his fortune melt away had caused his hair to turn ashy and recede further back from his forehead.
    If he’d just stuck to houses, he thought, every time he started to beat himself up about the hole he had gotten into. He’d gotten greedy, that was all. When the opportunity came up and the white developers from downtown promised potential investors the lofts would be sold before the foundations were even poured, Billy let the thought of quick double-digit returns convince him to put more money in than his gut told him was wise. Displacing long-time black businesses, the three loft projects Billy sunk money into around MLK Boulevard were not popular with longtime neighborhood folks. Billy, however, disagreed, believing the projects would lift the neighborhood up.
    A few lofts were sold in each of the buildings and owners moved in. But the majority stayed empty. Having borrowed and then borrowed more to cover his debts, Billy fell into a deep financial crevasse. He’d reluctantly started to consider bankruptcy.
    So here he was, sitting in his office pretending not to believe that eighty percent of the lofts hadn’t sold and he didn’t have all his money tied up in those buildings. Instead, Billy let his thoughts travel back to a better time.
    When Billy was still playing ball, everybody wanted to know what he did out there before heading to the batters’ box. The commentators watched him after the announcer called his number and his position, second baseman, and finally his name. From the on-deck circle where he’d swung the bat and moved his mind into what he thought of as the zone, Billy stepped a few feet from home plate and drew some symbols in the dirt, using the tip of the bat. Then he shuffled his feet in what looked to the crowd like an Irish dance. Last but not least, he blessed himself – once, twice and then a third and final time – before strolling to the plate and getting ready to bat.
    The ritual was born in San Francisco. Billy had gone looking for something, he wasn’t sure exactly what. A young player headed for the big leagues, Billy didn’t want to admit that he was after a lucky charm.
    His first spring training, he explained to the beautiful girl working in the Mission District shop. She didn’t know a thing about baseball, she confessed.
    “Baseball is everything,” Billy said and smiled.
    Several girls had let Billy know they thought he had a beautiful smile, so he made sure to slap one on his face and beam straight ahead at this angel.
    She was lovely. “The Dominican Republic,” she said, when Billy asked where she was from. Her accent sounded like music to dance to, only Billy wasn’t much of a dancer, her skin caramel colored, and her wildly curly hair the shade of toffee. Her eyes were green and soft. Looking at her, Billy couldn’t think straight.
    The store sold candles and statues of Catholic saints. Alicia was the angel’s name and she had on a pale blue sweater and gauzy white skirt that drifted down to her ankles. Billy could see her legs through the skirt, which unsettled him. She began telling Billy about Santeria and how they still practiced it in places like Cuba. Billy didn’t remember much afterwards that she had said, mostly because he was figuring out how to get this girl to go out with him. He did grasp several things. Santeria was based on practices the slaves brought from Africa, combined with Catholicism. And the rituals helped practitioners believe they could get what they wanted in their lives.
    At that moment, Billy wanted two things. He most definitely wanted this girl and he wanted to be the best ballplayer that ever stepped onto a major league diamond. He kept asking questions because he wanted to keep looking at this beautiful woman. And he kept smiling.

    Billy rarely thought about the old days. The few times he did, well, it just made him melancholy. Billy didn’t use that term to describe his feelings. Neither would he have admitted that he felt depressed, though that was more like it. If he’d been honest with himself, which he rarely was, dwelling on the days when he was a star felt too much like grieving for someone close who had died. He wasn’t that guy anymore, the Bomber who felt so passionately about life and believed anything was possible. That guy had died.
    Yet remembering now, he realized that it happened so suddenly. If he’d paid more attention and read about players who had come before him, Billy would have known. Instead, he concentrated on his swing and stance, putting himself in the zone, and making sure that nothing got in the way of what he referred to as being one hundred percent.
    Well, almost nothing. Billy had a couple of weaknesses. The first happened to be that Dominican beauty, Alicia. The day Billy met her and she helped him find something that wasn’t a lucky charm like a rabbit’s foot or a smooth stone for rubbing or even a shiny gold cross was two days shy of Billy’s twenty-third birthday. He was slim and strong, in the best physical shape he’d ever be, with those wide, dark brown eyes that knew how to take in a woman’s best features and reflect them back to her. He’d already seen how this made girls, and later women, want to slide their arms through his and let Billy take them anyplace he wanted to go.
    So this is what happened with Alicia. Billy left the city for spring training with a ritual she’d helped him devise. It wasn’t until later that he learned he’d left Alicia with something to remember him by. Billy did the right thing and married her.
    The Bomber had a weakness for more than his wife Alicia. He also loved to eat. The more home runs he hit and the higher the ball soared, the bigger his appetite seemed to get.
    When reporters asked the Bomber why he gorged himself, he explained, “I love the taste of food.” He might go on to describe a sirloin steak he’d eaten the night before, cooked rare the way he liked, and the cherry cheesecake he’d savored afterwards.
    “At least I don’t drink,” Billy sometimes said, usually to himself. He would say this, thinking about his father, who drank himself out of one job after the next, until he ended up on the street, and then dead, in a downtown doorway one frigid December morning. Billy didn’t view his appetite for food as an addiction, like his father’s sickness. He loved life, he liked to say, and this was how the media portrayed him. That is, as long as he kept hitting those home runs.
    The few times Billy let himself think about what he and the media dubbed the slide, he remembered that it began on a Tuesday night, at a home game against the Dodgers. The legendary fog had settled over the stadium early in the afternoon. A light wind scattered drops of heavy mist all around.
    Billy swung the bat in the on-deck circle and right away knew something was off. The usual smoothness he had in his swing when he practiced without a ball had gone missing. He didn’t like thinking about his swing, preferring to simply move into the place where his arms, the bat, his hips and legs became one. If the swing had been a walk, there would have been a slight limp, a hitch, right at the end, which, of course, lessened its power.
    The announcer called Billy’s number, his position and finally his name, and the hometown crowd roared. He stepped closer to the plate, twirling the bat like a baton. The twirling made him appear relaxed, which he was not.
    Billy reached the spot where he performed his ritual and stopped. In that moment, his mind went blank. It was like forgetting an old friend’s name, just at the moment he intended to introduce him to someone else. Blank. Billy couldn’t remember how his ritual started.
    He shook his head back and forth to clear it and then fiddled with his gloves. There was no way he could bat without first performing the ritual but all memory of it had gone. He needed time, but where would he get that, now that time was running out?
    So he crossed himself and whispered a prayer, pleading with God to help him. Then without another thought, he began to scratch in the dirt, using the end of the bat in front of the tip of his shoes. The quick foot shuffle followed and he tapped the end of the bat against his toes, patted his helmet to conclude, and stepped over to the plate.
    But he was shaken. Although he’d managed to remember the ritual and perform it in time, the zone was nowhere to be found. He heard the crowd chant. Let’s go Bomber, let’s go. Let’s go Bomber, let’s go. The chant grated on his nerves. What he wanted was silence.
    “A swing and a miss,” the announcer informed the fans watching on t.v.
    Billy wasn’t aware that he’d swung.
    “Got him,” the announcer said, moments after.
    Billy turned to look at the umpire, still gesturing with his arms. The Bomber didn’t know what had happened. Without even being aware of the ball flying over the plate from the pitcher’s hand, the Bomber had let himself strike out.

    The slide that began on a foggy Tuesday evening took over the Bomber’s life. Although he now remembered the ritual right off when his name was called, the ritual didn’t feel the same. Billy never told anyone that in the old days, every movement he made when he performed the ritual gave him power. Since that fateful Tuesday night, though, he just went through the motions, without getting a single positive thing back.
    And then he swung. He swung at high balls and low, outside and inside pitches, even ones that came so close to his chest he had to step back and choke the bat, in order to whack at them. Billy had always been a player who liked to swing but now he couldn’t manage to get his bat in contact with the ball.
    In a matter of weeks, Billy’s batting average sunk down and his mood quickly followed. The only thing he wanted to do now was eat. Fans began to notice. The Bomber’s belly, hips and thighs were ballooning out. He no longer seemed capable of hitting the ball.
    Food took the place of everything. Billy lost interest in the lovely Alicia. The rare times he was home, Billy holed up in the den alone, watching t.v. and eating. Alicia warned the three kids to stay away from their father.
    Then one Friday evening in a game against the Dodgers, Billy performed his ritual and stepped up to the plate. It was the ninth inning, with two outs. The bases were loaded, the team down one run. This looked like Billy’s chance to haul himself back up out of the hole, by bringing in the tying run and maybe much more.
    In the old days, without much effort, the Bomber would have gotten a grand slam, propelling the fans to their feet, the applause and cheering loud enough to rock the stadium seats. The fans worried now that Billy would screw this up.
    “Got him,” the announcer told the t.v. audience.
    And for the first time since Billy stepped out onto a major league diamond, he couldn’t help but hear the fans booing him, as he walked with his head down toward the dugout.

    Billy felt relieved to be pulled out of his reverie, since recalling that day he lost the game had made his chest ache. The truth was that Billy wanted to cry, but how could a grown man sob over something that happened a long time ago?
    He turned away from the door, so the mailman who’d just stepped inside wouldn’t see Billy quickly wipe the tears that had dribbled down onto his cheeks from his eyes. Billy turned back around.
    “Afternoon,” he said, in response to the same greeting from the mailman, Robin. “Got more bills for me, I can tell.”
    “Isn’t there a check for ten million in there?” Robin asked, the same joking question he often posed. “Didn’t you win the lottery?”
    “I’m afraid not,” Billy answered, his debts having ballooned so, he couldn’t joke about money anymore.
    Robin dropped a rubber-banded stack of envelopes onto the side of Billy’s desk. Billy knew without looking that they were mostly letters from collection agencies. In addition to the mail, the money collectors had started pestering him by phone.
    The mailman hesitated for a moment when he got to the door. Instead of opening the door and stepping outside, he turned around and looked at Billy.
    “Well, this is gonna be it for me,” he said softly. “My last run.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Today’s my last day. As of tomorrow, I’m officially retired. The wife and me, we bought an RV and we’re headed to Florida.”
    “Well, that’s great, Robin. Congratulations.”
    “Thank you,” Robin said.
    Billy waited for the mailman to leave but he kept standing there, staring at the floor.
    “Hope you have a good time,” Billy said, as a way to fill up the suddenly awkward silence.
    The mailman cleared his throat and then raised his head, as he fished inside the dull blue canvas mailbag.
    “I was just wondering,” he said, his throat raspy, as if he needed a glass of water.
    Before Billy got a chance to ask, he saw what the mailman was holding in his right palm.
    “I was wondering,” Robin said again, and stretched out his arm. “Would you mind?”
    Billy couldn’t remember the last time anyone had asked him – to sign a ball or a program or his photograph. It had been years since he felt a glow run through his body, being the special sort of person whose very name meant everything to a perfect stranger. He didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or cry or get down on his knees and thank this man for giving him another chance.
    Billy decided that at this moment, he didn’t need to do a thing, except give this man what he’d asked for. And so, for one last time, Billy became the guy that could bat a ball so high in the outfield guys didn’t know where it would come down.
    He pulled a blue ink pen he used to sign checks from the sterling silver holder on his desk and signed, Billy, the Bomber, Boggs. And he even made sure to add the extra curl on the final “s,” in order to prove that the signature was an authentic one.

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