Laughter was good. Laughter was an antidote. The only true antidote to this place. He laughed as loud as he could. The sound reverberated off the hallway walls, off the sloped cement floors and the metal doorways. It bounced around and back again, echoing in front of him as he walked, as quickly and noisily as an old man with plantar fasciitis could.

“Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!” he shouted, not because it was the season—far from it—but because he could. Because it sounded glorious out of season. Because he knew it would irritate the staff. Doors popped open behind him as he spread his message of false cheer.

“Hush up now,” the nurse looking out from the women’s ward said.

“Shhh,” whispered the orderly who stepped out of the electroshock therapy room.

“Happy Chanukah!” he added for good measure. “Feliz navidad!”

 

From the opposite end of the long hallway, from near the Social Activities Room he had just left, came a voice he recognized without looking back. The voice of authority in this wing. The voice of Head Nurse Peters.

“Detain that patient!” the voice commanded, but the old man hobbled out of the hallway into the men’s ward before the orderlies could catch up to him. By the time they entered the men’s ward, the residents had hidden the old man beneath a pile of dirty laundry and they all pointed toward the shower room at the far end of the ward, so the orderlies headed into the showers. The shower room was a dead end, so in a moment the orderlies returned to the men’s ward. This time the residents pointed back out into the hallway, as if the old man had tried to double back on his pursuers. The orderlies had no choice but to follow the lead and resume their search in the hallway. When they left the ward, the residents helped the old man out from under the pile of dirty laundry. He was laughing again.

“Keep it down or they’ll hear you!” one of the residents of the men’s ward said.

“And go hide in your own room,” another added.

“He’s got a private room,” a third noted.

“Semiprivate,” the old man corrected.

“You got no business bringing your trouble into our ward,” the largest of the residents said, pushing the old man toward the door.

“Wait, wait,” the old man said. “I’ll go. Thanks for, you know, helping, but …”  He looked at their faces. “Any of you play baseball?”

“This hospital don’t got no ball field, you know that. Just a lousy half court for basketball.”

“No no, I don’t mean real baseball, I mean a baseball game. APBA or Stratomatic? Ever heard of those?”

“You’re talking gibberish, old man. Get outta here before Nurse Peters shows up.”

“It’s a tabletop game,” the old man explained. He pulled the Eddie Mathews card out of his pocket to show them. “Dice and cards like this one.” He saw not a flicker of recognition in their faces.

“Out. Now,” the largest resident said. He pulled the old man by his arm toward the door.

“Okay okay, I just thought—heh, anyone collect baseball cards?”

He thought he saw the glint of recognition in the face of one resident, but before he could learn more he was ushered out of the ward and back into the hallway. Okay, he said to himself, I’ll be back. Someone in there might have a stash of illicit baseball cards.

He heard their footsteps before he saw them, and by the time he did there was nowhere to go. He hid the Eddie Mathews card in his underwear, then relaxed into their arms and allowed the two orderlies to walk him back to his room.

“Seasons Greetings!” he called out as they marched him past the electroshock therapy room and down the side hallway to the private and semiprivate rooms. When they arrived at his door, they patted him down like usual.

“Just to make sure you can’t hurt yourself,” one of them explained, like always.

“Who thinks I want to hurt myself?” he responded.

“Nurse Peters doesn’t like accidents.”

“Think about it,” the old man said. “I’m here because I’m crazy, right?”

The orderlies looked at him. They turned to leave.

“You gotta be a little bit crazy just to get admitted here, right?”

They couldn’t argue with that logic. The orderlies had seen plenty of craziness.

“So what’s your point?” the younger orderly asked.

“It’s the crazy ones who think about hurting themselves, right?”

The younger one nodded.

“So just thinking about hurting a human being, that’s a little crazy, isn’t it?”

“Let’s go,” the older orderly said. But the young one wanted to be sympathetic. He wanted to make a difference, to help patients. At least that’s what he told himself, that’s why he’d taken the job. He listened to the old man.

“Nurse Peters worries about me hurting myself, right? About all of us hurting ourselves or each other. Am I right?”

The young orderly nodded again.

“So she’s gotta be just a little bit crazy herself, doesn’t she? All that thinking about people hurting themselves, that’s crazy thoughts, right?”

The young orderly started to respond but the older one cut him off.

“Enough crazy talk. You’re locked down for 24.” Then he dragged the younger orderly out of the room.

They locked the old man inside.

Twenty-four hour lockdown, he thought. Cruel punishment. And what about his roommate? Where does he stay during the lockdown? Last time this happened, the old man asked his roommate when the 24 hours were up, “Where’d they put you for the night?”

His roommate just shook his head. He wouldn’t say a word. That disturbed the old man. There were plenty of things worse than getting a lockdown, so it wasn’t hard to imagine, but his roommate had done nothing. Why’d they punish him too?

He knew if he thought about it any more he’d get really upset. Angry. He’d start shouting and then kicking the door and throwing things until he hurt himself. And then he’d be in real pain for 24 hours because they were not coming back. So he clenched his jaw against the thought and tried to distract himself.

They have to feed me, he thought. They fed me last time. He remembered the pathetic 1/2 bowl of soup they’d delivered late at night. No crackers even. Just a bowl, a spoon and some salty broth that only made him want to eat more. Stop thinking about it, he told himself.

In the beginning was baseball.

The repetition of his mantra had a calming affect. So he said it aloud.

In the beginning was baseball.

He repeated it until he felt his jaw unclench and the pain in his feet subside a little. He leaned back on his bed and said it again and again and again.

In the beginning was baseball and baseball was the word and the word was baseball.

He remembered the Eddie Mathews card and pulled it from his underwear. He stared at the name in bright red letters:

Edwin Lee, Jr.

“Eddie”

MATHEWS

Perfect choice, he thought. He’d find Mark, Luke and John soon enough, he was sure. Just a matter of … of what? He couldn’t remember what it was a matter of. He couldn’t remember what that phrase “a matter of” even meant. Was it all slipping away again?

He looked at the numbers on the card beneath the name in bright red letters. Two columns of numbers, one black and one red. The code that made the game work, that unraveled the mysteries of baseball and recreated the hitting record of Eddie Mathews, third baseman for the Milwaukee Braves.

A memory fired in his brain. The Braves weren’t in Milwaukee anymore, were they? He remembered them moving to Atlanta, but did they take Eddie Mathews with them or did they trade him before they moved? He couldn’t remember. So many things he once knew as plain as the back of his own hand.

The back of his hand? Where did that come from? He looked at his right hand, turned it over and studied the back. It looked like a stranger’s hand to him. The hair growing all the way down to his knuckles, the bright liver spots and the white scar tissue. It seemed somehow familiar but … He held his left hand up, looked at the back of it, and saw less hair, more liver spots and no pale white scar tissue. He put his hands side by side and realized they didn’t seem to belong together. Like the hands of two different people. Two different old men. One thing they did share: the hands were old.

Holy Hammerin’ Hank, when had his hands gotten so old? He didn’t remember getting old. But then there was so much he didn’t remember.

He remembered Eddie Mathews though, as if he’d known the third sacker personally. The shy grin on his face when he was a young player; the 5 o’clock shadow that emerged as he matured; and those eyes, intent and focused on the pitched ball. Mathews was a power hitter who drew a lot of walks because of those eyes.

All of this, and more, flooded into his brain. No problems with memories of Eddie Mathews, but ask him what they served for breakfast this morning or what the date was or even why he was in this place—and he was lost. Not a clue. He wasn’t certain he had eaten breakfast. But he must have because he remembered showing his friend his APBA baseball cards in the Social Activities Room. And they always met in that room after breakfast.

So, Sherlock, he said to himself, ipso facto, we ate breakfast.

But there was no memory of breakfast. No memories of the morning at all. As if the day began with the baseball cards on the table in the Social Activities Room. Showing them to his friend. His friend whose name … whose name …

He couldn’t recall a name for his friend. A man he met in the Social Activities Room almost every day to discuss baseball. The only person in this entire institution he could call a friend. The only one he dared show his APBA cards to. And yet … no name.

He slapped the side of his head with his hand. Stupid! It’s all in there, shake it up, rearrange it, mix the right chemicals and it will all come spilling out. Like Eddie Mathews. Third baseman for the old Milwaukee Braves. Left-handed hitter with a sweet swing. Twice led the National League in home runs, three times hit over .300. A perennial all-star.

Looking at the APBA card he could see those qualities in the two columns of red numbers. A pair of 1’s indicating home run power, and 5 and 6, which usually resulted in doubles. Mathews had distance and gap power, plus all those 14’s, bases on balls. Hadn’t he led the league in walks several times?

In his mind’s eye, the old man could see Mathews dig in at the plate, the bat cocked high over his left shoulder, then the stride and smooth level swing, the sudden snap of his powerful wrists, and the balanced follow-through which left him poised on both feet in the batter’s box, ready to run—not wound into a tight corkscrew like Mickey Mantle.

Images of both Mantle and Mathews swinging at pitches played across the movie screen in his brain. How vivid they were! Strange, since he hadn’t seen either of them play in person, only on television. And the images were in black-and-white, just like the tv of his childhood! If he slowed down the images, made them swing in slow motion, or pushed in for a close-up. Yes! See how grainy the images become? Like tv in the Fifties. He was remembering television images he’d seen as a kid! He could recall those like he’d watched them yesterday in the tv room, but he couldn’t conjure up the face of his friend, or his friend’s name.

What a tease memory is, he thought.

He looked down at the Eddie Mathews card in his hand. What was I doing with this? For a moment he couldn’t recall. The panic started to rise in him, the fog gathered on the perimeter of his brain, but he held it off.

In the beginning was baseball and baseball was the word …

Yes, he remembered now. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. He had found Matthew—Eddie Mathews—but he still had to find a Mark, a Luke and a John. He grabbed his pillow, flipped it over, and reached inside the pillow case, his fingers searching for the 6 inch tear in the pillow itself. Inside that tear, replacing some of the foam he’d removed, his fingers found his APBA card collection. Four bundles held together by old shoe laces. Rubber bands would be an improvement, he thought, but the nurses weren’t going to let him have any rubber bands. Don’t know what he’ll do with them! Why he might try to choke himself to death with rubber bands!

It was silly, sometimes, the things they kept from the patients. Rubber bands and pencils, belts and plastic bags, chess pieces and playing cards. The plastic bags he could understand. Easy enough to snuff yourself out with one of those. And belts, of course. Classic. But the chess pieces and playing cards weren’t about safety at all, though they used that as their excuse. They just didn’t want to have to pick them up after some quarrel that ended with a patient throwing the pieces or the cards at another patient. And rubber bands? Pencils?

He extracted the four bundles of cards and untied them. The backs were identical: blue lettering on a white background: APBA Baseball. He’d forgotten what the letters stood for, but he’d been playing this game since he was twelve. How many years was that now? Forty? Fifty? He wasn’t sure how old he was, though a glance at the back of his hands confirmed he was old. Really old.

The cards, though, were nearly new. Faded white on the front with red and black lettering. Same pattern as the Eddie Mathews card: the player’s name and biographical information in red above the columns of numbers that represented one season in the career of the ballplayer. Which means, he reasoned like Sherlock, these couldn’t be the same cards he actually played with as a kid. Too new. He must have acquired them more recently. Since they locked him in here? Maybe. If that were the case, it meant there was a black market in swapped baseball cards. And he was connected. But he had no idea how.

Suddenly he had to find the other black marketeers! He wanted to talk baseball with them, swap cards. Maybe one of them would have the next card he was looking for: Mathews … and then … what was it … Mark! Yes, a Mark card. Maybe a marked card! He chuckled over his pun.

His feet itched to be moving, searching the halls, looking for someone else with contraband cards. But he could only pace, from side to side in his room, and if he kept doing that, he’d get angry, and then …

In the beginning was baseball …

In the beginning was baseball …

In the beginning was baseball …

He stopped pacing. He took a deep breath. He spread his cards on the bed. He studied his possessions, his distractions, his salvation.

He looked. And imagined himself … elsewhere.