Freak Show – Mike Davis

Text Excerpt for Freak Show

But Gramps was a pro ball player – Man, did he love his baseball. I don’t think there was anything he loved more; except for Mom ‘n me. He’n Gramma’d split up a long time ago, when Mom was just two or three. He was a professional – Back in the days when ‘Pro’ meant having your uniforms, fares and away-games accommodation paid for – back when, like him, the twentieth century was still in its teens. He worked full-time for the railroad too. Being a pro was different in those days, they didn’t have training sessions like they do now, so to stay fit, sharp and on top of his game; he swung a pick or sledge-hammer by day and played pick-up or sand-lot games he’d hear about by night between the big games.

Gramma said he was ‘baseball crazy’, and looking back, I’d have to agree.

Mom says, I was as crazy about surfing has he was about baseball – Guess that’s why when I started surfing and dropped the baseball thing altogether, he seemed to understand what the surfing thing meant to me – Even encouraged me.

I still attended all of local games with him. It was something special we shared. I think I even loved baseball more when I was no longer as involved in the game and could just appreciate the skill on show.

When I decided that absconding to Australia was a better moral option for me than Vietnam – It like to’ve broke Gramps’s heart. I can still hear him saying, “Was a time when I’d’ve agreed to anything the government said, but sadly – Times’ve changed.”

I can still see the sadness in his rheumy and grim, quavering smile that day in 1970 when I left for Hawaii and not even thinking that it might be the last time I’d ever see him. Weeks later, unable to even hint where I was going, I slipped quietly into the ethers at the extreme fringes of the country, knowing the FBI’d soon come sniffing around. He knew somehow – I know that now – My little ‘See ya in two months’ surf trip and his last goodbye was evident in his eyes.

Lord knows how he’d’ve suffered the following months before I finally wrote to let him know I was OK. Although we stayed in touch, I never saw him again. He died before they declared the amnesty.

Guess nobody’ll ever even consider the number of broken hearts in regards to the final tally of real Vietnam casualties.

If I wasn’t feeling a little flight weary maybe down right apprehensive if not just plain fragile when I touched down at LAX after twenty hours in transit from Noosa Heads, Queensland, Australia – I certainly was when I sighted the little story tucked into the bottom of the sports page below the      U.S. PRESIDENT vetoes BADBOY CHARITY GAME BAN

headline story: The Surfing World’s Biggest Blank Manufacturer Closes in the LA Times in the rent-a-wreck lounge awaiting my compact chariot.

It wouldn’t take rocket scientist to understand what’d happened to my three hundred board shaping contract at Yater’s up in Santa Barbara.

I was suddenly as uncomfortable as Mike Tyson’s pink thong. But no where near as uncomfortable as the guy he’d caught laughing, I chuckled to myself, wondering what I as going to do for the next three months. 

And then I found an old buddy’s address in my wallet when I was picking up my rental car.

Rent a wreck at the curb burning my travel money at a rate of knots, I hoped that this little jaunt to Venice wouldn’t end up like the surfboard shaping contract I’d blown so much on to fulfill.

Still smarting from the three months of planning down the chute and still smoldering on the hillside of a bureaucracy gone mad, I’m standing on the door step of tidy little cottage called ‘Dunrunnin’ thinking, This’ll probably pan-out to being the address of a complete stranger as I stroke the folded, refolded and frayed crease of Gramps’s last letter, that said, “If you ever come back to California and you’re down Venice way and you’ve got some time up your sleeve, go and look up ‘Bubba’ Bradbury at this address. He’d sure like to see you.”

I sucked in a deep breath, exhaled and surveyed the weedy vacant lots with the remains of demolished houses languishing between this place and the next house of the same era like two tiny waifs in a world of giants; rubbed a threatening tear aside and gave the door a good, solid knock.

Bubba: I still chuckle, every time I think of him. Like everyone else, I tend to picture the stereo-typical, over-weight, African-American guy in overalls, busting his hump in the soul destroying humidity of some cracker’s cotton field in the early twenties; or the dumb fat cop in Dukes of Hazard. Truth-be-known – Nothing could be further from that perception. Bubba’d been the star pitcher for the Santa Barbara Dodgers when I’d bailed-out for Australia, helluva surfer too.

We were about the same age and temperament – Only I was a total surf-crazed teenager (much to Gramp’s chagrin) and Burbank, yeah, that’s Bubba’s real middle name, was equally as crazed about baseball. It drove Gramp’s nuts, but I was still his flesh‘n blood and besides, I was the one that took him to every home game and even a few away games against Santa Maria or Ventura.

Bubba was a good lookin’ son-of-a-bitch too – Tall, tanned, sun-bleached, honey colored hair, piercing blue eyes and a face‘n hairless body like Adonis – Women couldn’t keep their hands off him. We were all in awe of him.

But man, above all that, he could really throw a baseball – It was artistry – Like no-one I’ve ever seen or even heard of. I’ll never forget Gramps rubbing his eyes in disbelief after watching one of Bubba’s ‘screw-balls’ bobble and dance as it seemed to hover and hula, even defying gravity, muttering finally, “Whatn’a hell was that?”

Gramps said he was a natural, “A real, tall glass ‘o water – Tall‘n lanky – long‘n lean muscles – The kind that go forever.” I learned how right Gramps was too, because it was the same in surfing, my Australian surfing buddy, Nat Young, was built just like Bubba; only the Aussies described him as ‘a long streak of pelican shit’. Guess that’s what’d always appealed to me about the Australians – They’re so genteel.

While Bubba and I seemed to share a lot of temperaments, I was nearly the exact opposite of Bubba, physically – Solid and stockier, more of a fire-hydrant, like Gramps. We did however share a certain athletic grace that came from playing sport since we’d been able to do more than stop a baseball with our face.

Hell, watching Bubba wind-up for the pitch: He’d throw that right foot way higher than his head before driving it downwards from that great height, following and maximizing that momentum with a catapult-like over-arm action that made every catcher who’d ever been on the receiving end’s mit smoke.

Gramps and I’d hear that distinctive ‘Pop’ even from our seats, just behind first base, sixty feet away, over the noise of the crowd and popcorn‘n hotdog vendors.

Couple of times, the umpires’d had to call ‘Time-out’ because the ball’d been too hot to handle and lodged in the bars of their face-masks. That really tickled Gramps.

Looking back, a lot of things tickled Gramps – He always saw the funny side of things. That’s why he hung the tag ‘Bubba’ on Bubba.

Bubba, not only had a smokin’ fast ball, he had the best armory of pitches in the game – Besides his ‘Screw-ball, that’d dance and bob around like a mosquito avoiding a fat lady’s flyswatter, then drop like a stone, right in front of the plate; his slider looked like something out of a ‘Roadrunner’ cartoon – Didn’t even look possible.

His quiver of curve balls that broke either way were so well disguised by his identical delivery, no matter what he was throwing; that I’ve seen big-time batters so mad after he’d made them look bad, that they’ve thrown their bats down and charged the mound after him, didn’t stop until he was in the middle of center field. So, I guess it’s no small wonder that his elbow blew out the way it did.

Because he and Gramps had been so close, Bubba never did forgive me for leaving the way I did, chasing the surf. Sure, he knew Vietnam was wrong, I knew Vietnam was wrong – Hell, everybody knew it was wrong. Too bad the fucking government had to be so recalcitrant about it. But, unlike me, Bubba didn’t have any problem with them, he’d knocked-up his high school sweetheart and married her, and the resulting little boy, made him ineligible for the draft.

My only saving grace in the guilt department was that Bubba’d been there to talk baseball with Gramps in my absence. And Gramps really loved helping him with his game.

It’s too bad that Bubba’d gotten banned for steroid abuse. Yeah, seems those long lean muscles Gramps had always praised, caused problems of their own – Trouble with those long, lean muscles that seem to go all day is; they put undue stress on the joints: shoulders, elbows, wrists and hips. He groaned like a rusty gate, some morning’s, Gramps wrote in one of his letters; and Bubba was still a young man at the time.

By all accounts his career was really smokin’ when the rules changed. Bubba’d been called-up to tryout out for the ‘Show’. So he packed Suzy and Jake up and moved to the training camp in Florida. He’d only been there a week or so when they notified him that he’d tested positive to steroids. He didn’t even deny it. The steroids were the only thing that eased the inflammation in his elbow and shoulder; that inflammation, if left untreated would soon be so painful and it was already evident in his hips and knees. Even though it was only a two-year ban, there was no way anyone; no matter how gifted; could break back into the majors past the magic age of twenty-five. He was washed-up – Finished.

Gramps was heartbroken.

Bubba’s wife, Suzy; tired of the promises of a better life always depending on a fickle elbow or a difficult game, walked out with their baby son and left no forwarding address.

Gutted, Bubba took to drinking. Gramps’ health took a bad turn shortly after that. He was gone within the year.

So here I am, standing at the door of ‘Dunrunnin’, the address Gramps had forwarded to me in his last letter, imploring me, He’d sure like to see you.

Normally I’d never had the time for a social call on a guy I hadn’t had any contact with in all those years. What could we possibly have to talk about? But then, who’d’ve figured that I’d’ve been here with no dough, no blanks, no shapes and no prospects and cheap return ticket to Australia that’s not valid for three months and in dire need of someone to play with?

Knocking again, I wondered, What’ll he be like? Remembering what Gramps had said about Bubba taking to the drink; I looked around the modest but tidy, front garden, with its embellishments of flotsam ‘n jetsam and ancient looking nautical stuff that added a kind of kitsch seafaring ambience.

Expecting the very worst, I summoned all the courage I had and knocked on the door again, harder this time.

Nothing.

Maybe he’s not home.

“ANYBODY HOME?” I called out, knocking again.

Maybe he doesn’t live here anymore.

I was just turning to leave, slightly relieved that if he’d gone bad, I wouldn’t’ve had to endure that uncomfortable encounter.

Then there was the matter of what I was going to do for work. I really needed that shaping gig – I’ve only got a couple of thousand dollars and a return ticket to Brisbane, I was thinking when he suddenly appeared from around the back.

“Bubba? Bubba Bradbury?” His name fell out of my mouth like a house brick.

“Yeah?” he grumbled, eyeing me like I was some kind of cop, bill collector, IRS inspector or any other bureaucratic pain in the arse. His piercing blue eyes bored right into me, sizing me up, like I was some kind of dangerous, big ‘Away-hitter’.

Buy on Amazon – FREAK SHOW (The second in the Medford Haley series)