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Looking at Carlos May’s Thumb
It was another sandlot summer on the grounds
of the church. Zurowski and I were going at it
again. He with his Aparicio and Allen and me
with my Kessinger and Banks. We squabbled about
whose boys of summer were better while in winter
we agreed on the virtues of Mikita, Esposito, and Hull.
It was an odd dance between a Lutheran who
went to St. John’s and a Catholic who went to
St. John of the Cross. On Saturday evenings
I’d play army and roll in the ditch with
my Hillerich & Bradsby Cracker Jack bat picking off
people in the parking lot who showed up for mass.
I’d bazooka their cars like they were tanks.
I’d slaughter the girls in their plaid skirts right
where they stood, and I thought I was the hero,
an avenging marine, not a fanatical crusader.
But it was Zurowski who set me straight about
wiping out Catholics, about being a holier-than-thou
Cubs fan too. It was clear to me though
that the sisters had gotten to him, yet he rattled on
about the Gospel According to the South Side.
That’s where his dad’s gas station was, why he rooted
for Wilbur Wood and not Fergie Jenkins.
It’s why his dad drank Falstaff and listened to
Harry Caray on the radio where the announcers
referred to the Sox’s starting outfield of Walt Williams,
Pat Kelly, and Carlos May as featuring one guy with
no neck, one with no arm, and one with no thumb.
It was true. The summer before Carlos May
had blown off part of his thumb shooting a mortar
for the Marine Reserve. Every year we’d examine
his baseball card for the stub. Zurowski trained
himself to look away, citing mercy and the grace of God.
His empathy clung to the world and expanded it.
He cherished the sacred heart. But I could not look away.
My mind kept churning on its reformation.
Somehow his thumb might be remade, maybe
even improved. The world was a work in progress
that moved ever closer to the ideal. Both Zurowski
and I understood this was how a place like Chicago
was supposed to behave—though it rarely did
during baseball season. Occasionally its teams
would win, once in a great while even achieve
the pinnacle. Harry Caray would eventually work
his way up to the money and the ivy on the north side.
But mostly Zurowski and I would survive the mediocrity,
suffer through the close calls and the misery of
poorly played games, the comedy of errors that marked
Illinois politics. We would stand by our stupid teams’
blunders waiting for that impossible moment to arrive,
a Cubs-Sox World Series, a moment so glorious for
a Chicagoan, it would beckon the rapture.
Then an avenging angel would sweep down, returning to
earth with her Cracker Jack bat and blow everyone away
in the name of salvation, so that afterward
only the baseball gods could sort out all the bodies.
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