Butterfly Winter. W. Kinsella P.
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the only clear land would take in a slough, full of frog grass and cattails, where inches of water lay hidden under seemingly innocent greenery. But no matter the obstacles, Sandor’s enthusiasm would shine through, and the big, lumbering boys would get word to their neighbors, and by the second evening of his visit there would be almost enough players for a side of baseball.
Then Sandor would spring the trap. He would mention the last area that he had visited, five, or ten, or fifteen miles away, and he would mention how they had taken to the game, and how they had formed a team and were waiting only for a challenge.
When he moved on he would leave behind a precious ball, after painstakingly demonstrating to his converts how to re-cover it. He might also leave behind a bat, or he might simply show them how to hew a bat from a sturdy piece of timber. On rare occasions he would actually see the competition through, choosing a site, scheduling the contest, acting as umpire.
He learned early on that the main objections to his mission would be on religious grounds. Sandor was quick to realize that pioneers, facing unbelievable hardships, often clinging to life and sanity by the thinnest of threads, needed not only to believe in the supernatural, but to believe the supernatural was on their side. Sandor realized too, that these primitive peoples lacked the sophistication to realize that there were many and various manifestations of the supernatural, Sandor Boatly himself being one.
Since he was often mistaken, on first contact, for a circuit rider, Sandor took to carrying a heavy, leather-bound bible. He learned to quote the passages that urged the listeners to make a joyful noise and celebrate life. He never claimed to be a minister, but if his dress and demeanor intimated such, he found no reason to deny it.
If requested, he could conduct a brief nondenominational service of a Sunday morning, after which he would bring out his baseball equipment and retire to the nearest meadow with the men and boys. Even the most pinched and pious farm women could find no fault with a hard-working pastor who regarded baseball as a sinless pastime for a sunny summer Sunday afternoon.
Occasionally, Sandor stumbled into a situation where a minister was clearly needed. He was known to pray with vigor over the terminally ill, preparing them for passage to the next world, easing that passage. When called upon he conducted funerals, baptisms, even an occasional marriage, though he loathed the intolerance of most Christians. ‘Christianity is the only army that shoots its own wounded,’ he said in one of his last letters to his sister, Evita.
As a boy he had heard or read that it matters not what qualifications one possesses, but only that one look the part, words that would have a profound effect on the many lives of Sandor Boatly. For instead of planting trees as a legacy, he planted the joy of baseball in several thousand hearts, and, as a seed grew into a sapling, then a tree, and eventually into a forest, so his own efforts multiplied over the years until baseball was everywhere in America, like the trees and the rain.
Sandor worked his way as far west as Wyoming, before heading south, touring Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, crossing several Southern states before finding himself in Florida – Miami to be specific.
Though he had never lived in a truly warm climate he always sensed deep in his bones that the natural state of the universe was endless summer, though he had only heard rumors of its existence. He had heard of places where the grass was eternally green, where snow was spoken of with nostalgia by people who had not endured it for years. But Miami, and Florida, that tropical green finger with the angelic aura of white sand, was so perfect, so magical, the possibilities of baseball so endless, that its mere existence almost caused Sandor to acknowledge the possibility of a God.
What he discovered, something that disappointed him to no end, was that in Florida he was not a pioneer, for baseball was well known, played in every park, school yard and vacant lot. Only in the furthest backwaters of the Everglades could he practice his calling, and then with only limited success, due to the lack of arable land.
His journey to the island of Hispaniola came about after he became acquainted with a group of Pentecostal missionaries on the Miami docks. They mistook him for a man of the cloth.
‘We are off to spread the word of the Lord to the heathen,’ they confided in him.
‘I share your dedication,’ he said obliquely.
Over his shoulder was slung a lumpy sack that might have been full of a many-armed invention. ‘Where might you be bound?’ Sandor asked.
The Pentecostals explained that they were headed for Courteguay, on the island of Hispaniola, a tiny landlocked country nestled like a snail between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, bordered by both, the shape of the moon of a fingernail, and not much larger.
‘We sent a team of missionaries to Courteguay a few years ago,’ one of the tall pale men explained. ‘At first they sent back enthusiastic reports, then we didn’t hear from them for a few months. Neither they, nor the follow-up team we sent have ever been heard from at all.’
‘Beyond there be dragons …’ said Sandor, quoting from a medieval map he had seen in a museum. The phrase described the unknown, everything beyond the explored world.
‘Haiti is full of dark visions and strange deaths,’ said a wiry-looking woman with bony, red-knuckled hands.
‘And the Dominican Republic?’ asked Sandor, willing to risk a good deal for baseball, but not anxious to be eaten by savages, or burned alive as a sacrifice to some primitive god.
‘We are led to believe the Dominican is much more civilized than Haiti, though it is said to be heavily Catholic,’ a short rotund man said.
‘And Courteguay?’
‘Unknown territory,’ said the leader of the Pentecostals, a red-cheeked man with a perpetual smile. ‘One of the newest and smallest countries in the world. Reportedly, a piece of useless mountain slope and swampy valley, given to a fierce old soldier, who so terrorized the governments of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, so disrupted their attempts at civilization, that they gave him his own country just to be rid of him. His name – he was given the land some forty years ago and was an old man then, so he must certainly be dead – is said to be Octavio Court, though he was known to one and all as the Old Dictator.’
‘The trouble with an island is that it is the end of the world,’ said Sandor. ‘One cannot run and hide well on an island. People left with only themselves, with nowhere to hide, have to look inward, have to face the reality that they are trapped within their own skins forever. Sometimes they do not like what they see.’
Sandor Boatly for some reason felt no fear at the idea of setting off for Courteguay. Perhaps they did not play baseball there, he thought, he hoped. He knew the Pentecostals would relish suffering, even death. They were fundamentalists so narrow they could look through a keyhole with both eyes. Martyrs have always been well regarded in religious circles.
‘What do you think of baseball?’ he asked the missionaries, tossing an ermine-white ball in the air and catching it in his large, calloused hands.
‘A relatively sinless game,’ replied their leader, ‘as long as it is not played on Sunday.’
‘How little you know,’ whispered Sandor Boatly, smiling mysteriously, as he boarded the boat for the island of Hispaniola.
No one on the mainland ever heard from Sandor Boatly again.
He has become a legend, of course. You newsmen, journalists, writers, or whatever you call yourselves, must know all about that. By the time he departed America, Sandor Boatly was already a folk hero, tales were told, songs were sung about his spreading the gospel of baseball across the continent. But because of his mysterious disappearance the legends grew, multiplied and prospered