Seeing Dead People
by Richard Froude

Jackie Robinson, October 24th

First

At a yard sale in Tacoma, I find Jackie Robinson’s rookie card inside a cigar box. Mint, except the card has been drawn by a child and the numbers replaced by hieroglyphs from the Ptolemaic period. I buy the card for 12 cents and keep it under my pillow for the next seven years. The first night we sleep together, you find it and ask me what it is. I tell you I stole it from a museum. You say you used to dream about a thief. How he would leave you in the night, only to return days later with scars on his forearms and diamonds in his shoes.

Second

Over his complete career, Jackie Robinson stole home 19 times. This is more than any other player since World War Two.

Third

You want me to run with you.
Out of Pasadena, south, toward the border.
We hitch a ride in a blue pickup.
Jackie Robinson at the wheel.
In the flatbed we hide under sackcloth.
Tear pages from holy books.
No fear in the end. Jackie’s taking us away.
This is our new mythology.
Jackie’s taking us away.

Fourth

Jackie Robinson lives in a house carved entirely of oak. No flag flies on the lawn. This reminds Jackie of a joke, which is a lie because it reminds me of a joke and I am not Jackie Robinson. A joke I’m stealing:

The day Barry Bonds dies, St. Peter meets him at the Pearly Gates. Into heaven they walk, down rows of manicured lawns and pristine picket fences. And the further they walk, the larger the houses become, until Peter stops Barry outside an Edwardian wet dream of a mansion bedecked in the unmistakable orange and black of the San Francisco Giants. “Man,” says Barry, “this place is great...but...” Barry spies, at the end of the road, an even larger, more beautiful mansion adorned with flags and pennants of true Dodger blue. “I guess that’s Jackie Robinson’s house,” Barry concedes. “Oh, no,” pipes Peter, “that’s God’s house.”

And Jackie Robinson lives in a house carved entirely of oak. The house is the culmination of Jackie’s fifth dream, which is really my dream.

Fifth

I sell everything I own and walk into the woods.
I build a house inside an oak tree.
Life becomes acorns and silence.

Sixth

Jackie and I have seats on the upper deck. Say Jackie, you want a beer. So I leave him in his seat and stride back toward the concessions. It is the bottom of the sixth. One on, two out. By the time I return, Jackie’s hanging onto the blimp above left field, skywriting lines of Whitman with his own public image. Jeff Kent homers to right. I drink Jackie’s beer.

Seventh

I’m taking you out to the ballgame.
I’m taking you out with the crowd.
I’ll buy you some peanuts and Cracker Jack.
But darling, we are never, no we’re never coming back.

Eighth

Don’t sweat the small stuff. Jackie doesn’t sweat at all.

Ninth

Jackie shaves with a rapier.
I shave with my hand.
Jackie sips ambrosia with Billie Holliday.
I eat mutton with a clown.

Jackie can recite the alphabet backwards until the rhythm of the consonants hums and drifts across the plains to where I wait for him, confused and stuck on N.

Jackie has visited 48 states.
I am a small town in Georgia.
Jackie has diamonds in his shoes.
I am a scar on his forearm.