About Me
Paul Byall escaped from a small town in Ohio at the age of 18 by earning a scholarship to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he majored in physics. He went on to do graduate work at the University of California. In addition to Ohio and California, he has lived in Barcelona, Spain, NYC and currently resides and writes in Savannah, Georgia.
He is the award-winning author of numerous short stories and the novels Ridgeland and The Genie at Low Tide. His first published story, written while a student at the University of California, received mention as a “distinguished story” in The Best American Short Stories anthology. Paul's long short story, "The Genie at Low Tide", published by Ploughshares has been anthologized in Ploughshares Solos Omnibus 2.
Paul's most recent novel, The Genie at Low Tide, based on his short story of the same title, recounts the story of a reclusive former professional baseball player who, on his sixtieth birthday, is visited by a woman who claims to be his daughter from a one-night stand he had in his playing days. The book is currently looking for a home.
Paul can be reached at pbyall@gmail.com
Excerpt from The Genie at Low Tide
1
Rookie of The Year
When Josh Cooper met Marybelle Evans, he'd been out of the majors for thirty-seven years. His star had burned brightly for a few years a thousand miles north, where he'd won Rookie of the Year in 1961 with the Boston Bisons. But that flame fizzled out with a single pitch in 1962 when he tried to sneak a fastball past Boomer Johnson.
The fateful day had begun with a spate of omens. The team awoke in the NYC Waldorf to a solar eclipse that had turned the sky a charcoal gray. The eclipse lifted before game time, but its effects lingered among some of the Bisons, most especially Pepper Perez, a practitioner of the black arts who had already refused to play on the third Thursday of any month because that was the day his grandmother had been struck by lightning while hacking sugar cane in Cuba. Pepper proselytized to anyone who would listen that the eclipse augured the end of the world.
To further jinx their day, the Bisons' usual contact at the Waldorf was on vacation, and whoever subbed for her had overlooked, forgotten or simply not paid attention to the team's request to scrounge up some grits for Josh, who couldn't get his motor started without ham hock and grits for breakfast. Thus, he'd had to haul his six-foot-four frame onto the bus with nothing in his stomach but blueberries and polenta (the polenta a suggestion of the Waldorf waiter, who said it was the closest they could come to grits). Then the bus broke down on the way to the Stadium, and they ended up standing at the curb waving frantically at a stream of New York City taxis, the cabbies already spooked by the eclipse and reluctant to stop for a gang of guys wearing Bisons baseball caps. Meanwhile, Marty Mickens, the travel manager, stood in the bus fussing with a crackling radio in an effort to contact a limo company, which never did come on the line.
When they finally made it to the stadium (nobody remembers how), the door to the visitors' lockers wouldn't open and Poppy Boggs, the manager, had to call security.
Despite these setbacks, Josh, who did not believe in omens, had managed to hold the mighty Yankees – whom he liked to call the Doodles – scoreless through six innings. Then, in the bottom of the seventh, the PA system announced a pinch-hitter batting for the pitcher.
Josh stepped up on the mound to spot the hulking figure of the notorious long-ball hitter, Boomer Johnson, stalking to the plate. At the sight of Boomer, the fans went into a frenzy, screaming and stomping their feet. Boomer took a few practice swings, flexing a piece of lumber the size of a fencepost as if it were a pine twig, and glared out at Josh. To silence the crowd, Josh turned his back to the plate and stepped away from the rubber. He looked toward the dugout where Poppy Boggs stood, one foot up on the ledge, forearms crossed over the knee. Poppy nodded and tipped his cap to indicate he had faith in Josh.
Josh stepped up on the rubber, took the sign from Buster Kilgore, his catcher, and fired a fastball that Boomer may not even have seen, as the ball smacked into Buster's mitt before Boomer had a chance to lift his bat from his shoulder. Buster raised his mask to reveal a fat grin and threw Josh a thumbs up. The crowd booed. Boomer Johnson worked the count to three and two, the stadium din rising with each pitch. The situation called for an off-speed pitch, something to force a ground ball and a possible double play. But Josh was twenty-two and wedded to the strength of his arm. Kilgore flashed the sign for a curve, but Josh shook him off. He flashed the sign for a change-up; Josh shook him off.
The sky darkened, grew a ghostly black, and a wind began to howl through the stadium. Dust devils swirled down the first base line.
Leaning toward the plate, Josh gripped the ball behind his back and focused his every throbbing neuron on Buster Kilgore's catcher's mitt perched on the inside corner. As he went into his stretch, the wind rose to a roar that shut out the din of the crowd and the jeers from the Doodle dugout, the universe reduced to Josh and Boomer facing each other down a sixty-foot tunnel of contention.
Boomer cocked his bat and glared out at Josh from the shadows of his cap, elbows up, chin thrust forward, determined to drive the ball into a distant galaxy. Josh fired, a small white blur stretched into the shape of an egg whizzed toward the plate, Boomer uncoiled, the bat snapped forward, and Boomer proved to all present from whence came his nickname.
The missile caught Josh square in the forehead and caromed all the way to the right field warning track, where it fell into the waiting glove of Pepper Perez. Boomer was out. And so was Josh, flat on his back on the dusty mound, his mouth frozen open in silent surprise, his pupils fixed on a point beyond the clouds.
Josh attempted a come-back the following year, but he had lost the magic, his fastball gone flat, his slow stuff limp. He endured a gauntlet of neurologists, physiologists and phrenologists determined to find an explanation, each concluding his examination with a befuddled look and a shake of the head.
Josh tried a plethora of new grips and releases, experimented with screwballs, sinkers and split-finger fastballs, but nothing worked, and by opening day, 1963, he was on his way home to Beaufort, South Carolina.
Fortunately, Josh had signed a six-year contract after his rookie season. The contract was guaranteed, if Josh was not, and this bloated stipend allowed Josh to wallow in idleness. He took up residence in the Beaufort House, where he commanded a suite on the first floor. At his request, the accommodating proprietors slung a hammock across the front porch where their local hero could wile away his days cradled in the sling's soft netting. He became a common sight, stretched out in the hammock, a beer bottle balanced on his belly, his head turned to the skirted legs that marched by on the sidewalk and climbed up and down the entrance steps during the lunch hour. Evenings would generally find him parked on one of the thirty or so barstools around town, cooling his palms on a beer mug and chatting with the bartender, while waiting to buy drinks for the first pretty face to wander into the cone of his vision.
In this manner he drifted through two and a half dissolute decades, featuring a string of women friends and thudding hangovers, until he smashed headlong into the Law of Diminishing Returns (both financially and socially) and retired to a small house on Cutter Island, a spit of sand dunes and marshland accessible from the mainland by a WPA-era two-lane bridge. There, Josh purchased a bungalow on the brackish Rooster Tail River that wound through the marshes to the sea. The house had a deck in back with an obstinate sliding glass door that only opened half way, always sticking on some invisible obstacle no one had ever been able to clear. There was a live oak to the side of the house, whose huge ghostly branches dripped great tresses of Spanish moss and canopied the deck and pier where Josh docked a twenty-two-foot outboard. The boat sat near the bottom during low tide with the motor yanked up to keep the blades free of the mud, but it rose up on high tide, and Josh would climb in most mornings and putter off down the twisting Rooster Tail, between fields of marsh grass, to Coleman's Sound or Cooter's Cove, wherever the fish were biting. He usually fished alone, and he knew some people thought that odd, but he had never been one to feel a great need for company, and even less one to pay any mind to what people thought. Most evenings he didn't motor straight home, but stopped off at Carl's Bait Shop, which doubled as the local marina (and tripled as the town tavern), where he'd drop off the majority of his catch, to be distributed by Carl to whomever happened to stop by for a bucket of bait or a six-pack of beer. Here, huddled over the bar, he and Carl would idle away the rest of the afternoon drinking beer and chatting about baseball, and this is where destiny found him on his sixtieth birthday, when Marybelle Evans dropped smack into the intersection of his personal coordinates in space and time.
2
Marybelle
She didn't suddenly materialize in a puff of smoke or a flash of light. There was no drum roll or blaring trumpets, but only the weak jingle of the bell above the door to announce her arrival and interrupt Josh and Carl's argument over who should be batting cleanup for the Braves. Rather than advance to the bar, she hung back among the shelves of lures, hooks, sinkers, and other such accessories, looking around as if studying the place for a remodeling. Carl straightened up behind the bar and asked her if he could be of assistance.
"Are you the owner?"
"Guilty as charged," Carl said, but she didn't laugh, or even smile, but just came up to the bar and looked Carl straight in the face. She was brown-haired, about thirty-five, Josh guessed, thin as a fly rod and almost pretty but with a tired-looking face.
"You know where I can find a man the name of Josh Cooper?"
Carl, his cheek distended by a plug of tobacco, adopted a thoughtful pose, cocking his head and pursing his lips. He scratched his chin, looked up at the ceiling fan churning lazily through the air, then over at the window, everywhere but at Josh, and said, "Nope, 'fraid not."
Josh tightened his grip on the frosted mug he'd been nursing and glanced at the woman, then looked out at the marsh beyond the window where the ebbing tide pulled at the base of the tall grass and made it flutter, as if in a wind.
The woman ran her tongue in a little lump between her teeth and upper lip. "Amazin'. Scrap of an island this size, I'd think you'd know everybody."
"Sorry," said Carl and shot a gob of black juice into a spittoon behind the bar, the missile striking the tin with a ping as sharp as a BB.
Josh kept both hands on his mug, his shoulders square to the bar, and turned his head to the woman. "What you want him for? This Cooper fella."
She stepped up to the bar, placed one forearm on the varnished wood and looked at Josh. "Why, we's kin. I came all the way from Greenville just to say hello."
"What kind a kin?"
"Well, I don't know that's any concern of yours. Unless you might be him."
"And if I was?"
"Then I'd tell ya."
"Well, I ain't. So you don't have to."
"Sorry to hear that."
Leaving the bar, the woman nearly bumped into the Clemons brothers, both of whom tipped their big straw hats and stepped aside to let her pass.
The brothers were oyster pickers, skids who went out in the marsh at low tide and picked oysters out of the clusters that grew in the mud. It was a hard way to make a living, and the swing of the tides made for irregular hours, as the pull of the moon cares not a whit for the twenty-four-hour day. Low tide might come at noon, afternoon or the middle of the night. The only thing sure was it'd come twelve hours and twenty-five minutes after the last one.
Everett Clemons came up to the bar, and Hank went to the cooler for a six-pack of beer. When Everett saw Josh, he said, "Hey, Josh we saw you on TV yesterday."
Josh threw Everett a squint-eyed stare. "How's that? I ain't been on TV since they went to color."
Everett pushed his hat back on his head to reveal a strip of pale white flesh uncolored by the sun. The rest of his face was as dark as Mexican. "On that sports channel. We were over at my cousin's in Beaufort. He's got one of them big color TVs. They had your game on. Your no-hitter. Well, not the whole game, just the last inning, where you struck out the side. They said you were only the fifth rookie to pitch a no-hitter. Man, that's something. I didn't know that."
"A long time ago," Josh said. "There's been a bunch since."
Carl handed Everett a string of two shiners and a mullet that Josh had caught that morning. He still had two nice flounders in a barrel of saltwater for whomever came next.
"Thanks much, Carl," Everett said, and Carl said, "Thank Josh. They're his fish."
Everett gave Josh a nod and said, "Guess you'd a won the CY Young, probably MVP too, if you hadn't got hurt. That's what the man said."
Coming from anyone else, Josh would have taken Everett's remarks as an attempt to needle him. Afterall, who wants to be reminded of all the things he lost out on? But the Clemons were too simple-minded for that kind of snideness, so Josh just said, "Yeah, maybe," and turned back to the window and the fluttering marsh grass. The marsh was an ever-changing wonder. The sun, the wind, the tides, the clouds and even the night stars played with its hues and motion. They could turn it blue and still, brown and fluttery, rust-colored or even charcoal. At that moment, the tide caused tiny ripples on the surface of the water that sparkled in the sunlight.
Hank brought his six-pack to the bar and gave Josh a nod. "So she found you, eh?"
"What?"
"That lady. We ran into her at Elmer's. Said she was looking for you. We told her she'd probably find you here."
"Shit."
When the brothers had left, Carl said, "That woman said she came from Greenville. You got kin in Greenville?"
"Not that I know of."
Carl shrugged and went to stacking beer mugs on the shelf behind the bar. Josh gulped down the last of his beer and slid off the bar stool.
"What you got planned?" asked Carl. "For tonight, I mean."
Josh cocked his head. "Why would I have anything planned?"
Carl leaned forward with his forearms on the bar and stared at him. "I thought it was your birthday."
"Oh yeah, that."
"Maggie says you should come for dinner."
3
The Birthday Dinner
Maggie cooked up a meal of grouper and rice, which was what she always cooked when Josh came for dinner. Except this time, it being Josh's birthday, she baked the grouper with tomatoes and olives. She placed a plate of broccoli on the table as well, which went untouched until she stabbed out a stalk up for herself.
"I shoulda known better than to put anything green in front of you two," she said.
Carl wolfed down a mouthful of rice and harpooned a stalk of broccoli with his fork. "How's that. Satisfied?"
Josh sat glancing from one to other, bemused, but he didn't touch the broccoli."
Afterwards Maggie brought out a small cake with a single, fat candle in the shape of the number 60. She produced a match to light the candle, but Josh said, "Don't bother. I don't want to embarrass myself," and she dropped the match into the pocket of her dress.
Carl handed Josh a knife to cut the cake. Carl had cleaned himself up, as Maggie always demanded he do before dinner, and he grinned at Josh with lips lacking their usual crust of dried tobacco juice. Josh had never cottoned to tobacco, although several of his old teammates had indulged in the stuff. Buster Kilgore used go through a tin a day, sliding his mask up on his head to spit a gob out at the batter's shoes between pitches.
"Now, I ain't gonna tell you how to cut the cake," Carl said, "but just remember there's three of us, and we'd all like a slice."
Maggie gave a little laugh, but Josh only offered a weak smirk and cut the cake. Carl had a penchant for teasing and he liked to joke, but he rarely elicited a chuckle from Josh, who was not big on laughter.
They finished the cake, and Carl rummaged around in a cabinet until he came up with a bottle of Bourbon. He set three tumblers on the table, poured out a couple inches for Josh, looked at Maggie, who shook her head, and poured some for himself. Maggie went into the kitchen, and Carl and Josh took their drinks out to the porch, Carl toting the bottle of Bourbon by the neck like a shot duck.
The house, a gray clapboard bungalow built by Carl's grandfather in the fifties, stood on a low rise above the dunes on the Atlantic side of the island, and the deck looked out on the open ocean and the ever-present gulls squawking at the waves.
Josh said Carl had the choicest piece of land on earth, and Carl nodded and said, "Thanks to grandpa."
Just then an osprey came down, diving like a meteor, splashed into the waves and came up a second later, its wings stretched out on the surface like pontoons. It began flapping its wings in an effort to rise, but with little effect. It had a fish, a large one, just as determined to stay wet as the bird was to fly. It was a struggle Josh could feel in his bones.
"He's got a big one," Josh said, imagining the fish writhing and flapping beneath the surface, frantic to break free of the talons.
"Yep. I saw one drown once. Wouldn't let go, and the fish wore him out."
Josh pierced Carl with a skeptical stare.
With several frantic flaps of its wings, the osprey rose from the water and soared off carrying a three-foot fish in its talons.
"Really," Carl said. "I saw it."
"That looks like a sea bass," Josh said.
"Really," Carl said. "I saw it right here."
"You saw an osprey drown?" It wasn't so much a question as an accusation.
"I swear."
Maggie came out cradling a mug of tea, the Lipton tag drooping over the rim, and dropped into the chair next to Josh. "What you boys lyin' about now?"
Maggie was a thin, handsome woman, too handsome for Carl, truth be told, but she'd grown up on the island and hadn't had a lot of options, the male population consisting primarily of shrimpers and dirt farmers. She carried herself with a demeanor Josh often thought more appropriate to Charleston or Atlanta.
The talk turned to the woman who'd stopped by the bait shop looking for Josh, and Maggie asked if the woman had specified how she was related to Josh.
"Nope. She wouldn't tell," Carl said.
"Did you ask?" Maggie said.
"Josh did, and she said it was none of his business, unless he was the kin."
"Which he probably is," Maggie said.
Josh paid only sporadic attention to this chatter, preoccupied as he was watching the gulls skid down, wings spread like brakes, to inspect the dunes, peck around for sand crabs and flap in some random orbit over the water. The airborne birds seemed always to be squawking out some bitter complaint, causing Josh to wonder what they had to gripe about.
"Well, I wouldn't trust her," Carl said.
"You and your suspicions," Maggie said. "What you think she might do? Kidnap Josh? Hold him for ransom? Ain't nobody that'd pay it." She sipped on her tea. "But if she's serious about lookin' for you, Josh, she's sure to find you. Everybody on the island knows where you live."
Josh threw her an icy stare. "I'm countin' on people to mind their own business and not go blabbin' my whereabouts to every stranger passing through."
"Well, somebody's bound to tell her, Josh. Why won't you talk to her? Maybe she's a long-lost cousin."
"Ain't got no cousins."
"What kin you got, Josh?"
Josh said he had a sister somewhere, he wasn't sure where. "She lived in Macon, last I knew."
"Macon, Georgia?" Carl said, and Josh threw him a dumbfounded look.
"Do you know of any other Macon?"
Carl thought for a few seconds, pursed his lips and gave the question serious consideration. "Ain't there one over in Europe somewhere? France or somewhere?"
Maggie, who had just lifted her mug to her lips, choked off a laugh and nearly coughed up her tea. Regaining her composure, she asked Josh if his sister had kids, if he had any nieces or nephews.
"I think she had one, as I remember. A boy. I remember because she brought him up when she came to see me in Beaufort. But that was about twenty years ago."
Maggie plopped her mug on the table. "You got a sister and a nephew you haven't seen in twenty years?"
"The occasion just never arose."
"You mean occasions. Like maybe birthdays or a high school graduation? Those never arose?"
"We weren't that kind of family. We weren't close."
"What kind of family were you, Josh?"
"Do we have to talk about this?"
Maggie shook her head. "No, Josh, we don't have to talk about it, but it's hard for me to fathom having a sister and a nephew you haven't seen in twenty years."
"You don't have to fathom it."