The Dixon Cornbelt League by W. P. Kinsella

Author:W. P. Kinsella
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780795350993
Publisher: RosettaBooks

SEARCHING FOR JANUARY

On December 31, 1972, Pittsburgh’s all-star outfielder Roberto Clemente took off on a mercy flight taking clothing and medical supplies to Nicaraguan earthquake victims. Some time that night his plane went down in the ocean. His body was never recovered.

The sand is white as salt but powdery as icing sugar, cool on my bare feet, although if I push my toes down a few inches, yesterday’s heat lurks, waiting to surface with the sun.

It is 6:00 A.M. and I am alone on a tropical beach a mile down from our hotel. The calm ocean is a clear, heart-breaking blue. Fifty yards out a few tendrils of sweet, gray fog laze above the water; farther out the mist, water, and pale morning sky merge.

It appears slowly out of the mist, like something from an Arthurian legend, a large, inflatable life raft, the depressing khaki and olive-drab of military camouflage. A man kneeling in the front directs the raft with a paddle. He waves when he sees me, stands up and calls out in an urgent voice, but I can’t make it out. As the raft drifts closer I can see that the lone occupant is tall and athletic-looking, dark-skinned, with a long jaw and flashing eyes.

“Clemente!” is the first word I hear clearly. “I am Clemente! The baseball player. My plane went down. Days ago! Everyone must think I am dead.”

What he says registers slowly. Clemente! It has been fifteen years. Is this some local fisherman playing a cruel joke on a tourist?

“Yes,” I call back, after pausing too long, scanning his features again. There is no question: it is Roberto Clemente. “I believe everyone does think you’re dead.”

“We crashed on New Year’s Eve,” he said. “I’m the only one who survived.”

He steps lithely into the water, pulls the raft up on the beach, tosses the paddle back into the raft.

“Five days I’ve been out there,” he says. “Give or take a day. I sliced up the other paddle with my pocket knife, made a spear. Caught three fish. Never thought I’d enjoy eating raw fish. But I was so hungry they tasted like they were cooked. By the way, where am I?”

I tell him.

He thinks a minute.

“It’s possible. We crashed at night on the way to Managua. The plane was carrying three times the weight it should have, but the need was so great. Supplies for the earthquake victims.

“You look so surprised,” he says after a pause. “Have they called off the air search already, given us up for dead?” When I remain silent he continues. “Which way is your hotel? I must call my wife, she’ll be so worried.”

“I am surprised. More than surprised. You are Roberto Clemente, the baseball player?”

“Of course.”

“You were lost at sea?”

“Until now.”

“There’s something not quite right.”

“Like what?” says Clemente.

“Like what year do you think this is?”

“When we took off it was 1972, but New Year’s Eve. We crashed in the ocean. It must be January fifth or sixth, maybe even the seventh, 1973.

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