The Light of God: America’s Pastime in the Age of Drone Warfare

At the elbow of Highway 54, where the road bends back toward Jornada del Muerto, there we are, just before it veers north and climbs from the Tularosa Basin, just before the straight shot of asphalt between the dark green stretch of Lincoln Forest and the big pure splotch of White Sands, there we are at the ballpark at the southernmost elbow of Highway 54, just before it rips straight to the Valley of Fires, the hardened guts of the earth coughed up all molten five thousand years ago, cooled to black and stuck midflow like the shadow of a mighty bird hovering, covering the sun, a dark scar across the underbelly of New Mexico, a mean streak grinning toward Trinity where they discovered destroying whole worlds by cracking atoms, radiated sand still glowing green just north of where we are, me and Pops eating hot dogs, holding our hearts and standing atop flimsy aluminum bleachers for The Star-spangled Banner blaring from a stereo in the press box which is a closet above the garage where they sell beer at the ballpark in Alamogordo—my home sweet home. Can’t you see that American flag, popping in the wind? My god, look at that sunset. Take 54 south and there’s a porn shop and the very tip of the spout of Texas and then there’s Juarez, where 11,202 people have been murdered in six years. There are maybe seventy fans here at the height of summer in 2012, all milling around, not exactly excited because the heat is a drag and because this is only the Pecos League of semi-pro baseball clubs. But there is minor anticipation; this is a rivalry game—white Sands Pupfish vs. Roswell Invaders. Tickets were six bucks. The players get two hundred a month if they get paid at all. The beer is three bucks, except when the cleanup batter strikes out; then it’s two for the rest of the inning. Pops is keen to retire after thirty years as a public school administrator, tired of dealing with guns like never before, tired of education reduced to standardized tests, tired of his cartoon ties and the click of his cowboy boots on the asbestos tile up and down the halls of Heights Elementary— Where Everyone Is a Winner— just tired. I worry he will drown in his LA-Z Boy and so we start here with plans to go north and see all the baseball we can, trying to remember why we care to be alive and American.