announcers and PR agents.
Danny tries to make each swing just like the one before it. He doesn’t bend his knees much or get much torque. His swing is a leadoff hitter’s, a fast slap of the ball, designed for line drives that allow him to start running. He keeps his eyes focused on the wall about sixty feet away from him, as though there is a pitcher there. He takes a high step with his left foot, places it down right about where it had been, and swings. The ball skips off the strip of Astroturf beneath him and gets caught in the mesh at the other end of the room. He grabs another ball and repeats. Repeats again. It’s the same motion for a hundred balls or so. His expression hasn’t changed.
“What are you thinking about?” I ask him as he stands, hands on his hips, looking at the pile he’s created.
He gives me a quizzical look.
“Nothing, dude,” he says. “It’s bad for you to think in here. I had to learn that. Because I’m naturally thoughtful.”
There’s a pause as he adjusts his batting gloves.
“That’s funny, right?” he says suddenly. “Like your mind has an off switch.”
Danny Carroll does this every day but Sunday in the off-season and every day from April to September since minor-league baseball cannot take days off simply because God did. He swings, swings again, hears the same sound, watches balls fly and bounce. He grimaces when he hits them wrong, nods when he hits them right. Repeats. It’s a basic movement, one that millions do, it’s just that Danny does it more. And he must do it better. But the movement, so short, so ultimately uninteresting, remains the same,
“Should I do another bucket?” he asks me.
“Yeah, yeah, another bucket,” he says before I can answer.
“Motivation,” he says, maybe to me, maybe to himself, or to no one.
“You ever get tired of it?” I ask. “The same thing all the time?”
“It’s just what you do,” he says.
I have called Archer Daniels Midland, and there is no fucking way that they’ll let me see the factory on the inside. Like everyone, I will have to watch the metal and the smoke from the other side of the train tracks.
“It’s just a bunch of pipes leading to more pipes,” said the media relations man on the phone. “It would probably bore you. It’s nothing too interesting.”
“Don’t be so modest,” I said.
There was crackling silence through the phone because he did not find me funny.
Somewhere in there, the slurry is pumped, all day long, right now even, as Danny and his teammates dress and the sun begins to set, dull pink. It’s pumped into something that looks like a contraption that James Bond must escape, but the corn doesn’t escape. Toothy discs on long rods spin, and the corn is macerated, separating the germ of the plant, leaving a starch-and-acid milkshake ready to be processed. No more kernels, just mash.
A man who used to work at the factory described the next step as being like a cotton candy machine, but fifty times the size. The slurry is spun in metal mesh colanders. The liquid passes through, and crystals are caught in the mesh. The crystals are the sugar. The liquid moves on, sitting again in glinting blue whale vats, where it’s mixed with more enzymes and chemicals, cooked until it ferments and becomes pure ethanol as smoke pours out over the town.
The 200-proof liquor can be treated as anything. It’s raw. It can be booze. When the factory was smaller, and owned by a smaller company, you could climb into the freight cars, where there was always a little moonshine runoff pooled at the bottom. Workers bottled it quick and took it home. There’s a good chance that the first taste of alcohol Tom Bigwood had, like everyone else who grew up around here, was a tablespoon of fresh corn ethanol. Sometimes he couldn’t even swallow it, but he still got hammered drunk anyway, as if the stuff were seeping into his blood through his cheeks, foaming on his tongue.
If the factory works at full
Danny tries to make each swing just like the one before it. He doesn’t bend his knees much or get much torque. His swing is a leadoff hitter’s, a fast slap of the ball, designed for line drives that allow him to start running. He keeps his eyes focused on the wall about sixty feet away from him, as though there is a pitcher there. He takes a high step with his left foot, places it down right about where it had been, and swings. The ball skips off the strip of Astroturf beneath him and gets caught in the mesh at the other end of the room. He grabs another ball and repeats. Repeats again. It’s the same motion for a hundred balls or so. His expression hasn’t changed.
“What are you thinking about?” I ask him as he stands, hands on his hips, looking at the pile he’s created.
He gives me a quizzical look.
“Nothing, dude,” he says. “It’s bad for you to think in here. I had to learn that. Because I’m naturally thoughtful.”
There’s a pause as he adjusts his batting gloves.
“That’s funny, right?” he says suddenly. “Like your mind has an off switch.”
Danny Carroll does this every day but Sunday in the off-season and every day from April to September since minor-league baseball cannot take days off simply because God did. He swings, swings again, hears the same sound, watches balls fly and bounce. He grimaces when he hits them wrong, nods when he hits them right. Repeats. It’s a basic movement, one that millions do, it’s just that Danny does it more. And he must do it better. But the movement, so short, so ultimately uninteresting, remains the same,
“Should I do another bucket?” he asks me.
“Yeah, yeah, another bucket,” he says before I can answer.
“Motivation,” he says, maybe to me, maybe to himself, or to no one.
“You ever get tired of it?” I ask. “The same thing all the time?”
“It’s just what you do,” he says.
I have called Archer Daniels Midland, and there is no fucking way that they’ll let me see the factory on the inside. Like everyone, I will have to watch the metal and the smoke from the other side of the train tracks.
“It’s just a bunch of pipes leading to more pipes,” said the media relations man on the phone. “It would probably bore you. It’s nothing too interesting.”
“Don’t be so modest,” I said.
There was crackling silence through the phone because he did not find me funny.
Somewhere in there, the slurry is pumped, all day long, right now even, as Danny and his teammates dress and the sun begins to set, dull pink. It’s pumped into something that looks like a contraption that James Bond must escape, but the corn doesn’t escape. Toothy discs on long rods spin, and the corn is macerated, separating the germ of the plant, leaving a starch-and-acid milkshake ready to be processed. No more kernels, just mash.
A man who used to work at the factory described the next step as being like a cotton candy machine, but fifty times the size. The slurry is spun in metal mesh colanders. The liquid passes through, and crystals are caught in the mesh. The crystals are the sugar. The liquid moves on, sitting again in glinting blue whale vats, where it’s mixed with more enzymes and chemicals, cooked until it ferments and becomes pure ethanol as smoke pours out over the town.
The 200-proof liquor can be treated as anything. It’s raw. It can be booze. When the factory was smaller, and owned by a smaller company, you could climb into the freight cars, where there was always a little moonshine runoff pooled at the bottom. Workers bottled it quick and took it home. There’s a good chance that the first taste of alcohol Tom Bigwood had, like everyone else who grew up around here, was a tablespoon of fresh corn ethanol. Sometimes he couldn’t even swallow it, but he still got hammered drunk anyway, as if the stuff were seeping into his blood through his cheeks, foaming on his tongue.
If the factory works at full
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