Nothing happens right away, but Jacks can feel a change in the air, like it gets on the Gulf in Texas before a big blow, backs stiffening among the local crackers behind home, an edge to the cheering from the men of the 12th standing on the sideline. Too Tall throws again, wincing, and Jacks doesn’t like the sound when the batter lays into the ball. He turns, expecting the worst, but there is Scott backed up deep in center, the boy waiting, waiting, then charging a few steps forward to catch the ball and winging it in on the fly, Jacks letting it sizzle past him to skip off the front of the mound and continue to the catcher so quick the runner is four feet from home when he’s tagged. Double out, inning over.
The whole regiment lets out a Comanche whoop then, slapping the Carolina boy on the back when he comes in from the field, sharing out a sack of oranges somebody has foraged. Water at the camp is not much for drinking, boiled and allowed to settle it still tastes like mud, so even hot from the sun the orange soothes his throat.
“I took something off it,” says Too Tall. “I knowed he’s gonna pop up.”
The pop-up would have been out of reach in any fenced ballpark Jacks has played in, but he leads off the inning and can’t deal with the pitching now. He digs in at the plate, splits his grip on the bat for control, and watches the white boy’s legs. His fastball still has too much pop to do much with, but his curve is a lot slower and starting to break earlier. In his windup for the curve he twists his hip and swings his lead leg across his body, almost stiff at the knee, while he bends the knee and lifts it high for the straight pitch.
Jacks waits for a curve.
“Come on, Sarge!” calls Cooper, not playing but plenty active on the sideline. “I got some serious paper on the line!”
Laughter from the men then. There is no cash left in the camp, soldiers writing “checks” to each other in their card games and charging what little there is to buy at the colored canteen against next month’s pay. Jacks waits out two fast ones, a strike and a ball.
On the next throw the hurler keeps his lead leg stiff and Jacks steps back while he’s still in motion, waiting on the ball then slapping it hard between the shortstop and the third baseman.
“Atta go, Sarge! Runner on board!”
The pitcher has a good quick-throw to first and has almost caught them napping a couple times. Jacks hasn’t stolen a base in ten years and stays close to the bag while Curtis strikes out on a pitch in the dirt. Dell Spicer who married the Blackfoot gal back in Montana comes up then and swings late on the first pitch, slicing it just fair of the first-base boundary that has been laid down with lime. It gets lost in the spectators, who complicate things by trying to help, and Jacks ends up on third with Spicer standing up at second. The umpire makes them both move back a base, claiming interference. Jacks knows it will do no good but needs to make a show for the boys, calling time and stomping over to complain.
“If they hadn’t grabbed it, it would’ve rolled for a triple!”
The umpire is in military uniform. He taps his second lieutenant’s bar. “All decisions final.”
Jacks returns to second with the white side of the field catcalling after him. Horace Bell from B Company is up now, the swiftest of their runners but not much with the bat. Jacks sees the 12th infield playing back, and signals for a bunt.
“Good look now!” he calls, catching Bell’s eye and tugging twice on his cap. “Wait for your pitch.”
But the curve snaps in on his hands and hits the neck of the bat before he can pull it back, popping up easily to the catcher.
Jacks calls time again and has them wake up Sergeant Lumbley, who has been snoozing in the shade under the bench. Lum can’t run any more on account of the bullet he took in the knee during a scrap in Bozeman, but he can grit his teeth and march the boots off most of the boys. And with a hickory club in his hands, well—
The big sergeant steps up to the plate, a pattern of field grass dented into one side of his face, squinting sleepily and looking around the bases. He hasn’t been awake enough to know what stuff the pitcher has got, but with Lum it’s never mattered much.
“Strike this darky out!” hollers one of the locals and Lum turns to stare at him as the first pitch sails over for a strike. The crackers laugh.
Lum turns his sleepy gaze back to the pitcher then and knocks the next one over the left fielder’s head and it just rolls and rolls, rolls so far that two runs score and he is able to quick march all the way to third before they get the ball back in. Jacks sends a runner to take his place and Lum returns to the bench, rubbing his eyes.
“We ahead or behind?” he asks.
“Tied.”
“What inning?”
“Top of the eighth.”
“Damn.” He looks up at the sun. “This day done slip by me.”
Shavers bounces out and they take the field, Jacks walking out next to his pitcher.
“Can you do this?”
Too Tall spits tobacco. “I’ll keep it low.”
The first batter up for the 12th is a pinch-hitter too, a long-limbed drink of water who has been corked black wherever his skin shows out from the uniform. The crackers behind the catcher think this is a riot, and the boy coons it up, dragging the bat to the plate, dangling his loose limbs like rubber, turning to doff his cap, revealing a shock of yellow hair, and bow to the ladies who cover their mouths as they giggle.
“Send one to the moon, Rastus!” calls the sheriff through cupped hands.
“I sho’ly do mah best, sah!” he answers, bugging his eyes wide. He walks with his buttocks stuck out and arched high, and waggles them to great amusement as he settles in at the plate.
“Send me the sauce, Boss!” he calls to Coleman.
It is bad enough down here in this shithole Georgia not knowing if there’s going to be a war or not or if there is will they be allowed to go and wearing the damn woolen tunics in this heat while you drill and then what’s supposed to be your own people who you are fighting for treating you like dirt every time you wander off the reservation.
Jacks sees it coming.
Jacks sees it coming in the way Coleman holds his body. In the way he grips the ball, but he just stands at his position and says nothing.
Too Tall sends one upstairs and the blackface boy hits the dirt.
It is dead quiet for a long moment.
“Ball one!” calls the second lieutenant, and gives Jacks a look.
The crackers and a good number of the boys from the 12th are screaming as he walks to the mound this time, faces red, a few stepping across the lime onto the infield to make their threats. He hears nigger this and nigger that, something about when the sun goes down. The 12th are regulars, a good outfit, but the pastel ladies are here now and it changes everything. Both the colonels are standing up in the bleachers, looking concerned.
Jacks takes the ball from Too Tall. “You don’t really have nothin left, do you?”
“Spose not,” the pitcher says, turning to spit tobacco, face a mask as the crackers shout. “If I still had it, I’d of tore that boy’s head off.”
“You walk straight for the middle of our fellas over there, keep your eyes to yourself.”
“I can get these bastards out.”
“You done enough today, Trooper. Nice job.”
The private walks extra slow to the waiting wall of blue shirts, tucking his glove under his arm and seeming not to notice his life is being threatened by the mob on the other side. Jacks waves for Hooks to go in at center, and brings Scott in to take the mound. The word is that the Carolina boy can throw it some, and at this point he wishes Colonel Burt would step down and run the damn team like he did when they played the railroaders in Missoula.