“Danbo,” Euclid said. “Suppa.”
I didn’t want to, but I ate with the other players boarding in McKissic House. Counting me, sixteen fellas crowded the long table. Lon Musselwhite, the team’s six-foot-four left fielder and the biggest man in the dining room, had the seat of honor next to the kitchen. (Musselwhite was team captain.) The chair at the table’s foot, more a throne than a piece of furniture, stayed empty, even though Kizzy had set it a place. I guessed it was for Mister JayMac, who’d show up when he felt like it. Reese Curriden, the third baseman, and Q. U. Parris, a pitcher nicknamed Quip, served us, toting bowls of vegetables and plates of meat in from the kitchen so Kizzy wouldn’t drop dead trying to do everything alone.
“Don’t fret,” Reese Curriden told us newcomers. “This is just a get-acquainted deal. Yall’ll get your shot next week.”
“KP,” Quip Parris said. He was short, blond as wheat, and triggered like a clock spring. Soon enough, I learned he saw himself as the linchpin of the pitching staff. He hailed from Raleigh, North Carolina. His initials stood for Quintus Uriah, which explains why everybody called him Quip.
With nearly all the food on the table, Musselwhite rapped his spoon against his tea glass and said, “Yall please bow.” Everyone bowed. Kizzy came back in with three banana cream pies on a rack of lacquered dowels. She sighed loudly. “Sweet and holy Jesus,” Musselwhite said, “thy blessings on the lady that prepared these victuals, the victuals themselves, and all who aim to eat em. Give us strength-also victories over our CVL enemies, as Thou dost give our fighting forces victories over the Nips and Krauts. Amen.”
“Amen,” said everybody at table.
“Pass them ol field peas,” Musselwhite said.
Bowls began shuttling around. Kizzy finally got to squeeze her rack of meringue-topped pies onto the table.
“Okay, fellas,” Musselwhite said, “innerduce yourselves.” He served himself field peas, tomatoes, fried squash, okra, butter beans, green beans, and mashed potatoes. He grabbed off several biscuits and forked up a breaded pork chop, a slice of ham, a batter-fried chicken breast. I followed suit.
Players introduced themselves. In addition to Reese Curriden and Quip Parris, we heard from Clarence “Trapdoor” Evans, Burt Fanning, Lamar Knowles, Charlie Jorgensen, Sweet Gus Pettus, Vito Mariani, Jerry Wayne Sosebee, Rick Roper, and Percy “Double” Dunnagin. Us newcomers to Highbridge included Philip Ankers, the farm boy who’d called me ugly; Jefferson Dobbs, alias Skinny; and Junior Heggie, shy and decent and maybe a tad smarter than the other two rookies.
Lon Musselwhite pointed his butter knife at me. “Okay, champ, who’re you?”
On one of her glide-throughs from the kitchen, Kizzy said, “He don’t talk, but you can caw him Danny Bowes.”
Boles, I wanted to correct her; not Bowes.
“Why the hell don’t he talk?” Musselwhite said.
“Maybe he’s taken a vow of silence,” Vito Mariani said.
“You figure him for another damned Papist?” Musselwhite said. “Uh-uh. He’s got Primitive Pentecostal writ all over him.”
“Darius told me he’s a born-again shortstop,” Quip Parris said, “with serious plans to excommunicate Hoey.”
“Hallelujah,” Lamar Knowles, the second baseman, said; he said it quietlike, but everybody heard him.
“Careful,” Rick Roper, a utility player, said. “Heggie may be out for you like Bowes is out for Hoey.”
Boles, I thought: Boles! I tried to talk. What I got was a loud gargle that shut me up quicker than a right jab to the mouth. I could feel myself reddening, burning like I’d plunged my whole head into a bucket of liniment.
Musselwhite had just started to speak when the biggest, nigh-on to ugliest, man I’d ever seen came lumbering in. He had to stoop to get under the transom between the dining room and the parlor. Like Ankers, he wore overalls. His overalls were the biggest pair I’d ever seen, enough denim to outfit every man jack in an Oklahoma oil field. He also wore a long-sleeved white shirt and a brown cap with a fancy H for Highbridge on it. His face was out of alignment somehow, like a pumpkin cut in two and put back together wrong. It even had the color of a blotchy pumpkin. He looked semi-Oriental. At the corners of his bottom lip, two pale scars rucked up, like lopsided buttons. His eyes brimmed with a yellow goo. He wiped them with the back of one meaty hand, then wiped that hand on his overalls. His bare feet reminded me of gray rubber galoshes, but they were only feet-a Titan’s feet, with horny calluses, ropy veins, and ingrown toenails.
The Titan pulled out the thronelike chair at the end of the table and lowered himself into it. Even sitting, he had a good foot on Musselwhite. A helluvan entrance. Ankers, Heggie, and Dobbs had frozen in place, with tea glasses or forks lifted to their mouths. Me too, I guess.
“Gentlemen, meet Jumbo Hank Clerval,” Musselwhite said. “Glad you could join us, Jumbo.”
“Thank you.” The big guy’s voice was like a ship’s gun booming over deep water.
“Meet the new guys,” Musselwhite said. “Ankers, Dobbs, Heggie, and Bowes. Bowes is their silver-tongued spokesman.”
“Call him Boles,” Parris said. “With an l.”
“Delighted to meet yall,” Jumbo said, glancing at us with what seemed like real curiosity. Despite the yall, he had a Frenchified accent, an odd lilt that rode the natural booming of his voice. Jumbo-how else could I think of him?-turned to me. “How do yall like Highbridge, Mr Boles?”
“Boles aint my spokesman,” Ankers said. “I am.”
“Actually, Mr Clerval, Danny cain’t talk,” Junior Heggie said, a hiccup in his voice. Everybody, including Jumbo and me, looked at Junior as if he’d belched at a piano recital. Not that I didn’t welcome his explanation; only that, being so bashful, he’d boggled us all just by speaking. “But I’m shore he can play ball,” he hurried to add.
“He looks like a player,” Jumbo said.
“He looks like a chitlin with ears,” Trapdoor Evans said.
I flushed tomato-red again. The whole table, except for Heggie and Jumbo, guffawed. In Jumbo’s case, I couldn’t tell if he hated jabs at people’s looks or if he had the sense of humor of a cast-iron pot. In my view, Evans hadn’t meant to hurt me; just to get off a funny saying, a josh.
“Too bad about your disability, Mr Boles,” Jumbo said. “I’m Henry Clerval. Muscles”-he nodded at Lon Musselwhite-“has an imperfect grasp of the etiquette of introductions.”
Mariani whistled, meaning, “Boy, he popped you, Muscles,” but Jumbo frowned at the other guys’ sniggerings.
“You’re a big one to talk about my imperfect Emily Posts,” Musselwhite said. “Coming down here with your cap on. You owe the house kitty a dime, Jumbo.”