I started greasing baking sheets while Kizzy measured fresh grounds into a coffee pot the size of a small oil drum. The sun hadn’t risen full yet, but the kitchen had already begun to creak and steam. I felt like a galley slave.
“I’m Mrs McKissic,” the white woman told me. “Giselle Crouch McKissic. You may call me, as everyone does, Miss Giselle.” She paused in her rapid-fire bacon slicing. “Or could, that is, if you could talk. So you may think of me as Miss Giselle. However, you will probably settle on a private name in tune with your own vulgar tastes and biases. I can’t prevent that, but it betrays your upbringing, Mr Boles.”
“Mister Danl’s a good boy, ma’am. Jes cain’t talk.”
“I know he can’t talk,” Miss Giselle said, “but he can think. Not well, necessarily, but freely, unimpeded by any human concern for the feelings of his elders. Muteness affords an awfully convenient armor against self-revelation. Perhaps we should all aspire to it.”
“You thinking way too much, ma’am,” Kizzy said. “Thisere boy’s awright.”
“A judgment based on only half a day’s experience?”
“Yessum. That’s aw I gots.”
Miss Giselle said, “Enough greasing, Mr Boles. Lard and butter are rationed. Do you wish to run us out?” Impossible, I thought. This kitchen seemed to have reserves of everything from tabasco sauce to oatmeal. “To the juice, please. A herd will soon be gathering.”
I went to the juicer. It looked like a glass Ku Klux Klan hat, with a moat around it. I halved oranges and mashed out juice. Kizzy hummed radio melodies-“Paper Doll” and “Pistol Packin Mama,” not corny spirituals or big-city blues. Miss Giselle cracked eggs into a big mixing bowl and whipped them into a froth with a long-handled spoon.
Darius came in from his room above the carriage house. “Kizzy, Miss Giselle, Mr Boles.” He waited.
“Yes,” Miss Giselle said. “You may roust them out.”
Darius banged out of the kitchen and into the foyer. “Rise and shine!” He climbed. “Rise and shine, gentlemens. You don’t eat now, you don’t eat till noon! Rise and shine!” I heard him pounding on doors. “Rise and shine!” He climbed to the third floor. “Don’t eat now, you don’t eat till noon!”
Somebody yelled, “Damn, man! You’re the loudest nigger in the whole brought-low Confederacy!”
It didn’t phase Darius. Back on the second floor, he shouted, “Rise and shine!” Reveille at McKissic House. I felt smug about beating this wake-up call, even as I crippled my throwing hand on a juicer spindle and missed my extra winks.
“When you’re through there, Mr Boles,” Miss Giselle said, “get out the cereal and sweet milk for Mr Clerval. He can’t abide animal protein.”
“He is a picky fella,” Kizzy said.
“I admire that in him,” Miss Giselle said. “It’s unusual to find a cogent particularity in any human male.”
Darius came back into the kitchen. He took a biscuit from one of the baking sheets Kizzy’d removed from the oven, cut it open, and smeared it with strawberry jam.
Miss Giselle looked on with the sourest expression I’d yet seen on her porcelain-pretty face. “Who said you could have that?”
Darius finished eating and licked his fingertips. “Nobody, ma’am. I’ll be eating shortly. Hardly seems a crime to grab a early taste.”
Miss Giselle just looked at him.
Darius tightened his jaw. “Sorry, ma’am.” He stalked out to the screened-in porch. At its door, he said, “After breakfuss, see me fo practice flannels, Danl. Tell them other new fellas the same.” He went on down the steps. The screen door banged to like a mine going off.
10
At practice that morning, I backed up Buck Hoey at shortstop. Heggie backed up Lamar Knowles at second. Skinny Dobbs birddossed Trapdoor Evans in right field. Philip Ankers, who’d probably learned to pitch chunking clods at cows, went down to the bullpen to warm up with our second-string catcher, Nyland “ Turkey ” Sloan.
“S only me you’ve got to get by, Dumbo,” Hoey said as we stood in the infield watching Mister JayMac hit fungoes to the outfield. I gave Hoey a look. “Roper’s gone. Roper, Pettus, Jorgensen-they all took Mister JayMac’s offer of back pay, railway tickets, and severance pay. So did Bob Collum. Mister JayMac’s savvy. He knows everybody’s skills and limitations. Yours too, Dumbo. So I hope he’s right.”
From right, Dobbs threw one in like a bazooka shot to Dunnagin at home plate-a no-hopper, the kind of dead-on-target throw you don’t see twice all year.
“S too soon to showboat, Mr Dobbs!” Mister JayMac yelled. “You ruin that arm, I’ll unsocket the other, jes to keep em a matched set.”
“Yessir!” Dobbs yelled back. “Sorry, sir!”
“My wife and Collum’s wife’re big pals,” Hoey said. “Now the Collums’re leaving. Looks like Mister JayMac may’ve guessed right on Dobbs, though. Collum never threw like that. What about you? Did he guess right on you? Or am I gonna send you home with a dent in your cup and mud on your face?”
I pretended to watch the fielders catching and throwing in. In fact, I did watch em, them and Mister JayMac.
In refusing to wear baseball duds, Mister JayMac set himself apart from most other managers. He dressed like a man off for a scrambled dog at the corner drug store, casual but neat. Today, he wore beat-up spikes instead of street shoes. The dirt around home was loose, and hitting fungoes from there required purchase.
Seeing Mister JayMac at a flip chart, you’d’ve figured him for a manager who’d ride the bench with a bourbon bottle in a paper sack. But I’d seen him throwing hard yesterday, and today he was smacking the ball. He’d even step in front of his catcher to pick off one-hop throws from the outfield. He liked his players to put out. “Exert!” he’d yell. “Sweat! Dive!” He liked leaping grabs, all-out tumbles, flamethrower pegs to first or home.
Even in his linen pants, dirt spilling from his cuffs, Mister JayMac was something. Trying out for him, I busted my tail. So did Junior at second and Dobbs in right. Not only did we want to earn ourselves starting spots, we also wanted to please-really please-Mister JayMac.
At the three challenge spots, three rookies against three old hands, we had us three battle royals. Mister JayMac tested every pair of rivals, turn by turn. He’d say, “Men on first and third, one out, Boles and Heegie up,” or, “Bottom o the ninth, tie score, runner on second, Hoey and Knowles up,” toss the ball up, feint one way, and fungo it another, with such a skitter on it you’d be lucky not to catch it in your teeth.
I had my championship year on the Red Stix going for me. Even more important, I had a history of hundreds of thousands of fielded ricochets from the wall of Tenkiller’s icehouse. I don’t think even Buck Hoey, a career minor leaguer, had handled more chances than me. Eight or nine a game tops it out for a shortstop, with a few hundred to a thousand more chances in spring training. Hoey had talent and more experience in actual game situations, but I had talent too and I’d practiced more-a hundred years as an all-star vet of Ye Olde Icehouse Loop. Off the field, I lacked confidence, but I had so much sass on it, you could’ve given half of mine to Stepin Fetchit and made him swagger like Mussolini. Swear to God.