“Cmon, you guys,” Muscles said. “Next case!”
Jerry Wayne Sosebee stood up. “Awright.” He swallowed. “I accuse Jumbo and young Boles there of hoodwinking the boss. He gives em special road privileges that hurt team morale and affect how we play.”
A flight of locusts wheeled through my gut. The bus went quiet as a morgue.
Mister JayMac turned in his seat. “Hoodwinked?”
Only Hoey got a kick out of Sosebee’s accusation. “Jerry Wayne thinks Dumbo and Jumbo mumbo-jumboed you, sir.”
A couple of players sniggered. Guys with sense, though, hung on bent tenterhooks and bided their time.
“Do you really believe a speechless flea like Mr Boles could hoodwink me into anything, Mr Sosebee?” Mister JayMac said.
“Sir, I jes don’t believe Mr Boles cain’t talk. I think he could if he tried.”
“Case thown out,” Muscles said. “Mr Sosebee has based his accusation on ill will and prejudice. Therefore-”
“No, no,” Mister JayMac said. “I assume Mr Sosebee plans to demonstrate how Messieurs Clerval and Boles hood-winked me?”
“Well, mebbe Dumbo didn’t,” Sosebee said. “He’s jes flying on Jumbo’s coattails.”
“You excuse Mr Boles from your accusation?” Muscles said.
“Yeah, sure. I mean, the real favorite in this business is ol Goliath there.”
“And you see yourself as David?” Mister JayMac said.
“Nosir. Well, mebbe,” Sosebee said. “Jumbo needs to be brought down, though. Somebody has to do it.”
“Brought down? From what?” Mister JayMac said. “Leading us in home runs and RBIs? Playing his bag bettern any other first baseman in the league?”
“Taking advantage and stirring up ill will,” Sosebee said.
“You must be talking about yourself, Jerry Wayne,” said Lamar Knowles. Wow. Knowles never came down on anybody. If you pulled a merkle, he’d sidle over and tell you to forget it.
Jumbo stood up. “I confront my accuser.”
Sosebee’s jowly gills went ashy-gray, but he kept facing Jumbo across five seat backs. He didn’t sit.
“Mr Sosebee must speak for others too,” Jumbo said. “How many agree that Mr JayMac’s kindnesses to me have undone your good will or degraded the quality of your play?”
No one answered.
“A fair question,” Mister JayMac said. “Do any of you play sloppy ball because Jumbo gets commercial rooms on the road?”
“I resent the special treatment,” Trapdoor Evans allowed. “I don’t play any worse for it, though.”
“It’d be hard for you to play any worse than you did this past weekend,” Buck Hoey said.
“An honest admission,” Mister JayMac said. “Give credit.”
That remark-praise instead of a lynching-opened some more guys’ mouths. Sloan, Sudikoff, and Fanning all spoke up-not malcontents, exactly, but ballplayers who always looked outside themselves for Christs to hang on trees.
Jumbo said, “Last year I lodged alone, both in Highbridge and on the road. By nature I’m a solitary person, and Mister JayMac saw that I could tolerate the compelled camaraderie of our sport, or of any joint human enterprise, for only so long. I did not demand this favor. I asked it humbly and received it most gratefully.”
“He speaks true,” Mister JayMac said.
Sosebee kept standing: Jumbo was answering his charge. He looked less hepped than before, though. His skin had turned ashy-gray. Sweat showed in loops under the arms of his shirt.
“I would have agreed to the lodgings that Mister JayMac arranges for us,” Jumbo said, “except that small children and a great many female adults find mine a fearsome presence. I also discomfit not a few men. I didn’t wish to test the hospitality of Mister JayMac’s host families by presenting myself to them as a guest. I had no wish to burden them.”
“He still speaks true,” Mister JayMac said.
“Once last year, I might add, an innkeeper in Eufaula refused me a room because my appearance… offended him. I made no clamor. I simply went elsewhere.”
“So why’d you accept Dumbo as a roomy this season?” Jerry Wayne Sosebee asked.
“It was time,” Jumbo said.
“And Dumbo’s as close to nobody as Jumbo could get without taking nobody,” Hoey said.
“I assure Mr Sosebee that Daniel cannot talk,” Jumbo said, “but I reject the slur that his inability to speak renders him a cipher.”
“Translation!” Hoey shouted. “Translation, please!”
Jumbo put one big raw hand on his chest. “Mr Sosebee, if you still feel that I must relinquish the privileges I enjoy, I have a compact to propose. A deal.”
“What deal?” Sosebee said.
“I will come down to the second floor of McKissic House if you will take me as your roommate.”
Sosebee looked at Jumbo, then at Mister JayMac. No one wanted to give him any help. “Never mind,” he said. “Forgit it.” He lowered himself back to his seat. Either he or the seat cushion sighed like a bellows.
“Mr Sosebee,” Muscles said, “the court fines you two bits for trying to initiate a meritless proceeding. Case closed! Court adjourned!”
So ended that morning’s Rolling Assizes.
Forty minutes later, we hit the outskirts of Highbridge, gagged on the sweet stinks of the Goober Pride peanut butter factory, and waved at a gaggle of colored young uns waving like mad at us. Their heroes’d come home.
19
Halfway through June, I’d played in-actually played in-seven straight games. Hoey got into our games, if he got in at all, as a pinch hitter or a late-innings sub. On my first road trip, I’d had two off games in a row, the loss on Friday night to Quitman and the loss of the twin-bill opener against Marble Springs on Saturday afternoon. Mister JayMac put Hoey in for me in the seventh inning of the loss to the Seminoles, but I felt sure he hadn’t won the job back. And he hadn’t. I played every inning of our next two games, strong wins, and got more hits than any other Hellbender but Charlie Snow, who’d slipped into such a groove that his bat fired off hits with the lickety-split golly-wow of a machine-gun.
Hoey didn’t cotton to my success, but he did stop hazing me as a flash-in-the-pan. He had to. My stats were radioactive. Of course, my statistics didn’t stay that bright all season-nobody’s could’ve-but they informed my skeptical teammates I could play. In the long run, I’d even help the bench riders, malcontents, and jerks who didn’t like me.