“Fair-weather friends,” Muscles said.
“They’re entitled,” Snow said. “They don’t pay their money to watch us crap our pants.”
Snow, I noticed, had a strange purple bruise on the inside of his forearm, maybe from running into the wall in the third inning for a home run that’d barely cleared-a long, fragile injury, like a lavender-blue snake with a fringe of back hairs and another of veiny feet. For some reason, I reached over and touched it. Lightly. He pulled back so quick you’d’ve thought I’d jabbed him with a cattle prod.
“Lay off, Boles.”
What the devil. Snow ranked with Musselwhite, Curriden, Nutter, and Dunnagin as one of the Hellbenders’ toughest characters. In Army uniforms, I sometimes thought, those five guys could easily chase the Huns out of North Africa.
I don’t know where I got the grit, but I pulled Snow’s hand towards me the better to see his snake bruise. Boy, he must’ve really collided with that headache-powder sign out there. Snow seldom hit the wall. Even right up against it, he always timed his leap to avoid rebounding in a drop-dead roll. No mad Pete Reiser heroics for Snow. He didn’t need em. He always got a good jump on long flies and measured his distances.
“It’s not from today,” Snow told me, a little friendlier. “And it aint as bad as it looks. Let go.”
I let go.
“My men kin’ve always bruised easy. Stupid, but it kept me out of the Army, bruising easy. So I’m careful. Mostly.”
“If you bruise that easy, Charlie,” Muscles said, “you’re an idiot to play ball.”
“At least I don’t box.”
Mister JayMac walked by. “Anybody who plays like Charlie-Mr Snow-would be an idiot not to play.” He strolled on past, pacing, flusterated, out of sorts.
Snow, I learned, wore a strip of sponge in the palm of his fielder’s glove. He also wore hip pads, cloth cushions inside his shoes, sliding pads, and a sleeveless jersey under his flannel shirt-all to help prevent bruising. People thought of Snow as stocky because, dressed like that, he looked stocky. Out of uniform, though, he wasn’t much thicker in the chest and butt than Dobbs or me. Batting hurt him more than any other part of the game. The shock to his hands and forearms when he banged out another hit would always raise a bruise. He worked to reduce the harm by growing calluses on his palms and trying to smack every pitch on the bat’s sweet spot.
A pox on us, we also blew the second game of our four-game series with Eufaula, the opener of Saturday’s twin bill. Between games, Mister JayMac said, “Win-win, lose-lose, win-win, lose-lose! Damn the pattern yall’ve fallen into!”
“We got a win-win coming tonight and tomorrow,” Hoey said. “Want us to break the pattern?”
“Ha ha,” said Mister JayMac. “Not until we get to Opelika on Wednesday.”
Funny thing, we didn’t break our pattern. We beat Eufaula in Saturday’s nightcap and again on Sunday afternoon. Then, in Opelika, we lost two straight to the Orphans (with no parent club in the bigs and no home field until 1941, they’d played every game up till then as roadies, or “orphans”), then beat em in the nightcap of a rare Thursday-evening twin bill.
The next night, in LaGrange against the Gendarmes, we broke our two-up, two-down jig by losing. That made us seventeen and fifteen on the season, and nine and seven for June-a winning record, but only just.
“God!” Mister JayMac exploded after the loss. “That gets yall out of your rut-it puts us in a hole instead.”
The two weekend series against Opelika and LaGrange, our biggest CVL rivals, could’ve given us momentum. Instead, we lost each series two games to one and slunk home to change our splints and savor the home cooking of the fans at McKissic Field.
20
On the Monday before a trip to Opelika and LaGrange, Jumbo came upstairs to find me writing down my stats from the Eufaula series and weighing them against my teammates’. It embarrassed me for him to see me doing this-I still had a sky-high batting average and came down harder on my teammates than on myself. I couldn’t quibble with Jumbo’s stats, though. He’d played great on the road-my notebook said so.
“Daniel.”
I slammed my notebook shut on my knees.
“Some of my library books fall due this week. Go with me to return them.” Jumbo packed a laundry bag with books.
I turned an imaginary steering wheel. Would we drive? Jumbo smiled, sort of, and walked two fingers over the quilt on his mattress. Uh-uh, I thought.
“Please come. The heat here’s barbarous and the light at your cot poor.”
The heat everywhere in Highbridge was barbarous-unless you went to a refrigerated movie show or bowling alley. A walk to the library in Alligator Park would push our temperatures to sunstroke levels. On the other hand, an invite from Jumbo came round about as often as Halley’s comet.
“I’ll help you acquire a library card,” Jumbo said. “I’m on very good terms with Mrs Hocking, the librarian.”
I agreed to go. And, yes, we walked.
In the farmer’s market, people shouted at Jumbo: “Way to gig them Mudcats, Jumbo!” and “Hit me a rainmaker gainst them lousy Gendarmes!” And so on.
A man at a produce stall asked Jumbo to autograph one of his watermelons with a grease pencil. He took my signature on a big yellow squash, but only after Jumbo told him my batting average and sold me as a future big leaguer.
Three colored boys-one turned out to be Euclid -dogged our heels all the way to the edge of Alligator Park, where Negroes seemed to be forbidden unless they were using hedge clippers or pushing a pram with a pink-skinned kid in it.
The Alligator Park branch of the Highbridge library system was a red brick building not far from the church Mister JayMac, Miss Giselle, and a few of the Hellbenders sometimes attended. It had a pot-bellied white portico and windows separated by rose trellises or well-trimmed snowball shrubs. In Tenkiller, this branch would’ve held every book in town-maybe the whole county-with space left over for a LaSalle showroom.
Mrs Hocking surprised me too. She didn’t have blue hair or a squint or blocky black shoes with ankle straps. She had a pretty face, a plumpish body with flying-squirrel flaps on her upper arms, and a smile that made my own mouth muscles ache. I guessed her age as fifty-plus. She greeted Jumbo like he was an electrocuted loved one brought back to life-I mean, she was overjoyed.
“It’s so good to see you, Mr Clerval! One of the titles you asked me to put on reserve has just come in! Now I won’t have to send you a postal notice!”