“Go on. You done misunderstood me. I’m okay. Got me no-hitters to thow, homers to knock. Jes cain’t figger out where. Anyways, git!” I climbed down into the velvety dust. Darius slid over to an open window and peered out at me.
“Quip hadn’t no sass on his speedball tonight. Too bad. Mine a turned them Weevil bats to dick sponge. Everybody knows it, but aint nobody gon let it happen.”
“G-g-good night,” I said.
Darius had parked behind a full-blown holly. The needle tips of its glossy leaves pricked me as I squeezed past it to the path up to the main road. A bauble of moon-varnished blood erupted on one thumb, and I sucked it as I walked.
Darius didn’t shoot himself or Euclid. He didn’t drive the Bomber off to Birmingham to cadge a tryout with the Black Barons or to Moton Field near Tuskegee in hopes of becoming a replacement flyer in the air squadron commanded by Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. He showed up at The Fields the next afternoon at three and spent about twenty minutes briefing our regulars on how to hit the Boll Weevil starting hurler’s best pitch, a forkball. We hit it. We hit it so often Eggling yanked the guy by the fourth.
After that, all the homies in Cottonton’s open-sided flea box hung around less to root their Weevils on than to watch our starters, even Curriden and Musselwhite, put on a power-hitting show that made their fielders wish Eggling had anted up enough cash money for a fence-to spare them the shame of chasing down balls that in any other CVL park would’ve been ground-rule home runs. To compensate, they started playing deeper and deeper, but guys like Junior, Skinny, Dunnagin, Snow, and me countered by dropping Texas leaguers in front of them like mortar shells.
We whipped Cottonton by fourteen runs, to achieve a split, and drove to Lanett the next morning for a four-game weekend series-with Euclid out of the luggage bin and in a front seat across from Mister JayMac. (He got chewed out for stowing away, though-royally chewed out.) At Chattahoochee Field, the Linenmakers, even though last in league standings, played us tough as cross-tie spikes. We split with them too, winning on Friday night, dropping both ends of a Saturday twin bill, and nosing by them on Sunday on Henry’s home run, his twenty-eighth of the season, twelve more than the next guy, Lon Musselwhite, a teammate, and Ed Bantling, the Gendarme catcher.
Mister JayMac publicly thanked Henry during one of our Rolling Assizes for salvaging the road trip. Even so, he had Muscles fine every relief pitcher, pinch hitter, and starter who’d contributed to Saturday’s fiasco against Lanett. The only Hellbenders to escape fines were Snow, Nutter, Dobbs, and Henry. Even the Honorable Judge Lionel K. Musselwhite had to dig into his coin purse for a quarter, for turning a long fly ball into a triple by overrunning it and denting a signboard.
“Needless and catastrophic showboating,” prosecutor Buck Hoey called the play. “You let in two runs and bunged up your shoulder to boot. The captain ought to set us something other than a bad example.” You got the idea Hoey was disguising a reference to the dustup on Hellbender Pond between Muscles and Curriden. Anyway, nobody on the Bomber voted for clemency.
Darius didn’t say two words from his seat up front, and I couldn’t help wondering what kind of fine he’d draw for packing a concealed pistol. More than a quarter, I’d bet. In some places down here, he could’ve wound up decorating a tree just for leaving his fly at half-mast.
40
On Tuesday evening, the bigs played their first-ever night all-star game. Everyone in McKissic House heard the broadcast from Philadelphia over our cathedral Philco. Worldwide, U.S. servicemen listened with us over shortwave radios. Actually, Henry opted out of our party, the only resident Hellbender not on hand. He’d trudged upstairs to read, saying, “Baseball is not my entire life. In any case, at breakfast Mr Mariani will recount every pitch and putout.”
I missed Henry’s being there. Dunnagin sat on a folding chair next to me, but he and Creighton Nutter, who’d come over from Cotton Creek, picked at each other through the whole game. As an ex-Brownie, Dunnagin wanted the American League to win, while Nutter, an ex-Brave, rooted like crazy for Johnny Vander Meer and the senior-circuit Nats. Most of the rest of us, chattel of the Phutile Phillies, automatically sided with Nutter against Dunnagin. Vander Meer and Vince DiMaggio played like shining princes for their squad, but when the Americans won it five to three, Dunnagin danced around the parlor on his spindly gams. Darius spent the entire game leaning in the door to the dining room, but vanished a split second after the last broadcast play.
When I went up to tell Henry the outcome, he lay face down on his bed, softly wheezing away.
At Wednesday morning’s optional workout at McKissic Field, a major from the camp and a colored guy in a bottlefly-green jacket came onto the field just as I started to enter the batting cage. The major, a young guy with a razor slit of a mouth, put his hand on my arm.
“Excuse me, kid,” he said. “I’m Major Adrian Dexter. This is Mr Cozy Bissonette.”
I stared. That kid business burned me off. Major Dexter looked about twenty-six. Besides, visitors, outside of family and invited guests, had no standing ticket to our workouts.
“A stadium guard let us in,” Major Dexter said, nodding at the entrance tunnel. “We have an appointment.” I still didn’t speak. “With Mr Jordan McKissic, the owner and manager.” He pronounced the first name like the river-not JUR-dan, the way locals did. “Could you direct us to him, please?”
“We’d be decidedly grateful,” Cozy Bissonette said.
“C-cmon.” I led them to our dugout, where Mister JayMac sat with Darius, strategizing for our next away series.
Darius looked up, and he and Mr Bissonette each did a funny click thing with their eyes-almost a shutter snap, like a photographer catching a big-deal event and not just another family-album head shot. Major Dexter and Mister JayMac didn’t see it, and I couldn’t read it. It didn’t work only on the level of one colored greeting another, though; it also involved the sort of flash conspiracy that can happen between any two like-thinking persons, whoever they are. It scared me.
“Are we early?” Major Dexter said. “We could always-”
“Fine,” Mister JayMac said. “I’ll jes be a moment.”
I stayed there in the dugout, cat-curious and vexed, hoping to learn something.
“Go hit,” Mister JayMac told me. “I’ll handle the coaching details. You jes do what you’re paid for.” He gave me a face smile, with nothing but distracted cogitation behind it. I spike-walked back out to the batting cage.
That evening, Mister JayMac held a team meeting in the parlor. No flip charts. No recruits to introduce. No rules to review. Of the Cotton Creek bunch, Snow and Nutter seldom griped about anything, but Hoey, Sloan, Hay, and Sudikoff waltzed in bellyaching, having earlier supposed they’d have the whole day to themselves. They put a lid on it when they saw Mister JayMac impatiently pacing the hardwood.