“Ten dollars to every No sez them Dominicans’ll smack yall like a baby’s butt. If you got the grit to play em.”
“You aint got fifty bucks to bet,” Trapdoor Evans said. “You aint got ten to bet me.”
Darius strode like a crop fire up to Mister JayMac. “Give me fifty, sir. Gainst my nex draw.”
Mister JayMac took a money clip from his seersucker jacket, peeled off five tens, and slapped them into Darius’s palm.
Darius walked through the crowded parlor to Henry and gave him the five tens. “Mister Henry, hold this please. If yall vote it unanimous to play Mr Cozy’s boys, the bet’s on. Yall win, I pay. Hellbenders lose, like yall gon to, I git ten each from Mr Ankers, Mr Sloan, Mr Sudikoff, Mr Sosebee, and the bettern-anybody-colored Mr Evans.”
One by one, the nay-sayers changed their nays to ayes and walked over to Henry to give him either a ten-spot or a signed IOU; then they returned to their places. Henry arranged the wager money in his billfold and then slid the billfold into his frock coat. Jumbo Hank Clerval, reluctant bookie.
“I want in,” Hay said. “I vote nay too.”
“You abstained,” Mister JayMac said. “Election’s over. I don’t hold with gambling, especially for players. Except this is gonna be a unofficial exhibition, I’d veto it here too.”
“You’re a paragon, sir,” Buck Hoey said.
Mister JayMac ignored him. “Our next vote’s on the Army’s lump-sum payment. Do we return it, or do yall divvy it mongst yourselves?”
Uh-oh. Which way did you jump on this one? Patriotism or self-interest?
Curriden said, “Look. We’ll support the war effort by playing a game for Camp Penticuff’s darky recruits.” He looked at Darius. “Aint that enough? Do we have to fork over our pay too? Bet you a pork side, Mr Cozy’s boys keep theirs.”
“I don’t care what yall do with yo money,” Darius said.
“We should keep it,” Hoey said.
Sloan and friends also voted to keep and divvy the Army’s payment, and almost everyone else, including Snow and Nutter, fell in line. Even Henry voted with the mercenary majority, a surprise to me because he had his secret atonement agenda to fulfill and I thought he’d go for the sacrifice. Then I heard his reason.
“If we return our fee to the Army,” he said, “they may use it to purchase weaponry and ordnance.”
“So?” said Sudikoff.
“I abhor the making and distribution of implements that in any wise maim or kill,” Henry said.
That kind of talk didn’t go during the war. It really didn’t go in the South. Hitler wanted a hiding, and the Japs deserved any swift-kick comeuppance American determination and know-how could give them. The parlor lapsed into a silence broken only by mumbles.
“If that’s how folks’ll read us taking the Army’s money,” Charlie Snow finally said, “I vote to give it back.”
“Jumbo’s a crank on that point,” Muscles said. “Nobody’ll read it that way.”
“The greater shame,” Henry said.
In the end, of course, we voted to keep and divvy. Only Lamar Knowles and Dunnagin voted to return the honorarium to the government. Me, I went with the majority, but even today I can’t tell you if my reasons were more like Curriden’s or Henry’s. Of all the Hellbenders there, only Mister JayMac and Darius had failed to vote on the two issues before us. Anyway, the meeting started to break up.
“Hold it!” Mister JayMac jammed his hands in the pockets of his seersucker coat, stretching it out of true. “I should tell yall, the nature of this exhibition contest offers me some managerial latitude I don’t have in the CVL.”
What the hell did that mean?
“I plan to start Darius on the mound.”
That news goosed the gee-whilikers out of us. Should we hurrah or squawk? Trapdoor Evans said, “Jesus, sir, he could queer the whole game a-purpose jes to take Turkey and my and these other saps’ money.”
“It’s more than that,” Muscles said. “If we win, and if Darius finishes the game for us, them colored recruits-not to mention them Splendiferous Whozits-will say it was because one of their own was throwing for us.”
“That’s precisely the point,” Mister JayMac said.
“Why?” Muscles said. “Why?”
Mister JayMac looked over at Darius and winked: an open wink, like an open letter. Darius glanced off, the hinges in his jaw bulging.
“And if we lose,” Muscles said, “it’ll all come down to us not backing our pitcher-in their eyes, I mean. In their eyes, we’ll either ride Darius’s arm to a win or jap him with sloppy backup and weak-sister hitting.”
“And if we lose,” Evans said, “Darius picks our pockets.”
“I don’t want to pitch this one,” Darius said. “Give me some respect, Mister JayMac. Gimme some respect.”
Mister JayMac spoke to everybody: “Those who watch us and those who compete against us will judge each player on his own performance. Remember that. End of meeting.”
41
That same week, we had two home games against Lanett and three against Cottonton. We won the first four, but dropped our Sunday finale to the Weevils by a single run. Hub Sisti pitched against us, and Muscles afterwards claimed Sisti had Vander Meer blood, even if hts name sounded Eye-talian.
The night before, I’d eaten dinner at the Pharram house in Cotton Creek, a clapboard box with blue shutters, porcelain knickknacks in the open boxes of its wooden porch columns, and an old-fashioned swing on the porch itself. Miss LaRaina and Phoebe had lived in the officers’ housing out to Camp Penticuff before Captain Pharram’s assignment overseas, but now they rented this place from Mister JayMac. Unless they’d done an all-out tidy-up for me, the Pharram women seemed to keep that house as trim and eye-fetching as a Fabergé egg.
All in all, a nice date. Phoebe’d given me a rain check for the night Curriden abducted me to The Wing & Thigh. She fixed exactly what she’d fixed then: fried chicken, snap beans, mashed potatoes. Only this time, I got to eat it hot.
“More tea?” Phoebe said. “More biscuits?”
“Sh-sure,” I said.
“I’m so proud you can talk,” Miss LaRaina said. “I feared yall’s babies wouldn’t be able to.” Phoebe folded her napkin and retreated head-up to the kitchen. “A joke. And the girl flies to Tokyo.”
Phoebe returned, opened out her napkin, and laid it across her lap. “Mama, heredity don’t work that way. Acquired traits don’t pass. Don’t hammer us with sech nonsense.”
Miss LaRaina flicked her fingers at her plate. Deep in her mouth, she made noises like bomb explosions. Phoebe pretended her mama didn’t exist.
“I forgot yore tea,” she told me formally. “I forgot yore biscuits.” She went to get them.
The next night, Phoebe and I rode into town to see Abbott and Costello in Hit the Ice at the Exotic and almost laughed our fannies off. On the taxi ride home, I wanted to smooch her silly, to spaniel-crawl her tit-wren body, but the driver kept checking out the rearview and blithering about that afternoon’s loss to Hub Sisti.