Turtlemouth showed me the whites of his eyes, but didn’t tumble to my feints. He threw to the plate again, another pitchout. I strolled back to first and kicked the bag. The Dominican battery mates looked like fools. They’d risked two straight pitchouts, for nothing. Even worse, from their point of view, they’d run the count on Charlie Snow, the best hitter in the CVL, to two and zero. Only a madman deliberately put himself in the hole with Snow at bat and me on base.
As I took my fourth lead of this at bat, Hoey caught my eye. Behind his hand, he mouthed, Co. He also cradled his left elbow, our sign to steal. Turtlemouth, he obviously figured, had to throw Snow a strike to keep from moving within a ball of walking him. He and Beckland wouldn’t dare pitch out again. So, of course, they did.
I had a decent jump on Turtlemouth and second base looked stepping-stone close. Before I could belly-slide into it, though, Slag Iron Smith leapt in front of me, caught Beckland’s stinger from home, and let me tag myself out coming head-first into his floppy cold cut of a glove.
Three straight pitchouts. Stupid. Except the strategy’d nailed me dead. On the other hand, Charlie Snow, too surprised to try to queer Beckland’s throw by swinging at the last one, now had three balls on him. Maybe the Dominicans’ ruse hadn’t worked-not, at least, as slick as they’d’ve liked.
Forget that. Cool as ice, Turtlemouth worked the count to three balls and two strikes, then erased Snow on a nibbler back to the mound. He humiliated Muscles with another strikeout and slouched off the field to a standing O.
In the bottom of the sixth, Darius gave up the first two hits of the Camp Penticuff exhibition, back-to-back singles to Gator Partlow and Waxahachie Beckland. Nobody out. Partlow at third, Beckland at first.
“Push done come to shove, eh?” Fadeaway shouted from the bench. “Time to make sure us crackers don’t win our money.”
Mister JayMac went over to Fadeaway and spoke to him.
“Made it look good as you could for as long as you could, I guess!” Fadeaway shouted around the boss.
Mister JayMac got right in front of Fadeaway and quietly chewed the kid from Sea Island to Pensacola. Fadeaway shut up, and Mister JayMac sat back down again.
Darius struck out the third Dominican batter. The fourth hit a grounder to Junior, who snapped it to me for the force at second. I dragged my foot over the bag and threw to Henry at first. We got the runner there by half a step, and the double play wiped out the run that would’ve scored from third if my throw had hit Henry’s mitt a fraction of a second later.
On his way in to the bench, Darius collected the game ball from Henry and ambled straight to Fadeaway. Mister JayMac hurried to interpose himself, but Darius stepped around him and slapped the ball into Fadeaway’s chest.
“You thow, boy. Save yo precious wager.”
“Darius, I’ll pull you when it’s time,” Mister JayMac said.
“I’m sittin,” Darius said. “I jes guv yall six of the best I got. Let this eggsuck boy carry yall from here.”
“Neither of you has a thing to say about it,” Mister JayMac said. “Darius, you pitch.”
“Nosir. I’m gone.”
Major Dexter waddled over in his umpire’s gear. “They need that ball for warm-ups. Toss it back out, please.”
Fadeaway tossed the ball to Turtlemouth Clark. Then he sat back down, his eyes on the clayey dust between his shoes.
Mister JayMac grabbed Darius’s shirt. “This club belongs to me-you pitch because I say you do, nigger!” Despite the crowd noise, everyone on our bench heard this. Mister JayMac heard it himself and looked around.
“So much belongs to you,” Darius said distinctly.
“I’m sorry,” Mister JayMac said. “You’ve held these fellas in check the whole way. Keep on doing it.”
“Nosir. I brung yall far’s I can.” Darius stripped to his ribbed gray undershirt and dropped his Hellbenders blouse into Fadeaway’s lap. Fadeaway pushed it into the dirt, like he would’ve a grungy dishrag.
“Damn it,” Mister JayMac whispered to himself.
Darius walked through a gate and between a pair of bleacher sections towards the Brown Bomber. The soldiers in the stands watched him go with the same sledgehammered curiosity felt by us Hellbenders. Some of the GIs hollered, “Way to sling that baby!” or “Hallelujah!” Darius raised one arm and held it over his head until he’d disappeared from view.
“Batter up!” Major Dexter yelled. “We need a batter!”
In the top of the seventh, Henry jacked Turtlemouth’s first pitch so far over the right-field fence that everyone-everyone-stood up to watch it arc off into infinity.
“Ooooiiiuuuweeoo!” went Lamar Knowles. “Never seen nobody but Jumbo pole em like that!”
His amazed jubilation didn’t extend to the troops. They admired the crunch of Henry’s home run, but not Turtlemouth blowing his shutout or yielding a crucial run this late in the game. In any case, Turtlemouth wiped his forehead and mowed down-like a man with a Catling gun-Reese Curriden, Junior Heggie, and Double Dunnagin.
In the bottom of the inning, Fadeaway swaggered out to pitch. A few disgruntled GIs shot him the razz. They sensed he might have rabbit ears and got on him like cats on a camel cricket: “Fade away, Fadeaway! Oh, fade away, please today, oh, faded ofay, Fadeaway!” And so on. Fadeaway adjusted. He left off strutting and buckled down. In his first inning of work, he allowed one solid single but emerged unscored-on and quietly cocky. It’d taken me six innings to get the strut he’d picked up facing only four Dominican hitters.
In the top of the eighth, Skinny Dobbs, Fadeaway Ankers, and I came up against Turtlemouth-Skinny and I for only the third time, Fadeaway for his first. Skinny and Fadeaway lined and struck out respectively, and Henry stopped me as I started up to the plate.
“I know what you should do,” he said.
“Yeah. H-h-hit it where they aint.”
He took me by the shoulders, gently. “Bunt.”
“B-b-bunt?”
“Push it down the third-base line, Daniel. Mr Clark has a weakness fielding bunts.”
“H-h-how do you kn-know?”
“Mr Clark has an inner-ear problem. I read it in a Negro paper from Birmingham.”
“Inner-ear problem?”
“If you push the ball down the line, Mr Clark will lose his balance trying to retrieve it. With your speed, Daniel, you’ll have a hit.”
I had no quarrel with Henry’s suggestion. In my two at bats, I’d fanned and reached base on a strategic charity ticket. This time, then, I squared around, into the blazing sweep of Turtlemouth’s sidearm curve, and, yielding with the pitch, let the ball plunk off my bat and sprinted.
To improve your chances of legging out a doubtful hit, you lower your head and dig. As Satchel Paige said, you don’t look back; either somebody might be gaining on you or you’ve stolen a second or two from your ultimate time. God save my soul, but I peeked to see how Turtlemouth’d attacked my bunt. When I did, I saw him grab for the ball, wheel around his outstretched arm like a besotted maypole dancer, and topple into the dirt. He underhanded a throw to first as he fell, but the ball-by now I was digging again, burning jet fuel-sailed on him, and his wild throw got me all the way to second.