Henry shrugged, but most of us thought Bebout’d finagled-or, worse, maybe even deserved-an NP, or “neuropsychiatric,” rejection. He gave off the waves of a serious crazy.
Probably because Mister JayMac was still pulling strings to have him enrolled as a CVL player, Bebout didn’t start our Sunday afternoon game against the Gendarmes. Four innings along, though, Mister JayMac got a go-ahead from the three-man commission that ran the league (just as Mister JayMac, by wile, guile, and noblesse oblige, wanted it to); and he pinch hit Bebout for Trapdoor Evans at the first chance.
The score stood at two each. Bebout responded by swinging so hard at three straight Dink Dewhurst curveballs he almost wrapped himself around his bat. The crowd booed, but Bebout just unwrapped himself and shuffled back to the dug-out wearing a quirky smile. With nearly every other Hellbender watching, Bebout dipped a pinch of snuff from the tin in his back pocket, sucked it into his mouth, and rubbed his upper gum with the first joint of his pinky.
The game went on. In the seventh, Bebout made two super catches, a shoestring grab and a last-second leap-and-snatch to prevent a Gendarme extra-baser off the Feen-A-Mint sign. A couple of minutes later, several of us clustered around him in the dugout to congratulate him.
“S okay,” Bebout said, refreshing his dip from the snuff tin that’d made a raised circle on his hip pocket.
As Skinny stood in to bat, Junior Heggie sat down next to me. “Ever dip snuff, Danl?”
I shook my head. I was a smoker.
“You ever start, don’t bum a pinch from Bebout there.”
“Why not? He t-tight with it?”
“Oh no, he’d give you some all right, but the screwball dips dirt,” he said. “That lil tin in his pocket’s brimful of loose Wedowee dirt! Dirt, by damn!”
Dobbs singled. Quip Parris struck out. I drew a walk. Worthy Bebout came up behind me in Charlie Snow’s old batting slot. The fans cheered him for the catches he’d made, but set themselves for his second CVL at bat with show-me furrows on their brows. No one could forget his debut as a hitter: three torso-twisting swings and no contact.
On Dewhurst’s first pitch, Bebout rippled again. Twirled, dropped his bat, fell on home plate. A groan went up. This at bat looked so much like his first one it gave us a powerful sense of deja vu. Bebout got up, though, and spanked the next pitch-a rolling curve-into the left-field bleachers, and we went on to defeat the Gendarmes five to two, winning the series and moving within two games of first place. So what if Bebout had celebrated his homer by skipping around the bases?
In the clubhouse afterwards, Junior asked Bebout why he dipped dirt.
Bebout took his snuff tin, screwed off the top, and studied its contents-rich black Alabama soil-like he expected to find fishing crickets in it.
“It’s Wedowee loam. Bacca gives you gum rot. Sides, a fella knows you got dirt in yore snuff tin, he aint keen to borry it. Mazes me.”
“What does?” I said.
“Fellas who aint afeared to slide in dirt act like it’s gunpowder when it comes to dippin it.”
Back at McKissic House, Mister JayMac met in the parlor with Worthy Bebout and all fourteen of his current boarders. He had to find a room for Bebout. Problem was, every room on every floor already had at least two guys in it, overcozylike.
“Any yall willing to triple up?” Mister JayMac said.
The parlor scarcely breathed.
“I cain’t have a room to mysef?” Bebout said.
“Think you’re so hotshot you deserve one?” Evans asked him.
“Nosir. Got habits could conflick with whosoever gits’ put with me.”
“Like what?” Curriden said. “You eat live roosters?”
“Nosir. I read my Testaments. I speak to my voices. I talk to my dead brother Woodrow.”
“Cripes,” Curriden said.
“Then jes give me a pup tent outside,” Bebout suggested.
And until he devised his own indoor answer to the problem, the pup-tent solution actually went into effect. He slept on the lawn in a tent from Sunday, August 1, to Thursday, August 12 (minus five days on the road in the homes of some of Mister JayMac’s friends). Then he moved into quarters unlike those of anybody else lodging in McKissic House.
Before that meeting ended, though, he asked Mister JayMac where we’d stowed his “dip fixings.”
“Kitchen porch. Nobody here’ll disturb em.”
Later, fetching a colander for Kizzy, I saw those fixings: a taped cardboard box full of ordinary-looking but fine-grained dirt. On the sides of this box, with a black Crayola, someone had crookedly printed
WEDOWEE SNUFF.
50
Early in August, Lamar Knowles knocked on Henry’s and my door. Henry’d missed breakfast and lay in bed, face down, one arm hanging off the mattress. As soon as Lamar saw Henry, he apologized and tried to retreat. He had that morning’s issue of the Highbridge Herald rolled up in one hand, and he bopped himself in the forehead with it for coming up so early.
“C-cmon in,” I said. “It’s not early, Henry st-stayed out awful late, that’s all.” I dragged him in and sat him at my desk; I plopped down on my bed. Fan noise had covered Lamar’s entrance. It would’ve taken a cattle prod to goad Henry awake, and I told Lamar so. That news seemed to reassure him. He opened out his newspaper.
“You try to keep up with our parent club?” he asked.
“The Phutile Phillies?”
“Yessir. No other.”
“Only to n-n-notice they aint doing so great.”
“Well, on Sunday, their owner-president, Mr Cox, canned Bucky Harris as manager and hired Freddie Fitzsimmons. Take a look.” He passed me the sports page.
I read the story. The Phillies had dropped to seventh in the National League standings. This lurch towards the cellar had so irked William D. Cox he’d given the press an eight-page statement accusing Bucky Harris of calling his players “those jerks” and writing them off as losers. Harris had learned of the statement on Sunday evening. On Monday he said if anybody in the Phillies organization qualified as a jerk, it was Cox: “ ‘And he’s an all-American jerk. If I had said any of those things,’ ” the Herald quoted Harris, and Lamar read out loud, “ ‘I certainly would be the first to admit them.’ ”
“Whaddaya think?” Lamar said.
I shrugged. “B-b-business as usual.”
Lamar tapped my knee. “Mebbe so, but the way you and Jumbo been playing, it could mean a heckuva break for yall.”
“Uh-uh,” I said.
“Sure. Look, the Phils’ first baseman and shortstop aint playing worth used ration stamps. In fact, Harris kept switching out different guys at those spots. It could happen, you and your roomy getting a call-up.”
“It could n-n-not happen too. Or it could happen to Henry and not to m-me.”
“Or vice versa. I don’t say this to amp up the pressure, Danny, jes to remind you your play here has two goals, winning us the CVL pennant and training yourself for the bigs. Don’t forget that second one, kid.” When Lamar offered me the paper, I shook my head. “Fitzsimmons might ask the Phils to call yall as replacements for Jimmy Wasdell and Gabby Stewart.”
“Charlie Brewster plays short for the Phillies too,” I said. “So does Babe Dahlgren.”
“Yeah, but Stewart and Brewster’ll be lucky to hit.220 together. Dahlgren plays more first base, subbing for Wasdell, than shortstop. He could use yall’s help.”
Going up to the bigs from a Class C club seemed about as likely as Hitler catching the Holy Spirit and joining the Pentecostals.
“Even if it happened,” Lamar said, “you could end up warming the bench like I do now, or gitting two or three starts in throw-away games towards the end of the season. Still, those games could set yall for starters’ roles next year, specially if this stupid war’s still on.”
“I hope it aint.”
“Well, if it happens, yall’ll deserve it.” Lamar blushed. “It’d tickle me silly.” He stood up and laid the Herald sports page on my desk. “Show that to ol Jumbo Hank. Tell him what I said. If he ever wakes up.”