Our plane headed north along the coast of Lake Michigan before leaning to the left and slipping inland, toward O’Hare. Even though the seat-belt sign was on, I climbed to the other side of the plane, to a vacant window seat. From there I could see the coastline as it fled north, as if trying to outrun the fancy apartment buildings that ran along its length into the suburbs. I was looking for something specific, trying to follow the converging lines of the avenues as they made their way toward a singular shrine. And then I spotted it, smaller than I imagined, stuck smack in the middle of its urban neighborhood, without the seas of parking lots that ring most of its kind. A dark boomerang of a building surrounding a wedge of jade.
Wrigley Field.
The ballpark was why I had come to Chicago. One person’s miracle, Dr. Bob had said, is another person’s disaster. What did that mean, or the strange invocation of a name that seemed still to haunt him? And don’t get me started, he had said, on Don Young. Who the heck was Don Young?
The story is sad and all too familiar. It is 1969, in the heat of summer, and the Chicago Cubs are solidly ensconced in first place. This is a great Cub team, managed by Leo the Lip, with Ernie Banks, Ferguson Jenkins, sweet-swinging Billy Williams, Hall of Famers all, and the legendary Ron Santo, who should be in there with them. On a July night, the Cubs arrive at Shea Stadium, ready to put away the fading Mets. The Cubbies are up three to one in the ninth, when the Met second baseman hits an easy liner to center field. Inexplicably, the Chicago center fielder, a raw rookie, breaks back, allowing the ball to fall in front of him for a double. One out later, the mighty Donn Clendenon hits a shot deep to center. The rookie gets a jump on it and snags it just as he hits the wall, but the blow knocks the ball loose. Another double. Jones and Kranepool do the rest, knocking in three, giving the Mets the game. The next night, Tom Seaver pitches a one-hitter. The Cubs are reeling, the Mets, the eventual World Series champion “Miracle Mets,” are rising, the season has turned.
And the rookie center fielder’s name? Well, of course it was.
And who else would remember it but a native, a kid who was living and dying with his hometown team the way only hometown kids can? Once that was figured out, it wasn’t so hard to narrow the location down even further. I could hear the groaning from my backyard, he had said. Which explained why, after I arrived, I rented a car and headed down the parking lot that was I-90, looking for the exit that would take me to the part of Chicago on the North Side known, for obvious reasons, as Wrigleyville.
There weren’t that many Pfeffers listed in Chicago. The one who lived in Wrigleyville had moved there three years before, after living for years in New Jersey. Of the others, there were a few who knew a Bob Pfeffer here or there of the approximate right age, but none that matched closely enough the description of my dentist.
“Does Dr. Bob have relatives that you know of?” I had asked Carol Kingsly after my Pfeffer search came up blank.
“He never mentioned any,” she said. “How does that fit?”
“It’s a little tight.”
“That’s good. Tight is good.”
“It’s not very comfortable.”
“Honey, it’s a shoe. Try wearing these for a day.” She exhibited her shapely leg, showing off a red patent leather pump with a narrow spike. I got her point. It wasn’t so much that her shoes were uncomfortable, rather that if I wanted to take them off her feet again with my teeth, it was time I changed my footwear.
“But there are no laces,” I said.
“Isn’t that wonderful? Buckles are fabulous.”
“I feel like Buster Brown.” I looked at the salesclerk who had shaken his head with such despair at my thick-soled black wingtips. “What is this again?”
“It’s a Compton,” he said, “from Crockett & Jones.”
“Weren’t they the cops on Miami Vice?”
He sniffed. “It’s a British manufacturer, sir.”
“How much?”
“Four hundred forty dollars, and a steal at that.”
“I suppose it is, for Mr. Crockett. Do you have anything else, maybe something on sale?”
“Daffy’s is just down the street.”
“Then how about something just a little less buckle-ish, maybe.”
“I understand,” he said. “I’ll check the synthetic leathers.”
“You sure do know how to impress the help,” said Carol after the clerk left to return the Comptons to the back room.
“What is a Pfeffer anyway?” I said. “It sounds like a smoker’s cough. Pfeffer. Pfeffer.”
“I think it’s German.”
“For what, pain?”
“Don’t be silly. Pfeffer is German for pepper.”
Driving around Chicago is a little like looking for drinks in Salt Lake City, you pretty much need to be a local to get where you want to go. And it didn’t help that I had the usual rental-car sense of dislocation; how could I find the right street if I couldn’t even find my turn signal? But I had a map and a plan. I left the highway at Belmont, followed Belmont down to Clark, and then Clark up until I eventually arrived at the marker I was looking for. The Cubbies were out of town, so traffic was light and the corner of Addison and Clark was empty except for the massive white structure with its great red sign. WRIGLEY FIELD / HOME OF / CHICAGO CUBS. As if we didn’t know. I looked at the map, and from there it was a breeze. Up a bit, over a bit, just about three blocks west of third base, and there it was.
It was an old shambling two-story house on a block of old shambling houses, with only narrow walkways between them. But this house was smaller, darker, meaner than the rest. Some of the homes had been freshly painted, some had lovely lawns, new windows, a nice car parked out front, but not this one. It was owned by a Virgil Pepper. It had been owned by Virgil Pepper for forty years. Three Peppers were listed at the address: Virgil, James, and Fran.
The door was opened by Fran. “What do you want?” she said. She was short and heavy, wearing the sort of well-worn housedress that indicated she wasn’t planning to go out that day. Based on the state of her hair, the paleness of her face, the way she squinted into the sunlight, she wasn’t planning to go out tomorrow either.
“I called,” I said. “My name is Victor Carl.”
“You’re that lawyer fellow, right?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“What is it you wanted to talk about again?”
“I wanted to talk about your brother,” I said. “Your brother Bob.”
58
“We thought he was dead,” said Jim Pepper, leaning back on his recliner, wincing as he shifted his position.
“We hoped he wasn’t,” said Fran.
“Of course we hoped he wasn’t,” snapped Jim. “What kind of fool wants his little brother dead?”
“I was just saying,” said Fran.
Fran sat on a sagging, mud-colored couch. I was sitting stiffly on a stiff fold-up chair. Both Jim and Fran spoke with a slightly southern accent, more a West Virginia twang than the flat prairie accent of Chicago.
“When was the last time you saw your brother?” I said.
“Let’s see, now,” said Jim, talking over the television that remained on, a daytime drama with perfect teeth and concerned faces. “He was seventeen, I think. A real hippie-dippie, hair down to his ass, into the drugs and the causes.”
“Bobby was a hippie?”
“Sure. Grapes. Something about grapes, I remember, and a Mexican feller he was all up in arms about. Times was tough around here, what with our mother gone and our father away and our father’s sister trying to take care of us. She was a bitter old witch, less than useless, with a mouth on her.” Jim raised his chin to the ceiling, raised his voice to a shout. “Did you hear that? Less than useless.”