When we were on the train, Buckskin quoted: “ ‘The umpire’s first decision was usually his last; they broke him in two with a bat, and his friends toted him home on a shutter. When it was noticed that no umpire ever survived a game, umpiring got to be unpopular.’ ”
Mr. Norris asked what the Sam Hill was that all about, and Buckskin said it was from the Bessemers’ game against the Ulsters. Ed Norris swore and went to find the smoking car on the train. Buckskin winked at me and said that I ought to read Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, but he gave me Tom Sawyer instead.
Still, I reckon it was Nelse McConnell who figured out what had happened at Perry better than anybody else.
“This is what happens when you outlaw liquor.”
Chapter Ten
Evening Star
Independence, Kansas
June 1, 1906
Neodesha Sun: The Bloomer aggregation consisted of fourteen persons, eight women and six men. Three or four of the women played ball. The little girl who played first base, whom most of the spectators thought was a boy, is only about fourteen years old. Her mother is along with her. They stopped at the Commercial hotel and the landlord says they were an unusually clean and orderly lot. The manager refused to let any of the girls leave the hotel after dark and saw that all retired early.
Reporters. What do they know? The Sun wrote that us Bloomer Girls played six men when there weren’t more than four, though some folks often mistook Maggie Casey for a guy, and Katie Maloney, too, every now and then. But that inkslinger got his facts right about that manager at the Commercial. Fool wouldn’t let nobody upstairs after we got checked in, but Russ Waddell and Nelse McConnell got out, dressed in their men duds, by going down the back staircase, and that proved to be their mistake. ’Cause when they tried to come back in after midnight, the back door was locked and two policemen guarded the outside staircase. The old boy at the front desk remained awake, protecting all the girls upstairs, and he told Waddell and McConnell that they weren’t registered guests and had best skedaddle. Since he, the hotel manager, held a cannon of a shotgun, Waddell and McConnell left. Considering the hay on their clothes, me and Buckskin figured they’d slept in a livery, which is why Buckskin sent me back up to our room to fetch the grips of our two bunkmates, and then Waddell and McConnell had to find somewhere to get dressed in their uniforms and look like girls and not saddle tramps who’d just spent the night with horses, donkeys, and mules, ’cause we had to catch the first train out and play a game that Thursday in Independence.
We were down in the southern part of the state for a while, not that far from Coffeyville, when Buckskin told us all about how the Dalton boys got shot to hell and gone back in ’92 whilst they tried to rob two banks in one day.
“Daltons,” Waddell said with a snort. “Not an honest bunch in the whole family.”
Buckskin shook his head. “You’re wrong there, Russ. Frank was the best of the bunch. Good man. Honest. About as fine a man as I ever met. Deputy marshal for Judge Parker’s court. Got gunned down by a whiskey-runner in ’87. But as far as Frank’s brothers … Bob, Grat, Emmett … yeah, I guess you’re likely right.”
“I don’t know those Daltons,” Waddell said. “I’m talking about Courtney and Reed Dalton. Umpired in the Western League in ’99. The Bisons and Hoosiers must have paid them aplenty, considering the calls they made. My grandma could’ve umped better than those two idiots, even after that bad whiskey left her blind.”
That got me to thinking, not about blind grandmas or outlaws or how Buckskin Compton might have known a deputy marshal who got killed almost twenty years earlier, but that we was in Independence, which wasn’t far from Coffeyville which wasn’t too far from Pleasanton and the Widow Amy DeFee and her man-killing judge, unless they had lit a shuck for Mexico and I was playing baseball dressed like a gal for nothing. And then I found the itinerary for the next week or two that Mr. Norris had give us that noted all the towns where we’d be staying and the names of the hotels and what time the games were and when we’d be leaving for the next place.
I learnt we weren’t never getting out of eastern Kansas no time soon.
Anyhow, we boarded the morning’s Missouri Pacific train and rode straight south down to Independence. I sat alone, since we weren’t going no more than fifteen miles, and Buckskin went with McConnell and Waddell to the smoking car. I practiced looking at my fingernails the way Buckskin said I was supposed to, and then somebody cleared her throat and said: “Lucy, do you mind if I sit down?” I stopped looking at my nails, including the split one on my pointer finger that I got trying to field a bad hopper that danged near drove that tip down two joints. My mouth dropped open, ’cause standing right next to me was Ruth Eagan.
Girl’s voice. Girl’s voice. Girl’s voice.
That run through my mind, but first I looked away from Ruth Eagan, which allowed me to close my mouth. I saw Mrs. Eagan sitting up about four rows and frowning while pretending to be listening to Gypsie O’Hearn talk about how Dr. Rose’s Improved Kidney and Liver Cure, which she got through Sears, Roebuck & Co. for only eighty-five cents, had worked a wonder on her dysmenorrhea. ’Cause you couldn’t look at Mrs. Eagan too long without turning to stone, I whipped my head back to sweet, pretty Ruth Eagan and said: “Sure.”
A half minute later, I remembered to slide over and move Buckskin’s heavy bat bag—made heavier on account of the arsenal he carried— off the opposite seat so that Ruth could sit down.
“I’m sorry,” she said, once she had settled herself into the seat.
I wet my lips and hid my fingernails, trying to give her an ordinary look whilst trying to figure out what she could be apologizing for. It couldn’t have been for all them filthy words she had cut loose with back when we had had that meeting upstairs of the Harvey House, ’cause she surely must have heard me cut loose a couple of times when she was playing first base after that ball had bounced off a stone and slammed into the finger on my throwing hand and not into my baseball glove.
“You were right,” she said, and let out the longest sigh.
I sat up a little straighter ’cause you were right ain’t a sentence I hear every day.
“When you told me I shouldn’t play first base wearing a catcher’s mitt,” Ruth explained.
“Oh,” said I. First, I thought if that were the case then why had she played first base today wearing that big old mitt, but I knew not to say that, ’cause that would make me a louse, which is what Buckskin said I was after I’d told Ruth that she’d never play baseball as well as a man as long as she used that mitt anywhere except behind the plate. I didn’t want to be no louse never again.
The railroad-car door opened, and a man in a brown suit hurried down the aisle.
“Listen,” I said. “The rules say you can wear any glove, any mitt, any size, if you’re playing first base or catcher. I just don’t see many men doing that. The rules say other fielders have to use a glove like mine.”
She smiled. “No more than ten ounces. Not more than fourteen inches around the palm.”
That impressed me. The only reason I knew the rule about catchers and first basemen was ’cause Buckskin let me know the facts all them days ago, after I’d made Ruth unhappy and Buckskin had called me a louse.
“Ruth,” I said, and leaned kinda close to her, so that I could smell her, but then I rammed my spine against the back of that hard-rock seat and made sure I couldn’t smell her lilac and lemon scent no more, and I said: “Spalding is making mitts for first basemen. And basewomen. Ummm. Waddell. Lady Waddell, I mean, she’s got one that she uses when she ain’t pitching. But you couldn’t use hers. I mean, she’s a lefty, and you ain’t,” though I’d heard some coaches say they wanted lefties playing first base.
Had to get my breathing, brain, and tongue working properly again. “They’re not as big as a catcher’s mitt. The first baseman’s
mitt, I mean. But they’re bigger than mine. Well-padded, too. ’Specially around the wrist and thumb. For them bad hops thrown far ’cross the field. I mean, I wouldn’t want to take a throw from Buck— Dolly Madison as hard as … she … throws from third to first.”
Ruth smiled. “Dolly’s throws sting my hand when I’m wearing my catcher’s mitt. Anyway, I wanted you to know I’ve ordered a new glove. Well, Mother did. It should reach us in Axtell.”
I got inspired and showed her my purple finger. “I could’ve used it yesterday.”
She laughed. “But that’s your throwing hand.”
“Still could have used it.”
Her laugh got harder, and I felt about as comfortable as I’d ever felt talking to a pretty girl whilst I was dressed up like a National Bloomer Girl. There we sat, making jokes and laughing and feeling real good, and even though trains practically always put me to sleep, I felt perky and wide awake and about as happy as a guy can feel when he’s dressed in a girl’s uniform and hiding from an evil woman and her crooked judge friend who’d done made me an orphan. But living your life can be like playing a baseball game. One inning you think you’re a king, ’cause you just sent a screaming fastball between the center and right fielders and wound up on second base, clapping your hands and hearing the crowd booing, ’cause your hit just tied the score. Two innings later, you’re trying to shake the feeling back into a finger that might be broke, and the crowd is hooting and making fun of you, and even your own mean center fielder is yelling that you ain’t worth a hoot. (It’s a proved fact that outfielders don’t know what it’s like to try to field a sharp ground ball that hits a stone and takes a path that not even Nap Lajoie could have anticipated, even before he got spiked so bad last year that the doctors feared they might have to saw off his limb.)
Ruth’s smile got turned into a frown, because she saw me frowning, which I was doing as I watched Mrs. Eagan making her way down the aisle, followed by the fellow who’d come in the car wearing the brown suit. Right soon Ruth’s ma stood above us, and she didn’t even give me a mean look, just said to Ruth: “Come along, child. This handsome gentleman with the Sporting News has requested an interview with you.”
That handsome gentleman removed his hat and bowed at Ruth and said: “Louis Friedman. Special correspondent, Miss Eagan. Out of Topeka.”
“He writes for Variety, too,” Mrs. Eagan said. “Remember … I’ll tell you what to say.”
I studied that dark-haired fellow with a thin, waxed mustache and a gleam in his eye and his hair all perfect and shining and smelling like Old Reliable Hair and Whisker Dye, the scent of which I remembered all too well from that time when Pa come across about a dozen bottles inside a box some drummer had left behind at the depot and proceeded to drink them empty.
Ruth didn’t look too happy, though I would’ve been thrilled to get asked to talk to a reporter from that sporting journal, even if he was only a correspondent who used too much hair oil that made me sick to my stomach. I had to move my legs out of Ruth’s way so the Sporting News could make her famous. As Ruth walked back down the aisle, Mrs. Eagan give me a look that wasn’t that far from the faces on them folks from Perry after they practically drawed and quartered the umpire. Louis Friedman hadn’t even bothered to introduce hisself to me or even give me a by-his-leave before he walked back to the front of the coach.
I’m sure my face didn’t look no better when Gypsie O’Hearn slid into the seat across from me that had, in my mind, been the throne of Queen Ruth Eagan. Gypsie waited till Mrs. Eagan got back into her seat with her daughter and the nice-looking Sporting News gent, before leaning closer to me and saying: “How ’bout you, hon? Do you take Doctor Rose’s Improved Kidney and Liver Cure when the dysmenorrhea strikes you each month? Or do you just grin, bleed, and bear it?”
Tilting her head back, she laughed, like a hydrophoby coyote, and asked if she could get a cigarette off me. Ready made. She didn’t like to roll her own. Richmond Straight Cut No. 1s, preferably, but any kind would do.
“I don’t smoke,” I told her.
“Didn’t ask if you smoked,” she said. “I asked you if you had a cigarette?” She added some salty words to describe the cigarette she wanted. After which she laughed and put up her limbs, straddling my legs, asking if I’d rub her feet, ’cause they ached. Next, she asked me where I was sleeping when we rode out of Independence and if I’d like some company. Then she kind of puffed herself up so that her Bloomer Girls’ blouse got sort of bigger. That horrible laugh of hers come again when my ears got red, but she wouldn’t move her legs. We hadn’t gone but maybe four or five miles, which meant I had to ride all that rest of the way held prisoner by Gypsie O’Hearn’s limbs.
Chapter Eleven
Oskaloosa Times
Oskaloosa, Kansas • May 24, 1906
When the dainty bloomer lassies come to town,
Wearing costumes suited to the circus clowns,
There will be a lot of people
Climbing housetop and church steeple
Just to get a better chance to peep aroun’.
When the dainty bloomer lassies come to town,
Plump as quails, with sparkling eyes and faces brown,
There will be an awful flurry
And the boys will have to hurry
For their places on the bleachers close, low down …
We made it as far north as Oskaloosa, which is between Kansas City and Topeka and a bit north, but is on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe. I thought about leaving my teammates and buying a ticket that would take me to wherever the Santa Fe line went west. I might have done that, except that would have meant I’d never see Ruth again. Besides, for all I knew, the Widow Amy DeFee could’ve been hiding out in Santa Fe or anywhere else I got off the train. On top of all that, I knew our next ball games were to be played in Holton and Concordia—they were west, so maybe we’d finally start putting some miles between me and the widow and her judge. But then I imagined her showing up at one of our games with her .30-30. Being on the dodge, I tell you, doesn’t get you nothing but worries and a sick feeling in your gut.
Those Oskaloosans knew how to play baseball better than some of the town teams we’d seen, which come as a surprise, ’cause I didn’t think men who worked in factories that made bridle bits and ice—not at the same factory, mind you, the bridle bit building being in the center of town whilst the ice got made somewhere down Big Slough Creek, wherever that was—could play ball. Anyhow, it was a good game, with about fifty men and women and kids of color in attendance, and they cheered us and the Oskaloosans. The umpire come from the electric light plant and was an Episcopal, but he called a game better than them Daltons of the old Western League, according to Waddell. Waddell didn’t even give the parson one ugly look, and McConnell only cussed underneath his breath sixty or seventy times.
After the game we went to get something to eat, though we were taking the 7:45 to Concordia on the Missouri Pacific, not the Santa Fe. There, Ruth come up to us and told Buckskin and me to follow her, so we did. We waited out on the porch for a while before a Negress come along and said that we should follow her, so we did, Buckskin toting his bag and me hauling mine, a few blocks to the Baptist church for the colored folks.
The Negress opened the door and told us to take any seat, which we done on the back pew. I was surprised to find Jessie Dailey, Maude Sullivan, and Agnes McGuire already there. Not much time passed before Pearl Murphy come in with Katie Maloney. Then Carrie Cassady and Maggie Casey walked through them doors, and after that the rest of the Bloomer Girls come inside, excepting Gypsie O’Hearn, who Maggie said wouldn’t be with us this evening, on account she got in her cups and was sicker than a dog, which was fine with me, because I still felt mighty uncomfortable around her after that train ride down to Independence where she had trapped me in my seat with her limbs.
Normally, folks talk in hushed voices before church services
begin, but nobody in our group was whispering. And there wasn’t nobody in the church excepting the Bloomer Girls, plus Buckskin and me. (Buckskin has been scolding me that I really ought to say Buckskin and me and not me and Buckskin, ’cause the former is correct English and makes me sound learnt instead of ignorant. He went on to say there were a few more things he ought to point out about how I write and how I talk, allowing that a boy has to learn to walk before he can run and then must master the running part before he can ride a bicycle. I told him that he knew I could run, because I played second base and had stole eight bases without being thrown out yet, and he knew I could ride a bicycle because he had seen my Hawthorne. He told me to shut up and just write the best I can.)
At length, Pearl Murphy stood up and moved out into the center aisle so she could see all of us. She said: “I guess we might as well call this meeting to order.”
That made me feel more comfortable, ’cause it looked like Pearl Murphy would be running this show and not Maggie Casey, so the chances of me not getting cussed at or having my eyeballs scratched out seemed much improved. I didn’t know there was gonna be no meeting when I’d followed Ruth, though I figured that Buckskin must’ve knew, only he didn’t tell me nothing, because he likely expected that I wouldn’t have come had I known there was going to be a meeting, and I expect that he was right in that mind of thinking.
“First,” Pearl Murphy said, “I’d like to thank Buckskin Compton and …”
My mouth dropped open, my heart stopped beating, and I felt plumb horrified. She hadn’t called Buckskin by his Bloomer Girls’ name but by Buckskin Compton. Worser, she hadn’t said I was Lucy Totton but called me by my whole name, even used my middle name, which nobody should have knew excepting for Mr. Norris, as that’s what I’d written down on my contract. I all but died of shame and terror, the shame being that some of the girl players who was sitting on the aisles in front of us turned and stared at us, but mostly me. The terror being that Mr. Norris and Mrs. Eagan might rip up my contract and put me out in the streets of Oskaloosa, which wasn’t far enough away from Pleasanton being right smack in eastern Kansas. Then I might face instant and painful death from the hands or rifle of the Widow Amy DeFee.
Buckskin, Bloomers, and Me Page 8
