by Wes Tooke
The third batter was the skinny kid who had opened the game by complaining that Satch was doctoring the ball. He had a little bat—not much bigger than the bat Nick had used back before he went to the hospital—and he took a half swing at the first pitch. The ball made a dull thwack as it made contact with the wood, but the swing had been late and he hit a lazy little pop-up in foul territory halfway between home plate and first base. Satch trotted under it, but at the last moment he pulled his glove away and let the ball fall to the grass.
“You ain’t getting off that easy,” he said to the kid, loudly enough that everyone in the stands could hear him.
And he didn’t. Satch’s second pitch started at the kid’s front shoulder, but as the kid flinched, it broke violently and caught the inside corner for a strike. The third pitch was a textbook Satchel fastball—just above the knee on the outside edge of the plate. The kid just stared blankly at it as Bob pointed his fingers to the side.
“Strike three,” he said. “Game over.”
As the Bismarck team flooded onto the field to congratulate Satch, Nick glanced at the angry group of men behind the plate. He expected to see them shouting things at Satch—or at least glaring angrily at the field—but instead they were filing out, heads lowered. Nick’s father followed his stare and then raised an eyebrow.
“Good,” he said. “Maybe next time they’ll think twice before flapping their mouths.”
The drive back to Bismarck took two days. They headed almost due north to play a quick game in Columbus, Nebraska—where vast oceans of cornfields stretched to the horizon in all directions—and then continued to Aberdeen, South Dakota, where Satch struck out ten men in five innings before turning the game over to other pitchers. They finally rolled back into Bismarck late at night on a Monday. Nick stumbled out of the Chrysler, wobbly with sleep, and as the two cars rolled away, Mr. Churchill waved a hand out the window.
“Day off tomorrow,” he said. “Stay out of trouble.”
Nick followed his father down the path to the cabin and barely remembered falling into bed. His dreams were vivid, culminating in one that he’d had many times at the hospital: He was standing on a pitching mound, everyone from school clustered around the field, and as he started his windup he would glance down and suddenly realize that he wasn’t wearing any clothes other than a ratty pair of underwear. Usually the dream would make Nick nervous, but this time he awoke with a smile on his face. It was nice to be on a mound again—even if it was only a dream.
When Nick rolled over he saw that his father was eating a can of beans by the stove, already dressed. “This place needs cleaning,” his father said when he realized that Nick was awake. “I’m going fishing, so meet me at the hole this afternoon once you’ve finished your chores.”
A minute later he clumped out of the cabin. Nick stared at the broom for a long moment and then rolled onto his stomach and closed his eyes. It had been a long time since he’d slept much past sunrise, and he enjoyed the feeling of dozing in and out of consciousness until most of the morning was gone. When he finally got out of bed, he hurried to sweep the floor and clean the stove and make his bed. It was warm outside, but before Nick left he put on long pants to conceal the fact that he wasn’t wearing his brace—which was still hidden deep under his cot.
Their old fishing hole was just below the railway bridge north of the center of town, where a small sandbar often formed in the eddy around the concrete pilings. The best fishing on this part of the river was for walleyes, which were lazy and liked to relax in the slack water. The summer before Nick went to the hospital, he and his father had gone almost every day there wasn’t a game, and in addition to walleyes they’d caught just about every fish you could find in this stretch of the Missouri: brown trout, rainbow trout, lake trout, cutthroat trout, northern pike, chinook salmon, and a variety of catfish.
When Nick got to the hole, his father was standing thigh-deep in the water just off the closest sandbar, two buckets near him on the shore. Nick glanced in the buckets. The first one was filled with minnows for bait, but the second contained three large walleyes, their olive scales and silver eyes glittering in the sun. Nick guessed they were all about a foot long and probably weighed two and a half pounds apiece—a good catch.
“Bring me another minnow,” his father said from the water. “I just lost mine.”
Nick cupped a minnow in his hands and waded into the water. He staggered a bit in the current on his bad leg, but he forced himself forward until his father grabbed the minnow from his palms, hooked it in one neat motion, and cast into an eddy.
“I saw you’ve got three already,” Nick said. “Pretty good day.”
“It would be better if I could stay through twilight,” his father said. “But we’re having dinner with Mrs. Landry and her daughter. She invited us this morning.”
“Oh,” Nick said. He suddenly realized that he’d forgotten to mention Emma’s invitation—or maybe he hadn’t forgotten. Maybe he didn’t want Emma to hear the things that sometimes came out of his father’s mouth.
“Can I hold the rod for a while?” Nick asked after a long moment.
His father shook his head. “You’re old enough to cut your own rod. Now go clean those fish for dinner. I’ll be home in a while.”
Nick was disappointed, but he just nodded and waded back to shore. It was awkward to carry the bucket home—it kept banging against the side of his leg—and by the time he got back to the cabin, he was sore and frustrated. He took his father’s big Buck knife from the sheath beside the stove and cleaned and gutted the fish outside on the porch. When he was done, he washed the fillets in the pump, put them in a pot filled with cool water, and left the pot in the shade. He went to give the remains to the pigs in the pen down the street, and by the time he got back, his father was roughly scrubbing his face with a towel by the pump.
“Come get clean,” he said when he noticed Nick. “We don’t want Mrs. Landry thinking that we live like a bunch of savages.”
Nick got a bar of soap from inside and then followed his father’s example and scrubbed his face, neck, and hands. When he was done, he ran a comb through his hair—temporarily bringing order to the bird’s nest that lived atop his head—and put on his cleanest shirt and pants. His father was finished about the same time, and he grabbed the pot before they walked across the yard and knocked on the back door of the house. A moment later Mrs. Landry answered. She was wearing a plain blue dress with a high starched collar. Nick, who had seen her only from a distance, had thought that her hair was tinged with gray, but on closer inspection he realized that it was actually just blond streaks.
“Come in,” she said. “Everything’s almost ready.”
Emma was standing by the narrow staircase as they entered. She was also wearing a dress—bright red—with white socks and matching red shoes. As Mrs. Landry and Nick’s father walked into the kitchen, she looked at Nick and rolled her eyes.
“I feel like a doll,” she said. “I should be in a glass case or something.”
“I think you look nice,” Nick said.
“And you look . . . clean. What did you do to your hair?”
Nick ruefully patted the top of his head. “I tried to use a comb. Does it look stupid?”
“Not stupid,” she said. “Just different.” She flicked her head at the kitchen. “Come on. My mother’s been cooking all afternoon.”
Dinner was the best meal Nick had eaten in several years. Emma’s mother fried the fish in cornmeal and served it with boiled greens and potatoes and strawberry pie for dessert. She even had a tall pitcher of cool milk—which Nick drank practically by himself—and when the meal was over, his stomach felt bloated and happy. Nick’s father must have felt the same way because when he finished his pie, he turned to Mrs. Landry and smiled a smile that had existed only in the deepest corners of Nick’s memory.
“That was a fine meal,” he said. “Me and my boy are much obliged.”
“It was no trouble,�
�� Mrs. Landry said, her hands folded neatly on her lap. “I think of you often. . . . It must be difficult to live without the kindness of female company.”
“It is,” his father said. “But there’s no sense in complaining about it. These are tough times for lots of folks, and we do the best we can.” He slid back from the table and glanced at Nick. “Now let’s leave them to their cleaning.”
His father was snoring twenty minutes later, but Nick had slept too late that morning to be ready for bed, so he went outside and sat on the porch. About ten minutes after the lights went off in the main house, a shadow appeared in the yard and crept toward him. It was Emma.
“What are you doing out here?” Nick asked when she was close enough that he could see her clearly in the moonlight.
She put her finger over her lips. “Quiet. Follow me.”
She reached out and took his hand, and Nick let himself be led across the yard to the little bench on the edge of the trees. Her palm was warm and soft. When they were seated, she let go and then stared down at her bare feet, which were sticking out of her long nightgown.
“That’s the first time my mama’s had a man in the house who wasn’t kin,” she said. “You know, since my daddy left.”
Nick didn’t know what to say, so he just grunted. After a long moment she turned and looked at him, her face a puzzle of shadows. “Your mom got sick, right?”
“Yeah. Tuberculosis.”
“My daddy was no account. He ran off when I was five and ended up getting killed running liquor in Michigan.”
“Really?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s what my cousin told me. Mama says he died in a railway accident, but that doesn’t sound as exciting.”
In the long pause that followed, Nick let himself think—really think—about his mother for the first time in a while. She had always been the one who got him up in the morning, who made sure he ate enough for dinner, who told him to change his shirt when it was dirty . . . basically, the person who really looked out for him. His father’s role had always been just to teach Nick about fishing or baseball or how to sharpen a knife, and now he barely even did that. The truth was that Nick had been on his own for the three years since his mom had died—and now that he was old enough to think about it, he realized that being on your own was exhausting.
Nick suddenly realized that Emma was staring at him, her head cocked. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing. I can always tell when you get lost in your brain because your lips get all tight and you stare at thin air.”
“Oh.” Nick paused and then the words came in a rush. “Was your mom nicer before your dad went away?”
“I don’t remember,” Emma said. “But I think she used to laugh a lot more.”
“She laughed tonight.”
“She was happy tonight. I’m not used to seeing her happy.”
They were quiet for a long moment. Emma was looking at her feet again. “Are we friends?” she finally asked.
“Of course.”
“What about when we go back to school? Are you still going to talk to me?”
“Why wouldn’t I talk to you?” Nick asked, confused.
“You didn’t seem very happy that time I walked up to you and your friends at the ballpark.”
Nick shrugged. “It’s just . . . hard. Tom and Nate wouldn’t understand about a girl liking baseball and stuff.”
“Is that why you like me? Because I like baseball?”
There was a note in her voice that Nick couldn’t quite identify—hurt, maybe—and some instinct told him that his answer was really important. “I don’t know,” he said after a long pause. “I guess I like you because you’re you.”
“Okay,” she said. And then she stood and skipped away across the wet grass of the lawn, the words trailing behind her in the darkness. “Sleep well, Nick.”
Late the next morning Nick idly swept the home bench while watching Satch take batting practice. He was a surprisingly good hitter given his lanky frame, and when he made solid contact, the ball would leap off his bat. He tended to hit line drives, which meant that he ended up with lots of singles and doubles rather than home runs, but when he really caught a pitch, he would send it a long way. He had just rapped a sharp grounder up the middle, hard enough that the pitcher had to hop to the side, when Mr. Churchill walked onto the field. He whistled at Nick, and Nick hustled over as quickly as he could.
“We got a meeting,” he said when Nick reached his side. “You and me.”
Nick stared at him, puzzled. “A meeting?”
“Downtown. With Wild Bill Langer.”
Nick’s jaw dropped. William “Wild Bill” Langer was a notorious figure. He had been elected governor four years earlier, but he had been convicted by a federal court for some complex scheme involving taking money from highway department employees. As a result the state supreme court had ordered him removed from office, and Wild Bill had responded by barricading himself with ten friends in the governor’s mansion and declaring that North Dakota was now an independent country. The drama had ultimately ended when Wild Bill decided to step down as governor and fight the case in the courts, and while Nick was in the hospital his conviction had been overturned. Now he was running for governor again and claiming that the entire thing had been a scam to get him out of office.
“Why do you want me to go to the meeting?” Nick finally asked.
Mr. Churchill smiled thinly. “Because he’s less likely to eat me for lunch if there’s a kid in the room.”
Nick didn’t find that very comforting—especially since he’d never seen Mr. Churchill intimidated by anything—but he got in the car because he couldn’t think of any good excuses. They drove downtown and parked in front of the Patterson Hotel. Nick had never been inside, but he knew the building well—it was ten stories high and had been the tallest structure in North Dakota until they’d completed the new statehouse, two years earlier. As they walked into the ornate lobby, Nick stayed as close to Mr. Churchill’s side as possible. Mr. Churchill nodded at several men in severe blue uniforms and then stopped in front of the giant oak reception desk.
“I’m here to see Bill,” he said to the clerk.
The clerk glanced up from writing in a giant book. “Name?”
“Churchill.”
“Of course,” the clerk said, snapping the book closed. “Sorry, Mr. Churchill. I’ll tell him you’re here.”
As the clerk scurried away, Mr. Churchill glanced down at Nick. “Have you ever been in here before?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
“Well, what do you think?”
“It’s nice,” Nick said.
Mr. Churchill smiled. “It ought to be nice. They worked on this monstrosity for twenty years. Do you know why?”
“Because it was hard to build?”
“Because according to state law any property under construction is exempt from taxes. So as long as they kept working on it, they didn’t owe the tax man a red cent.”
“I heard they built a secret tunnel connecting the basement with the train station,” Nick said. “So they could smuggle stuff inside during Prohibition.”
Mr. Churchill gave him a sharp look. “And where did you hear that?”
“At school. One of the kids said his father helped build it.”
Mr. Churchill was silent for a long moment and then shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t put it past them. Most of the folks who come into this building have a rather loose interpretation of the law.”
The clerk suddenly reappeared at Mr. Churchill’s side. “Follow me,” he said. “Mr. Langer is ready to see you.”
The clerk led them to a dark wood door in the back of the lobby. He knocked five times in an unusual pattern and then a lock clicked. As the door swung open, a thick burst of smoke escaped, and when Nick followed Mr. Churchill into the room, it took his eyes a moment to adjust to both the dark and the burnin
g haze of tobacco. He recognized Wild Bill immediately from the newspaper photographs. His hair was slicked straight back from his forehead, and he had a round face with a pronounced dimple in his chin. He stared at Mr. Churchill through intense eyes for a few seconds and then glanced at Nick.
“Hey, kid,” he said. “Are you supposed to be his bodyguard or something?” There was no smile on his face or anything else to indicate he was joking.
“No, sir,” Nick said. “I’m just here to make sure you don’t eat him.”
A smile flickered across Wild Bill’s face—quick as a bolt of lightning—and the men sitting around the table with him laughed.
“I generally don’t eat people until suppertime,” Wild Bill said when the laughter subsided. “But I’m sure Churchill appreciates your concern.” His gaze turned to Mr. Churchill. “I’ve been hearing a lot about your team.”
“Best players money can buy,” Mr. Churchill said. “At least outside of the majors.”
Mr. Churchill reached for a chair, but Wild Bill shook his head. “Don’t sit,” he said. “I’ve just got a quick proposition for you.”
Mr. Churchill gave the chair a glance and then shrugged. “You know me, Bill. I’m always ready to hear a deal.”
“I was talking with one of my compatriots the other day,” Wild Bill said, his voice rising, “and we realized that Bismarck has never won a championship in any sport. Which, we agreed, is an outrage. This city is the capital of the great state of North Dakota, and as such it should achieve glory commensurate with its stature. Do you not agree?”
“Of course,” Mr. Churchill said. “But what did you have in mind?”
Wild Bill glanced at one of the men sitting with him, who pulled out a leaflet and tossed it on the table. “An old friend of mine has decided to put together a competition in Wichita, Kansas. A national semiprofessional baseball tournament. It will be played at the new stadium on the Arkansas River, and teams will travel from all over the country to compete for glory.”
