Centuries of June

by Keith Donohue

  “Hiya, Charlie.” Pat stood to greet him and shake his hand. “Caught us with a few friends. Miss Hopkins, Miss Jankowski, this here is Charles Wells. Good to see you, old boy, hope you enjoy the game.”

  Charlie touched the brim of his bowler and went right to his point. “Who’d ya like today, Pats? I’ve a half eagle to put on the Giants.” He held up the gold coin.

  “Ah, you’re crazy. They’ll be lucky if they score at all against the Deacon.”

  “Phillipe’s pitching? You’ve got yourself a bet—”

  “No,” Pat held up his hand. “No sportin’ for me today, chum. Can’t you see I’ve company? Ladies present.”

  “Go on then,” said Charlie, “you’re jagging me with that.”

  Pat shook his head and folded his arms against his chest.

  “Don’t be like that, old sport.” He turned to address Adele. “Don’t you know this old man is but a reprobate?”

  As quick as a hound, Pat found his feet, stepped on the empty bench in front of them, and had Charlie’s lapel in his grip. The man in the bowler squawked, and half the crowd, it seemed, turned around, and thus surrounded, Pat let go. Spry as a rat, Charlie was on his way, skittering down toward the field. One of the New York ballplayers, an older, stout fellow, was watching the fracas, and he cupped his hands in a megaphone and called to Pat, “Leave the poor sonofabitch alone, you big galoot.” He feigned throwing a baseball at the patrons in the stands, and all the cranks had a good laugh. Even Pat, his temper abated, flashed that toothy smile.

  “Ain’t that something,” Christy told him. “That’s old John McGraw, the manager hisself, bawling you out.”

  The Pirates came onto the field in their home whites, blue caps and collars, and the blue stockings with the red stripes. A great war cry rose from the crowd. At three or four spots in the bleachers, young boys clanged cowbells, and one put a cornet to his lips and blew out a three-note huzzah. As prelude to the game itself, the players tossed around the ball, and the pitcher went to the mound to doctor the dirt hill to his liking.

  Adele had scores of questions, but she deferred all until the game itself began, preferring instead to let the experience invade her senses—the smell of peanuts and grilled sausages, wool suits in the summer heat, the thwack of the ball hitting leather mitts, the sight of men as gleeful as boys cavorting in the newly mown grass. As she had been warned, a fair amount of foul language peppered the hum of conversation in the stands, a few words she thought she never would hear, and every now and then, some gentleman would feel compelled to yell something disparaging at the foe. The cranks cheered at every New York out and hooted when the umpire decided the other way. The whole first inning passed by her notice. Too much was happening, and the man beside her gave her the vapors.

  • • •

  Across the room, from the cramped niche between the bathtub and the sink, whispers grew louder. Jane conferred with Alice on some secret matter, but they had become animated in their discussions to the point of overtaking the unfolding narrative of the baseball romance. The old man cleared his throat as a sign of disapproval.

  “And who are you to stick your beak in it?” Alice asked him.

  “Yarrah, go off, old man, and take that little drooler with you.” Jane flashed him a sparkling look.

  Gently, he removed the child from his lap and set him on the floor. During the course of this latest story, the boy had stolen the cap and now wore it backward on his head. Clutching the lapels of his white robe, the old man straightened and bounced twice on the balls of his feet, thrusting out a defiant chest. “There is no call, ladies, for that sort of sedition. Adele has the floor as you once had, and we owe one another a modicum of respect—”

  “Hear, hear,” Dolly amended.

  “And what, might I ask, is the subject of your private disputation?”

  They both eyed Adele, a mixture of disdain and pity in their gaze. Jane threw her arm around Alice’s shoulder. “We were only talking about the sad state of feminine affairs, and what a shame it was to swoon over a man, and such a man as that.”

  Light flickered on the tiles and the music started with a few discordant notes, like a cat crossing a keyboard, and the silent movie began again. A wide-perspective shot of the ballpark from the vantage of an overlooking hill gave way to a panning shot from the outfield and into the diamond itself. Men in baggy uniforms ran the bases, fielded ground balls, and turned a double play. Against this backdrop, Adele picked up from where she had been interrupted by her more cynical sisters.

  • • •

  That first ball game, that whole June day, passed in a blur and yet in memory lasts a century. The Pirates won, 7–0, a shutout, the first of a record six in a row their pitchers were to post. She was at the ballpark for the last of the six, as well, and read all about it in the newspapers. In fact, everything about baseball could be found in the Post or the Daily Gazette, most important the scores, who won or lost, and how the runs came about, and the names of yesterday’s heroes and goats. She had never taken an interest in the sporting news before meeting Pat, but now her mornings began with a quick check of the league standings and over her toast and jam she deciphered the box scores.

  On the screen were shots of the players relaxing. Two men clown before the camera, monkey-faces, and the taller grabs the hat off the short, stocky fellow and rustles his thick wavy hair. Above the man runs his name in black letters: Ginger Beaumont, outfield. The gangly fellow holds the cap out higher and higher as the redhead paws for it. Above his grinning face: Kitty Bransfield, first base.

  Keeping up with the news about the Pirates occupied her days when Pat failed to call. But that occurred infrequently as the month wore on. Those first weeks of June when the Pirates were in town, he would fetch a hack two or three times a week to include her on the ballpark excursion. Other days he went by himself, but he would arrive at her home on the Bluff around six o’clock and take her out to dinner or promenade on the ridge above the Monongahela River. When the team left town, he had more freedom, and once they attended an afternoon at the movies. Alice in Wonderland thrilled her when the girl was trapped in the small house and had to reach through the tiny window for her magic fan. But on the same bill was Edison’s Electrocution of an Elephant, and she cried in her sleep that night, remembering the cloud of smoke and how the beast toppled at once as the volts pulsed through its body, and she wished that Pat had been with her in the bed to put his arms around her as he had done in the dark exhibition hall. She dreamt of him often, waking in the hot nights drenched in sweat, and wondering how he might touch her, what he might do to her, should they be married.

  In sepia, the boys, still in their uniforms, file out of the park and climb aboard a horse-drawn omnibus. Across the street, storefronts advertise Milliners, Dry Goods, and the Benevolent Temperance Society of Chicago. The game is done, and the Pirates are on their way back to the hotel in a good mood. Two of the young men stand on the wagon’s running boards, and as it jostles on, they perform a mock arabesque, as if preparing to fly. Claude Ritchey, second base. Jimmy Sebring, outfield.

  On the morning of Independence Day, Pat showed up on her doorstep to take her to the ball game against Philadelphia, the dregs of the National League. Adele’s father answered the knock, and from her bedroom on the second floor, she could hear the two men conversing in stiff exchange. Mr. Hopkins, an accountant for the city, was a small, formal man, not given to any display of emotion, but his voice, which had started out mild and pleasant, grew agitated by Pat’s booming replies to his queries. No, Pat was saying, no I have not. She quickly finished tying her corset and then threw on her dress to hurry to intervene. At the top of the stairs, she heard Pat’s anguished reply to her father’s insisting question. “… but I’ve not had a drop today, Mr. Hopkins, hand to God. It’s not even noon.”

  Adele flew down the steps and inserted herself between the two rams. Flustered by any sign of disagreement, she did not even see her beau but focused
immediately on mollifying her father.

  “Papa dear, I had no idea you were home today. How nice.” She kissed the old man on his cheek and clung to his shoulder with one hand. He placed his hand over hers and returned her kiss. Then and only then did she face Pat Ahearn and notice, with a shudder, the thin vertical line that split his lip. The blood had dried into a dull red scab. She drew her fingers to her own mouth and could not find the words for a simple greeting. Neither man could muster a graceful exit to their disagreement, and they all might be standing there to this day, silent as a three-legged stool, had not the dog walked into the parlor, demanding, by the fierce circling propelling of her tail, to be acknowledged. Pat reached down and scratched behind the mutt’s floppy ears, cooing thatagirl, that’s a good girl. Adele stepped under her bonnet and using the glass window as a mirror, she tied the straps in a bow and kissed her father good-bye all in one motion, promising to be home in time for the celebratory supper and to hear the cannons and see the fireworks that evening as they had done every Fourth of July since she was a little girl.

  A broad-faced man shows how his long crooked fingers allow him to hold in one hand four baseballs at once. Ed Phelps, catcher. Four young men, three right-handers and a left-hand thrower, wind up and pretend to hurl the pill right at us through the camera lens. When they finish their follow-through motions, three are smiling sheepishly: Deacon Phillippe, Sam Leever, Brickyard Kennedy, pitchers. Only the fourth, lefty Ed Doheny, remains dead serious. A strangeness in the eyes.

  • • •

  At the ballpark, she finally managed to ask him about the argument with her father.

  “He accused me of showing up drunk to escort his daughter. I’m not drunk at all. Christy and I had a beer or two with our breakfast, but that’s all. Hardly a drop.”

  “You should know that he’s got a stir about the Irish—”

  “Who don’t?” Ahearn clenched his fists. “It’s always the micks this, the micks that.”

  “Are you sure it was just a beer with breakfast?”

  Pat flicked back the brim of his boater so that it made a halo around his face.

  Squinting into the bright light, Adele watched the Pirates take the field and begin to toss around the baseballs. “He took the pledge is all. A temperance man.” She was nearly afraid to ask about Pat’s injury, but at last volunteered, “Did you hurt your lip?”

  “Don’t be a mope,” he told her. “A gentlemen’s disagreement. But you should see the other fellow. This ain’t nothing.”

  For the first three innings she sat, petulant, barely caring herself who won or lost. In the middle of the fourth, Pat leaned closer, held her chin in the crook of one finger. “C’mon, Adele, give us a kiss.” And for the first time: “Be a sweetheart. Don’tcha know that I love you?”

  The house lights rose and we all blinked, adjusting our sight.

  “Gag,” said Flo and mimed sticking her fingers down her throat.

  “Revolting,” said Jane at the mirror, fixing the ends of her new hairdo. “Absolutely revolting.”

  The old man stretched his long bare legs and crossed his arms. “Now, ladies, your bitterness is unbecoming. We all have faith in love, especially in our youth.”

  I nodded my agreement, thinking the while of the girl surrounded by fireflies.

  Abuzz with opinions, the women debated the merits of love, and the old man took advantage of their philosophizing to address me privately. “May I ask a personal question?” This he asks after spending who knows how long in my bathrobe, in my bathroom, and sharing as my coeval the sundry stories visited by the past upon my present. This he asks after saving my life no fewer than six times, and more to come, I fear. This he asks, though he does not realize, slender as it may be, that he is the reed upon which clings all hope that some sense and order may be restored. I thought and hoped that he might ask me about the girl and help me rescue her from my amnesiac fog. I gave him the okay.

  He spoke in a serious manner that had a hint of sarcasm. “Where’d you get the money to afford a place like this? Surely not on your salary with the architects. At which, may I add, you’ve not designed and built more than an archway.”

  Perhaps it was unintentional on his part, but the words stung. He may have detected the faint whiff of self-abnegation escaping from my body. I must have smelled of disappointment. Even the baby crinkled his nose, and the women briefly paused their discussions to note the aroma of failure and, now, mortification.

  “Not that you haven’t got ideas, I’m sure,” he said. “Great designs in the mind. Plans to plan. But this place must have cost a small fortune.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “My brother and I went in together. I never would have been able to afford this house on my own.”

  “Must be a helluva fella,” the old man smiled and then reached out for the baby boy begging to be held.

  The house lights dimmed and as the movie started once more, we fell silent to its spell. Three men in baseball caps and matching sweaters pose unhappily on a cold day. The guy in the middle mouths something to the other pair, the words emerge as clouds. Like bears waking from hibernation, they loosen their limbs, roll their necks, shrug their shoulders. The title reads: “Hot Springs, Arkansas, Spring Training.” The man on the left has a serious air about him, the weight of gravitas. Fred Clarke, outfield and manager. In the middle stands an imp. Tommy Leach, third base. But the man on the right is of a kind not made anymore. Long-armed, broad hands, and long crooked fingers, he appears to be a kind of golem or man of baked clay. His legs are slightly bowed. A hooked nose dominates his face, and his gaze at first is circumspect. He shows the cameraman a pet miniature dachshund sitting nonchalantly in the cup of one hand. On command, the little dog barks and howls and then, still in its master’s palm, stands on its hind legs and begs until rewarded with a morsel hidden in the man’s other hand. Once it has finished the treat, the dog lifts its left hind leg and piddles down the big man’s arm. The other two roar with laughter, and the man dances on his bandy legs, feigning anger, until he, too, cannot escape the humor of the moment. His booming laugh can almost be heard. Honus Wagner, the Flying Dutchman, shortstop.

  Although she loved him, Adele fought the impulse to blurt out her feelings right then and there at the ball game in front of all those cranks. But she loved him, yes, and was so happy that he loved her, too. She kissed him quickly and for the rest of the day allowed Pat to hold her hand when she was not cheering another victory by the swaggering Pirates. He was good and kind and generous, and aside from that flash of anger at the man in the bowler hat, he had not shown a single fault. A drink now and then, but that could be hidden from her father. And, true, he liked to tease her at times, especially when Christy was around as coconspirator.

  “Did I ever tell you,” Pat said near the end of the game, “about our man Hans Wagner and his big shovel of a hand? Out in St. Lou it was, a batter hit a ground ball towards him, but instead of grabbing the baseball, he scooped up a rabbit that had wandered on the field.”

  “A rabbit, no,” said Christy.

  “Aye, Wagner throws it over to first base anyway, and the runner was out by a hare.”

  Adele smacked the meat of his arm with her paper fan. “You boys,” she laughed. “You had me going for a moment. Feeling sorry for the little bunny.”

  Up hopped a small hard chaw of a man, his bowler cocked forward to hide a black eye. He waited in the aisle between the rows of seats, as penitent as a scolded child, and he did not speak till Pat noticed him.

  “Well, if it ain’t Charlie Wells hisself. I thought I made myself clear last night when we spoke.”

  Tipping the brim of his lid, Wells acknowledged Adele and winced before he spoke, as though putting thoughts into words pained his mind. “Beggin’ your pardon, Patsy, but I just came to apologize—again—for the fracas and to inquire after your health.”

  Reflexively, Pat brought his hand to his tender mouth. “Never mind all that. It’s you I ho
pe learned your lesson.”

  The briefest trace of resentment flashed across Wells’s face, the bitterness of a small man long-suffering and put upon by bullies. He reminded Adele of her father, a man of a thousand grievances against those richer or stronger or more handsome or more confident. Or just luckier in life. She knew countless such downtrodden men, boiling under the surface, who hesitate momentarily when confronted. “Never cross the Irish,” Wells said, with a laugh.

  “That’s the style,” Pat said. He seemed unaware, Adele thought, of the little man’s obsequiousness. “Now tell me, do you still think the Pirates won’t finish first and win the flag?”

  Let off the hook, Wells relaxed. “From what the touts say, I’d watch that Ed Doheny and see he doesn’t go buggy like the rumor has it. As Doheny goes, so goest the team. They’re in first place now, but I warn you, the wheel of fortune turns for every man.”

  “Round and round, round and round,” the little boy sang from the old man’s lap. I had forgotten he could talk.

  The heat that summer drove everyone slightly mad. Not just the temperatures, brutal though they were, but the heat of the city generated by the steel mills along the rivers’ edges, and the coke ovens burning night and day. They called Pittsburg hell with the lid off, and as a July drought settled in, the clouds of smoke and soot thickened, so that the sun itself burned as through a woolen blanket. The new millionaires, whose homes lined Fifth and Forbes in the Oakland suburbs, would escape to the Great Lakes or the Atlantic shore. The workingman took relief where he could.

  Pat and Adele would journey to the new zoo out in Highland Park or simply picnic in the groves nearby. Some afternoons they wandered among the modern art at the Carnegie Museum or in the cooled splendor of the Phipps Conservatory. It was all new, a sign of the money minted through the bars of pig iron and ribbons of molten steel, the largesse of the burghers and barons. The ball club began a monthlong western swing to Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis, so the Ahearn boys were free for a little sport. Pat and Adele and Christy and Helen hopped on the train to Carnegie Lake and bathed with the crowd of swimmers gathered there. Cartmen sold sandwiches and cold beer from a keg on ice, and the brothers drank mug after mug to stay cool. The sight of the two women in their bathing costumes raised the heat in the Ahearn brothers. In the covering waters, Pat held her close, and what she felt stirring against her thigh both thrilled and horrified her, but she knew better than to pull away, so she let him press against her till he could no longer stand it and had to swim off like a lunatic, muttering oaths. Later that evening, after supper and over a game of rummy in the summer parlor of the Hopkins home, Adele and Pat passed a knowing glance when Mr. Hopkins asked how the water had been that day.