by Honey
"I have to admit, listening to her was better than watching Red throw his dinner plate."
Laughter and smiles.
"She put words in his mouth he didn't know he had."
More smiles.
"That fellow didn't know what hit him."
Nods of agreement.
"When she mentioned the tickets, he sure changed his tune."
Then from Specs, "You got him to do something without yelling, Miss Kennison. You stuck up for us."
Fork in hand, Camille paused. "Of course I did. Because we've got a right to the same service as anybody else. Just like," she added softly, "I've got the right to have the same chance as any other manager in charge of the Keystones. I know I don't do things the way Red Vanderguest or my father did. Just because I don't swear or spit or yell doesn't mean that I don't care about what happens to this team."
The players looked at her, solemnly and thoughtfully, and for a long moment, nothing else was said. The seconds passed. Silent understanding measured out the time. Camille felt rekindled hope that she could be taken seriously.
Then the smiling came back and the men resumed eating. Talk began anew. They traded jokes, laughing and expressing their enjoyment.
The men included her in their conversation.
It was a rapport she'd never experienced before in her life—most certainly not with the Garden Club women.
She lowered her head, a full smile on her lips that she couldn't contain. She was a part of something and it felt wonderful.
When she looked up, she found Alex staring at her and her excitement slowed to something else— deeper, more intense. She had the fleeting feeling that he thought her... worthy.
And that meant a lot to her.
Chapter 14
They looked like bumblebees.
The uniforms the Keystones had brought with them to the St. James hotel weren't the same ones that had gone to the laundry in Harmony. Alex looked at the putrid color of the fabric encasing his arms and legs, then glared at Camille.
"I can't imagine what could have happened," she gasped, giving them all a glance. "I took the dirty uniforms to the laundry, the same way as I always do—in the canvas bags. Then I picked these up the next day. How could something like this have happened? It's not as if the colors have faded. These are new uniforms."
"These are puke-i-forms," Noodles whined.
They'd left the hotel for the Huntington Avenue Grounds without checking the uniforms. There'd been no reason to. But now the Keystones had no choice but to suit up in the bumblebee gear.
Camille was perplexed. "The colors may be a little... bright, but it will be easier for you to spot one another on the field. Old gold with dark slate for the lettering."
"This isn't any Old Gold and Dark Slate," Yank commented, scowling at the clash of colors on his chest.
Noodles broke in. "This is squash yellow and black plum."
Cupid frowned. "Put the two together—"
"—and you've got a bumblebee," Bones finished.
Grumbles circulated in the small room.
"I honestly don't know how such a mistake could have been made," Camille said, standing before them, her peach dress falling in a light swirl of fabric over her long legs. "But mark my words, I'll get to the bottom of it when I get back to Harmony. In the meantime," she said encouragingly, "are they that bad? The Tigers and the Senators wear bright colors."
No comment.
Dressed as she was, she reminded Alex of an Italian ice—enticing on a hot day. He wanted to put his mouth over hers to see if she tasted as cool and sweet as she looked.
She wore a simple braided hat that on closer inspection looked vaguely familiar. Damned if it wasn't the hat he'd given her—minus most of the gewgaws the milliner had put on it. Just a sprig of lace here and there remained, and one ivory flower.
"Well," she went on, her eyes resting on Alex a moment. "We'll just have to make the best of things. There isn't anything else you can wear."
"Our birthday suits," Jimmy suggested with a grin.
"Yes," Camille replied, "that would go over very well. Why don't you?"
It took the players a few seconds to realize she was teasing them. Afterward, they laughed along with her and shook their heads at Jimmy.
Alex sat down on the bench and began to lace up his shoes. Uniforms were the least of his worries. It was all he could do to keep his mind clear and his thoughts from being pulled down a dark path. But hard as he tried to keep away visions of Joe, Joe McGill filled his head. Alex saw Joe at the plate, catcher's mitt in his grasp. As the years had melted away, so had some of the words he'd once traded with the Giants' catcher. He couldn't remember exactly everything they'd said to each other that day. He knew they weren't pretty. It was part of the game, of the way they were toward one another.
Laces knotted, Alex sat back and inhaled deep lungfuls of air. He'd get through the day, just like he had on the two previous Junes. Only today, he had to get through it with a bat in his hand. He had to fight the personal battle raging in him. He had to stay uncaring, remain unfeeling.
If Joe were here, he'd probably say to spare him no mercy. To knock him right out of the batter's box because he was going to hit the ball out of the park. The admission was dredged from a place Alex didn't like to go—memories of the old days, the glory days.
His glory days.
To get out on the mound, to pitch like he meant business, to see the batters take a powder, one right after the other, strike, strike, strike—He was capable of doing it. Just like he'd done that afternoon Camille had caught him hurling balls at the dirt.
He thought back to the question she'd asked him: Why had he quit baseball? He'd wanted to tell her, to take her into his confidence.
But there was nothing anybody could do to change things. No matter how hard Alex tried, he couldn't revive Joe. And he would have given anything—anything—to bring him back. In body. In mind. In spirit.
"Hey, busher."
Alex froze. His heartbeat tripped, then surged; his blood grew hot in his veins. Slowly, he glanced over his shoulder. Nobody was there. Who in the hell was he expecting? Joe McGill?
It was just like Joe to play a trick on him. To make him think one thing and do another, to make him want to shove his fist in his chops and kick his ass— and maybe have his ass kicked in return. That was the way of things between them because they'd both been bruised by the other at the plate and on the field, starting with the first day Joe batted in a Giant's uniform. He'd ripped a pitch right at the mound and shot the ball into Alex's shoulder. The injury benched him for a couple of weeks. Intentional or not, that incident had set up seasons of antagonism.
"Cordova, if you can't play the game stay the hell off the field."
Alex shot his chin around, his gaze darting across the wall. There were open lockers, closed lockers, clothes on the floor, bats and balls in buckets and tall boxes, towels, water pitchers.
No Joe.
Facing forward, he was assailed with a sense of relief. He shouldn't feel that way. Grief should have torn at his heart. But it didn't. His heart pulsed and his blood flowed, strongly and without the usual tightening in his throat. A weight had lifted from his shoulders. Somehow, it just felt easier to breathe. His awareness of the sensations was so acute, it was almost a physical pain. And with the tenseness eased in his body, he allowed himself to mentally prepare to pitch.
He was going to win today.
Because Joe McGill understood why he had to. Even though he wasn't in the room, he was here. He'd been with Alex since the day of the accident. In his thoughts. Words. What he did. Why he did things.
And oddly, Alex's decision to do his best came from Camille. She was good at standing up for what she believed in. He could do no less. By failing himself and the team, he failed her.
It was time to either get into the game, or get out.
"Gentlemen, I'm going to bring the lineup to the umpires." Camille's voice broke into A
lex's thoughts. "Let's make the best of things, shall we?"
Then she left.
Alex looked at the group of men shuffling on their feet and taking their own good time getting ready.
"We're going to win today's game," he said, tucking the tails of his shirt into his pants.
Charlie, cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth, asked, "How do you know that, Cordova?"
"Because we owe her. After what she did in the restaurant."
"Well, that's a nice thought." Doc buttoned his jersey. "But when we win, it's not like we really set out to do it. I think we get lucky, that's all."
"Yeah, that's right." Specs squinted. His new glasses didn't seem to be working.
Alex went to the small desk, grabbed the box on it and lifted the lid. It was Camille's and he knew what was in it. "Today we'll do things her way. And I mean everything."
He fingered the packages of Chiclets and began to toss them out to the players. "No sneaking tobacco. We'll do the music thing where we pass the ball to one another with that two-step crap. Bones, wear your shoe inserts. Specs, plaster a different pair of glasses on your nose."
Specs grunted. "I like this pair."
Yank chuckled. "That pair wouldn't help you find the foul line if you were standing on it."
"Shut up, Yank."
"Both of you put a lid on it," Alex directed. "Cupid, make sure you put a lot of liniment on your head. Maybe we can piss off Cy and he'll throw a punch— get himself ejected from the game."
"I don't want the Cyclone hitting me in the head," Cupid objected.
"Then duck if you see his fist coming at you." Alex reached for the basket containing their luck charms, remedy bottles, and the other essentials that fueled their phobias. Alex, though, had never once relied on any of that stuff. He always counted on himself to pull him through a game.
"Take all this sludge and make it work for you." He held the basket out. "Other than that, I don't know what else we can do."
"We could pray," Deacon said, his cap low over his eyes.
"Yeah, we haven't tried that." Yank had shoved the entire package of gum into his mouth and talked around the wad in his cheek.
Cub snorted. "Why would the Lord listen to anything we have to say?"
" 'Cause we're asking," Doc said. "He'll listen to anyone who asks."
Alex took up his cap, grabbed his bat, and went toward the door. "Do what you have to do."
Then he went outside. He'd done all his praying when Captain was in the hospital. And it hadn't done any good.
He put more faith in Bones's string of rabbits' feet.
* * * * *
"Mr. Regal man," Cy Young called to Alex with a mocking tip of his cap.
Alex shot back, "How's the farm, Denton?"
Cy's face grew red from being called his given name and having his Ohio country roots mentioned. "Same as it always was, Regal. Doing well. Just like my pitching. Not like yours, which is in the crapper."
Camille listened to the exchange between the Somerset player and Alex Cordova. Alex wasn't amused. In fact, he glowered and would have probably fired off an obscenity if she hadn't been standing beside him.
"You're going to wonder why you can't hit the ball today, rube," Alex said. "Because the Keystones are winning this game."
Cy smirked. "What are you going to do? Knock my head off like you knocked off—"
Alex tackled Cy to the ground before he could finish his sentence. Their fists flailed and some punches landing. Dust clouded the air. Camille shot to her feet, but her call to stop went unheeded. It was the umpire who broke them apart and sent them to their respective benches to cool off.
Sitting beside Alex, Camille looked at him as he pressed a wet towel on the corner of his mouth.
"What was that all about?" she asked.
"Winning." His eyes narrowed across the field to where Cy sat in the Somersets' dugout. "I'm going to beat him pitching today."
Camille was taken aback by Alex's sudden confidence. "Are you really going to beat him?" she asked, gazing into his face, her breath catching as it had a way of doing when his brown eyes peered directly into hers.
"Watch me." Alex snagged his glove and jogged out to the pitcher's mound.
Camille observed her players, taking notations. The Huntington Avenue Grounds, newly constructed this year, had opened in May, with railroad tracks along the full advertisement wall behind first base. In back of third base, tall offices and warehouses sprung up, some as tall as ten stories. The ballpark, built on a former circus lot, had patches of sand in the outfield where grass wouldn't grow.
There was a toolshed in the far middle of center field, and as the Somersets took the outfield, the players grabbed rakes and groomed the ground around their positions to give their spiked shoes more grip on pebbleless dirt.
Outraged by the unfairness, Camille went to her feet to have a word with the umpire behind home plate.
Walking toward him, she called out. "Mr.... er—"
But she stopped, having to think a moment to make sure she didn't call him Catfish. It didn't help that his name had an aquatic sound to it. If she addressed him incorrectly, he'd take her out of the game. Just that one word, Catfish, and you were ejected. He was quite sensitive about it. Probably because he had rather prominent lips, and because when he'd call a ball or a strike he'd let a fine spray of spit fly from his mouth. It gave the general impression of a catfish.
"Uh, Mr...." She'd reached him now, and he gazed at her with quiet reprobation in his eyes. Then his name came to her. "Mr. Carpio, I find this display of raking the dirt unacceptable."
"On what grounds?" Boomer Hurley, the Somersets' manager, asked with a guffaw as he drew up to them. "Get it? Grounds. As in dirt."
"I get it, Mr. Hurley," she remarked tightly. Her second meeting of the man was fast proving to be just as antagonizing as the first.
"The Somersets always rake their dirt between innings," Mr. Carpio declared.
"Then I propose the Keystones have the same advantage." She looked at her team members, who sat on the bench, waiting for her to tell them what to do. Noodles was next to bat, but she'd held him back until a decision could be made about the rakes.
"Did you bring your own rakes?" The tobacco lump in Boomer's cheek put a lisp in his words. He spit. "The Keystones can't use the property of the Somersets."
Mr. Carpio nodded his head in agreement. "You had the opportunity to even things out."
"Of course we didn't bring our own rakes, and to imply that it should have been a consideration is ludicrous." She lifted her chin and spoke crisply. "Mr. Carpio, this is very offensive to me and to the Keystones organization. To all of baseball, for that matter. A manager can't make up rules. And nowhere in the books does it say the home team has control of rakes."
Mr. Carpio pursed those fleshy lips of his, then looked at Camille and then at Boomer—who inched one deviant brow up his forehead like a crook on the prowl for something to steal.
"Miss Kennison," Mr. Carpio stated judiciously, black fedora over his bald head, "I can't force Mr. Hurley into sharing his rakes. They are official property of the Somersets."
In a silent standoff, Boomer sardonically grinned at her, to the point of gloating. She fought the urge to sneer.
Without another word, she resumed her seat. It was horrid. It was vulgar. It was baseball wearing its worst face. The home team was getting away with something that was unfair. Her father would have lambasted Mr. Carpio with language that would have gotten him severely fined, if not thrown from the ballpark. Were she to do such a thing, he'd probably be proud. Camille wondered if spouting a mild oath would make her feel better.
On the bench, she gave it a polite try mumbling beneath her breath, "The big dumb stiff."
Reclining next to her, one leg out in a long and lean stretch, Alex commented, "I would have said worse."
"I know."
He laughed, the sound rich and deep-timbred.
She grew a
ware of how close he sat—not indecently so, but just near enough to have his muscular thigh meet the material of her skirt. Just enough to have her sleeve lightly skim over the outline of his hard biceps as she raised her hand to shade her eyes. She saw the field, but she didn't see it. She could smell the soap Alex had used this morning, a woodsy masculine scent that jumbled her senses and made her almost forget what she was doing.
"Noodles, go out there and hit a home run," she mumbled, not putting much emphasis into her words. They seemed wasted on a team that was always the underdog—not even granted the courtesy of rakes. Much to her surprise, though, Alex had pitched a fine first inning. Only one man had gottened a hit off him, but the man hadn't scored because of great fielding from Cupid. Alex had struck out the rest up to bat. He looked like the Alex she'd seen at his wood shop. Virile and dominant. In prime form.
Her advice to Noodles had been given in near jest. In the twenty-eight games they had played since she'd taken over, he'd gotten a few hits, but not a single home run or even a double. He never beat the ball to second, and it seemed he was chronically out at first even if he hit a bobble that rolled into third base territory.
So when he stood and took his first strike, it didn't surprise her. Nor did the second. As he positioned himself for the third pitch, he dug his spikes into the dirt, but then he held his hands up to call time. She sat forward, wondering if there was a problem. But he gave her a quick gaze and a nod, then reached into his back pocket. His hand withdrew a package of Chiclets. He tipped his head back and poured the tiny candy-gum pieces into his mouth; then he stuffed the wrapper back into his pocket.
Carpio fined for littering. He wouldn't fine for illegal rake use, but he'd get you on a trash violation.
The fans booed and hissed at Noodles, waving him off and jeering at him. Their laughter and mockery made Camille angry. Noodles took his stance again and Cy fired a knuckleball. Noodles took a swing. It sounded like he was hitting a squash when the tip made contact and sent the ball sailing high. Higher. Over the backfield wall.
He'd hit a home run.
The voices of the red-hot Somersets fans were abruptly silenced. On the Keystones bench, a wild cheer rose, along with the players who ran out to home plate to wait for their unlikely hero.
