A Stranger in the Kingdom

by Howard Frank Mosher

  An idea occurred to me. “You mind if I come over and listen with you? I’ve always wanted—”

  “Are you chaps going to spend all morning jabbering up there?” Reverend Andrews called from the foot of the stairs. “I’ve got a meeting at the newspaper office with Jim’s father. I’m taking off.”

  Nat rolled his eyes and sighed. “All right,” he told me. “All right. Yes, you can listen with me if it’ll make you happy. Now come on. Let’s get this bloody baseball game over with.”

  Baseball was still the game in Kingdom Common and a hundred other New England villages like it during the early fifties. In northern Vermont when I was growing up, every four-corner hamlet with a filling station and a general store seemed to have its own team. Naturally, this fervor spilled over to us kids, and although Kingdom Common was too remote from other Vermont towns to join a Little League or Pony League network, our Saturday morning pickup games on the diamond at the south end of the green were as fiercely contested as any intertown rivalry.

  It was still early when we arrived, just past nine-thirty on the courthouse clock. For half an hour or so, as the sun burned the dew off the outfield grass and we waited for more boys to show up, Nat and I played flies and grounders with my old taped baseball Nat was exceptionally good at this game. Except for fly-fishing, I can’t think of a sport he wasn’t good at, and with his speed and ball sense he made even hard catches look easy. What sticks in my mind is that he was the first kid I ever saw catch fly balls basket-style, like Willie Mays, circling under the ball and letting it drop into his lap instead of reaching up for it.

  Gradually other boys drifted in, town boys mostly, though a sprinkling of country kids, too, in the village with their folks for the morning. By about ten we had a gang of a dozen or so. Al Quinn and Justin LaBounty, both of whom played on the Academy’s team, chose up sides. As the youngest kid there, I was picked last; but I was playing on Nat’s team, and gratified just to be playing instead of relegated to shag foul balls on the United Church lawn across the street from the backstop.

  Our team took the field first, with Nat pitching for us. Al dispatched me to pick daisies in deep center, near the monument of Ethan Allen taking Fort Ticonderoga, where I promptly tried to make a basket catch with my catcher’s glove on the first hit of the game, a towering fly ball. I misjudged it entirely and gave up a home mn on a play that should have been an out.

  “Good show, Kinneson!” Bobby Hefner jeered from first base. “There’s a water bucket over at the Academy locker room that’ll have your name on it for the next four years.”

  “You’ll be riding the pine, all right, if you try that fancy stuff in high school, Jimmy,” Al Quinn called out to me from shortstop. “Leave that to Nat, here. He knows what he’s doing.”

  “Just give me a shot at catching,” I yelled in to him, thumping my mitt; but Bobby Hefner gave me a long raspberry.

  At the plate I did better. Justin LaBounty was pitching for the other team, and I had to grit my teeth to keep my foot from going in the bucket. But I had learned years ago, batting against Charlie and my father in front of the barn, to hang in there against a fastball. First time up I got a soft opposite-field single, and later that same inning I beat out a drag bunt down the third base line that Al said was a beauty. Even old Plug Johnson, who’d come over from the hotel and was watching from the third-base bleachers with three or four of his cronies, croaked out “Good job.”

  Nat batted three times in our half of the inning, and hit three long line-drive home runs.

  “I don’t know why Nathan wouldn’t play for the Academy, especially with his father coaching,” Al Quinn said to me in a low voice as Nathan rounded third base on his third consecutive homer. “A bunch of us boys even went up to his house to try to talk him into it.”

  On my third time up I beat out an infield hit to shortstop.

  “Hey, Nat,” Justin called out, “your little buddy here can motor.”

  “He’s had lots of practice, running away from Frenchy LaMott and his brothers,” Bobby said, and again everyone had a good laugh at my expense.

  Something stuck in my mind, though. Justin had called me Nat’s buddy, so word must have gotten around that he and I were friends. That, at least, made me happy, and around eleven o’clock, when our catcher had to leave to mow a lawn, I had my big opportunity.

  “Okay, Kinneson,” Nat said, “how about calling signals for me for an inning or two?”

  I didn’t need to be told twice. All the catcher’s equipment we had was one old face mask with a single strap, but I clamped it loosely over my head, stuck my hand as far into the recesses of my new catcher’s glove as it would go, and squatted down behind the plate.

  The first batter up that inning was Billy Kittredge, who was just a year older than me. Nat wound up easily and threw him a mediumspeed pitch. Billy swung from the heels and missed. He swung and missed at the next one, and the next one, too, but I dropped the third strike and Billy ran down to first.

  The next two batters flied out, and Justin was up. He grinned at Nat and waggled his big Louisville Slugger. “Put some mustard on it, Andrews.”

  Nat grinned. He wrapped his long fingers around the ball, then hid it in his glove. He pumped, kicked high, and blazed one right in there. All I saw was a white streak.

  Justin swung way late, I jumped to the side, and the ball whizzed by and whanged into the backstop.

  “Don’t quail away from those pitches, mister,” a harsh voice from behind me barked out.

  I whirled around. My father, who could no more stay away from a baseball game than ignore a good story, was standing just behind the backstop. Beside him stood Reverend Andrews.

  Worse yet, Charlie was now approaching the bleachers with Royce St. Onge and Stub Poulin. “Yes, James,” he called over, laughing. “Let’s not quail away.”

  This was wonderful. Half the town and two-thirds of my own family were on hand to witness my latest humiliation!

  “Give me another one of those,” Justin told Nat as I retrieved the ball from where it had lodged deep in the chickenwire mesh of the backstop. “I’ll catch up with it this time.”

  But he didn’t, and neither did I. This time Nat’s fastball went clean through the wire screen and across the street into the church lawn, rolling all the way to the foot of the bulletin board, where Elijah Kinneson was putting up a new message for the coming week. Elijah glanced down at the ball but made no move to pick it up and throw it back.

  “Watch your arm, son,” Reverend Andrews said, then walked across the road to retrieve the ball.

  “I’ll tell you something, mister man,” my father said to me. “You’ve got to learn to keep your body behind that ball.”

  I returned to the plate, with my father still lecturing me. Squinting out at Nat, fighting back tears, I caught the words “mister” and “muckle onto it.”

  I braced myself, praying I wouldn’t quail away from Nat’s next pitch, knowing I would.

  But this time he pulled the string on everybody. Instead of his fastball he threw a big slow looping curve that the bottom dropped completely out of when it reached the plate. Justin missed it by a good six inches, the ball bounced in front of me, and in a single motion, I swept it out of the sandy dirt and tagged. Justin, ending the inning.

  My father nodded his approval. Charlie whistled, and Reverend Andrews came over to where I was swinging my bat in the on-deck circle. “Good scoop, Jim. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever played any infield positions? Second base, shortstop?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. I’m a catcher, just like Charlie.”

  The minister smiled. “No offense, chum, but with your quick hands and speed, I’d have you playing shortstop on my team. We’ve got a good catcher coming back next year, but with Al Quinn graduating, short’s an open position. We could use somebody there who knows how to throw some leather. Think it over.”

  I did, and the next inning I got Al Quinn to switch positions and glo
ves with me. The second batter hit a scorcher along the grasstop to my right. I backhanded it and threw the runner out by three steps.

  “Good job, Phil Rizzuto!” Charlie yelled.

  From behind the backstop Reverend Andrews gave me his small salute and headed back across the street to the church. I couldn’t have been more pleased by a standing ovation at Fenway Park, I knew right then and there that I had found my position. Never again, at least when it came to baseball, would I think of myself just as Charlie Kinneson’s kid brother.

  By now the brick shopping block was lined with vehicles. A long freight was unloading lumber cars in the mill yard behind the courthouse, and the air was filled with the shunting of the cars, the steady whir of the big dust blowers on top of the American Heritage Mill, the clang and clatter of cattle trucks being loaded and unloaded at the Saturday morning commission sales auction, and the bellow of cattle, interspersed with snatches of Bumper Stevens’ singsong voice over an outdoor microphone.

  Across the street from the south end of the common, Reverend Andrews and Elijah Kinneson seemed to be having some sort of disagreement over the bulletin board, where Elijah had just spelled out this comforting message. IN THE HANDS OF THE LORD THERE IS A CUP, BUT THE DREGS THEREOF, ALL THE WICKED OF THE EARTH SHALL WRING THEM OUT AND DRINK THEM. Elijah was waving his hands, the minister was shaking his head. Abruptly Elijah turned away and stalked over to the Monitor, Reverend Andrews watched him cross the street, then began taking down the letters.

  By now several more of Charlie’s teammates had arrived and were playing catch along the sidelines. Charlie squatted down and began warming up big Harlan Kittredge. “One more half-inning, guys,” he called to us.

  As the game continued, I glanced over my shoulder and noticed Frenchy LaMott and his two younger half-brothers, Emile and Jeanie, slouching across the outfield from the direction of the commission sales.

  “Hold up a minute, Nat.”

  Frenchy and his brothers continued to take their own sweet time crossing the field. And they seemed to be chanting something, like an auctioneer’s pitch of some kind.

  “Go ahead and throw the ball,” Bobby Hefner urged Nat. “Those morons’ll get out of the way.”

  Nat wound up and threw. By now the LaMott boys were just behind me on the infield dirt, still chanting. I began to catch some of the words. Then more words.

  I sucked in my breath sharply. At the risk of taking a line drive in the back of the head, I spun around. They continued to chant:

  Nig-ger monkeypaw, laid an egg in our straw,

  Egg was rotten, long forgotten,

  Nig-ger monkeypaw.

  “What’s that you’re saying?” Justin LaBounty yelled to the LaMotts from the on-deck circle.

  Frenchy halted near third base. “I weren’t talking to you, LaBounty.”

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “Only see one monkeypaw out there,” Frenchy said, and Emile gave a long laugh exactly like a turkey’s gobble. Not to be outdone, Jeanie hooted like a loon, inspiring Emile to let out a shrill crow I couldn’t have told from Ethan Allen’s regular five A.M. reveille. To the delight of the Folding Chair Club, Jeanie began to honk and hiss like a mad gander, hunching his shoulders forward, jutting out his neck at Nat, and swaying his close-cropped round head from side to side

  “Look at his hands, long as a frigging ape’s,” Frenchy said.

  Nat ignored him and got ready to pitch, but Justin took several steps toward Frenchy. “You say one more word, boy, and Nat’s going to clean your clock good.”

  Frenchy laughed and began again to chant, “Nig-ger monkeypaw, laid an egg—”

  “End of game,” Nat said, and flipped Justin the baseball and headed off the diamond on the first-base side.

  “Nat! You going to let him call you that?” Bobby Hefner hollered.

  As usual Bobby was spoiling for someone else to fight; but I felt the same way. I caught up to my friend and grabbed his sleeve.

  “Come on, Nat. Go back and kick Frenchy’s ass for him. Otherwise you’ll never hear the end of that monkeypaw stuff.”

  “Egg was rotten, long forgotten,” Frenchy and his brothers chanted. They kept looking toward the church lawn, ready to bolt if the minister started to cross the street. But Reverend Andrews made no move to interfere. Clearly, he intended to let Nat fight this battle himself.

  I looked at Charlie, who had not even stopped playing catch with Harlan.

  “Nig-ger monkeypaw, nig-ger monkeypaw,” the LaMott boys chanted.

  Nat continued up the common with his back to them.

  “Nig-ger monkeypaw . . .”

  I had heard enough. Rushing up to Justin LaBounty, I grabbed the Louisville Slugger out of his hands and started toward Frenchy. Instantly Al Quinn intercepted me and yanked away the bat. “No,” he said quietly. “Nat has to do this himself. You butt out.”

  I looked at Justin, who nodded. “He’s right, Jimmy. I’ve wrestled with Nat in the locker room. He could make mincemeat out of Frenchy if he wanted to.”

  What on earth was wrong with Nat? I wondered. He was the best ball player at the Academy since Charlie’s days, yet he wouldn’t play on the team even after his father began coaching it. He probably was the best wrestler in school, too, but he wouldn’t stand up to Frenchy LaMott.

  Of one thing I was certain, though. Nathan Andrews had not heard the last from Frenchy and his two half-brothers.

  “I’m not going, Kinneson. You can suppose that I’m afraid of your local bully or whatever you want to suppose. In time it’ll blow over. Or it won’t. I don’t know or care.”

  Nat sank back on his bed and stared at the ceiling. It was two evenings after the terrible name-calling episode on the ballfield. Just that afternoon Frenchy had confronted Nat on the common again, this time challenging him to a fistfight that night at the commission sales bam—and here my friend was holed up in his bedroom as though he was scared for his life!

  “I know you aren’t scared, Nat,” I told him pleadingly. “I know you could kick Frenchy’s ass from here to Canada. But you’ve got to prove that to Frenchy. Otherwise he’ll never let up. He’ll lay for you and torment you with that stupid song from now until the cows come home. You’ve got to stop him.”

  “Not tonight, I don’t. Tonight I’ve got to write to my grandmother.”

  “Come on, Nat. He’s waiting now. All it’ll take you is about ten sec—”

  Before I knew what was happening, I found myself sprawled on the bed, with Nat standing over me.

  He jerked me to my feet. “Go away,” he said wearily, and shoved me toward the door. “Just go away.”

  I was nearly crying with frustration. It was past nine o’clock already, the time Frenchy had challenged Nat to fight him.

  “Nat, you’ve got to go. Otherwise they really will think you’re scared.”

  “They?”

  “The other guys. Justin and Al and Bobby and them. The town boys.”

  “I don’t give a hoot what your town boys think. The trouble with you, Kinneson, is you’re far too much swayed by other people. Justin and most of the guys know I’m not afraid of Frenchy. But even if they didn’t, I wouldn’t fight him. Would you?”

  “I would if I were you.”

  Nat grinned tiredly. “In fact, you wouldn’t if you were me, because then you’d have the same reason not to that I have.”

  “But wouldn’t you like to?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then for God’s sake, why don’t you? You can tell me, Nat.”

  Nat sighed. He tossed his comic book aside in an abrupt impatient motion, and I jumped back for fear that he was going to muckle onto me again. But he didn’t. “Kinneson, if I tell you why I won’t fight Frenchy, will you promise me two things?”

  “I’ll promise anything. I just have to understand this, that’s all. So I can tell—”

  “No! That’s the first thing I want you to promise. I want you to promise not to tell anyon
e anything. Number two, I want your word that you won’t pester me about the matter ever again.”

  “You’ve got it. Cross my heart and hope to die if I breathe a word to anyone or ever bring it up again.”

  “Let’s not be quite so melodramatic, Kinneson. You probably will tell somebody; but I’ll take a chance, just to get you off my back.”

  Nat went over to the window and looked out into the twilight. “The reason I won’t fight Frenchy LaMott, or anyone else for that matter, is I gave someone my word that I wouldn’t.”

  “Your dad?”

  “Hardly. Dad’s the one who started me in with boxing lessons about the time I was five. He’d back me up one hundred percent if I went after Frenchy. I think he wishes I would, in fact. You can bet he would, in my shoes. But Dad doesn’t know about this promise I made.

  “You see, Kinneson, I promised my grandmother that I would never under any circumstances short of absolute necessity, say if my life was at stake, get into a fight. Gram’s always been like a mother to me, and I’ve never broken that promise, nor intend to.”

  “I’m sorry, Nat. I didn’t know. I mean, I didn’t understand.”

  “You still don’t.”

  Although I wasn’t sure, I thought I saw Nat’s shoulders shaking. Thirty seconds or so passed, during which neither of us spoke. Then he turned around and sat back down in the welter of coverless comic books on his unmade bed. “About two years ago I got into a bad scrape up in Montreal. It was down on the lower part of what’s called The Main, St. Lawrence Street, in a pretty rough district of town I used to cut through sometimes on my way home from school. Actually it was one of my favorite parts of the city, what with the river and port being nearby, and big freighters coming in from all over the world. A few of my school chums and I used to go swimming there in the summer, though Gram would have had a fit if she’d known. And there were all kinds of curious little hole-in-the-wall shops—Polish butcher shops and Greek candy and cigarette shops and Asian fish markets and I don’t know what all. That was where the caleche drivers kept their caleches, too. And in good weather there was an open-air market where people came to buy vegetables and fruit and stuff.”