by Alan Gratz
Arnold rushed to Kelly’s side and tried to turn him over.
“What’s happened!? What should I do? Should I go for a doctor?” Arnold asked. He looked up at Hiroshi’s blank face and realized he probably didn’t understand a word Arnold was saying. “I—I’m sorry,” Arnold said loudly. “No speak Chinaman.”
Hiroshi sighed. “I’m Japanese,” he said with a distinct New England accent. “And no, he doesn’t need a doctor. He needs a paddy wagon. King Kelly is drunk.”
2
Arnold and Hiroshi carried the unconscious Kelly back to his boardinghouse, though to call his temporary place of residence a “boardinghouse” was generous. It was unclean and overcrowded, what Arnold’s father would probably call a “flophouse.” A man behind a counter shielded by chicken wire watched the three of them suspiciously as they crossed the lobby, and Arnold kept his head down as they dragged Kelly toward the stairs.
“Does King Kelly really stay here?” Arnold asked Hiroshi.
The valet grunted. “If they haven’t thrown his bags into the alley yet.”
“No pets!” the man behind the chicken wire yelled. Hiroshi stopped and clicked some command to the monkey, and it leaped down and scurried out the front door and into the night.
“Wait, where will it—” Arnold started to ask, but Hiroshi was already moving again.
The stairs were just as full of people as the lobby, and Arnold wondered if these were people who couldn’t afford a proper room. Some slept; others stared into the dim haze of the place, not registering Arnold and the others as they passed.
At the second-floor landing, Kelly roused for a moment and seemed almost lucid.
“What’s all this then?” he asked. He straightened, and Arnold and Hiroshi backed away, watching to see if he could stand. He noticed neither of them, instead focusing on a homeless man huddled in the stairwell corner.
“You look a mite cold, friend,” Kelly said. He struggled with his long coat, the removal of his arms giving him particular problems in his inebriated state. Arnold noticed that Hiroshi made no move to help him. At length Kelly escaped his coat and ceremoniously draped it over the man in the corner.
Kelly turned to his valet and smiled.
“Very noble, sir,” Hiroshi told him, though his tone said he thought otherwise.
“And what’s your name, laddie?” Kelly asked.
“Arnold—” he began to tell him again, but Kelly’s eyes lost their focus again and he fell forward. Arnold was relieved when Hiroshi put a hand to Kelly’s chest and stopped his fall, but was equally horrified when the manservant pushed him hard the other way, sending Kelly crashing to the stairs.
Arnold stared at Hiroshi in disbelief, but the manservant said nothing, simply taking one of Kelly’s hands and dragging him up the stairs. Arnold rushed to help, doing his best to keep King Kelly’s head from thunk-thunk-thunking on the stair treads.
King Kelly’s room was tiny, even smaller than the one Arnold had all to himself at home. There was little more than a bed in one corner and a chair in another, the washroom shared by all somewhere else down the hall. Broken plaster hung from the ceiling, and the room smelled of sweat, liquor, and vomit.
Hiroshi went to the window, wrenched it open, and whistled. Arnold thought this very odd, until the little black monkey leaped in, having somehow scaled the outside of the building. The valet gave the creature a bit of treat from his pocket, then settled into the chair.
Arnold looked around the room and shook his head. “I thought he lived on strawberries and ice cream.”
The manservant laughed. “Maybe once. He talks like he still does, just like he keeps me around, to make people think he’s still rich. But he squandered all his money, and now he keeps himself in booze and pays my meager salary with these vaudeville shows. That coat he so generously gave away just now was the only one of its kind he owned. Now the poor mick’ll freeze to death before he drinks himself to death.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” Arnold said, “but you don’t sound much like a Japanner.”
The valet rubbed his face in his hands. “I lived in Boston for twenty-five years before this sot hired me to carry his bags for him.”
“Shouldn’t we get him up off the floor?” Arnold asked.
Hiroshi afforded his employer a disdainful look and went back to feeding the monkey. “Have at it,” he said.
Kelly was slight for a man, but Arnold still had trouble hefting him up off the floor. He started with his head and arms, then tried lifting him from the waist, turning his body sideways to roll it onto the mattress. Hiroshi did nothing to help. Just when Arnold though he had Kelly’s lower half securely on the bed his top half slid off and thunked to the floor.
Kelly woke with a start.
“That is a smashing hat,” he said.
Arnold blinked, then put a hand to his head. He was just wearing an ordinary boy’s cap.
“Smashing hat,” Kelly said. He started to giggle. He righted himself and plucked Arnold’s hat from his head, then stood and smashed the cap beneath his heel. “Smashing . . . hat!” He laughed, then spied his own top hat, which had fallen to the floor.
“Smashing hat!” he cried, putting his foot through the top of his own hat. As strange as it all was, Arnold couldn’t help but laugh with him.
Kelly’s eyes fixed on the bowler his manservant wore.
“No,” the valet warned.
“Smashing hat, Hiroshi!” said Kelly, and he chased the Japanese man around the room. The monkey flew screeching from Hiroshi’s shoulders and perched on the bed, and the neighbors pounded on the wall for them all to be quiet. Kelly made a swipe for Hiroshi’s hat, but the manservant was too quick for him. To save his hat, Hiroshi took it off and tossed it through the open window.
“There. No smashing my hat,” he said.
Kelly went to the window and leaned out.
“You’ve lost your hat, my good man. Just let me fetch it for you—”
King Kelly had a leg out the window before Arnold and Hiroshi grabbed him and pulled him back inside. Kelly fought them the whole time, as though he had no idea what peril it would be to fall three stories to the street.
When they’d pulled him a sufficient distance away from the window, Hiroshi reared back and slapped Kelly hard across the face. Kelly had certainly been silly, but Arnold couldn’t believe how cruel his manservant was. Neither could King Kelly.
“What on Earth—what did you strike me for?”
“You just tried to jump out the window.”
That thought, more than the slap, seemed to sober Kelly up. The red color drained out of his face and he slumped on the bed, looking around as though seeing the room for the first time.
“Who are you, laddie?” he asked Arnold. “What’s your name?”
Arnold told him again.
“I’ll get you some coffee,” Hiroshi said.
“No, no,” Kelly said. “I feel fine. Fit as a fiddle.” He stood. “Why, I haven’t felt this good since I won the batting title with Chicago. What year was that, Hiroshi?”
The valet was at the window, trying to see where his hat had fallen. “You know darn well what year it was.”
“1886,” said Arnold. “You hit .388. You also led the league in runs for the third straight year.”
“Say, I like this lad!” Kelly said. “Aye, 1886 it was. The season old Cap Anson had those Pinkerton boys follow me about. I grew so tired of private eyes watching me every move that I decked one at the train station before I alighted. It wasn’t ’til we were back in Chicago I found the poor lad wasn’t really a detective. That was my last season with the White Stockings to be sure!”
“They sold you to Boston for ten thousand dollars,” Arnold said.
“Aye, made A. G. Spalding a great deal of money, I did.”
“You made a fair bit yourself,” Hiroshi said from his chair in the corner. “And just where is that two-thousand-dollar salary now? The three-thousand-dollar ‘bonus
’ for the use of your likeness? The endorsement fees for the King Kelly bats, the ‘Slide, Kelly, Slide’ sled, the shoe polish with your name on the can?”
“You know,” Kelly told Arnold, ignoring his manservant, “I was once given a silver bat by the Cincinnati Enquirer when I played in the Queen City, in honor of hitting the first home run at the Avenue Grounds. That very bat is still on display in a store window in me hometown of Paterson, New Jersey.”
Hiroshi gave a short, harsh laugh. Arnold didn’t understand what was so funny about that, but Kelly didn’t seem to mind. He wobbled back and forth, then caught himself like he was trying to stay awake.
“Have ye—have ye ever heard the story of how I substituted meself for Dimples Tate while he was trying to catch a foul ball?”
“Why don’t you tell him the story of how you hit .189 your final season with Boston?” his valet asked. “Or how you made ten errors in just eighteen games last year with the Giants?”
But everything Hiroshi said was lost on Kelly. He was fast asleep again, sprawled out on his bed. The Japanese manservant buried his head in his hands.
“If you hate him so much, why are you still here?” Arnold asked.
“That’s a very good question.”
Hiroshi got up from his chair and called the monkey to him with a whistle. He pulled a suitcase out from under the bed, opened it to check the contents, then stood.
“You’re—you’re leaving?” Arnold asked.
“Might as well. Kelly can’t pay his rent, let alone me. I’m going back to Boston.”
“But what about next season?”
“There isn’t going to be a next season, kid. Not for King Kelly, not on the baseball diamond. He hasn’t told anyone, but the Giants cut him. Not even his old friend Monte Ward will have him. He’s finished.”
“But the stage, the vaudeville halls. People will still pay to hear his stories.”
“Anson, hat. Fetch my hat,” Hiroshi said, and the little monkey leaped to the open window and was gone.
“Kelly barely makes enough on the stage to keep him in beer and cigarettes,” the valet told Arnold. “He drinks more than he earns every night. He’s not the ten-thousand-dollar beauty anymore, but he still lives like it.”
Hiroshi was clearly done with Kelly, but all Arnold could think about were the records the old ballplayer had broken, the songs that were sung about him, the picture of King Kelly sliding into second that had replaced the pictures of Custer’s Last Stand in every public house in Brooklyn.
Anson the monkey climbed back into the room with Hiroshi’s hat. The valet took it from him and dusted it off.
“That silver bat he won,” Arnold said, still staring at Kelly. “You laughed. Did he really not win it?”
“Oh, he won it all right, and it’s right there in a shop window in Paterson for all the world to see, just like he said. Only the shop is R. J. Robinson’s Pawnbroker and Loan. He sold it to pay his bar tab.” Hiroshi put his hat on his head and opened the door to leave. “Sayonara, kid. The job’s yours now. And tell Kelly he can keep the monkey.”
Water sloshed onto King Kelly’s face and he sat up like a man stuck with a pin.
“Whaaaa—! Who? What?” he sputtered.
Arnold felt a little bad for dumping a bucket of cold water on him, but didn’t figure he had much other choice. He flipped the bucket over and sat down on it next to Kelly.
“I’m dreadful sorry to have to wake you like that,” Arnold said.
“W—what day is it?” Kelly asked.
“Saturday.” The monkey jumped on Kelly’s back and perched there.
“And where am I?”
“A boardinghouse.”
“I meant what city, laddie.”
“Oh. Brooklyn.”
Kelly put a hand to his head, as though it pained him to think.
“Ah. Yes. Brooklyn. And you are—?”
“Arnold, sir. Arnold Schneider.”
Arnold waited for some sort of recognition to dawn on Kelly’s face, but it didn’t.
“I met you last night,” Arnold told him. “I asked you for your autograph.”
“Well, I certainly hope ye haven’t been waiting all this time to get it.”
“No. I came back to help you out.” Arnold stood. “I’m your new valet.”
“Are you now? And just what’s happened to Hiroshi then?”
“He went back to Boston.”
Kelly nodded. “So. You’re me new valet, eh? And just how old are you?”
“Ten,” Arnold told him.
“Aha. And what is our first order of business today, laddie?”
“To get you cleaned up.”
Arnold waited outside the Turkish bath in Brooklyn Heights with Anson the monkey for what seemed like hours. Kelly’s treatment had cost Arnold a fair bit of what little money he’d saved for himself, but it was necessary. While Kelly’d been inside, Arnold had run the ballplayer’s shirt, pants, and collar down the street to have them cleaned with kerosene at the dry cleaner too.
After a time Kelly strolled out of the bathhouse looking positively regal. His face was flush, his hair was slicked back, and his mustache stood at attention.
Anson jumped from Arnold’s shoulder to his master’s.
“I don’t believe I have ever sweat so much in me entire life,” Kelly said. “All right, valet. You’ve got the whisky wrung out of me, and me clothes have never looked finer.” He straightened the red handkerchief tied around his newly pressed collar. “Where to next? Have I an audition at Prospect Hall?”
“No,” Arnold told him. “You’re playing Pigtown.”
3
Arnold Schneider was a hero.
Just about every boy in Brooklyn heard that King Kelly was at the Pigtown field, and they rushed down to crowd him and pepper the baseball star with a thousand questions. Kelly answered them all with a wide smile, though just slightly smaller than the smile Arnold was wearing.
“What was it like winning the pennant?”
“Which time?” Kelly asked.
“The first time.”
“With Boston!”
“Tell us about being sold for ten thousand dollars!”
“What’d you do with the money, Kel?”
“What’s your monkey’s name?”
“Anson,” he managed.
“You mean like Cap Anson? What was it like to play with him?”
“Oh, he’s a tough player, all right, but an even tougher manager. The first day of practice he ordered me to lose twenty pounds and put me through the mill with special meals and supervised dog trots. ’Course I have a new boss now,” King Kelly said. He smashed Arnold’s hat farther down on his head and rubbed it around. “This one’s got me cleaned up and living straight again.”
For the first time in his life, everybody wanted to stand near Arnold, to talk with him, to be his best friend. He was giddy with the rush of it all.
“Tell us about Corcoran,” one of the boys begged Kelly.
“And George Gore!”
“What about Fred Pfeffer?” Tommy Collum said.
“Fred Pfeffer, Fred Pfeffer!” Arnold taunted, and everyone laughed. They laughed!
“Ah, now Freddy was a great friend of mine,” Kelly told them. “A great friend indeed. He and I used to go out drinking, ah . . . lemonade.” Kelly smiled. “Freddy was a proponent of ‘inside baseball.’ Do ye know what that is? So-called ‘scientific baseball.’ He even wrote a book on it.”
The boys begged Kelly to show them how it was done, and he asked for a bat and ball. Arnold handed him his own bat, the one his father had brought home from the Civil War.
“Now this here is a fine bat, a fine bat indeed,” Kelly said, weighing it in his hands. He stood back from the boys and gave it a swing. “Trade you me glove for it, Arnold.”
The boys gasped as Kelly gave Arnold his baseball mitt. It was thick and padded like a pillow, the kind that was in fashion among the catchers in the National League. A
rnold marveled at it. None of the boys could afford a proper glove like this. It was heavy, like a great mitten with a leather-clad lump of stuffing forming a U along the base of the palm. Where the broad thumb met the rest of the mitt there were two small strings of leather to hold them together. The other boys watched on quietly as Arnold put his hand inside the massive thing. He was just able to bend it along its middle, and for a moment he imagined himself clamping down tight on an Amos Rusie fastball.
“Marvelous piece o’ cowhide, ain’t it?” Kelly said. “A trade then?”
“I—I can’t,” Arnold said, and he told Kelly the story of how his father had traded for the bat during the war. He sighed and handed the glove back. “I wish I could,” he said.
“Ah well, you can have me glove anyway, laddie. No trade.”
Arnold felt the wave of envy from the boys around him, and he knew he would never be picked last again. Ever.
Kelly put Arnold behind the plate and arranged the rest of the boys all around the infield.
“Scientific baseball is about playing the percentages, see?” Kelly said. “If you know Oyster Burns always pulls to the left side, why, you tell your fielders to shift that direction. If Big Dan Brouthers likes to give the ball a Baltimore chop, you play your boys in, see? That’s scientific.”
Kelly showed the boys how to drill themselves on the basics of inside baseball, then taught them a few tricks they wouldn’t find in any book: how to fool base runners into thinking you’d overthrown their bag when there was really an outfielder standing behind them to catch it, how to keep an extra ball in your pocket in case you lost one over your head, and how to skip bases when the umpires weren’t looking. After that they played a few innings until Anson the monkey snatched up the ball and led the boys on a wild chase for it all over Pigtown.
“I’ve had a fine time, laddie,” Kelly told Arnold, “but I’d best be getting back. I’ve a show to do tonight, and I find me act goes better when I’ve had a little something to drink first. And I don’t mean lemonade. I’ll tell you, lad, I’d rather face ten thousand angry baseball enthusiasts on the diamond field than go before a friendly audience in a theater.”
