Brittle Innings

by Michael Bishop

  If you began fresh and had a cloud cover, the bus rides could be a hoot. Sosebee played guitar, Fanning harmonica, and just about everybody else could mouth a Kleenex-and-comb kazoo or drum a seat back. Dunnagin and several other guys sang. Darius told funny courting stories, on himself, his buddies, or players no longer with the team, tales that skirted sleaze by zeroing in on his heroes’ hopes, then ticking off all their missed connections and comeuppances. We’d fall out laughing, but not Old Stoneface, Darius. His singing voice, though, was a frog’s croak, and the only musical instrument he really knew how to play was the Brown Bomber’s clutch.

  Riding back to Highbridge, Mister JayMac always made us review our games. With a score book open on his seat, he’d defend or apologize for so-so plays, and asking everybody to analyze our botches. We’d also discuss opposing hitters-how we’d got them out, how to retire them in future games.

  “Play better,” Sloan always said. “Jes play better.”

  “Gentlemen, we play better by practicing,” Mister JayMac said. “By thinking about what we’ve done that didn’t work. By reviewing from all sides what actually may.”

  “Thinking too much’ll kill you faster than a jilted honey with a Smith and Wesson,” Charlie Snow said. Snow had the best ballplaying instincts on the club. He flowed from one spot to another and hit with the grace of an otter sliding off a rock.

  “Think beforehand,” Mister JayMac said. “Not during. Most bush leaguers never go up cause they don’t want to put in the before and after work necessary to improve.”

  “Other clubs don’t do this,” Fanning said. “They use bus trips to cool down and have some fun.”

  “Good teams do it,” Mister JayMac said. “Who among yall wants to copy the Boll Weevils?”

  Darius said, “The K. C. Monarchs do it. The Birmingham Barons do it.” Colored clubs, both of them.

  “Yeah,” said Sloan. “And look where they are. Right at the top o the baseball world.”

  Anyway, Mister JayMac guided us through that three-game skull session for better than an hour. He asked Fadeaway to explain why he’d slacked off towards the end of Sunday’s game. He told Evans to get Snow to teach him how to bunt.

  “I know how to bunt. I jes didn’t get it done Sunday.”

  “Then you don’t know how to bunt. All you can do is fake the stance and pop out backwards.”

  “Fine him!” Hoey shouted from a seat or two behind Jumbo and me. “Fine the sorry peckerwood!”

  The Bomber rolled past drought-stricken cattle pastures and peanut fields, rattling like a gypsy’s wagon. Most of us had pushed our windows up, and the air blowing through still had a vague morning coolness.

  Lon Musselwhite lurched up the aisle. “Hear ye! Hear ye! The Rolling Assizes of the Hellbender Bureau of CVL Justice is now in session! The Honorable Judge Lionel K. Musselwhite presiding.”

  “Lionel?” Skinny said. “His name’s Lionel?”

  “Baseball-Latin for Muscles,” Hoey said.

  Almost everybody else clapped or stamped. Muscles held up his hand. Darius glanced back and cried, “Stop! Yall gon bust the bottom outta this boat!” That helped some. So did Mister JayMac lifting his hands and making stifle-it gestures.

  But the hubbub went on, and the Bomber did seem about ready to burst open and spill us onto the blacktop. In the pasture whipping past, moon-faced cows watched us go by.

  Muscles said, “Sergeant-at-Arms Clerval, ten-HUT!”

  Jumbo got up, his head turtle-ducked to keep from scraping the ceiling.

  “Sergeant-at-Arms Clerval, remove from this assembly anyone whose behavior upsets the scales of justice,” Muscles said. “Toss em out a window.”

  “Yessir.” Jumbo didn’t smile. Even in his clumsy stoop, he towered like a grizzly. It was half a joke and half a real threat. When everyone got quiet, he sat back down.

  Muscles said, “Mr Evans, a party of some probity and maybe even unimpeachable expertise has accused you of-”

  “Brown noser!” Hoey shouted.

  Muscles ignored him. “-a demonstrated ignorance of the art of bunting. How do you plead?”

  “Give him a defense attorney!” Quip Parris said.

  “Turkey Sloan,” Evans said. “Give me Turkey.”

  “Nyland Sloan, the court hereby appoints you to defend the incompetent accused,” Muscles said. “Mr Dunnagin, you must prosecute.”

  Sloan traded places with Fanning so he could talk with Evans, and Muscles asked anyone willing to witness to say so. Sosebee, Fanning, and Sudikoff agreed to testify for Evans; Nutter, Curriden, Hoey, and Snow to speak against.

  “How does your client plead?” Muscles asked Sloan.

  Sloan stood up and said, “Your Honor, Mr Evans thinks these whole proceedings reek of kangaroo dung. The fix is in. A skinny kid from Brunswick ”-he meant Dobbs-”grabbed his starting role thout so much as a by-your-leave n-”

  “A by-your-leave?” Mister JayMac roared. “Mr Dobbs beat Mr Evans like a drum! What’s this by-your-leave folderol?”

  “Sorry, Mister JayMac,” Sloan said. “Just a formal legal way of speaking. It don’t mean pig tracks, actually.”

  “Then you admit it’s a lie,” Mister JayMac said.

  “Sir, you’re out of order,” Muscles said. “Mr Sloan, how does your useless scumbag of a client plead?”

  “Objection!” Evans said.

  “Shut up,” Muscles said. “I mean, hush. Overruled. I can’t say anything objectionable. I’m the judge.”

  Sloan stretched out one arm and cleared his throat:

  “The question is, Can Trapdoor bunt?

  Does he know how, or is it a stunt

  When he assumes the stance and then

  Allows the ball to bruise his shin

  Or bounce off his bat like popping corn?

  Does he deserve our ruth or scorn?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Turkey, how’re you pleading the sap?” Hoey said. “We aint got time for the goddamn Iliad.”

  Sloan blinked and continued:

  “Is a player who cannot bunt

  A guilty lout or a innosunt

  Victim of our expectations?

  Blame we him or those vile matrons

  Who sewed the ball to such a trim

  Its twisting seams bamboozled him,

  Causing him to look a lout

  By poking it up, for an out?

  So how pleads Evans this fine day?

  Like this: Nolo contendere.”

  “Okay,” Muscles said. “Mr Evans, I hereby fine you two bits and sentence you to practice bunting with Mr Snow.”

  “Wait a sec,” Hoey said. “Don’t I get to present my testimony against the bastid?”

  “Yeah,” Curriden said. “What about Nutter and me? Evans can’t bunt any bettern he can fart ‘ America the Beautiful.’ ”

  “He doesn’t say otherwise,” Muscles said. “I’ve assessed the fine and stated the penalty. Case closed. Court continues in session, however. Next case!”

  The Bomber groaned along, belching and smoking. Nobody said anything. I looked out the window. A line of oaks or elms split one of the rising pastures. Their branches dripped with Spanish moss. Red-winged blackbirds perched on the weeds in the roadside ditch; puzzled cattle looked out from hardwood clumps along the pasture ridge. Despite the bus’s growling, I felt nearly peaceful enough to fall asleep.

  “Cmon, you guys,” Muscles said. “Next case!”

  Jerry Wayne Sosebee stood up. “Awright.” He swallowed. “I accuse Jumbo and young Boles there of hoodwinking the boss. He gives em special road privileges that hurt team morale and affect how we play.”

  A flight of locusts wheeled through my gut. The bus went quiet as a morgue.

  Mister JayMac turned in his seat. “Hoodwinked?”

  Only Hoey got a kick out of Sosebee’s accusation. “Jerry Wayne thinks Dumbo and Jumbo mumbo-jumboed you, sir.”

  A couple of players sniggered. Guys with sense, though, hung on bent tente
rhooks and bided their time.

  “Do you really believe a speechless flea like Mr Boles could hoodwink me into anything, Mr Sosebee?” Mister JayMac said.

  “Sir, I jes don’t believe Mr Boles cain’t talk. I think he could if he tried.”

  “Case thown out,” Muscles said. “Mr Sosebee has based his accusation on ill will and prejudice. Therefore-”

  “No, no,” Mister JayMac said. “I assume Mr Sosebee plans to demonstrate how Messieurs Clerval and Boles hood-winked me?”

  “Well, mebbe Dumbo didn’t,” Sosebee said. “He’s jes flying on Jumbo’s coattails.”

  “You excuse Mr Boles from your accusation?” Muscles said.

  “Yeah, sure. I mean, the real favorite in this business is ol Goliath there.”

  “And you see yourself as David?” Mister JayMac said.

  “Nosir. Well, mebbe,” Sosebee said. “Jumbo needs to be brought down, though. Somebody has to do it.”

  “Brought down? From what?” Mister JayMac said. “Leading us in home runs and RBIs? Playing his bag bettern any other first baseman in the league?”

  “Taking advantage and stirring up ill will,” Sosebee said.

  “You must be talking about yourself, Jerry Wayne,” said Lamar Knowles. Wow. Knowles never came down on anybody. If you pulled a merkle, he’d sidle over and tell you to forget it.

  Jumbo stood up. “I confront my accuser.”

  Sosebee’s jowly gills went ashy-gray, but he kept facing Jumbo across five seat backs. He didn’t sit.

  “Mr Sosebee must speak for others too,” Jumbo said. “How many agree that Mr JayMac’s kindnesses to me have undone your good will or degraded the quality of your play?”

  No one answered.

  “A fair question,” Mister JayMac said. “Do any of you play sloppy ball because Jumbo gets commercial rooms on the road?”

  “I resent the special treatment,” Trapdoor Evans allowed. “I don’t play any worse for it, though.”

  “It’d be hard for you to play any worse than you did this past weekend,” Buck Hoey said.

  “An honest admission,” Mister JayMac said. “Give credit.”

  That remark-praise instead of a lynching-opened some more guys’ mouths. Sloan, Sudikoff, and Fanning all spoke up-not malcontents, exactly, but ballplayers who always looked outside themselves for Christs to hang on trees.

  Jumbo said, “Last year I lodged alone, both in Highbridge and on the road. By nature I’m a solitary person, and Mister JayMac saw that I could tolerate the compelled camaraderie of our sport, or of any joint human enterprise, for only so long. I did not demand this favor. I asked it humbly and received it most gratefully.”

  “He speaks true,” Mister JayMac said.

  Sosebee kept standing: Jumbo was answering his charge. He looked less hepped than before, though. His skin had turned ashy-gray. Sweat showed in loops under the arms of his shirt.

  “I would have agreed to the lodgings that Mister JayMac arranges for us,” Jumbo said, “except that small children and a great many female adults find mine a fearsome presence. I also discomfit not a few men. I didn’t wish to test the hospitality of Mister JayMac’s host families by presenting myself to them as a guest. I had no wish to burden them.”

  “He still speaks true,” Mister JayMac said.

  “Once last year, I might add, an innkeeper in Eufaula refused me a room because my appearance… offended him. I made no clamor. I simply went elsewhere.”

  “So why’d you accept Dumbo as a roomy this season?” Jerry Wayne Sosebee asked.

  “It was time,” Jumbo said.

  “And Dumbo’s as close to nobody as Jumbo could get without taking nobody,” Hoey said.

  “I assure Mr Sosebee that Daniel cannot talk,” Jumbo said, “but I reject the slur that his inability to speak renders him a cipher.”

  “Translation!” Hoey shouted. “Translation, please!”

  Jumbo put one big raw hand on his chest. “Mr Sosebee, if you still feel that I must relinquish the privileges I enjoy, I have a compact to propose. A deal.”

  “What deal?” Sosebee said.

  “I will come down to the second floor of McKissic House if you will take me as your roommate.”

  Sosebee looked at Jumbo, then at Mister JayMac. No one wanted to give him any help. “Never mind,” he said. “Forgit it.” He lowered himself back to his seat. Either he or the seat cushion sighed like a bellows.

  “Mr Sosebee,” Muscles said, “the court fines you two bits for trying to initiate a meritless proceeding. Case closed! Court adjourned!”

  So ended that morning’s Rolling Assizes.

  Forty minutes later, we hit the outskirts of Highbridge, gagged on the sweet stinks of the Goober Pride peanut butter factory, and waved at a gaggle of colored young uns waving like mad at us. Their heroes’d come home.

  19

  Halfway through June, I’d played in-actually played in-seven straight games. Hoey got into our games, if he got in at all, as a pinch hitter or a late-innings sub. On my first road trip, I’d had two off games in a row, the loss on Friday night to Quitman and the loss of the twin-bill opener against Marble Springs on Saturday afternoon. Mister JayMac put Hoey in for me in the seventh inning of the loss to the Seminoles, but I felt sure he hadn’t won the job back. And he hadn’t. I played every inning of our next two games, strong wins, and got more hits than any other Hellbender but Charlie Snow, who’d slipped into such a groove that his bat fired off hits with the lickety-split golly-wow of a machine-gun.

  Hoey didn’t cotton to my success, but he did stop hazing me as a flash-in-the-pan. He had to. My stats were radioactive. Of course, my statistics didn’t stay that bright all season-nobody’s could’ve-but they informed my skeptical teammates I could play. In the long run, I’d even help the bench riders, malcontents, and jerks who didn’t like me.

  Up to a point, anyway.

  Hoey’s living arrangements made it hard to read his changing feelings about me. He had a wife, a family, a house of his own. At our workouts he gave me tips-how to set up against certain hitters, how to flip the ball to Junior to speed his crossover pivot on double plays, how to drag bunt for a safety instead of just a sacrifice. He didn’t teach me like a man voluntarily passing on these skills-more like somebody with six months to live tying a ribbon round his life. Did he badmouth me at home? His kids didn’t act like he did. They didn’t blink at me like I was a messy roadkill, a polecat, say, or an armadillo.

  Back from that first road trip, I sat down to write Mama a letter and to send her some money. (Jumbo was reading.) I ought to’ve written her sooner, but how could I say a soldier’d buggered me and I’d gone dummy again? Long-distance calls were out (Uncle Sam asked you to keep the lines open for servicemen and emergency messages), and I didn’t relish trying to explain my roomy was an ogre of a pacifist.

  My first letter home:

  Dear Mama,

  Sorry not to write before now but Im fine. You know that already I think. If my train had recked or somebody had killed me in ball practice by mistake youdve got a telegram saying I was dead. I know you havent. People here seem nice, more or less. My roomate reads alot. Im batting over 500 and starting nearlybout every game. Hows work? Use this money for yourself. Next time I write Ill send more.

  Love, Danny

  I’d already had three letters from Mama, one mailed the day I left Tenkiller. It came the day we squeaked by Lanett, three to two. Everyone boarding in McKissic House got mail in care of its Angus Road address, but Miss Giselle sorted through it and slipped the right letters into the right cubby-holes at our post-office wall in the foyer. Mama’s letters-she never wrote more than a page-made me homesick and kept me going at the same time. I sent her clippings, to make up for the fact my notes never ran longer than a Listenne label.

  One of Mama’s letters-I still have them-complained about a recent act of Congress:

  Those co-kniving gasbags in Washington have done come up with a legal crime cal
led PAY AS YOU GO. They ask your boss to figure about how much you would owe in taxes at the end of a year, and they order him to hold back enough each month to cover it. It’ll tell in our paychecks, this BILL will. Money I used to get won’t be there any more. They say its to keep us from feeling poleaxt come taxing time, but why let these THIEVES IN SUITS fiddle with our pay, just to keep us working fokes “ahead of the game”? It’s butt-in-skee, if you ask me, uppity and dictatorlike. Watch out, Danny, their going to get you to. Old FDR turns redder every year. By the time this DAMN WAR ends, look for a Hammer & Cycle right in the middle of the Stars & Stripes.

  In mid-June, we had a four-day layoff between our win over the Seminoles in Marble Springs and our first home game with the Eufaula Mudcats on Friday. A part of one of those days we used to travel, but the other three, Tuesday through Thursday, felt like holidays. Practice in the A.M.’s at McKissic Field, then drowsy hot afternoons and radio-filled evenings.

  Junior taught me to play poker, and he, Fadeaway, Skinny, and I would lock up in cutthroat five-card stud, with piles of buttons (supplied by Kizzy) for chips and pitchers of lemonade for refreshment (likewise). If a game seemed about to turn into a fistfight, Miss Giselle’d threaten us with fines or room arrest. She seldom had to threaten twice. Once, though, Skinny accused Fadeaway of palming an ace and left the table to find a bat to rehabilitate Fadeaway with. Miss Giselle grabbed Skinny on his way back into the parlor, wrassled the bat away from him, and sent him upstairs.

  Several of the older Hellbenders worked at defense jobs on a part-time basis, punching in from one to three times a week in the early afternoons of days we didn’t have games or mandatory team meetings. They’d pull eight-hour second shifts and get back to their homes or to McKissic House around midnight, limp as boiled asparagus and almost as pale. Moonlighters included Muscles, Curriden, Hay, Nutter, Sudikoff, and Dunnagin. They had special arrangements with either the local torpedo factory, Foremost Forge, or our duck-board manufacturer, Highbridge Box & Crate. Mister JayMac pulled a double handful of strings for them-not to keep them out of the draft, as Ira Crawford had accused, but to find them war work that didn’t interfere with their ballplaying.