Brittle Innings

by Michael Bishop

  “Are we early?” Major Dexter said. “We could always-”

  “Fine,” Mister JayMac said. “I’ll jes be a moment.”

  I stayed there in the dugout, cat-curious and vexed, hoping to learn something.

  “Go hit,” Mister JayMac told me. “I’ll handle the coaching details. You jes do what you’re paid for.” He gave me a face smile, with nothing but distracted cogitation behind it. I spike-walked back out to the batting cage.

  ***

  That evening, Mister JayMac held a team meeting in the parlor. No flip charts. No recruits to introduce. No rules to review. Of the Cotton Creek bunch, Snow and Nutter seldom griped about anything, but Hoey, Sloan, Hay, and Sudikoff waltzed in bellyaching, having earlier supposed they’d have the whole day to themselves. They put a lid on it when they saw Mister JayMac impatiently pacing the hardwood.

  “This shouldn’t take too long,” he said. “We’ve got a vote to take.”

  “I vote no,” Hoey said. “Whatever it is.”

  “ ‘Be it resolved,’ ” Dunnagin said, “ ‘that we refrain from castrating Buck Hoey the next time he fans with men on base.’ ”

  Even Hoey laughed. (Henry only smiled, but, given it was Henry, count it a laugh.)

  “This shouldn’t take long unless every one of yall insists on auditioning for The Grape Nuts Hour.” Mister JayMac said.

  We ditched our smirks. Darius, I noticed, leaned exactly where he’d leaned during the all-star game.

  “This morning, the business manager of a barnstorming club of Negro ballplayers, the Splendid Dominican Touristers, and an Army major from the-”

  “Whoa,” Hoey said. “The who?”

  “The Splendid Dominican Touristers. Some Negro leaguers under a rubric de guerre, so to speak.”

  “Sounds like an order of stuck-up traveling monks,” Turkey Sloan said.

  “Shut up, Sloan,” Vito Mariani said.

  Before an argument could break out, Mister JayMac said, “Hush.” Everybody hushed. “The Negro American League-the Black Barons from over to Birmingham, the Memphis Red Sox, the Cincinnati Clowns, and so on-well, gas rationing’s hit these clubs hard. They’ve done finished a full split season. Their teams only had to play thirty games to qualify for the Negro World Series. Anyway, Mr Cozy Bissonette of Kansas City, Missouri, has assembled a group from some of the NAL’s better players, and he’s seeking exhibition opponents in advance of the club’s official formation in Atlanta early next week.”

  “And the coon wants to play us?” Jerry Wayne Sosebee said.

  Darius had his arms folded and his gaze fixed on a knot-hole in the floor’s oak planking. Sosebee didn’t see him, though; Darius was invisible to Sosebee.

  “What about this Army major?” Muscles asked Mister JayMac.

  “Major Dexter. First Battalion, Camp Penticuff Special Training Regiment. He wants to sponsor a contest between Mr Bissonette’s all-stars and us, a morale booster to kick off the club’s barnstorming tour.”

  “Sir, Georgia law doesn’t allow whites and coloreds to play pro ball against each other in public,” Sloan said.

  “That’s why, if yall vote to do it, we’d do it out to Camp Penticuff, where it wouldn’t be so public. For the biggest part, our spectators would be the Negro GIs of the two Special Training battalions out there.”

  “Jesus,” Sosebee said.

  “What’s in it for us?” That was Reese Curriden. Sometimes you could hear pocket change in his chuckles.

  “The Army, Major Dexter says, has offered a payment of five hundred dollars to each club, to divvy however we choose.”

  “Twenty-five bucks apiece!” Quip Parris cried happily.

  “I vote yes,” Hoey said. “Whichever way we divvy it.”

  “I’d recommend returning the money as a contribution to the war effort,” Mister JayMac said.

  “Except like that,” Hoey said. “What are we anyway, a pack of no-account field hands?”

  “Tote that bat, lift that base,” Sloan said.

  “What will the Dominican Jigaboos-sorry, Touristers-do with their five hundred?” Sosebee asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mister JayMac said. “Keep it, I imagine. They’ve got big expenses, their players need the money.”

  “I need the money,” Hoey said. “Ever try to feed four house apes on a hundred-plus a month?”

  “Hoey’s making a hundred-plus a month?” Musselwhite’s eyes went round, like such a salary staggered him.

  “Hold it,” Sosebee said. “You want us to play a bunch of jigs-uh, coloreds-in front of a bunch of coloreds, and to do it for nuthin?”

  “For the morale of the recruits,” Mister JayMac said. “For the joy of it. To face a squad of unknown players as good as, if not a smidgen better than, ourselves.”

  Trapdoor Evans said, “They could ever one of em out-play me from here to Timbuctoo, sir, but they’s still no way-no way in hell-it’d make a one of em bettern me.”

  “You said it,” Sudikoff said.

  “Who plans to suit up for this Mr Bossy Nut fella on his Splendid Dominican so-and-so’s?” Curriden asked. “A whole club of Negro League all-stars?”

  “No,” Mister JayMac said. “Jes better-than-most journeymen players. Yall won’t have to face the likes of Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, or Cool Papa Bell.”

  “Who?” Fadeaway Ankers said.

  “But never you fear, these barnstormers’ll make LaGrange’s Gendarmes look like beginning Little Leaguers.”

  Henry spoke up from the back of the room. “When would we play them, if we played?”

  “Good question,” Mister JayMac said. “Two Tuesdays from now, the twenty-seventh of July. The only time our schedule permits.”

  “No peace for the pooped,” Muscles said. “Couldn’t this screw our shot at the pennant, Mister JayMac?”

  “One game? Maybe. But only if Mr Clerval has a heart attack walloping one to the Canary Islands.”

  “Let’s v-v-vote,” I said.

  “I don’t play coloreds,” Fadeaway said. “Teams of em.”

  “Me either,” Evans said.

  “Ditto,” Sloan said. “To do great on a jig hunt, / Wear chocolate pigment / Exactly like your prey’s. / Thank God I’ve never gone through that phase.”

  “Thank you, Mr Longfellow,” Mister JayMac said. “That’s three outright nays, I take it. Any more?”

  “Here,” Sudikoff said. “No!”

  “And here,” Sosebee said. “No!”

  “Last chance,” Mister JayMac said. “Five nays to what I guess is fifteen unvoiced ayes.”

  “I abstain,” Pete Hay said.

  “What a pussy,” Mariani said.

  “What do you mean, a pussy?” Hay said.

  “A fence sitter’s got no balls,” Mariani said.

  “Hush,” Mister JayMac said. “I’d hoped for unanimity in this vote. Virtual unanimity. But when a quarter of you have reservations about the appropriateness of this game, it gives me pause. I wonder about the commitment of the nay-sayers to play their hardest.”

  “Cripes, sir,” Sloan said. “Don’t try to blackmail an aye out of us with this commitment guff. I mean, we-”

  “Yall’re scairt you’ll git whupped,” Darius said.

  Every head in the room turned towards him. He lifted his gaze from the floor and drilled Sloan with it.

  “Ten dollars to every No sez them Dominicans’ll smack yall like a baby’s butt. If you got the grit to play em.”

  “You aint got fifty bucks to bet,” Trapdoor Evans said. “You aint got ten to bet me.”

  Darius strode like a crop fire up to Mister JayMac. “Give me fifty, sir. Gainst my nex draw.”

  Mister JayMac took a money clip from his seersucker jacket, peeled off five tens, and slapped them into Darius’s palm.

  Darius walked through the crowded parlor to Henry and gave him the five tens. “Mister Henry, hold this please. If yall vote it unanimous to play Mr Cozy’s boys, the bet’s on. Yall win, I
pay. Hellbenders lose, like yall gon to, I git ten each from Mr Ankers, Mr Sloan, Mr Sudikoff, Mr Sosebee, and the bettern-anybody-colored Mr Evans.”

  One by one, the nay-sayers changed their nays to ayes and walked over to Henry to give him either a ten-spot or a signed IOU; then they returned to their places. Henry arranged the wager money in his billfold and then slid the billfold into his frock coat. Jumbo Hank Clerval, reluctant bookie.

  “I want in,” Hay said. “I vote nay too.”

  “You abstained,” Mister JayMac said. “Election’s over. I don’t hold with gambling, especially for players. Except this is gonna be a unofficial exhibition, I’d veto it here too.”

  “You’re a paragon, sir,” Buck Hoey said.

  Mister JayMac ignored him. “Our next vote’s on the Army’s lump-sum payment. Do we return it, or do yall divvy it mongst yourselves?”

  Uh-oh. Which way did you jump on this one? Patriotism or self-interest?

  Curriden said, “Look. We’ll support the war effort by playing a game for Camp Penticuff’s darky recruits.” He looked at Darius. “Aint that enough? Do we have to fork over our pay too? Bet you a pork side, Mr Cozy’s boys keep theirs.”

  “I don’t care what yall do with yo money,” Darius said.

  “We should keep it,” Hoey said.

  Sloan and friends also voted to keep and divvy the Army’s payment, and almost everyone else, including Snow and Nutter, fell in line. Even Henry voted with the mercenary majority, a surprise to me because he had his secret atonement agenda to fulfill and I thought he’d go for the sacrifice. Then I heard his reason.

  “If we return our fee to the Army,” he said, “they may use it to purchase weaponry and ordnance.”

  “So?” said Sudikoff.

  “I abhor the making and distribution of implements that in any wise maim or kill,” Henry said.

  That kind of talk didn’t go during the war. It really didn’t go in the South. Hitler wanted a hiding, and the Japs deserved any swift-kick comeuppance American determination and know-how could give them. The parlor lapsed into a silence broken only by mumbles.

  “If that’s how folks’ll read us taking the Army’s money,” Charlie Snow finally said, “I vote to give it back.”

  “Jumbo’s a crank on that point,” Muscles said. “Nobody’ll read it that way.”

  “The greater shame,” Henry said.

  In the end, of course, we voted to keep and divvy. Only Lamar Knowles and Dunnagin voted to return the honorarium to the government. Me, I went with the majority, but even today I can’t tell you if my reasons were more like Curriden’s or Henry’s. Of all the Hellbenders there, only Mister JayMac and Darius had failed to vote on the two issues before us. Anyway, the meeting started to break up.

  “Hold it!” Mister JayMac jammed his hands in the pockets of his seersucker coat, stretching it out of true. “I should tell yall, the nature of this exhibition contest offers me some managerial latitude I don’t have in the CVL.”

  What the hell did that mean?

  “I plan to start Darius on the mound.”

  That news goosed the gee-whilikers out of us. Should we hurrah or squawk? Trapdoor Evans said, “Jesus, sir, he could queer the whole game a-purpose jes to take Turkey and my and these other saps’ money.”

  “It’s more than that,” Muscles said. “If we win, and if Darius finishes the game for us, them colored recruits-not to mention them Splendiferous Whozits-will say it was because one of their own was throwing for us.”

  “That’s precisely the point,” Mister JayMac said.

  “Why?” Muscles said. “Why?”

  Mister JayMac looked over at Darius and winked: an open wink, like an open letter. Darius glanced off, the hinges in his jaw bulging.

  “And if we lose,” Muscles said, “it’ll all come down to us not backing our pitcher-in their eyes, I mean. In their eyes, we’ll either ride Darius’s arm to a win or jap him with sloppy backup and weak-sister hitting.”

  “And if we lose,” Evans said, “Darius picks our pockets.”

  “I don’t want to pitch this one,” Darius said. “Give me some respect, Mister JayMac. Gimme some respect.”

  Mister JayMac spoke to everybody: “Those who watch us and those who compete against us will judge each player on his own performance. Remember that. End of meeting.”

  41

  That same week, we had two home games against Lanett and three against Cottonton. We won the first four, but dropped our Sunday finale to the Weevils by a single run. Hub Sisti pitched against us, and Muscles afterwards claimed Sisti had Vander Meer blood, even if hts name sounded Eye-talian.

  The night before, I’d eaten dinner at the Pharram house in Cotton Creek, a clapboard box with blue shutters, porcelain knickknacks in the open boxes of its wooden porch columns, and an old-fashioned swing on the porch itself. Miss LaRaina and Phoebe had lived in the officers’ housing out to Camp Penticuff before Captain Pharram’s assignment overseas, but now they rented this place from Mister JayMac. Unless they’d done an all-out tidy-up for me, the Pharram women seemed to keep that house as trim and eye-fetching as a Fabergé egg.

  All in all, a nice date. Phoebe’d given me a rain check for the night Curriden abducted me to The Wing & Thigh. She fixed exactly what she’d fixed then: fried chicken, snap beans, mashed potatoes. Only this time, I got to eat it hot.

  “More tea?” Phoebe said. “More biscuits?”

  “Sh-sure,” I said.

  “I’m so proud you can talk,” Miss LaRaina said. “I feared yall’s babies wouldn’t be able to.” Phoebe folded her napkin and retreated head-up to the kitchen. “A joke. And the girl flies to Tokyo.”

  Phoebe returned, opened out her napkin, and laid it across her lap. “Mama, heredity don’t work that way. Acquired traits don’t pass. Don’t hammer us with sech nonsense.”

  Miss LaRaina flicked her fingers at her plate. Deep in her mouth, she made noises like bomb explosions. Phoebe pretended her mama didn’t exist.

  “I forgot yore tea,” she told me formally. “I forgot yore biscuits.” She went to get them.

  The next night, Phoebe and I rode into town to see Abbott and Costello in Hit the Ice at the Exotic and almost laughed our fannies off. On the taxi ride home, I wanted to smooch her silly, to spaniel-crawl her tit-wren body, but the driver kept checking out the rearview and blithering about that afternoon’s loss to Hub Sisti.

  In Cotton Creek, I asked him to wait and walked Phoebe to her doorstep.

  There, under the pecan boughs, we kissed for the first time since Mr Roosevelt’s visit, pushing in to each other. We took so long about it the cabby gave a crabby beep on his horn. His meter kept clicking the coins in my pocket into his, of course, but he wanted sleep worse than he did a fat fare.

  Phoebe broke from me. “Gnight, Danny.”

  I smiled.

  “What is it?” she asked me.

  “This time you didn’t f-fart.”

  “This time I didn’t eat no Brunswick stew,” she said, like that put me in my place. She banged through the screen door. On the porch, a skinny shadow, she hunched her shoulders and gave me a finger-wave toodle-do.

  Phoebe might like me, but Buck Hoey didn’t. He didn’t try to disguise his feelings-from me, his teammates, or his wife. He didn’t like it I’d “stolen” his position. (Who would?) He didn’t like my looks. (Neither did I, but the willingness of Henry, Kizzy, and the Pharrams to tolerate em’d almost broken me of cringing away from mirrors.) And he really didn’t like me doing so well at bat and in the field-because he, Turkey, and Trapdoor couldn’t go on accusing me of being a fuckup and a goat. I led every ’Bender but Snow in batting, and Snow led the CVL. With my lead-off slot and on-base percentage, I’d’ve probably led the league in runs scored except for missing the season’s first fifteen games.

  Hoey didn’t hit or field that badly, but had serious weaknesses in some fundamentals: executing the hit-and-run, bunting, flipping underhand to second on doub
le-play chances, and, if coaching, keeping his signals straight. Nowhere, though, was there a feistier wiseacre in baseball, except for the Dodgers’ Leo Durocher, and most Highbridgers would’ve bet on Hoey in a dirt-kicking and insult-flinging contest between the two. I would have.

  Hoey’d dodged the Army because his status as a father put him in the sixth lowest draft category: Married Men With Children But Without a Contributing Job. Three of his kids-Matt, Carolyn, and Ted-had come before Pearl Harbor. His age, thirty-five or so, and some stress-related back twinges’d also played a part in saving him from an infantry platoon. Linda Jane, Hoey’s Alabama-born wife, and all four kids, including a toddler named (hold on) Danny, came out to nearly every home game. Hoey always worked his two older boys into warm-up pepper games, which made you think Uncle Sam’d done right allowing him to stay home to help raise his brood.

  Matt and Ted, about ten and seven I’d guess, didn’t seem to hate my guts. Much as he disliked me, Hoey hadn’t spoon-fed his bitterness into his sons’ gap-toothed mouths. They let me hit them pepper fungoes. More than once, they waved to me from the grandstand when they caught my eye at shortstop. (Linda Jane, on the other hand, always wrinkled up her nose at me like she’d chanced upon a supermessy roadkill, a polecat, say, or an armadillo.) Early on, it’d impressed the boys I couldn’t talk; and it tickled them, every day I played, that their baby brother and I had the same first name. So they never tossed any smart-ass digs my way.

  In fact, after our Saturday doubleheader against the Boll Weevils, Matt jumped onto the field from the Hoeys’ box seats and sprinted out to see me. I mean, that humdinger of a kid intercepted me. He stuck a program and a pencil under my nose. “Sign it, wouldja, Mr Boles? Yo’re the best danged Mile ’Bender they’s ever been!”

  “Teddy!” his mother called from her box. “Teddy, you git on back up here!”

  “I wisht I could play like you. I wisht I could.” I took his program and began to write my name across the top of it. Buck Hoey slipped in next to his son and yanked the program away.