The Year We Sailed the Sun

by Theresa Nelson

  “You mean the car?”

  “Well, sure I mean the car! Mr. Egan’s car, what else?”

  My stomach clenched. Curiouser and curiouser . . . “You don’t mean that Mr. Egan—”

  Jimmy regarded me with pity. “And who else would I be meaning? Mr. Thomas Egan. The head Rat himself.”

  I looked again. There was a mountain of a man with a squashed-in nose leaning up against the auto’s door, picking his teeth. Hadn’t I seen him before somewhere? A long time ago, maybe . . .

  But I shook my head. “That ain’t Tom Egan.”

  Jimmy rolled his eyes. “Well, of course it ain’t. That’s just—ah, for thunder’s sake, don’t stare at him! Do you want to get us both kilt? I never said he was Tom Egan. Mr. Egan’s inside, watching the game. That’s just Fat Eddie, standing lookout.”

  Fat Eddie—that was it! “Fat Eddie Farrell?”

  “Just like in the papers.” Jimmy couldn’t have looked any prouder if Fat Eddie had been his uncle the mayor. “He’ll have you on his toast for breakfast if you look at him crooked. You see the scar over his left eye?”

  I said I saw it, so what?

  “That’s from backing up Red Kane in the shootout at the Four Courts.”

  “Ah, you’re full of it. It ain’t, either.”

  “Is too. Mickey Doyle’s old man saw the whole thing with his own eyes. There was people yellin’ bloody murder and bullets flyin’ everywhere and one of ’em ricocheted off the spittoon and—”

  The words died in his throat. Fat Eddie Farrell was glaring our way, pointing his toothpick at us. “What are you kids jabberin’ about? You think I don’t hear you jabberin’? You’re givin’ me a headache, do you see what I’m sayin’? Go on, get outta here.”

  He didn’t have to say it twice.

  “And don’t you come fiddlin’ around this fine automobile with your sticky fingers,” he yelled after us. “If I catch you so much as breathin’ on it—”

  But we were gone already, so we never heard what would happen if he did.

  “It’s a beauty, though, ain’t it?” Jimmy said breathlessly as we ducked under the turnstiles. (It was clear he knew the routine just as well as I did.)

  “What? The car?” I shrugged. “It’s all right, I guess.” Bill was the one who was crazy about cars. He could have named you every knob and dial and thingamabob. But I didn’t have time for any of that now; it was Bill himself I wanted.

  “Well, I should say it’s all right!” Jimmy upended his crutch, snagged a bag of peanuts from a passing cart, and popped it in his pocket. “Mickey says a car like that costs two thousand dollars.”

  “Mickey Doyle don’t know everything.”

  Jimmy shrugged. “He knows it if it’s worth knowing.”

  “And you believe that? If he’s so smart—”

  But Jimmy wasn’t listening. He was already dodging through the crowd ahead of me and slipping into the grandstand, slick as butter—and not the cheap seats, neither, but the one-dollar boxes, where the stuffed-shirts were sitting, as usual, watching the game through their fancy binoculars and booing the Browns’ shortstop, who’d just lost an easy pop-up and was stumbling over his own feet, chasing it down.

  “If Mickey’s so smart—”

  “Go suck an egg, Hallinan!” Jimmy’s holler could have reached the moon. “Is that a mitt on your hand or your ma’s old skillet?”

  A lady in a feathered hat raised an eyebrow at us, then caught sight of Jimmy’s crutch and blushed deep red. He saw her looking and beamed her a smile as innocent as an angel’s—if angels had snub noses and gaps in their teeth—and the next thing I knew, she was poking the tall man next to her and he was nudging the stubby guy next to him and the whole row was whispering and poking and moving over to make room for the two of us—

  And there we sat with the hoity-toities, pretty as you please.

  And they were good seats, too, you couldn’t deny that, just behind the dugout on the third-base side. Kind of took my breath away altogether, for a second there. We could see the wind bending the infield clover, the wad of tobacco in the pitcher’s right cheek, the scrape on the Detroit batter’s knuckles as he clutched the bat. Why, even Bill himself had never finagled us seats like these! Just wait till I tell him—

  And then I came back to my senses. “If Mickey Doyle’s such a genius—”

  “Just catch the ball, boys!”

  “How come he got himself arrested by his own father?”

  Jimmy never took his eyes off the field. “Oh, that. That was nothin’.” He took a peanut out of his pocket, put it on the floorboards under his seat, and cracked it with the tip of his crutch. “His pop was breakin’ up the fight, that’s all.”

  “You call that nothin’?”

  “Well, nobody got convicted.”

  “You think that was nothin’?” Even my ears felt hot, remembering. They’d rounded up Bill right along with the rest of ’em and locked up the whole crowd till morning, and poor Gran had cried and cried. . . .

  “Anyhow,” said Jimmy, “it wasn’t us that was askin’ for it. It was some of them loudmouth Learys from the Bad Lands, with the cousin in the Nixie Fighters. You shoulda heard what they said about Mickey’s cousin. And then they started in on the D and Ds! We couldn’t just stand there.”

  “The D and Ds?”

  “Come on, ump! That was right down the middle!”

  “Who are the D and Ds?” I had to yell to make myself heard over the noise of the crowd, who didn’t like the call any more than Jimmy did.

  “Well, who do you think?” Jimmy pushed back his cap and stared at me. “D and D—for Doyle and Delaney.”

  I knitted my brow.

  “Our gang, for thunder’s sake. Don’t you know anything?”

  “Ah, go on. You ain’t a gang.”

  “Who says we ain’t?” Jimmy shouted. He cracked another peanut. “We’re just as good as any of ’em. You don’t see all them other fellers takin’ on Mr. Thomas Egan!”

  Unfortunately just as the words came out of his mouth, the crowd—who by this time had hollered themselves hoarse—got quiet as church mice, so the name “Thomas Egan” rang out for the whole world to hear.

  Every last head in the one-dollar boxes turned around and stared.

  Jimmy’s eyes grew to twice their regular size.

  But he was a quick thinker; you had to hand it to him. My stomach was seizing up again so I couldn’t say a word, but he smiled and punched me on the arm like an old buddy and said, “Gotcha, Myrtle May! Ha-ha, ain’t I a card? Takin’ on Mr. Thomas Egan—now, there’s a laugh!” And though it was the last thing I’d have done, he looked back up at the feathered-hat lady, who was still on his left, smiled her that homely angel’s smile again, and said, “Excuse me, miss, but my sister here is afflicted with my-opey of the eyesight, and she’s desperate to get a gander at the outfielders. She’s got it bad for Bash Compton; you know how girls are”—I kicked him in his good leg but he went right on—“and I couldn’t help noticing that those are very fine field glasses you’ve got there. . . .”

  “They are indeed,” said the lady, nodding gravely.

  “And since they’re so fine and all, I was just wonderin’ if you wouldn’t mind if she took a short look-see?”

  “Oh, no, thank you,” I began. “I don’t really—you don’t have to—”

  Jimmy cut me off with an elbow to the ribs.

  “Why, certainly,” said the lady, still not smiling, exactly, but with a sort of upward crinkle to the left corner of her mouth that was at least first cousin to a smile. She started to lift off the strap from around her neck, where she had the glasses hanging, but it was caught in the back some way in a curl that had slipped out from under her hat, and while she was trying to get it untangled, a big, handsome black-haired man on her other side put his hand on her arm.

  “Don’t be silly, Cora. Can’t you see they’re a pair of con men? Her eyes look fine to me.”

  My ears go
t even hotter. “I never said—” I began, but Jimmy glared at me, so I closed my mouth.

  The handsome man sniffed. “I doubt he needs that crutch, either.”

  “Not so much now,” Jimmy agreed. “I’ll likely chuck it in a month or two. The smashed leg’s a bit shorter than the other one, but I think it’s catchin’ up.” He stuck it out in front of him, hiked his knickers above his bad knee, and inspected the poor twisted limb with interest, the way Fat Eddie might size up a flat tire.

  “Oh,” said the handsome man. He’d gone gray in the face. “Well, in that case, of course . . .” He took out a spotless handkerchief from his shirt pocket and dabbed at the sweat on his moustache. “What I mean to say, that is . . .”

  “What he means to say,” said the lady, who had finally gotten her hair separated from her viewing equipment, “is that he’s very sorry for the misunderstanding. Isn’t that so, Daniel?”

  “Hmm?” The handsome man was busy refolding his handkerchief in a perfect square. “Well, certainly if I had . . . that is . . . under the circumstances . . .” He cleared his throat.

  She handed me the glasses.

  At first I couldn’t make head nor tail of the outlook through the eyeholes—just a blur of shapes and colors and then the sun itself, so bright it made me blink.

  “Not up there,” said Jimmy. “What are you pointin’ at the sky for?” And he started to jerk ’em away, but the lady gave him a glance that shut him up good, and then she reached right across him and steadied my uncertain fingers with her gloved ones.

  “You have to turn this little wheel on top,” she explained, “until the picture comes clear. That’s it. . . . Keep turning. . . . Do you have it now?”

  “Yes, miss,” I mumbled. “I’ve got it.”

  Sweet Mary and Joseph. Did you ever see the like? Our man Hawk had the ball again, setting up for his next pitch, and it looked just as big as the moon itself in his two huge hands, and his whiskers needed trimming and the wad of tobacco in his cheek was the size of a watermelon now and it bobbed up and down, up and down, when he chewed and—

  “All right, all right, my turn,” said Jimmy.

  I held on tight. “But where’s Bill?”

  “Well, you won’t find him on the field, will you? Slide over to your right—your right, I said—that’s it, a little more now. Do you see home plate?”

  I nodded.

  “And the boxes just over it?”

  “I see ’em.”

  “You’re a hair too far, then. Go back toward first a little. That’s it, right there—don’t act surprised,” he added in a piercing whisper, well nigh shattering my one good eardrum. “That’s where he always sits when he comes to the games.”

  “What are you talking about? That ain’t Bill.”

  “Well, of course it ain’t; it’s Mr. Egan. Ah, just give me the glasses, will ya? Look there, plain as day, between the senator and the two priests. The one with the cigar—do you see him now? The feller blowin’ smoke rings.”

  I grabbed the glasses back. Ah, sure, I could see him now. My stomach went sour at the sight. But why should I give two straws about Thomas Egan? He was no friend of mine, or my brother’s neither.

  And then I took another look. There was Egan’s pal the senator, all right; you couldn’t miss him. If this was a parade, he’d be up front, marching. And nearer the aisle—why, that was Father Dempsey, wasn’t it? Our pastor at Saint Pat’s. And on his left—the other priest—the tall one with the jug ears—

  “Ain’t that Father Dunne?”

  I was so startled to see him, I must have said it out loud.

  “Father Dunne?” the hat lady repeated. “Is he here today?” She smiled for sure this time, both corners of her mouth at once. “Did you hear that, Daniel? These children are acquainted with Father Dunne!”

  Jimmy gave me another warning look, so I kept my own mouth closed now, though I didn’t see what he was so touchy about. The archbishop himself could be a Browns fan, for all I cared, as long as I found Bill. But I still hadn’t spotted him. So I glued my eyes to the glasses and searched high and low, and meanwhile Detroit kept shooing St. Louis boys off the bases, and our side fumbled the ball like a hot potato straight from the stove, and the crowd was booing every Brown that ever drew breath and Jimmy was louder than any of ’em, when all of a sudden he jerked the glasses out of my hands again and trained ’em on Egan’s box and said, “Ah, nuts, they were supposed to wait till the bottom of the eighth!”

  “Who? Wait for what?”

  I’d been so busy looking for Bill, I’d forgotten all about Egan and his buddies. But now Jimmy was peering that way again, muttering cusses, and even with bare eyeballs I could see some brand of commotion brewing. Something to do with that big feller there, galumphing down the aisle—

  What was Fat Eddie doing inside the ballpark?

  But it was old Ton o’ Fun himself, no question, with a pack of policemen trotting just behind him, and Egan and the priests and the senator were standing up to see what the trouble was. And heads were turning and people were staring and no one was looking at the game anymore, and while everybody was talking at once and waving their arms and pointing up behind the stands, Jimmy gave me a nudge and whispered, “Let’s go.”

  “Go where?” I wanted to know, but it was too late; we were already going there; we were on our feet and tearing out of the one-dollar boxes. Running like the wind, if the wind had hiccups, hop-hop-running, hopping, running—

  We were halfway to the main gate before I saw the field glasses still clutched in Jimmy’s freckled fist.

  “Ah, for cryin’ out loud, Jimmy, the binoculars!” I yelled after him. “They’ll think we stole ’em on purpose! Come on, we have to take ’em back!”

  But he never stopped for a second. “Take ’em back yourself!” he hollered.

  And then he slung ’em at me, and kept right on going.

  Chapter 10

  Hell’s bells. Now what?

  I stared at the glasses in my hands.

  But there wasn’t any choosing to it, really. If I didn’t stick with Jimmy, I’d never find Bill. Who cared what the hat lady thought? So I slipped the strap around my neck and kept running, running, running, matching Jimmy’s hop-step stride for stride, and pretty soon we were busting back out through the main gate into the slanting sun on Dodier Street—

  —where we all but slam-banged into the crowd that had gathered there before us.

  The backside of the crowd, that is. A solid wall of backsides—fed-up Browns fans leaving early, I figured—only they’d stopped short, for some reason, just past the exit, and were jammed together now, hemming us in. I craned my neck to get a glimpse of whatever the slowdown was, but I couldn’t see a thing, though I could hear little snatches of talk:

  “Did they get the whole gang?”

  “Just the one. . . .”

  “Pack of hooligans . . .”

  “Wait till Egan . . .”

  “Not Tom Egan . . .”

  “I pity their mothers. . . .”

  Oh Lord. Whose mothers were they pitying? I grabbed Jimmy’s shoulder. “They don’t mean—they couldn’t—” I got it out finally: “They ain’t talkin’ about Bill, are they?”

  “Well, what do you think? Leggo’ me.” Jimmy’s eyes were so bright, they looked feverish. “They were supposed to wait till the bottom of the eighth.”

  I gave him a shake. “Stop saying that. You said that already.”

  But he shrugged me off—“I told you we’re a gang!”—and started squeezing past the tall man in front of us. “S’cuse me, mister, s’cuse me, s’cuse me . . .” and the crutch worked its magic again; the crowd opened up just enough to let us slip through the cracks. And then we were standing on the curb, where more police were messing about, blue coats by the bushel trying to keep the peep-sighters back, and still more across the street, down the block a little, with a whole knot of ’em gathered around—

  What?

  I h
ad to stand on my tiptoes to see. . . .

  Oh no.

  It was the Chalmers, wasn’t it? The fine yellow automobile—Mr. Egan’s two-thousand-dollar car—only now it was lying on its side like a dead bug, smashed all to smithereens, piled up in a heap against the lamppost on the other side of Dodier.

  Oh no, no, no . . .

  A couple of the cops bent over the wreck with crowbars, wrenching the steering wheel loose. The driver was still inside, then?

  Oh dear God in heaven . . .

  But it couldn’t be him, it wasn’t him, not him, I knew it wasn’t—I couldn’t say his name even in my head or out loud, neither, because I couldn’t breathe, my lungs didn’t have any air left in ’em—

  Maybe it’s Mickey, it might be Mickey, please, God, let it be Mickey—

  But then they lifted him clear, and his cap went tumbling, and there was his old curly head, red as ever. “Bill!” I shouted, finding my voice again, but he never heard, he never moved a muscle; his eyes were shut tight as coffin lids and his right arm just hung there, bent and bloody, dangling like a slab of bacon at Murray the Meat Man’s.

  I started to run. “Bill, it’s me! Wake up, Bill—it’s Julia—”

  But before I’d taken two steps, a pair of burly hands caught me ’round the middle, and I was lifted clear off my feet, kicking and squirming. “Easy, missy; hold your horses. The boy ain’t dead. Just knocked himself silly is all. And you there, Jimmy Brannigan, where do you think you’re going? Get him, Greene—but mind the crutch! He’ll be taking your head off with that swing of his. That’s enough, now, Jim. Who do you think you are, Ty Cobb?”

  Officer Doyle?

  I kicked even harder. It was him again, wasn’t it? Mickey’s pop, the cop. And where was his great gutless wonder of a son this time, while they were carting my brother off like cold cuts?

  “Bill!” I kept trying to yell, but it was only a kind of croak now; they were loading him in a wagon, and my throat was closing up worse than ever. I’m here, I’m right here, oh please wake up! Where are they taking you? Oh dear God, Bill, what were you thinking? Open your eyes!