Centuries of June (30 page)

The title card on the wall reads: “Her First Game” and dissolves into a static shot of the crowd making its way down School Street and into Exposition Park. The twin spires decorating the roof of the wooden grandstand point into the smog, but the men and boys and few women rush forward, a sea of hats and caps. Spurred on by the prospect of the duel at three o’clock against the New York Giants, the crowd is electric with happiness. The few women in the queue are dressed as finely as any gentlemen, and Helen and Adele wear matching straw toques with a peacock’s feather, one in blue and one in red, in honor of the hometown team. Caught in the instant looking back at the camera, Adele holds on to her hat with one hand as she is swept away.

When the film concluded, she picked up her story.

P
ure chance, though sooner or later, they were bound to meet. The Ahearn brothers were West End Irish, but they had moved into town for a place of their own nearer to work. Pat finished early in the morning, and Christy was on nights, so they had nothing to do on summer days but go to the ball games. By June, the four of them would go together, and Adele put aside her reservations just to be near the brash fellow.

At the gates, Pat paid the two-bit admission each for all four of them, as if a dollar was nothing, and he gave the man another dollar to find them seats in the grandstand beneath the shelter of the roof. The afternoon sun shone brightly, and she nearly swooned the moment she first saw the brilliant green field. Cut into the manicured expanse was a keyhole between the pitcher’s mound and home plate, and the paths around the bases were similarly shaped in dirt. In their cream-colored uniforms and brown hats and stockings, the New Yorks were practicing, throwing the ball with such effortless grace and impossible speed.
Bordering the great lawn was a fence plastered with advertisements for everything from hair tonic to downtown restaurants. Just beyond ran the railroad, and beyond the tracks, barges and paddleboats sailed the Allegheny River, and on the other side of the water lay Pittsburg proper, the Point, and the hubbub of the city. She felt well away from all that in Exposition Park, almost as if out in the country for a summer’s picnic. The men had asked, and permission was granted, to remove their jackets, and they sat in their shirtsleeves like two stevedores. A negro in a white coat came by and offered to sell them a bag of roasted peanuts. Every few minutes, someone would wave or shout greetings to Pat and Christy, who seemed to know all of Pittsburg and Allegheny City. One such fellow in a derby and dark suit kept passing in the aisle near their bench, uncertain as to whether he might approach, until he became a thorough distraction. Finally, he caught Pat’s eye and made his way over.

“Hiya, Charlie.” Pat stood to greet him and shake his hand. “Caught us with a few friends. Miss Hopkins, Miss Jankowski, this here is Charles Wells. Good to see you, old boy, hope you enjoy the game.”

Charlie touched the brim of his bowler and went right to his point. “Who’d ya like today, Pats? I’ve a half eagle to put on the Giants.” He held up the gold coin.

“Ah, you’re crazy. They’ll be lucky if they score at all against the Deacon.”

“Phillipe’s pitching? You’ve got yourself a bet—”

“No,” Pat held up his hand. “No sportin’ for me today, chum. Can’t you see I’ve company? Ladies present.”

“Go on then,” said Charlie, “you’re jagging me with that.”

Pat shook his head and folded his arms against his chest.

“Don’t be like that, old sport.” He turned to address Adele. “Don’t you know this old man is but a reprobate?”

As quick as a hound, Pat found his feet, stepped on the empty bench in front of them, and had Charlie’s lapel in his grip. The man in the bowler squawked, and half the crowd, it seemed, turned around, and thus surrounded, Pat let go. Spry as a rat, Charlie was on his way, skittering down toward the field. One of the New York ballplayers, an older, stout fellow, was watching the fracas, and he cupped his hands in a megaphone and called to Pat, “Leave the poor sonofabitch alone, you big galoot.” He feigned throwing a baseball at the patrons in the stands, and all the cranks had a good laugh. Even Pat, his temper abated, flashed that toothy smile.

“Ain’t that something,” Christy told him. “That’s old John McGraw, the manager hisself, bawling you out.”

The Pirates came onto the field in their home whites, blue caps and collars, and the blue stockings with the red stripes. A great war cry rose from the crowd. At three or four spots in the bleachers, young boys clanged cowbells, and one put a cornet to his lips and blew out a three-note huzzah. As prelude to the game itself, the players tossed around the ball, and the pitcher went to the mound to doctor the dirt hill to his liking.

Adele had scores of questions, but she deferred all until the game itself began, preferring instead to let the experience invade her senses—the smell of peanuts and grilled sausages, wool suits in the summer heat, the thwack of the ball hitting leather mitts, the sight of men as gleeful as boys cavorting in the newly mown grass. As she had been warned, a fair amount of foul language peppered the hum of conversation in the stands, a few words she thought she never would hear, and every now and then, some gentleman would feel compelled to yell something disparaging at the foe. The cranks cheered at every New York out and hooted when the umpire decided the other way. The whole first inning passed by her notice. Too much was happening, and the man beside her gave her the vapors.

•   •   •

A
cross the room, from the cramped niche between the bathtub and the sink, whispers grew louder. Jane conferred with Alice on some secret matter, but they had become animated in their discussions to the point of overtaking the unfolding narrative of the baseball romance. The old man cleared his throat as a sign of disapproval.

“And who are you to stick your beak in it?” Alice asked him.

“Yarrah, go off, old man, and take that little drooler with you.” Jane flashed him a sparkling look.

Gently, he removed the child from his lap and set him on the floor. During the course of this latest story, the boy had stolen the cap and now wore it backward on his head. Clutching the lapels of his white robe, the old man straightened and bounced twice on the balls of his feet, thrusting out a defiant chest. “There is no call, ladies, for that sort of sedition. Adele has the floor as you once had, and we owe one another a modicum of respect—”

“Hear, hear,” Dolly amended.

“And what, might I ask, is the subject of your private disputation?”

They both eyed Adele, a mixture of disdain and pity in their gaze. Jane threw her arm around Alice’s shoulder. “We were only talking about the sad state of feminine affairs, and what a shame it was to swoon over a man, and such a man as that.”

Light flickered on the tiles and the music started with a few discordant notes, like a cat crossing a keyboard, and the silent movie began again. A wide-perspective shot of the ballpark from the vantage of an overlooking hill gave way to a panning shot from the outfield and into the diamond itself. Men in baggy uniforms ran the bases, fielded ground balls, and turned a double play. Against this backdrop, Adele picked up from where she had been interrupted by her more cynical sisters.

•   •   •

T
hat first ball game, that whole June day, passed in a blur and yet in memory lasts a century. The Pirates won, 7–0, a shutout, the first of a record six in a row their pitchers were to post. She was at the ballpark for the last of the six, as well, and read all about it in the newspapers. In fact, everything about baseball could be found in the
Post
or the
Daily Gazette
, most important the scores, who won or lost, and how the runs came about, and the names of yesterday’s heroes and goats. She had never taken an interest in the sporting news before meeting Pat, but now her mornings began with a quick check of the league standings and over her toast and jam she deciphered the box scores.

O
n the screen were shots of the players relaxing. Two men clown before the camera, monkey-faces, and the taller grabs the hat off the short, stocky fellow and rustles his thick wavy hair. Above the man runs his name in black letters:
Ginger Beaumont, outfield
. The gangly fellow holds the cap out higher and higher as the redhead paws for it. Above his grinning face:
Kitty Bransfield, first base
.

K
eeping up with the news about the Pirates occupied her days when Pat failed to call. But that occurred infrequently as the month wore on. Those first weeks of June when the Pirates were in town, he would fetch a hack two or three times a week to include her on the ballpark excursion. Other days he went by himself, but he would arrive at her home on the Bluff around six o’clock and take her out to dinner or promenade on the ridge above the Monongahela River. When the team left town, he had more freedom, and once they attended an afternoon at the movies.
Alice in Wonderland
thrilled her when the girl was trapped in the small
house and had to reach through the tiny window for her magic fan. But on the same bill was Edison’s
Electrocution of an Elephant
, and she cried in her sleep that night, remembering the cloud of smoke and how the beast toppled at once as the volts pulsed through its body, and she wished that Pat had been with her in the bed to put his arms around her as he had done in the dark exhibition hall. She dreamt of him often, waking in the hot nights drenched in sweat, and wondering how he might touch her, what he might do to her, should they be married.

I
n sepia, the boys, still in their uniforms, file out of the park and climb aboard a horse-drawn omnibus. Across the street, storefronts advertise Milliners, Dry Goods, and the Benevolent Temperance Society of Chicago. The game is done, and the Pirates are on their way back to the hotel in a good mood. Two of the young men stand on the wagon’s running boards, and as it jostles on, they perform a mock arabesque, as if preparing to fly.
Claude Ritchey, second base. Jimmy Sebring, outfield
.

O
n the morning of Independence Day, Pat showed up on her doorstep to take her to the ball game against Philadelphia, the dregs of the National League. Adele’s father answered the knock, and from her bedroom on the second floor, she could hear the two men conversing in stiff exchange. Mr. Hopkins, an accountant for the city, was a small, formal man, not given to any display of emotion, but his voice, which had started out mild and pleasant, grew agitated by Pat’s booming replies to his queries. No, Pat was saying, no I have not. She quickly finished tying her corset and then threw on her dress to hurry to intervene. At the top of the stairs, she heard Pat’s anguished reply to her father’s insisting question. “… but I’ve not had a drop today, Mr. Hopkins, hand to God. It’s not even noon.”

Adele flew down the steps and inserted herself between the two rams. Flustered by any sign of disagreement, she did not even see her beau but focused immediately on mollifying her father.

“Papa dear, I had no idea you were home today. How nice.” She kissed the old man on his cheek and clung to his shoulder with one hand. He placed his hand over hers and returned her kiss. Then and only then did she face Pat Ahearn and notice, with a shudder, the thin vertical line that split his lip. The blood had dried into a dull red scab. She drew her fingers to her own mouth and could not find the words for a simple greeting. Neither man could muster a graceful exit to their disagreement, and they all might be standing there to this day, silent as a three-legged stool, had not the dog walked into the parlor, demanding, by the fierce circling propelling of her tail, to be acknowledged. Pat reached down and scratched behind the mutt’s floppy ears, cooing thatagirl, that’s a good girl. Adele stepped under her bonnet and using the glass window as a mirror, she tied the straps in a bow and kissed her father good-bye all in one motion, promising to be home in time for the celebratory supper and to hear the cannons and see the fireworks that evening as they had done every Fourth of July since she was a little girl.

A
broad-faced man shows how his long crooked fingers allow him to hold in one hand four baseballs at once.
Ed Phelps, catcher
. Four young men, three right-handers and a left-hand thrower, wind up and pretend to hurl the pill right at us through the camera lens. When they finish their follow-through motions, three are smiling sheepishly:
Deacon Phillippe, Sam Leever, Brickyard Kennedy, pitchers
. Only the fourth, lefty
Ed Doheny
, remains dead serious. A strangeness in the eyes.

•   •   •

A
t the ballpark, she finally managed to ask him about the argument with her father.

“He accused me of showing up drunk to escort his daughter. I’m not drunk at all. Christy and I had a beer or two with our breakfast, but that’s all. Hardly a drop.”

“You should know that he’s got a stir about the Irish—”

“Who don’t?” Ahearn clenched his fists. “It’s always the micks this, the micks that.”

“Are you sure it was just a beer with breakfast?”

Pat flicked back the brim of his boater so that it made a halo around his face.

Squinting into the bright light, Adele watched the Pirates take the field and begin to toss around the baseballs. “He took the pledge is all. A temperance man.” She was nearly afraid to ask about Pat’s injury, but at last volunteered, “Did you hurt your lip?”

“Don’t be a mope,” he told her. “A gentlemen’s disagreement. But you should see the other fellow. This ain’t nothing.”

For the first three innings she sat, petulant, barely caring herself who won or lost. In the middle of the fourth, Pat leaned closer, held her chin in the crook of one finger. “C’mon, Adele, give us a kiss.” And for the first time: “Be a sweetheart. Don’tcha know that I love you?”

T
he house lights rose and we all blinked, adjusting our sight.

“Gag,” said Flo and mimed sticking her fingers down her throat.