Kid from Tomkinsville (15 page)

The toothpick agitated itself up and down. “Listen to me. I can play bridge with a man and usually tell whether he’ll be a ballplayer. If he has one thing. Remember what I told you that night back in Florida when you were sitting in the dark in your room sorry for yourself, remember? One thing, remember, courage. Has a guy got it?”

“But Dave, I’m all washed up. I’m no good in the box; what use am I anyhow?”

“Suppose I quit like this last month when they gave me an unconditional release? You may say I had luck, getting back so soon. Sure, luck always comes to the tryers. Maybe you’ll say you had tough luck. So you did. Now you find yourself on the spot. So’m I. A big-league manager is on the spot all the time. He’s got to have plenty of what it takes. He’s got to run a show of twenty-five prima donnas as different as you and Razzle Nugent. He must go out on the field, do the unexpected, and be willing to take punishment when the breaks go against his club. When the fans jeer and call him funny names." The Kid, sitting on the edge of the bed, shifted nervously, and Dave was quick to notice his movement. His toothpick rose rapidly up and down.

“Ha! So they got under your skin, hey? Why, boy, a manager has to take that every day in the week. When the situation calls for a bunt and he orders a hit-and-run and fails, he must be ready to take it on all sides. Gotta have courage. There’s men on this team have nothing else but, like Jake, for instance. Has no life on his fast ball, a wrinkle for a curve, and nothing but slow and down and a bucketful of moxie. That’s why he’s still in there pitching winning ball at thirty-seven.” He paused and removed the toothpick from one corner of his mouth to place it in the other corner.

“They got under your skin today, the fans out there, didn’t they? You can’t take it, hey? Trouble with you is, you’re used to being Mr. Big. Had some luck, you did; lotta luck considering you had just a pretty fair country assortment. But you aren’t used to the tough side. You were gonna whang that pineapple out of the park in the ninth, and what happened? You struck out. Then you go to pieces. Just like Eddie Davis. Can’t take it....” The toothpick started its quivering dance around his mouth, but the Kid stopped it short. He rose.

His face was flushed. He was angry. “Yeah... who says so?”

“Why, everyone. Boys on the club. The fans. Even you do. See, you admit it yourself.” He pointed round the room at the suitcases, at the piles of clothes, at the half-opened drawers. “Cut and run this way; why, you can’t take it. ’Course it was okay when things were going well, when you were a flash and a star and in every headline and the boys were giving you interviews and write-ups, all this Kid-from-Tomkinsville stuff, it was fine back in June pitching shut-out ball. We were all fresh in June, yes, and good, too. Not now. You can’t take it. There’s a saying down my way, Roy; maybe you heard it. I come from a great fishing country, and this is how they put it down there.” He paused and so did the toothpick. The Kid, angry and annoyed, glanced up as he hesitated.

“Only the game fish swim upstream. Remember that, Roy, when you get back home.” He repeated the phrase, turning it round and round in his mouth as the toothpick waggled in tune. “Only the... game fish... swim upstream.... Well” — he rose — “too bad you can’t take it.”

Now he was really mad. Now he was fighting mad. He was mad at old Dave for the first time.

“Can’t I? Says who?”

“I do. Otherwise you’d stay right here and help out a losing ballclub.”

The Kid suddenly stepped forward. He kicked a suitcase clean across the room. His big toe felt the effects of the blow for days afterward. “Dave, you just watch me. You’ll see whether I can take it or not....”

He turned his back and, leaning over, started to throw a mess of dirty laundry onto the floor of the closet. The door shut with a bang. He closed the drawers of the bureau and, catching up a suitcase, flung it back under the bed. Only... the game fish swim... upstream....

A
NYHOW, HE HAD
his job back. That was something.

Curious, too, because he distinctly remembered old Mr. MacKenzie telling him in a sharp voice that he “wasn’t keeping the place open for no ballplayers.” There had been scorn in his tone as he mentioned the last word. Yet when the Kid returned it appeared Mr. MacKenzie had said nothing of the sort. Mr. MacKenzie had merely offered to take Jimmy Harrison on until his return. Whatever the facts, the Kid was now famous, and being in the drugstore again didn’t hurt business. Folks came in all day long and stayed. They all knew him and all wanted to know things about the big leagues, and Gabby’s death, and was it true what the newspapers said about Razzle Nugent, and did the Cubs have the best chance for next year, and was this boy Raynor of the Tigers really fast, and a hundred other silly questions. Naturally if they came and stayed, they had to buy something. Maybe Mr. MacKenzie was smart at that.

The Kid had no contract, no way of knowing whether he’d get back on the team or any team anywhere the next season; nevertheless he was the town’s hero. Had he not played big-time ball? Being the town’s hero bothered him because he realized it was extremely likely he would never be called again, and would always be a guy who once played with the Dodgers. This he felt. But he did not act on that feeling. Quite the contrary; he pretended to himself he was sure to go back to baseball, and on this theory he planned his winter.

Grandma thought he was crazy. Anyone who managed to drive a sleigh up the snowy road on the ridge where the going was hard, and saw his device in the barn behind the house, thought he had lost his mind. It looked like a fence, a structure of boards about four inches wide and four feet high, on top of which he placed a baseball. The ball was attached by a string so that when hit it flew away ten yards and bounced back. Standing at right angles to this board he could practice hitting alone.

By the time snow came the road was seldom plowed and he was unable to use his old car going down to work. This he liked. Baseball was part condition; it was speed, speed, speed, and a good deal of the speed was speed of foot. He had walked down before many times, but never run. Now he began running, a slow easy jog trot at first, then faster as he became used to the two and a half mile trip twice a day. The run back at eight-thirty after work in the dark with a cold wind and snowflakes whistling down the road was sometimes hard. But no matter what the temperature, he kept at it; no matter how stormy it was he found time every morning to go for his practice swings to tune up his hitting in the barn.

“Keep your bat level,” Dave had said. That was it, that was the one important thing, keep his bat level. A tendency to keep his right shoulder down, to swing up, was his worst fault. If only that could be corrected, he might some day be a hitter. Standing before the little fence he was obliged to keep his bat level. If he didn’t, if he dropped his bat two inches, he cracked the edge of the wood and almost stung his hands off. Joe and Harry Cousins, the twins who played end on the Luther Jackson High football team with him, and Jess Moore who lived on the farm down the road, often used to drop past and watch. Day after day they found him in the icy barn trying to shorten his stride as Dave had shown him, swinging his bat level. While they stood about in the cold winter air, stomping, rubbing their ears and clapping their hands, he kept steadily at it.

Step... swing... bat level... step... swing... step... swing... bat level... gosh, it’s cold today... step... swing... must be five below... bat level... step... swing... keep that old bat level... step... swing... that... there, that was more like it... now... that was good, that was... now... step... swing... bat level....

While Joe or Harry or Jess secured the ball as it bounced and dangled on the end of the string and placed it once again on top of the wooden barrier. Grandma, sympathetic and understanding at first, shook her head as he came in cold winter mornings wringing wet from his hitting that ball on the little fence. An hour, only one hour, but sixty minutes of continuous batting practice is a long, long while. Mighty tiring, too.

“Roy, you’ll catch your death of cold if you keep on this way. When you have a good job, too, and Mr. MacKenzie such a real nice man....”

The Kid wasn’t so sure about Mr. MacKenzie. Business boomed all winter and he discovered that every day he had a constant stream of questions to answer no matter how often the questioners had been in before. Luckily they were the same questions so he could reply mechanically as he worked.

“Nosuh, ain’t heard a thing yet.... Yessuh, they’re a little late with contracts this year.... No’m, ballplayers are right good boys.... Hard work? You bet it’s hard work.... Razzle Nugent? Oh, he’s a great guy, he is.... No, Tommy, nothing yet.... Oh, mebbe they’ll send me a contract, mebbe they won’t.... You never know... just gotta wait.... Yessir, Gabby was a great ballplayer, lotta pepper, that’s right.... Nosir, I wouldn’t know if he was as good a shortstop as Honus Wagner.... Oh, yes, Mis’ Kennison, guess I did have some bad luck; well, it’s all in the game.... No, Mr. Hawkins, haven’t heard anything yet.... Yessir, I sure am glad to have this job. Yessir, thank you very much, Grandma’s fine....”

It was a cold morning in early January when she heard a knock on the kitchen door, the only door in the house which Grandma allowed open in the winter. Wiping her hands on her apron, for she had been washing the breakfast dishes, she went across the room and opened the door to find Perley Peters, the rural delivery mail carrier. Perley wore his winter costume: a short sheepskin jacket, boots, and a fur cap. His ears were red and so was his nose.

“My goodness, Perley, you look like you was froze. Come right in; come in and have a cup of hot coffee.”

“Thanks, don’t mind if I do have something hot, Mis’ Tucker. Cold out there on the ridge.” There was a grin on his face which betrayed his interest in the Tucker family and the interest of all Tomkinsville in the boy who had carried the town onto the sports pages of the big city dailies.

“First of all...” He pulled off his fur glove and fumbled in the mail sack slung over his shoulder. “Mis’ Tucker, looks like it’s come at last. Registered, too.”

“Goodness sakes alive!” She hoped and yet she didn’t hope. She hoped for Roy. She knew his disappointment and how bitter it would be not to return to the game, but she didn’t want him to go through another six months’ strain like the summer before. Nor did she want to go through it again herself.

Perley peeled off his second glove and dug into the sack. There it was, attached by a rubber band and several clips to a small red card. They were careful all right, down in the post office.

“See. Brooklyn Baseball Club.” Grandma searched in the pocket of her apron for her reading glasses. She realized as she took the letter that she was as excited as Roy possibly could be. Brooklyn Baseball Club, 215 Montague Street, Brooklyn, N. Y. “My goodness!” She held the letter in her hand as if it were gold, which indeed it was. “My goodness sakes alive....”

“Yep. There ’tis. Now...” He pulled out the little red card from the envelope and handed it to her with a pencil. "Returnreceiptrequested... sign there....”

Grandma drew herself up.

“No. That letter’s for Roy. Let him sign himself; he hasn’t gone down to work yet. You’ll find him out there practicing with that baseball contraption in the barn.” The mailman put on his cap, buttoned his coat, drew on his gloves, and. taking the letter and the red card, moved toward the door. “Come back, Perley; I’ll put some coffee on to heat.”

Perley opened the door. As he did so a sharp noise entered the kitchen. It was the same noise heard all summer long in a thousand ball parks.

“Crack...” The clean sweet sound of a bat squarely meeting a ball.

Grandma stood, happy and yet not happy underneath. If only they wouldn’t work him to the bone the way they did last summer. She started to put on the coffee, placed the pot on the stove, and removed her reading glasses. Then there was crunching of feet on the snowy pathway to the backyard, the door was swung open, and he burst into the room. In his hand was the opened letter and attached to it was a long green check.

“It’s come, Grandma, it’s come....”

I
T WAS GREAT TO
be back. Hullo, Red, hullo, Karl, hullo, Doc, how are you, anyway, hullo, Ray, hullo, Eddie, hullo there, Fat Stuff, hullo, Jerry, hullo, Rats, hullo, Jake....

Great to be back? You bet it was great to be back. Dave, accompanied by the pitching staff, plus Babe Stansworth and a couple of rookie catchers and the two coaches, Draper and Cassidy, had been limbering up for a couple of weeks at Hot Springs. They were all waiting at Clearwater, as the main group rolled in on various trains from the North and the West.

Great to be back? Sure was great. To see them all once more and feel they were glad to see him too; once more to be a part if only a small and unimportant part of that moving unit, a baseball club. Hullo, Harry, hullo, Tom, hullo, Razzle, hullo, Ed, hullo, Steve, hullo, Mr. Hanson.

Great to be back? Yes, it was wonderful. To eat on the roof of the Fort Harrison again, hearing the familiar chatter across the tables, and Razzle’s voice addressing the waitress as “sweetmeat” and demanding more ice cream. Yes, it was great to see them all, to shake hands with old Chiselbeak in the locker room, who patted him heartily on the back and called him “boy.” Great to be there, to watch the old man hand out uniforms and scold them as usual for not taking care of their stuff. The Kid was glad to see them, everyone down to little Snow White, the pickaninny who was their mascot and bat boy in Clearwater.

Great to be back, to be away from the cold and damp and slush of March on the ridge, away from that job with those everlasting questioners; great to feel the warm Florida sunshine once more on his face and neck, to hear the clack-clack, clackety-clack of spikes on the concrete of the clubhouse porch, to stand in the shower relieving tired muscles and listen to their talk.

“Who was that pitching in batting practice today, Frank—that big feller?”