King of the Mound: My Summer With Satchel Paige (5 page)

“I thought we weren’t talking,” she said.

Nick smiled and then threw the ball back. It felt weird not to move his feet, but the ball snapped off his fingers the way he remembered and cracked into her glove. After a few more tosses, Nick began to settle into the rhythm. This was why he and his dad didn’t like to talk when playing catch; after a while the motion would become automatic and your mind
would wander to a quiet, relaxing place. Sometimes the simple act of throwing a ball could make all the stress and clamor of the world disappear.

After fifteen or twenty minutes both of their throws started getting a little erratic, and Nick realized that they were getting tired.

“Thanks,” he said to Emma as he flipped the ball to her a final time.

“You want to go get ice cream?” she asked. “My mom gave me a dime.”

“My dad doesn’t want me to leave the cabin,” Nick said.

She wrinkled her brow. “That’s what you said yesterday. But you left anyway and we had fun, right?”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “But he was really mad.”

“Come on. It will be fun.”

Nick thought for one more second and then tossed his glove on the porch. Maybe he was going to get in trouble again, but he was still upset from the night before—and technically his father hadn’t said anything about staying at the cabin before he left the ballpark.

“I think ice cream is my favorite food,” Emma abruptly said, breaking Nick’s train of thought.

“It’s not really a food,” Nick said. “It’s dessert.”

“Then it’s my favorite dessert. What about you?”

Nick thought for a moment. “I like ice cream in the summer. Chocolate cake in the winter.”

“My mom makes the best chocolate cake,” Emma said. “She’s a good cook. You should come over for dinner sometime.”

“I’ll have to ask my dad,” Nick said.

They were silent for a dozen steps. Emma glanced at Nick out of the corner of her eye. “What’s he like?”

“Who? My dad?”

“He used to be my favorite player on the team. I like catchers.”

“He’s a great catcher,” Nick said. “But it’s hard when you get older. My dad says it’s like owning a car. . . . No matter how fast it is, eventually the shocks will wear out and the engine will start to sputter.”

“You think he’s going to be a starter this year? Or is Double Duty going to take his job?”

Nick shrugged. He didn’t really want to talk about that—or even think about it—so he changed the subject. “I got to talk to Satch today.”

Emma grabbed his arm. “You did not!”

“I did. Mr. Churchill told me to get the birthday of everyone on the team, and Satch wouldn’t tell me. I think he likes being mysterious.”

The words tumbled out of her mouth. “What was he like? Were his hands big? Did he say anything funny?”

“He was . . . different.” Nick paused. “He gave me a nickname.”

“Really? What?”

“Hopalong.”

“Like the cowboy from the comics?”

“Yeah. Because of the way I walk with my brace.”

Her forehead wrinkled. “That’s kind of mean.”

“It’s just baseball,” Nick said. “Guys are called Fats and Stumpy and Goofy. There’s even a guy who played for the Tigers called Stinky.”

“Stinky?” She was quiet for a moment. “I wish Satch would give me a nickname.”

Nick just smiled. A minute later they reached Bismarck’s small downtown. The ice-cream parlor was on the first block of Main Street that had stores, and they went inside and peered through the foggy glass at the assortment of flavors. After a long bout of deliberation Emma got chocolate and Nick chose strawberry. When she finished paying, they went outside and sat on the curb, frantically licking so the ice cream wouldn’t melt and run down onto their hands.

“Thanks,” Nick said when he was down to just the bottom half of his cone. “They had ice cream at the hospital, but it was really bad.”

Emma looked at him, puzzled. “How can ice cream be bad?”

“It tasted sour. And there was something wrong with the freezer because it always had this icy fuzz on the top.”

As Emma wrinkled her nose, a pair of kids emerged from the general store across the street. Nick recognized them immediately—it was Tom and Nate, two of his old friends from school.

“I’ve got to get home,” Nick said. “If I’m not there when my dad gets back, he’ll kill me.”

He stood, popped the last bit of his cone in his mouth, and then hobbled as fast as he could back down Main Street. Emma caught up to him after a few steps. She was practically skipping to keep up with his pace.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Nick said.

“Was it those kids?”

“Nope. I just can’t be late. Not two days in a row.”

Emma stopped. “I’m supposed to meet my mom down here.”

“Okay,” Nick said over his shoulder. “Thanks again for the ice cream.”

Although Nick could feel Emma’s eyes on his back as he continued walking away, he resisted the urge to turn around. She was right. Nick hadn’t realized it until the moment he saw Tom and Nate, but he wasn’t ready to see any of his old friends from school. They would stare at his brace and ask him questions about the hospital and whether or not he could pitch again—it would be a reminder of how much his life had changed since that fateful day when he woke up with a fever. And Nick wasn’t ready to deal with that. Not yet.

When Nick was halfway home, he noticed a state police car pulled over on the side of the road behind a silver convertible. As he got closer he realized that Satch was sitting on the curb as a sour-looking policeman tore through the convertible’s glove box.

“Hello, Mr. Paige,” Nick said when he reached the convertible.

Satch glanced at him and then smiled. “No need to mister me, Hopalong,” he said. “Ain’t nobody who don’t call me Satch.”

The policeman looked up from the glove box. His voice was gruff: “Get out of here, kid.”

Nick took a few steps down the sidewalk and then stopped. Something was wrong with the scene, but he couldn’t quite figure it out: Maybe it was the look in Satch’s eye or the set of the policeman’s jaw. Nick didn’t want to get in trouble, but he wasn’t
just going to walk away—not before he knew what was happening.

“What did he do?” he asked as he slowly turned around.

Nick was looking at the policeman, who gave him a glare that could have frozen a lake in the middle of the summer. Satch spoke slowly, his Southern accent making the words seem like drops of molasses.

“This fine officer of the law thinks that I stole my own car,” he said.

“I don’t
think
you stole the car,” the policeman said. “I
know
you stole the car. Because no colored man in this state owns a fancy convertible.”

“Didn’t you see him at the baseball game?” Nick asked. “He was sitting in the back of this car when Mr. Churchill drove him to the pitcher’s mound.”

“I don’t like baseball,” the policeman said.

Nick just blinked, shocked into silence. Satch shrugged. “There ain’t no accounting for taste,” he said.

The policeman finally finished digging through the glove box and slowly straightened, his frosty eyes focusing on Nick. “You say you know this man?”

“Everyone knows him,” Nick said. “He’s Satchel Paige!”

“He plays for Mr. Churchill’s team?”

“He’s the star of the team!” Nick knew his voice was getting louder, but he couldn’t help himself. “He might be the best pitcher in the world!”

The policeman gave Nick a last look and then turned and flipped the car keys back toward Satchel. They landed in a puddle.

“I’ll be watching you,” he said to Satch. “So don’t get uppity.”

A moment later he was back in his police car, and he violently pulled away from the curb, leaving behind the acrid smell of scorched rubber. Satch slowly stood up and fished his keys out of the puddle, an indescribable expression on his face, and then glanced at Nick.

“You need a lift?” he asked.

“Sure,” Nick said. His house was only a few blocks away, but he certainly wasn’t going to turn down a ride in a convertible—especially a convertible driven by Satchel Paige. He opened the door and hopped onto the leather seat. The silver knobs on the dashboard glittered in the late afternoon sunlight, and the engine growled as they accelerated. Nick closed his eyes as the warm summer air whipped through his hair. This was a moment he hoped he would remember.

“I had a cousin who got polio,” Satch said after a minute.

Nick opened his eyes. “What happened to him?”

“He died. But that was a long time ago. Back when I was a kid.”

“I know I’m lucky,” Nick said. “But I still miss baseball. I always wanted to be a pitcher like you.”

Satch smiled a cocky smile. “There ain’t no pitcher like me.” The smile slowly faded. “Why can’t you pitch?”

“You can’t pitch on one leg,” Nick said.

Satch shook his head. “There are lots of things in life that you aren’t supposed to be able to do. People told me a black kid couldn’t make no money in baseball. People told me anyone born Down the Bay was going to die there. People told
me I was going to go straight from reform school to jail. But I didn’t pay any of those people no mind, and that’s why I’m driving a silver convertible that made some cracker cop so jealous that he just had to pull me over.”

Nick wanted to let Satch keep talking, but they had reached the house. “This is it,” he said, pointing at the driveway.

The car coasted to a stop, and Nick got out and carefully closed the door. “Thanks for the ride,” he said.

Satch revved the engine and then looked up at Nick, the jaunty half smile on his face again. “Here’s a piece of wisdom for you,” he said. “Ain’t no man can avoid being born average, but there ain’t no man got to be common.”

And with those parting words he and the convertible were gone in a swirl of dust.

Before his father woke up the next morning, Nick pulled out the small scrapbook he had made two years earlier. Satch’s first game had been against Jamestown, Bismarck’s biggest rivals in North Dakota, and he had gone straight from the train to the field. The old park had been so packed that people were practically standing on top of one another to watch. Satch somehow managed to shake off the stiffness from his long trip north and threw a complete game—with eighteen strikeouts and just one walk—and Bismarck won in the bottom of the ninth.

Six weeks later Bismarck seized the state championship in a three-game series against that same Jamestown team, and Satch pledged to return the following spring. But, of course, he never showed up. It seemed awfully funny to Nick that Satch had ended up back on the team this season—and that Mr. Churchill had given him another chance—but Nick had learned in his short life that adults changed their minds for
all sorts of crazy reasons. And frankly Nick didn’t care; he was just glad he was going to be able to watch Satch pitch, no matter what the reason.

Nick’s father awoke when the sun hit the edge of his bed. He ate his usual pregame breakfast: fried eggs with bread, and water instead of his usual coffee because he said coffee made him too jittery to hit a good fastball. When they were finished eating, they cleaned up, and then Nick put on a pair of baggy pants because he was tired of people staring at his brace. On their way to the park Nick carried the bag again. This time it was less painful; maybe his body was getting used to the routine.

As usual they were the first to arrive, and they waited by the gate, his father nervously pacing back and forth until Mr. Churchill arrived with the keys. Nick followed Mr. Churchill to the office while his father went to the field to stretch and check his equipment.

“This town has been buzzing since Satch arrived,” Mr. Churchill said when they were inside the little shack. “It’s going to be a good crowd today.” He looked at Nick. “Forty cents a ticket, ten cents for kids. How much money do you think we’re going to make?”

“How many people do the new bleachers hold?”

“We can cram six thousand people into this little park,” Mr. Churchill said. “After that either the stands will collapse or the ground will swallow us up like a whale.”

Nick thought for a minute, trying to do the math in his head. Not many kids bought tickets to the games—they would either try to sneak in like he and Emma had or peek through the holes in the fence—so he multiplied five
thousand adults times point four and added it to one thousand kids times point one. Which was . . .

“Two thousand one hundred dollars,” Nick said.

Mr. Churchill raised an eyebrow. “That’s very exact. Do you like numbers?”

“Just statistics,” Nick said. “Baseball statistics.”

“Of course,” Mr. Churchill said with a laugh. He turned and pointed at a stack of paper in the corner.

“Those are the new programs,” he said. “Your job is to sell them for ten cents. And I expect half of that pile to be gone by the end of the game.”

Nick gave the pile a doubtful look—it was pretty big. “I’ll try,” he said.

Mr. Churchill shook his head. “Don’t try. If you want to sell something, you’ve got to
know
you can do it. You’ve got to believe you’re giving people an opportunity.”

“An opportunity?”