Only the Strong (13 page)

Crenshaw struggled to stifle a yawn. “Yeah? What are you known for?” He paused to study a photo on the wall. It was a team portrait of the Gateway City Blues, a one-time Negro League powerhouse. Next to it was a publicity photo of a bowlegged center fielder pretending to circle under a pop fly. Crenshaw lifted his shades and took a closer look. Then he turned toward the bowlegged old man, who was reaching to lift his cap—a baseball cap—off a coat tree.

“'Course, most people don't know me as Stanley J. Most people know me as —” He put on the cap and turned around.

“
Slick Daddy Johnson
!” Rip exclaimed. “Hot
damn
!”

Johnson smiled. “In the flesh,” he said. He shook Crenshaw's hand.

“I saw you play,” Crenshaw said. “I must have been about eight years old. You played an exhibition in Wigwam. It was you, Cool Papa Bell, Ray Dandridge—”

“And a bunch of other old-timers,” Johnson said. “That would have been 1950. I hung up my spikes after that.”

Crenshaw reluctantly let go of Johnson's hand.

“They say you could go from home to first in three seconds.”

“Sounds about right. Although these days it might take me four and a half. Sylvia, come on in here and meet these young fellas.”

A beautiful woman about Johnson's age entered with a smile. “Hello,” she said.

“You know Cephus. This here's Lorenzo Tolliver. Doesn't he remind you of Roy Campanella just a little bit? And this is Rip Crenshaw, first baseman for the home team.”

“Pleased to meet you both. Hello again, Cephus. Can I get you boys something to drink? Beer? Lemonade?”

“Lemonade,” Guts said, and a beat later Crenshaw said, “Beer.” Crenshaw looked at Guts. “Lemonade,” he conceded.

“I'll get it, honey,” Slick Daddy said. “I know your story's about to come on.”

“
One Life to Live
,” Mrs. Johnson said. “I hope you gentlemen will excuse me.” She departed.

“I love that accent,” Mr. Logan said. “It must be a joy to hear her talk.”

“It never gets old,” Johnson said, “but I do.”

Mr. Logan laughed. “You think you're old? Wait until you get to be my age.
That's
old.”

“Where is Mrs. Johnson from?” Guts asked.

“Dominican Republic. I met her when I was playing winter ball down there. Knew I'd never be the same if I didn't bring her back with me.”

“How long did you play winter ball?” Crenshaw asked.

“Twenty-one years. D.R., Mexico, Cuba—I played in Montreal too. I hit three homers in a game in Cuba, second man to do it.”

“Who was first?” Guts asked.

“Cool Papa,” Crenshaw said confidently.

“That's right,” Johnson agreed.

Mr. Logan raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“What?
Some
kinds of history I get,” Crenshaw said. “Twenty-one years, huh?” He whistled.

“We were playing mostly for fun,” Johnson said. “Wasn't nobody making a whole lot of money. When I played for Gateway City—shoot, we played one hundred and eighty, two hundred games a year.”

“But you couldn't have played all year here. Too cold.”

“That's right. We played five months. We had other jobs.”

“What did you do?”

“Worked at International Packing House.”

He pantomimed swinging a bat at a ball. “See, this is a line drive to left center.”

He swung again, shifting slightly. “See, this is a sledgehammer to a cow's head. Made about $30 a week doing that. On the field, I played five games a week and made $90 a month. Wanna see the field?”

They piled in Guts's Plymouth, and 15 minutes later they were standing at the corner of Compton and Market, in front of Gateway Teachers College.

“I don't get it,” Crenshaw said.

“This is where our field used to be. Right field line went that way. Left field was over there. Had a trolley barn in it, if you can believe that. Center field sitting in between, that was my kingdom. Seventy-five
cents a seat. We'd draw about three thousand, six thousand on Sundays. We had lights before the white leagues did. We played the Detroit Tigers here in 1933, beat 'em two out of three.”

“I'm not surprised,” Crenshaw said, his voice heavy with reverence. “Now that we play with the white players, we go first class. And the game is easier too, better equipment, a livelier ball. I'm not sure I could've cut it with you guys.”

“You could've cut it anytime, anyplace,” Johnson assured him. “You're a lock for the All-Star game next month.”

“I wish I was as sure as you are. Nobody argues with what I do on the field. But off it? They say I'm a loudmouth, a bad influence. You should have seen
Sports Illustrated
last week. They had a picture of me on the cover. The headline said, ‘Is Baseball in Trouble?'”

“I know you like your liquor and your horses, women too, but ain't nothing new about that. You're a choirboy next to Ty Cobb. Hell, he wouldn't even play against us when we whipped the Tigers. He was hateful. Hateful and scared.”

“Scared?”

“Yeah. Afraid we'd make him look bad. Next time somebody come around calling you out your name, you tell them you're a man demanding his proper respect. But you also got to respect the game—
our
game. When you play, you not just playing for yourself. You're playing for the rest of us.”

“Yes, sir.”

Johnson's voice softened. “We had our own World Series, you know. The whites got all the attention but we knew—hell, the world knew—who the real champions were. We had our own Series, our own trophies. You have a ring, don't you, son? You got it on you?”

Crenshaw looked helplessly at Guts, then back at Johnson. “Well, I, see, uh—”

“You probably keep it locked up. I understand.”

“The truth is, I lost it.”

“Hmm. Well. Listen here, if you get it back, drop in on Slick Daddy and let him have a look.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Johnson,” Crenshaw said. “I'll be sure to do that.”

They dropped the Negro Leaguer at home and took Crenshaw back to the Park Plaza, just three blocks up the road from
where PeeWee was lurking in the shrubbery outside Dr. Noel's apparently unoccupied house. PeeWee rolled the ring around in his hand and stared at the dark windows through a pair of binoculars. It was boring work, but at least he was alone, unlike those days when he had to work with that freaky motherfucker Sharps had paired him with. And he was getting paid, couldn't complain about that. He hadn't felt so good since he ran with the Warriors of Freedom in his revolutionary days. That hadn't turned out too well, with the group disbanding and their leader falling for some bitch. Last PeeWee heard, Gabe Patterson was running the boys club.
What kind of shit was that?
But that was the past.
This is a whole new decade, baby. Between the gig and the ring, everything's all right uptight.

Guts pulled up in front of Mr. Logan's house. “A long time ago,” Mr. Logan said, “I'd sit on the porch in the rocker and you'd sit on the top step. Just taking in the sun, talking about whatever came to mind. You remember?”

“It wasn't that long ago,” Guts said. “I think we still know how to do it.”

He helped the older man up the porch stairs and settled him into the rocker. Guts sat on the top step and watched shadows made by the afternoon sun glide slowly from house to house.

“I was thinking the other day and I remembered something,” Guts said. “You called Mrs. Logan ‘Queen B,' but her name was Alice.”

“I only called her that at home.”

“And she called you Phil. Is Philip your middle name?”

“No. It's short for Philemon. She called me Cephus in public.”

“I'm not following.”

“B was short for Baucis. Legend says that Baucis and Philemon were an old couple that lived in ancient Greece. Two gods disguised themselves as humans and came to visit this one town. Everybody treated them bad except for the old couple. As a reward, the gods showed their true selves and offered them anything they wanted. They wanted to always be together, even in death. So they made Baucis a linden tree and turned Philemon into an oak. The two trees wrapped their trunks around each
other. That's how we wanted to be, always together. So we called ourselves Baucis and Philemon.”

They sat in silence a moment. Guts was pretty sure the old man was reading his mind.

“Are you going to give Pearl a call?”

Yep, he was reading his mind. “I've been calling her. She doesn't answer.”

A mile and a half to the west, Sharps slowed to a stop in front of Goode's house and climbed from behind the wheel. He went around, opened the rear passenger door, and waited attentively while Goode got out. He then hustled back to the driver's side and opened the door for Goode. He waited until his boss was comfortably seated behind the wheel, then said goodbye. He got into his own car and drove around the block. Turning again onto Lewis Place, Sharps then did what Guts Tolliver had never done in his many years of service to Goode. He followed him.

G
UTS AWOKE
on Mr. Logan's couch, amused to discover that a blanket had been spread over him while he slept. He looked at his watch. It was a little after three a.m. After making sure all the windows and doors were secure and peeking in on his host to make sure he was still breathing, Guts quietly exited. He paused on the front porch. Finney Avenue was quiet except for a tireless chorus of crickets and the occasional distant moan of a train. Glancing at Mr. Logan's unkempt lawn, he made a mental note to send someone over to mow it—again. The old man could remember the details of a Supreme Court decision from 1857, but couldn't remember to take care of his lawn.
I should live so long
, Guts thought as he got in his car and cranked the engine. But he quickly checked himself. He'd never given much thought to living a long, happy life. The deaths of his parents had taught him that such fantasies were a useless waste of time. He'd seen a lot more deaths since then. Each of them, including Fish's violent, messy end, had confirmed his initial impressions. The best a man could hope for was temporary joy, a brief escape from the daily business of being hurt and hurting others.

Pearl had different ideas. She seemed to think that putting up pretty pictures and buying dishes in matched sets would somehow guarantee that he'd come home every night in one piece. Sometimes, in bed, she would go on about picket fences, candlelit suppers, and bundles of joy while running her lovely hands over his expansive chest. Guts, despite being pleasantly buzzed from Pearl's expert lovemaking, could only respond with vague, noncommittal grunts. At 35, he believed he'd seen and done enough to conclude that rose-colored dreams were for suckers.

Had he met her when he was younger, maybe he could have indulged in her wishful reveries. The only time he'd even flirted with that kind of fantasy had been long ago, when he was 17.

Goode and his gang were at his country farmhouse, a weekend retreat with several acres of greenery and its own lake. Guts was still a novice underling, exposed only to the parts of the operation that required his labor. Weekend work mostly meant standing or sitting around on the porch while Goode and his family relaxed. Mrs. Goode, a thin, nervous woman whose fashionable pearls and furs failed to conceal her consistent unhappiness, often paced impatiently as Goode turned what was meant to be a peaceful hiatus into another skull session in which he plotted with his top lieutenants.

One Saturday, fed up with Goode's failure to take her and little Julius for a long-promised ride—just the three of them—Mrs. Goode decided to pile their son into the Continental and take a turn behind the wheel herself. Goode stood on the porch and watched, gnawing furiously on his cigar as she stomped off. She nearly flooded the engine before roaring away in a spray of gravel. Carmel Green, whose duties included mentoring Guts in the fine art of leg-breaking, turned and looked at Goode, his brow knotted in concern. “Boss, should we go after her?” he asked.

At first Goode said nothing, working the cigar to pulp between his teeth. The car shrunk in the distance, making its way down the path that curved around the lake. “No, she's just blowing off steam. She'll be back.”

No sooner had Goode gone inside than the faint sound of peeling rubber carried across the greenery and back to the porch,
followed by the sound of a splash. Like Guts, Goode was gifted with extraordinary powers of observation. That's how, even in the midst of one of his life's most horrible moments, he noticed Guts easily outracing the rest of his men after they jerked their cars to a halt and spilled out toward the scene of the accident. That's how he saw several of his crew dive into the lake in pursuit of the rapidly submerging car. That's how, in the same sweeping glance, he saw Guts run past the lake toward the small thicket surrounding the water.

Guts had already concluded that Mrs. Goode and Julius had both been thrown free of the Continental before it careened into the lake. Julius died instantly upon impact. Guts found Mrs. Goode facedown in a puddle, unconscious.