The Southpaw (10 page)

He gathered up his various papers and put them in his envelope. He put on his overcoat, huffing and puffing, and that reminded him to tell me to keep in condition through the rest of the winter and be in Aqua Clara no later then March 1. I said I was in good condition and doing a lot of walking in the woods and playing basketball at the Hebrew Association. “No basketball,” he said. “That is in your contract when you get the time to read it. It is too dangerous. We do not mind if you walk in the woods. But we do not want you getting your teeth knocked out on the basketball floor,” and I said if it was in my contract I would do what it said.

Pop went off in the school bus, but me and Jocko got in the 50 Moors, me behind the wheel. I reached down by habit for the gear, but there was none, for all you got to do is give her the gas and off she goes, changing gears by herself, yet plenty of pickup. The only time you think about gears is to put her in reverse, and then you press a button and she is set to go ahead backwards. We swung out towards town, and I worked up some speed, and Jocko said to me, “Without looking at the speedometer how fast are we going?” and I said I judged 60, and he said look, and I looked, and we was doing 75 and yet it was like we was barely moving a-tall. I hit 85 by the time we got to Perkinsville and waited with Jocko until the train come. He already had his ticket bought. I said I guess he
expected
to give the car away, and he said he did, and he laughed.

Afterwards it begun to dawn on me what happened—that I was a Mammoth at last, or at least a small cog in the system—and I went over to the “Clarion” like I always promised Bill Duffy I would if it come to pass, and I told him all that happened, and he wrote it down, and they made some pictures of me reading the contract, and Bill give me a top-notch write-up with a lot of pictures dug out of the file as well as some new ones they took, plus a picture of Pop and an article about him, and some quotations by Jack Hand and Mayor Real and Mr. Gregory N. Oswald. I just about shoved basketball off the sporting section.

When I come out of the “Clarion” there was a number of kids standing around the car and gawking in the windows. The windows work off the dash, no need to crank them by hand like your old-fashion cars. I chased the kids away, asking them didn’t they ever see an up-to-date car before.

The horn has 3 places you can press. Dead center it will play “Take me out to the ball game.” But if you are bowling along the highway and some car is creeping along like a snail press down the left side of the horn and it plays “Lazy bones, lying in the sun.” The third part plays “I love you as I never loved before,” and the longer you hold your hand on the more it plays, over and over, “I love you as I never loved before since first we met upon the village green.”

I pressed the switch and geared her in reverse, stopped for a little gas at Tom Swallow’s and then done 80 all the way home.

When I got home I parked her in the shade. I went upstairs and sat by the window and looked down on her, and after awhile the shade from the tree shifted, and I went down and inched her over in the shade again. I begun to think I had swindled Old Man Moors. She is red with whitewall tires with treads that do not bog down in mud nor snow and will not skid on ice nor ever blow out.

That night in front of Holly’s I blowed the horn all 3 different ways, and she come out to look her over. She has a light up front that you can spot on anything you want, and I shone it on her as she come down the walk, like a spotlight at a floor show, and I played the music, and she opened the door and the lights went on inside so you do not need to be fracturing your shins climbing in and out in the dark, and Holly got in beside me, and she said, “Henry the Navigator has now got the flagship of the fleet.”

“I guess you was never in a boat like this before,” said I.

“Way anchor,” she said, and I asked her if she had ever rode 100 miles per hour, and she said no, and I informed her she was now about to do it, and she opened the door and begun to climb out. I laughed and coaxed her back in, and I backed her around and floated out on the highway, and I asked her if she had ever rode so smooth before, and she said no, and we rode along towards Perkinsville. I played the radio. It all works off the wheel, no need to be reaching down to the dash all the time. We got New York and Albany. Bing Crosby was on in both places, singing “White Christmas,” and we circled around Perkinsville and then come home again. She was in a mood. She invited me in, and then when I got there she read to me out of a number of gloomy books.

About the middle of February I begun to get my things together. I oiled my glove and put new laces in my shoes and hung my Perkinsville suit in the sun to air. It looked funny seeing a baseball suit hanging on the line in the middle of winter. I bought a ticket to Aqua Clara. You pay your own fare and bring your own gear unless they keep you in the organization, which if they do they give you back your fare and you naturally get uniforms from whatever club they assign you to.

The days drug along, and finally I could not stand it no longer and decided to get moving all in a hurry. I was all jittery and excited and moving my bowels about 12 times a day. Vincent Carucci is the same way. Get him excited and half his free time he spends in the can.

Many the long hour me and Vincent kept each other company in the clubhouse can last summer.

I went over the night before and said goodby to Holly, and then I come home and me and Pop gassed about 3 hours, and on the following morning, February 20, I got up at 5. Pop wanted to get up, too, but I made him stay put.

Everything I done that morning I thought how it would be the last time for awhile, brushing my teeth for the last time with my foot on the pipe like I always done and working the spigots of the sink for the last time and looking in the mirror whilst I shaved and seeing for the last time the nick I put in 1 side with the handle of a bat when I was a kid because I sometimes stood in front of the mirror posing for photographers in my imagination, and I dressed in the suit I bought at the Arcade in Perkinsville and thought was so sharp at the time, and overcoat and hat and scarf and shoes, all new, and I grabbed my bags and shot downstairs, ducking under the beam at the bottom step that when I was a kid I leaped for and sometimes just managed to graze with the tip of my fingers, and out I slammed.

Then I just about fell over. Who is standing by my 50 Moors but Aaron Webster! “Good morning, Henry,” said he. “Off at last?”

“Oh no,” said I. “I always carry 2 suitcases around with me at half past 5 in the morning for the sake of balance.”

This was purely sarcastic, but he went right along with it. “Balance,” said he. “I do hope you keep your balance in the time ahead.”

“I will try,” I said. I had only the skimpiest notion what he was saying at the time. “Holy Christ,” said I, “it is freezing out here.” It was about 5 degrees above and my teeth was beginning to chatter. How he stood it I do not know, standing there with nothing on but this raggedy green jacket about 25 years old that he always wears. I used to practically vomit looking at that jacket. Aaron never lets the weather bother him.  If I am in that much shape at 80 I will consider the job well done.

“Yes, it is cool,” said Aaron, “but I am planning no long discussion. I just come to give you a little gift.” He dug down in his pocket.

“Besides, it is 1 of my observations on life that old people cannot tell young people the score. We cannot pass along our knowledge. Young people must learn for themself. I am just hoping, Henry, that no matter if you fail or succeed in what you are about to try that you will keep your sense of humor. I also hope that you will keep your ways. You have always looked at things in a good way, finding the good things good and the boring things a bore. It would do no good for me to tell you that the bright world of glitter and glamor that you are heading towards is nothing but Graduation Night at Perkinsville High plus Tom Swallow’s Texaco Station. It is all a lot of hardware tinsel to cover the fact of the bore.”

“It is 25 of,” I said. “The train is at 6.”

“A great bore and a great fraud,” he said. “Yet I wish you success, for that is what you want. I only hope you will bear in mind that success is never a matter of how many people slap you on the back on your winning days. You must also be on the lookout for the few good friends who will come around on afternoons that you been knocked out of the box.”

“I certainly will,” I said. Time was inching by and he had yet to hand over the gift. I suppose I may of been short with him, and I am sorry for that. But it was not until more then 2 years afterwards, riding the lobby in Chicago 1 evening, that it all flashed in my mind, and I said upstairs to Perry Simpson later that night, “Does it not strike you as queer that at half past 5 in the cold morning it was not Bill Duffy nor Mayor Real nor Mugs O’Brien nor Jack Hand nor Mr. Gregory N. Oswald that give me my send-off, but Aaron Webster in his raggedy green jacket?” And Perry said it struck him as queer sure enough.

“I brung you a little something,” he said, and he give me a package all wrapped up, and I thanked him, and then he wished me luck about 9 times whilst I got the car started, and 1 minute later I was off and rolling. I done 75 clear to Perkinsville, parking the car in the slot in the depot that Gordon Heffel said was mine as long as I was gone.

Gordon is the station master, a great Mammoth fan and a great personal friend of both me and Pop. 

Chapter 8

On the train between Perkinsville and New York I was dead from hunger and the diner shut tight. I would of give 10 dollars for breakfast right about then. Everybody was asleep all up and down the isles, slumped over in queer positions, and the man I was next to was grumbling away and adding up a lot of figures out loud until finally he woke and asked me where we was, and I told him we was about 30 minutes out of Perkinsville. “Where the hell is that?” he said.

“I guess you never heard of the Perkinsville Scarlets,” I said.

“Sure I did,” he said. “I suppose you are 1 of their players.”

“I used to be,” I said.

“I could of guessed it,” he said. “You
look
like a ballplayer.”

“I am a pitcher,” said I.

We talked for a long time, and I suppose I told him my whole life history the way I been writing it here, though quickened up a good bit, right down to that very morning, and he asked me what was in the package Aaron give me. I clean forgot about it, and I reached up and took it out of my coat pocket.

In the package there was a money belt. It was made of waterproof leather with a zipper down the middle, and inside the zipper there was 5 bills of 10 dollars each, all green and crisp. He said I ought to put the belt on, and we went back in the washroom. There was a gang of men there, standing at the sinks in their undershirt, and this fellow give me a big build-up and told them I was going down to Aqua Clara to play for the Mammoths. Some of the men turned and looked at me, and 1 of them glanced me up and down and asked me if I did not think I was too undergrowed to get anywheres in baseball. We all got a good laugh out of that, for I was about twice as big as him and still growing. I could of stuck him in my pocket.

Then this other fellow showed the belt around, and they felt the material and said it was the best, and I pulled up my shirt and strapped it around my middle, and they all admired it, and a number of them asked me if I was really and truly signed to a Mammoth contract. I did very little talking. This other fellow chattered away, telling them my life history like I told it to him. We had breakfast, and pretty soon we was under the tunnel and in Grand Central, and we said goodby, and he said he would look for my name in the papers, and I said no need to look too close, for it would be up in the headlines. Then he went 1 way and I went another and I have not saw that wretched bum since.

I shuttled across to the west side and down to Penn Station. I had a layover of about 2 hours, and I checked my bags and went across Seventh into the building where the Mammoths have got their New York office. The office had a glass door with a lot of names wrote on it that I never heard of before, and I went in and seen a girl typewriter, and she smiled at me, and I said, “My name is Henry Wiggen,” and she said, “Yes, Mr. Wiggen. What can I do for you?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I just come to see what the office looked like.” I looked around. There was a big collection of pictures on the wall, a few baseball players but mostly a lot of men all dressed up sitting around the conference table, and there was a date wrote under each. The typewriter got up and disappeared out a back door, and soon she come back with a man, and he said, “Can I be of some help, Mr. Higgens?”

“Wiggen,” I said.

“Can I be of some help?” he said.

“I was just looking,” I said. “I am Henry Wiggen.” He give the typewriter a look of puzzlement, and she give him 1 back, and I figured they did not catch the name, and I told them again, and the man asked me what my business was, and I said I was a baseball player. “It is funny I do not strike no bell in your head,” I said, “for you have just signed me on. I am on my way down to Aqua Clara.”

“Oh yes,” he said. “Of course, there are a great many young men.”

“But there is only 1 of me,” I said.

“That is undoubtably true,” he said, and he give the typewriter another look, and she begun to giggle. The man did not giggle. But he stood there like he was about to bust out laughing, and I said to them, “I would like to know what the joke is all about if you 2 clucks would have the common ordinary decency to tell me.”

“There is no joke,” said the man.

“Then why in hell are you laughing?” I said. “Does your underwear itch?”

“My underwear does not itch,” he said. “Nothing itches, and I ain’t laughing,” and now the girl begun to giggle louder and the man got all red in the face. “The reason I am laughing,” said the man, “is this,” and he went over to the wall where there was 3 green cabinets, and he begun to slide some drawers out as far as they would go, and he run his hand up and down the papers in the drawer. “Records,” he said. “Every 1 of these papers is a record on some kid that thinks he is another Joe DiMaggio or another Honus Wagner. They are just names. Your name is somewhere amongst them. How do we know who you are except just a name? You are but another name.”