Two in the Field (8 page)

Looking miserable, the porter brought in the woman who’d washed and pressed my clothes. She said that she’d hung them outside my berth at dawn. I’d slept straight through as the train emptied that morning. Since the car wouldn’t be used again until evening, the cleanup people had worked elsewhere and not discovered me until noon. The porter swore that none of them had robbed me.

“When your duds wasn’t taken in, suh, that gave somebody the idea.” He theorized that the thief risked a peek, saw I was dead to the world, stepped inside and cleaned me out. “Stealing your duds would keep you from chasin’ after ’em too fast.”

It seemed as plausible as anything else.

“I’ll bring some things from the ‘lost’ bin in the station house,” the porter said hopefully. “Maybe somethin’ll suit you.”

Not surprisingly, it proved to be a wretched selection. I climbed into baggy, sprung-kneed trousers three inches short, boxlike brogans undifferentiated between right and left, and a homespun nubby wool shirt—the only one big enough—in which I’d roast by day but at least be snug at night.

The porter stepped back to see the total effect, and tactfully kept his opinion to himself. “Where you headed, suh?” he asked.

Good question. “It
was
Boston.”

“You got folks heah, suh?”

I shook my head. He regarded me silently. I hadn’t shaved for three days. The jockey shorts, the stubble, sleeping like a zombie—he must wonder if I’d really had any money. I searched for a way to demonstrate that I was honest.

“Heah, suh.” His outstretched hand held assorted coins, his tips from this trip. “To help you reach your folks.”

I took them gratefully. Later I’d have the paranoid thought that after robbing me he’d offered the coins to deflect suspicion. But I didn’t really believe it. The man had a good heart and simply felt sorry for me.

Meanwhile, somebody was using my ticket. In the station I told my story to the bowler-hatted railroad detective, a lantern-jawed tough-guy type who pointed out that a thief would likely sell the ticket, not use it himself, and even if it could be traced—which it couldn’t—the matter would boil down to my word against somebody else’s. As for the nearly two hundred dollars in gold, St. Louis was the connecting point for all western lines, and by now the thief could be on his way anywhere. No way I’d see my money again.
In the unlikely case you had it
, his attitude implied.

When he learned that I was from San Francisco, his eyes swept once again over my ramshackle clothes and unshaven face.

“What was your business in Keokuk?”

“Working on a story,” I lied. “I’m a journalist—”

“A what?”

“Newspaperman.” The temperature was hot and I was sweating inside the heavy shirt. “Travel stories,” I improvised. “I see a lot of country.”

“You’re following a ‘story’ to Boston?” Disbelief laced his voice. “For what paper?”

“The
Chronicle.”
I knew from microfilm files that it existed now. “The Red Stockings traveled from Cincinnati to play there in ’69. Now that they’re based in Boston, my editor wants a follow-up.”

“So he’s sending you clear across the country to write about … baseball?”

I nodded.

“Telegrapher’s around the corner,” he said briskly. “Let’s have that editor wire you some cash.”—

Uh oh
. “Look, I can’t afford—”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “What’s his name?”

I thought fast. “Isn’t today Sunday? He won’t be at his desk.”

“Okay.” A tight smile. “First thing tomorrow.”

“He’s on vacation.” I wondered if the word was in use yet. Or if people took them. “Won’t be back for another week.”

“All right,” he said after an ominous pause. “I’ll make my report. If your money belt”—given his tone, it might as well have been
satchel full of rubies
—“shows up, we’ll want to get hold of you. Where’ll you be?”

Where
would
I be? I shrugged helplessly.

His stare hardened. “I’ll say it straight out: This city has enough tramps, Mr. Fowler. We provide three places for vagrants: the almshouse, the workhouse, the jailhouse. Many end up in the last.” His expression said he figured I’d be joining them.

“I get your point.” An idea had finally begun to surface. Art Croft might help me. The trouble lay in finding him. No phonebooks yet. “How do I get to the ballpark?”

“That way, Grand Street.” He pointed northwest. “Keep out of trouble.”

“Right.”

Outside the towering facade of Union Station, dodging swift-moving pedestrians and rumbling baggage wagons, I felt like a fool in my silly clothes. The feeling grew more acute as I clumped in my ill-fitting brogans past the lavish Southern Hotel, where the doorman’s eyes tracked me along the boardwalk. I knew he thought I was a bum. On an impulse I counted the money in my pocket. Eighty-two cents.

I suppose that qualified me.

The blocks seemed interminable in the heavy heat. Before the robbery I’d enjoyed a buoyant confidence that I was being drawn back, mysteriously but inexorably, to Cait. Now that confidence had been badly undercut, and I didn’t know what to think.

Don’t think at all
, I tried to tell myself.
Just do the next thing
.

Finally the buildings thinned, and I came to a parklike square set among cultivated fields and multi-storied mansions. Visible above a high fence was a spacious grandstand bordered by flowering trees. Everything locked tight. No Sunday ball. No watchman, either. It looked like I’d have to wait till tomorrow to find Croft. I peered through the fence at manicured grass and smooth basepaths. Why had Sweasy complained?

A sign at the entrance gate provided the answer.

GRAND AVENUE GROUNDS
HOME OF THE BROWN STOCKINGS

I’d come to the wrong ballpark.

From a passing omnibus driver I learned that the Reds’ facility lay several miles the opposite way on Grand. I asked if I could ride free, but he said it would cost him his job. Unwilling to spend any of my precious coins, I set off again.

My feet were beginning to blister by the time I arrived. Hearing boys playing on the diamond, I stepped through broken slats in the fence and pulled off my brogans in a little patch of shade beside the bleachers. No covered stand here. Everything was fashioned more cheaply than at the Browns’ park. The neighborhood was vastly different, too: storage yards of the Missouri Pacific stretched for blocks around, and passing locomotives made the ground tremble.

While I massaged my feet and wondered if any of the boys knew how to find Croft, an old woman laboriously pushed
through a gap in the gate. She was stooped and moved as if every step hurt. Her clothes were worse than mine. Bending occasionally, she stuffed bits of paper into a burlap bag. As she neared the bleachers, unaware of me, I saw that her hands were palsied. The boys began yelling insults and one threw a rock at her.

“Hey!” I must have looked like a monster rising from the shadow of the bleachers. The boys scattered like birds and vanished through the fence. The old woman looked mortally frightened. “I won’t hurt you,” I told her.

She kept an eye cocked on me as she resumed her scavenging, cackling once as she deposited a wadded-up newspaper in her bag.

“What do you do with the paper?” I asked.

“What yer think?” she said tartly. “Sell it.”

“How much you get?”

“Fi’teen cents.” She cocked her head as if challenging me to find fault. “Every five pounds.”

A recycling program straight out of Dickens.

“I’m special for rags,” she said. “Got to wash ’em, but the rate’s good. Five cents a pound-weight for cotton, six for soft woolen.” She rattled it off with an expert’s flair.

“Tell you what.” I put a penny on a bleacher plank. “If that’s today’s paper, I’ll buy it from you.”

She set it down, snatched the coin, triumphantly crowed, “Yestiddy’s,” and headed off the field.

As Croft had figured, the sporting page was devoted almost totally to the Browns’ shutout of Chicago. The Reds’ road victory got three terse sentences at the bottom. I found what I wanted, SCHEDULE OF NATIONAL ASSOCIATION CHAMPIONSHIP MATCHES FOR MAY, and ran my finger down the column. Boston was scheduled at Hartford on the 18th. Eight days from
today. Spurred by the awareness that Twain now lived in a magnificent new house in Hartford, a plan began to form in my brain.

I dozed through the afternoon heat, then set out along the Missouri Pacific tracks, my brogans crunching on the gravel bed. A plume of smoke appeared ahead, followed by the warning jangle of a locomotive’s bell. I climbed the embankment and watched it thunder past, a huge historical toy come to life: cowcatcher and wheels bright red; brass gleaming on the boiler’s rims and funnel-shaped stack and bell and square-framed light. A coal car bore the letters ST L. K.C. & N. R.R. I would learn that “N” stood for North Missouri. After the coal tender came boxcars, smaller and flatter than modern ones, but still formidable as they swayed and rattled past. A few of their doors stood open.

I focused on those.

It’s one thing to
consider
riding the rails, which in my boyhood had seemed appealing and romantic. It’s quite another to crouch near a rushing train and imagine trying to swing aboard. No way I’d dare it at that speed.

“You look adrift, pard,” a nasal voice said behind me. “Care to plant yourself over here?”

A man lay on his side beneath a bush, propped on an elbow. Puffy sideburns framed his narrow face, graced with a beak nose and alert brown eyes. He was quite small and looked to be in his early twenties.

“Shyness befits virgins,” he said when I hesitated, the nasal tones mocking but friendly as he held up a blue long-necked bottle. “Care for a smile?”

I caught a potent whiff of moonshine. Short-term relief. It was tempting but a buzz wasn’t what I needed just then. And who knew what unwelcome surprises the whiskey might hold for my immune system.

“Won’t do?” He tilted the bottle and wiped his mouth. “You looked like you was set on catchin’ out.”

“Beg pardon?”

“You know, hoppin’.”

I gathered he meant jumping the train.

“It’s plain you’re green.” The mocking tone again. “But I don’t necessarily agree with Miz Silk. She called you a lunatic.”

“Who did?”

“That ragpicker you paid for yesterday’s news. She’s called Miz Silk, on account she never finds any. She figures you for a gent who lost his sense along with his earthly goods.” He laughed. “Reduced to the tramping life but unfit for it.”

A trifle stung, I pointed at his bottle. “Does that make you fit?”

“Don’t hurt,” he said, laughing again. “I
am
partial to the flowing bowl, especially when I carry the rigging.”

“How about talking plain English?”

“Go on the tramp,” he said patiently. “However, I’m not truly a member of that class painted darkly as vagabonds, idlers, thieves and worse. I’m what you might call a wandering mechanic.” He waved to a spot beside him. “Care to sit? Too early for grub at the main stem.”

I eased myself down. “I’m Sam Fowler.”

“Slackwater,” he responded. We shook hands, his feeling doll-sized in mine. “Slack for short. My daddy was called
Swift
-water, a go-getter of the highest order.” He chuckled as if at the irony of it.

“I gather you’re not?”

“Oh, if there’s a need, I’ll put in my time at the cases—I’m a typesetter by trade—but why bother otherwise?”

“Couldn’t say.” I found myself starting to like this little man.

“Miz Silk was on the mark about you being a gent. Ever done honest work with them smooth paws of yours?”

“I’m a reporter.”

“Pen-pusher,” he said. “Know a lot of the breed.” He took another pull and smacked his lips. “Typesetting’s the ideal occupation for the errant knight. Newspapers and print shops always need extra help.”

“Ever meet Mark Twain?”

“Why, Mark, yes!” He started to lift himself up and sank back with a wince. “Worked for him in Buffalo a few years back, when he owned the
Courier
. Mark kept a sunny outlook even when his wife nearly succumbed.”

The Clemenses, I remembered, had departed from Buffalo in sadness after a year of sickness and family deaths.

“You worked with him too?” he said.

“In New York once,” I said. “Special project.” I didn’t bother to explain that it involved robbing a graveyard and fleeing for my life with sacks of money.

“I got a humorous story Mark could write up,” he said. “It’s true, too. First you gotta know that most engineers don’t mind tramps riding along. What’s it to them? But there’s this one locomotive jockey who considers himself a goddamn Fancy Dan. Thinks the sight of us piling on his cars spoils the whole grand spectacle as he rolls out of the station—so he gets his brakies to rough us up.”

“Sweet guy,” I said.

“Brawley’s not widely appreciated,” Slack agreed. “There’s a good many itching to even things with him. Well, along comes this competition for a prize, and Brawley commences to spruce up his locomotive. One day I see him giving it a fresh coat of green paint, and I get an idea.” He grinned, enjoying himself. “I and some others borrow a feather merchant’s cart and—”

“Feather merchant?”

He gave me a look that suggested I had not been in the fastest
reading group. “They go ’round to chicken farmers? Get feathers to sell to pillow makers?”

“Okay.”

“So we shove the cart on the tracks just as Brawley’s fresh-painted engine roars up.”

“I think I get the picture.”

“Splat! Feathers everywhere on the paint. Not only that, but the merchant also had a load of eggs and now they’re fryin’ on Brawley’s shiny boiler! He was days scraping everything off—and of course missed the contest.”

We laughed together, then his face slowly sobered.

“I wouldn’t care for Mark telling how Brawley got his revenge, though,” he said. “It ain’t so humorous. Yesterday one of the yard spotters—them sneaking spy bastards hired to report us to the bulls—found out it was me behind the joke. So when I took my favorite place on the rods—the cars’ underpinnings—Brawley had a brakie fasten a length of chain to the coupling in front of me. I was laying low and couldn’t see what he was up to. When we got up to speed, that chain bounced and flew and knocked into me something fierce. I couldn’t roll out—it would’ve been suicide.”