Bang The Drum Slowly (2 page)

The upshot of it was we wound up over coffee in the airport in Chicago. She told me what a lonely and gloomy city Chicago was on a snowy night. “I will probably just lay on my bed curled up with a magazine,” she said, and now I begun getting pictures of her curled up like a girl does.

“No doubt you have got a roomie for company,” said I.

“Oh yes,” said she, “but she is on a flight to Mexico City,” and she yawned, and I started telling myself it was insane to go on in a snowstorm, besides which what could I do when I got there and how much more sense it would make to get there in the morning fresh as a daisy, and on and on. But then I said to myself, “Henry, what a louse you are with a wife 3 months pregnant that you kissed goodby not 7 hours ago!” “I have got to make a couple phone calls,” I said.

I called Goose Williams. I could not of sold Goose anything, and I knew it, but if I didn’t at least try I wouldn’t of had the nerve to list the trip deductible. He used to hate me. His wife said he went out for a loaf of bread Sunday and was never seen since. “I do not know which is worse,” she said, “having Harold home or having him away.”

“I wish to speak to him concerning insurance matters,” I said.

“Harold already cashed in all his insurance,” she said.

“He should not of done that,” said I.

“Harold should not of done a lot of things,” she said, “and a lot more things he should of done he never quite tended to. Tell me, Henry,” she said, “is Harold at the end of the trail?”

I could not get used to her calling him “Harold.” ”Goose?” said I. “At the end of the trail? That is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of.”

“Tell me the truth,” she said. “He is at the end of the trail. He has not got as much as one full season left in him. He has got only his wife and his debts and his children, and all of them a pain and a burden to him,” and I held the telephone away from my ear and looked out through the glass at the stewardess. She was twisted around on the stool, studying the seams of her stockings. “He will be 35 come August,” she said. The stewardess twisted her body first one way and then the other, and I said to myself, “It is true that you have got a wife back home, but it is also true that you only live once, and furthermore she practically as much as invited you up.” “I wish you was Harold,” she said, “and Harold was you. How old are you, Henry?”

I do not even think I answered. She begun crying a little, and I easied the phone back on the hook and slid the door open and started out. But right away I got these further pictures of Holly back home worrying about me and probably following me on the clock and no doubt picturing me rushing in one plane and out the other, and I quick closed the door again and called Joe Jaros and spoke to his wife. It was Joe’s wife later left the cat out of the barn. Usually I do not hang with the coaches much, but me and Joe become fairly friendly on account of Tegwar, The Exciting Game Without Any Rules, T-E-G-W-A-R, which nobody on the club can play but me and Joe because nobody can keep a straight face long enough. I will be hilarious on the inside but with a straight face on the outside, and I was smiling while his phone was ringing while poor Goose’s wife was probably still crying in a dead phone at her end which shows you the kind of a thoughtless personality I have. Joe was out baby-sitting his grandchildren. His wife give me his number, but I did not even take it down. “My Lord,” she said, “Joe has got insurance with 3 or 4 different outfits.”

“You do not have insurance,” said I, “unless you have got Arcturus.”

She laughed. She asked me how long I planned to be in town, and I said I did not know. There were the pictures of Holly and the pictures of the stewardess curled on the bed plus more pictures now of Joe Jaros baby-sitting his grandchildren, all cozy and warm with a snowstorm outside, not tramping the streets like Goose nor with girls in a number of towns, not drinking up all his credit in the saloons until all of a sudden one day the girls and the credit begin to give out at once. I seen it happen. I seen too many old-time ballplayers hanging around clubhouses telling you what a great game you just pitched (though you might of just got the hell shelled out of you) and could you by any chance loan them 5 to tide them over, which I used to loan them, too, before I was in so damn deep I was playing winter ball and hitting the banquet circuit and
still
getting in deeper with every passing day until Holly took a hold of things. I said, “Henry, look at Joe. He did not flub his life away chasing after every pair of big white teeth he run across,” and I slid open the door again and circled around and went out a side door saying “Positively No Admission” and listing a number of fines and penalties and prison terms you could get for passing through that one door, and out in the snowstorm and back up in the air.

*   *   *

The only time I was ever in Minneapolis before was in June of 53 for an exhibition in St. Paul, the night Red Traphagen split his finger and walked in to the bench with the nail hanging off and said to Dutch, “That is sufficient,” and stepped out of his gear and never even went back east with us but went to San Francisco and taught in the college there.

I fell asleep in the hotel wondering what I might of missed not following through with the airplane stewardess in Chicago, kicking myself for not having took a stab at it, yet knowing that I would of kicked myself all the harder if I done the opposite, laying there thinking how life was one big problem after the other and feeling sorry for myself and I suppose actually thinking I had any problems, not knowing what a real problem was.

I hardly knew a soul in town. I called Rosy Ryan in the morning, general manager I think they call him of the Millers, once a right-hand pitcher for the Giants, the first National League pitcher to ever hit a home run in the World Series, which he done in 1924, but he was out. I personally never hit a home run in 4 years up. The TV said, “Today’s high, 15 below zero.” I figured I heard wrong.

I called up Aleck Olson, the Boston outfielder, and he come rushing down, and we had coffee and gassed and talked about annuities, which he was very interested in and bought one off me later in the summer. I did not wish to sell him one on the spot but told him check around and compare Arcturus with the others, because I knew he would find nothing better, besides which they never do check around anyway, and he went with me to The Dayton Company and I bought a storm coat with a fur collar and earmuffs and gloves, $70, all deductible, business. I would not of needed them if I was not in Minneapolis and would not of been in Minneapolis except on business. Holly says the same. Me and him started floating around town like a couple old buddies, which handed me a laugh. All summer a fellow is just another ballplayer on somebody else’s ball club until if you run across him in the winter it’s a horse of another color, and he laughed, too, not knowing why, like Bruce does, laughs when you laugh without knowing why, which I bawled him out 500 times for but never made a dent.

Well, you know me, if I get to a place hungry the first thing I do is eat. When I got down to Rochester, Minnesota, I stumbled across this kosher restaurant, being very fond of kosher food, and when I was done I went to the hospital. He was not in the room. Yet I could tell it was his by the smell of this shaving lotion that he uses about a quart and a half of every time he shaves. And for who? For a prostitute on 66 Street name of Katie that he thinks he is in love with and goes around telling everybody he is about to marry. A nurse popped her head in the room and said, “Are you Mr. Wiggen at last?” and I said I was, and she left, and soon I heard the sound of his shoes racing along the hall and finally sliding the last 6 or 8 feet like we used to slide in the hallway in Perkinsville High, and in he come, all dressed, all fit as a fiddle, looking as tip-top as I ever seen him, and I said, “This is sick? This is why I dropped everything back home and risked my life in a snowstorm and went to the expense of a new wardrobe in Minneapolis?”

“Hello, Arthur,” he said.

“And do not call me “Arthur.” If you would trade in these gallon jugs of shaving lotion on a bar of soap and wash out your ears you would hear something.”

“Do not be mad,” he said. “They do not wish me to leave without a friend.”

“Then stay,” said I.

“I was even here over Christmas,” he said.

“For what?” I said, and right about then 3 doctors walked in, and the head one spoke, saying, “Sit down, Mr. Wiggen,” and they all begun to smile, first smiling at Bruce and then at me and then at each other, and one of them offered me a cigarette, though I do not smoke and did not take it. “How will things be going with the Mammoths?” said the doctor. But he did not really care. You could tell. He started flipping through papers on a clipboard, and then he turned the whole thing over and did not look at them, and he said, “Unless we have made a terrible mistake somewhere Mr. Pearson is suffering from Hodgkin’s Disease.” He then begun telling me what it was. It was bad.

“Exactly how bad?” I said.

“It is fatal,” he said.

I could not think what “fatal” meant. It is like a word like “cancel” or “postpone” that for a couple seconds I can never think what they mean but must ride with them, or like being told an X-ray is “negative” which always sounds bad to me until I remember that it is not bad but good. “What is that?” I said.

“It means I am doomeded,” said Bruce.

“You goddam fool,” I said.

Then I closed my eyes, and time passed, and when I opened them he was standing in front of me with one of one gulp, and he took the cup and run back across the room and filled it again from a pitcher. He kept running across the room like that about 4 times, too stupid to bring the pitcher over. But I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t talk, and I seen the doctors there like 3 bumps on a log. “3 phonies,” I said. “3 monkeys that I doubt could cure a case of warts. You are the boys that send me 50 letters a day looking for contributions for your rotten hospitals. What do you do with the contributions I send?”

“We done many great things,” said the first doctor. “We are only human and cannot do everything.”

“I will never send another penny,” said I.

“This is not a pleasant occasion for us,” said the doctor, “no more than it is for you.”

“It is some world,” I said. “I say turn the son of a bitches loose and leave them blow it up,” and I got up from the chair but sat down again, very weak in my knees.

“Anyhow, Arthur,” said Bruce, “I am covered by North Pole coverage. It is all paid right down to the end.”

“I doubt that you have even got what they say,” I said.

“We are naturally hoping we are wrong,” said the doctor.

“You never looked better in your life,” I said. “What do you weigh?”

“185,” he said.

“That is your weight,” I said. “Why do they not put you on a scale? I suppose that would be foolish, however, since I doubt that these knucklehead individuals could read a scale.”

“Be calm, Arthur,” said he. “You must be calm and listen to what they say, for they know best,” and I sat back and listened without believing them. It was all too impossible to belive.

WE PUSHED off in the morning, and I really mean pushed because his car wouldn’t start and Bruce pushed it, leaning into it from behind and moving it out about as fast as any tow truck could of done. This was in the police garage, for when he come up to Rochester he parked it in the street, and he wound up paying an enormous amount in fines and charges. The man said, “I hate to take your money because I am a Mammoth fan from way back,” but he took it all the same. We filled it up with anti-freeze, the kid in the station saying, “This will last you a lifetime.”

You would be surprised if you listen to the number of times a day people tell you something will last a lifetime, or tell you something killed them, or tell you they are dead. “I was simply dead,” they say, “He killed me,” “I am dying,” which I never noticed before but now begun to notice more and more. I don’t know if Bruce did. You never know what he notices nor what he sees, nor if he hears, nor what he thinks.

One thing he knew was north from south and east and west, which I myself barely ever know outside a ball park. We drove without a map, nights as well as days when we felt like driving nights, probably not going by the fastest roads but anyhow going mostly south and east. “Stay with the river,” he said.

“What river?” I said. “I cannot even see the river.”

“You are with it,” he said, and I guess we must of been. He traveled according to rivers. He never knew their name, but he knew which way they went by the way they flowed, and he knew how they flowed even if they weren’t flowing, if you know what I mean, even if they were froze, which they were for a ways, knowing by the way the bank was cut or the ice piled or the clutter tossed up along the sides when we ever got close enough to see the sides, which we sometimes did because he liked to stop by the river and urinate in it. He would rather urinate in the river than in a gas station. Once a couple years ago I caught him urinating in the washbowl in the hotel in Cleveland. I bawled the daylight out of him. “I wash it out,” he said. Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. For a long time I kept an eye on him.