Brittle Innings (36 page)

I drew one throw from Turtlemouth. He had only a so-so pickoff move. (Or he
showed
me only a so-so pickoff move.) I got back to first a full second ahead of his toss. On his first throw to the plate, though, Turtlemouth pitched out to Beckland. If I’d broken for second, Beckland would’ve gunned me down by a yard or more.

“Way to go, Dumbo,” Hoey said. “Watch em again.”

I felt pretty smug about drawing a throw from Turtlemouth and then hoodwinking him and his catcher into pitching out to Snow. They expected me to steal. Mister Cozy and his boys had done their homework; they knew I could outrun the word God, they respected my foot speed. I lengthened my lead, feinting once or twice with my upper body.

Turtlemouth showed me the whites of his eyes, but didn’t tumble to my feints. He threw to the plate again, another pitchout. I strolled back to first and kicked the bag. The Dominican battery mates looked like fools. They’d risked two straight pitchouts, for nothing. Even worse, from their point of view, they’d run the count on Charlie Snow, the best hitter in the CVL, to two and zero. Only a madman deliberately put himself in the hole with Snow at bat and me on base.

As I took my fourth lead of this at-bat, Hoey caught my eye. Behind his hand, he mouthed,
Go
. He also cradled his left elbow, our sign to steal. Turtlemouth, he obviously figured, had to throw Snow a strike to keep from moving within a ball of walking him. He and Beckland wouldn’t dare pitch out again.

So, of course, they did.

I had a decent jump on Turtlemouth and second base looked stepping-stone close. Before I could belly-slide into it, though, Slag Iron Smith leapt in front of me, caught Beckland’s stinger from home, and let me tag myself out coming head-first into his floppy cold cut of a glove.

Three straight pitchouts. Stupid. Except their strategy nailed me dead. On the other hand, Charlie Snow, too surprised to try to queer Beckland’s throw by swinging at the last one, now had three balls on him. Maybe the Dominicans’ ruse
hadn’t
worked—not, at least, as slick as they’d’ve liked.

Forget that.

Cool as ice, Turtlemouth worked the count to three balls and two strikes, then erased Snow on a nibbler back to the mound. He humiliated Muscles with another strikeout and slouched off the field to a standing O.

In the bottom of the sixth, Darius gave up the first two hits of the Camp Penticuff exhibition, back-to-back singles to Gator Partlow and Waxahachie Beckland. Nobody out. Partlow at third, Beckland at first.

“Push done come to shove, eh?” Fadeaway shouted from the bench. “Time to make sure us crackers don’t win our money.”

Mister JayMac went over to Fadeaway and spoke to him.

“Made it look good as you could for as long as you could, I guess!” Fadeaway shouted around the boss.

Mister JayMac got right in front of Fadeaway and quietly chewed the kid from Sea Island to Pensacola. Fadeaway shut up, and Mister JayMac sat back down again.

Darius struck out the third Dominican batter. The fourth hit a grounder to Junior, who snapped it to me for the force at second. I dragged my foot over the bag and threw to Henry at first. We got the runner there by half a step, and the double play wiped out the run that would’ve scored from third if my throw had hit Henry’s mitt a fraction of a second later.

On his way in to the bench, Darius collected the game ball from Henry and ambled straight to Fadeaway. Mister JayMac hurried to interpose himself, but Darius stepped around him and slapped the ball into Fadeaway’s chest.

“You thow, boy. Save yo precious wager.”

“Darius, I’ll pull you when it’s time,” Mister JayMac said.

“I’m sittin,” Darius said. “I jes guv yall six of the best I got. Let this eggsuck boy carry yall from here.”

“Neither of you has a thing to say about it,” Mister JayMac said. “Darius, you pitch.”

“Nosir. I’m gone.”

Major Dexter waddled over in his umpire’s gear. “They need that ball for warm-ups. Toss it back out, please.”

Fadeaway tossed the ball to Turtlemouth Clark. Then he sat back down, his eyes on the clayey dust between his shoes.

Mister JayMac grabbed Darius’s shirt. “This club belongs to me—you pitch because I say you do, nigger!” Despite the crowd noise, everyone on our bench heard this. Mister JayMac heard it himself and looked around.

“So
much
belongs to you,” Darius said distinctly.

“I’m sorry,” Mister JayMac said. “You’ve held these fellas in check the whole way. Keep on doing it.”

“Nosir. I brung yall as far as I can.” Darius stripped to his ribbed gray undershirt and dropped his Hellbenders blouse into Fadeaway’s lap. Fadeaway pushed it into the dirt, like he would’ve a grungy dishrag.

“Damn it,” Mister JayMac whispered to himself.

Darius walked through a gate and between a pair of bleacher sections towards the
Brown Bomber
. The soldiers in the stands watched him go with the same sledgehammered curiosity felt by us Hellbenders. Some of the GIs hollered, “Way to sling that baby!” or “Hallelujah!”

Darius raised one arm and held it over his head until he’d disappeared from view.

“Batter up!” Major Dexter yelled. “We need a batter!”

In the top of the seventh, Henry jacked Turtlemouth’s first pitch so far over the right-field fence that everyone—
everyone
—stood up to watch it arc off into infinity.

“
Ooooiiiuuuweeoo!
” went Lamar Knowles. “Never seen nobody but Jumbo pole em like that!”

His amazed jubilation didn’t extend to the troops. They admired the crunch of Henry’s home run, but not Turtlemouth blowing his shutout or yielding a crucial run this late in the game. In any case, Turtlemouth wiped his forehead and mowed down—like a man with a Gatling gun—Reese Curriden, Junior Heggie, and Double Dunnagin.

In the bottom of the inning, Fadeaway swaggered out to pitch. A few disgruntled GIs shot him the razz. They sensed he might have rabbit ears and got on him like cats on a camel cricket: “Fade away, Fadeaway! Oh, fade away, please today, oh, faded ofay, Fadeaway!” And so on. Fadeaway adjusted. He left off strutting and buckled down. In his first inning of work, he allowed one solid single but emerged unscored-on and quietly cocky. It had taken me six innings to get the strut he’d picked up facing only four Dominican hitters.

In the top of the eighth, Skinny Dobbs, Fadeaway Ankers, and I came up against Turtlemouth—Skinny and I for only the third time, Fadeaway for his first. Skinny and Fadeaway lined and struck out respectively, and Henry stopped me as I started up to the plate.

“I know what you should do,” he said.

“Yeah. H-h-hit it where they aint.”

He took me by the shoulders, gently. “Bunt.”

“B-b-bunt?”

“Push it down the third-base line, Daniel. Mr. Clark has a weakness fielding bunts.”

“H-h-how do you kn-know?”

“Mr. Clark has an inner-ear problem. I read it in a Negro paper from Birmingham.”

“Inner-ear problem?”

“If you push the ball down the line, Mr. Clark will lose his balance trying to retrieve it. With your speed, Daniel, you’ll have a hit.”

I had no quarrel with Henry’s suggestion. In my two at bats, I’d fanned and reached base on a strategic charity ticket. This time, then, I squared around, into the blazing sweep of Turtlemouth’s sidearm curve, and, yielding with the pitch, let the ball plunk off my bat and sprinted.

To improve your chances of legging out a doubtful hit, you lower your head and dig. As Satchel Paige said, you don’t look back; either somebody might be gaining on you or you’ve stolen a second or two from your ultimate time. God save my soul, but I peeked to see how Turtlemouth’d attacked my bunt. When I did, I saw him grab for the ball, wheel around his outstretched arm like a besotted maypole dancer, and topple into the dirt. He underhanded a throw to first as he fell, but the ball—by now I was digging again, burning jet fuel—sailed on him, and his wild throw got me all the way to second.

Turtlemouth, walking back to the mound, paused to consider me on second. He sneezed and rubbed his nose. “Done got there so fast you guv me pneumonia.” He got back into his stance and toed the rubber from a stretch.

Snow brought me home with a double to the right-field gap, making the score two to nothing. Muscles stranded Snow with a wing-shot gull to the left fielder, and the rest of us trotted back out to defend our lead against the cream of Mister Cozy’s batting order. The afternoon’s fractured dazzle hung on us like warm honey, golden and clingy.

44

D
espite the sunshine, and the peanut scorch drifting over us from town, the rest of that game played out like a wine drunk—some kind of drunk, with the slide-show lurchiness of a bad dream. At shortstop, I watched it all happen, my mouth full of worry flannel.

In the bottom of the eighth, the first bat showed up. I don’t mean baseball bat either. I mean
living
bat, a flying varmint with tattered wings. Against the rinsed blue of the sky, it seemed so humdrum, as it dive-bombed the field and swerved up from a thousand near collisions, that most of us mistook it for a bird—if we mistook it for anything other than a scudding magnolia leaf. Then more such wheeling varmints swept into view, and I wondered if a pigeon breeder on the roof of a nearby barracks had emptied his dovecotes. But the varmints got thicker and noisier, breaking into squadrons and chirping like airborne crickets, and I knew them for bats, several pesky flights of them. They stirred more breeze than the day did, zooming from the stands to the outfield, and from the fences to the stands, pip-pip-pipping so damned tinnily I started thinking of them as . . . as pip-squeaks.

In the black half of the eighth, the Dominicans sent up first baseman Gumbo Garcia, center fielder Tommy Christmas, and right fielder Gator Partlow. Fadeaway walked Garcia. The bats blew back and forth overhead like curls of newspaper char from summer’s own chimney. Fadeaway punched Christmas a ticket to first, just like he had Garcia.

Major Dexter’s GIs began to sway and foot-stamp.

Fadeaway struck out Partlow on a slider-slider-speedball setup, and Dunnagin jumped out from behind his third swing and snapped off a bullet to Henry that nailed Tommy Christmas two feet off the bag. Christmas died on his knees, ducking all the stooping bats a-twitter over the field.

The GIs went as dead as a knobbed-off radio station.

Now the Dominicans had two outs and only the melon-footed and heavy-ribbed Garcia still on second. Fadeaway walked third baseman Judd Davies.

“Buckle down!” shouted Mister JayMac, really hacked.

Fadeaway may’ve tried, but on his first pitch to Oscar Wall, the left fielder, Wall reached back, his front leg off the ground, and clobbered Fadeaway’s best scroogie an Alabama ton. He almost seemed to hit it one-handed—his left hand swept away from the bat handle on his follow-through, while the ball itself hurtled up and away, into a cloud of dive-bombing bats.

I could imagine Fadeaway praying, Dear God, let it hit one of them varmints. I prayed too. Only a lucky midair intercept would prevent Wall’s blast from carrying to the fence and tying us at two apiece. And if it
cleared
the fence, the Dominicans would likely beat us.

The ball didn’t de-head one damned bat. It flew through them, towards Charlie Snow, on a hard, low arc. They veered away from it like they’d’ve dodged any other flying predator, by sonar and stunt-flying. Snow ran under the ever-shifting cloud with his back to the ball, the way DiMaggio and later Mays did, thinking to turn at the last instant and pincer-snatch it.

But the bats broke his concentration. He looked back for the drive too soon and had to dig out again at a hard lope. Everyone could see he’d locked into a collision course with the fence. As the ball dropped, Snow sensed the fence coming. He tried to save his body and make the catch at the same time.

He hurtled, a leg-high effort to hit the fence’s cap rail with the edge of his shoe, grab the ball at belt height behind him, and spring to the grass with his bones unbroken and Darius and Fadeaway’s shutout intact. But his spikes, or the fence, or a crazy skew on Wall’s plummeting drive did him in. A spike snagged. He didn’t bounce off the fence but somersaulted over it, the ball going with him. When he didn’t get up right away, something scary uncurled in my gut.

“Thass a home run,” one of the colored umps said. “He made the catch all right, but his feet never come down fair.”

Garcia, Davies, and Wall all went round the bases. That made the score three to two, the Dominicans’ way. Major Dexter signaled as much.

I began running towards center. So did a bunch of others. Snow still hadn’t untangled from the heap he’d made beyond the fence, and both Muscles and Skinny, our other two out-fielders, clambered over it to see about him. From my lungs to my guts, I had a splintery ache, big as a two-by-four. Beside the chain link in center, I knelt with it, a sinner behind a grid, to ask Muscles how it fared with the beautiful Charlie Snow.

“S bad.” Muscles had grit in his voice, the first rubbings from a square of sandpaper. “S real bad.”

“Throw it in,” Snow said from Shangri-La, somewhere out of this atmosphere. “Hold the sucker to three.”

“Just you hush,” Muscles told him. “S too late for that.”

“Yeah,” said Snow sweetly. “I know.” Heaped there, he hemorrhaged. The wound at his ankle bled like gangbusters. Muscles tried to tourniquet it with his shirt, which seeped through crimson-brown and reeked of sweat and redness in a combo I never want to smell again. The bats peeled off towards their attics. So’d their shadows, moving us out from under an afghan of shifting dapples into a cruel flat burn of sunlight.

Someone—Mister JayMac? Major Dexter?—called for a medic and an ambulance. Gawkers of every stripe and hue appeared.

“Jesus Lord, he’s bleeding to death!” Muscles shouted.

“Hang on, Ch-Charlie,” I told Snow through the fence.

No ambulance came, but Camp Penticuff’s CO, General Gordon Holway, pulled up in a command car with the words THE OLD MAN stenciled on his door over a five-pointed white star. General Holway vaulted out and hustled over to the bleeding Snow.

Go there, do this, call for that, he barked to soldiers and ballplayers alike, and the way guys hurried to do what he said made me feel a little better. By this time, Mister JayMac’d reached Snow too. He stood beside me, his throat pulsing above me like a turkey gobbler’s wattles.

“Hemophiliac!” he said. “Yall’ve got to do something for him damned quick.”

“
What?
” General Holway squinted up at Mister JayMac out of eyes as narrow and blue as trout gills.

“He’s a bleeder,” Mister JayMac said. “A mildly afflicted bleeder, but a bleeder. His blood don’t clot like it ought.”

General Holway stood up. “A bleeder? And he plays ball? You let him?”

“I have to,” Snow said through papery lips. “Aint nothing for me but to play.”

Henry came up to me and did a side-saddle leap over the fence. He gathered the damaged Charlie Snow into his arms.

“Hospital? Infirmary? Where may we take him?”

“S dangerous to do it that way,” somebody said. “The poor bloke needs a litter and a couple of corpsmen.”

“It’s dangerous to let him lie,” Henry said.

“Put him in my car,” General Holway said. “Let’s move it!”

General Holway, his chauffeur, and Henry all got into the command car, Henry in the back with Snow propped like a smashed doll in the crook of his arm. Off they bounded towards the administrative and services area, a complex of two-story wooden buildings spaced out in rectangles, every building and every street block a twin of all the others.

The chauffeur played the command car’s Klaxon, sounding its raucous bleat every twenty-five yards or so. The rest of us stood back and watched—Hellbenders, Splendid Dominicans, and some of the GIs in Major Dexter’s Special Training units, a poleaxed crew of gawkers.

Major Dexter approached Mister JayMac. “Your fellas have one more out to get and at least one more trip into town, sir.”

“Game’s over,” Mister JayMac said.

“Why?” Fadeaway Ankers puled, dragging the word out. “You put me in to finish this thang, didn’t you?”

“You’ve jes finished.”

“Then Mister Cozy’s team wins,” Major Dexter said. “Five full innings are a legal game. This one’s nearly gone eight.”

“This game warnt legal to begin with,” Fadeaway said. “We had to sneak out here jes to start it.”

Mister JayMac said, “Hush, boy-o,” like a groom gentling a high-strung horse. Then, in the crush of bodies by the fence, he found Mr. Cozy Bissonette and stuck out his hand to him. “A hard-fought game, sir. Your men have skill and moxie. Please tell Mr. Clark and Mr. Wall, in particular, how much their play impressed us.”

“Preciate that,” Mister Cozy said. “Yo center fielder gon come round n play for yall again real soon.”

“He’s most likely going to die,” Mister JayMac said.

Mister Cozy dropped his gaze. “Then God rest his soul, and God bless yall for letting us play with such a man.”

Out there at the fence, us Hellbenders shook hands with Splendid Dominican Touristers, and vice versa. Fadeaway and a few others didn’t like it much, but the disrespect finishing out would’ve showed Charlie Snow was plain even to them and so they finally shut up.

The Dominicans took their win with gravity. One of em—Tommy Christmas, I think—said to me, “You mighta got us, one mo inning. You sholy might,” and strolled back to the stands with Partlow and Davies, marveling at the grit of Snow’s effort to chase down through a canopy of bats Oscar Wall’s tremendous knock to center.

When it was announced over the PA system the Dominicans’d won, the troops whooped and jitterbugged in the bleachers. I didn’t fault em. In the lingo of deeds, their champions had proclaimed their honor.