Hanging Curve (9 page)

“What did you do?”

“I went to Washington University; they have a program with City Hospital for training nurses. I know it might sound a little crazy ... but I’m thinking of enrolling.”

It sounded like a splendid idea to me. “What’s crazy about it?”

I rarely saw Margie uncertain about anything, but she was now. “I barely finished high school,” she said. “And I’ve never had a serious job. I’ve always just playacted. In the movies and on the stage, all I did was play. Nursing school is going to be a challenge.” Her voice dropped. “And I’m not sure I can do it.”

“Are you sure you
want
to?”

Her answer was unequivocal. “Yes.”

“Why?”

Margie put down her fork and knife. “Maybe because of all the playing that I’ve done. It’s time for me to do something useful, something that helps people.”

“I have no doubt you’ll be a terrific nurse,” I said. “And I know you’ll do just fine in school.” I was happy for her that she’d found something she wanted to pursue. I was also encouraged that she intended to stay in St. Louis, and thought it boded well for my plan to settle down together.

As we continued the meal, Margie talked excitedly about the school and the hospital. This year was starting to look awfully promising, I thought, both at home and at the ballpark. With Ken Williams belting home runs almost every day, the Browns were heading into the end of April locked in a tie with the Yankees for first place. And if I kept hitting like I had today, I might be playing third base for quite a while.

The only lingering cause for disquiet was the death of Slip Crawford, and I wondered if I should simply drop that matter. I couldn’t be like Karl Landfors, fighting one injustice after another, with always another battle on the horizon. I hadn’t wronged anyone, so why should I feel obligated to correct the wrongs of others?

I looked at Margie, and thought that all I wanted to do was play baseball and build a life with her.

When we’d finished the main course, the waiter cleared away the dishes and returned to tell us his suggestions for dessert.

While he waited for us to make our decisions, Margie asked me, “What do you think?”

I promptly answered, “I think we should get married.” It took a moment before I realized that I’d said it aloud, and I felt my face start to burn.

Margie smiled, but didn’t reply.

The waiter cleared his throat. “I’ll give you a few minutes.” Like a ghost, he was gone.

I started to stammer an apology for not asking the right way.

Margie put her hand over mine. “It’s the sweetest thing you could have said to me.”

I waited for her to utter the word “yes.”

A touch of sadness came into her eyes. “And I think it would be wonderful ... someday.”

Someday?
What about yes? “Is that a—You mean—Is that a no?”

“It means can we just keep things the way they are for a while longer?”

The waiter returned with several pieces of cake and pie and placed them before us. “Compliments of the chef,” he said, “with his best wishes for your happiness.” Then he looked at me, and the expression on my face caused him quietly to disappear again.

When I found my voice, I answered Margie’s question. “Sure.”

I poked at a piece of cheesecake. It had never occurred to me that Margie wouldn’t want to marry me. And “someday” sure felt like “no.”

I tried to prod her for an explanation, but all she would say was that things were fine the way they were.

We then talked about the dessert, although neither of us did much more than go through the motions of eating.

By the time the waiter came by with the bill, we weren’t saying anything at all.

A
t the plate for Cleveland was Smokey Joe Wood, once my teammate on the 1912 Boston Red Sox. He’d been a pitcher then, with a blazing fastball that earned him thirty-four wins in one of the most spectacular seasons in baseball history. Wood’s arm burned out soon after, however, and he converted to a right fielder. Although his pitching arm was long dead, he remained a threat with his bat.

Dixie Davis threw an inside fastball to the former hurler, and Wood ripped it, pulling a hard chopper up the third-base line.

Since I was playing him to pull, I had only to glide over a couple of steps to field the ball. It took a clean bounce, knee-high, easy to catch. Except that I somehow failed to get my glove in the path of the ball.

I still managed to stop it. With a resounding crack, the baseball smacked into my kneecap and bounced toward the coach’s box. I felt no pain, only panic and embarrassment at my miscue. I scrambled after the ball, far too late to make a throw to first base. But that didn’t stop me from trying. There’s some law of nature that if you botch a play with your glove, you have to try to compensate by making a strong throw—even if the runner is already standing on the base. And there’s a second law that virtually guarantees every such throw will end up in the stands. Mine did, passing several feet over George Sisler’s extended glove. Joe Wood was awarded second base, and I was credited with two errors on one play.

I’d provided Marty McManus—and three thousand spectators—with a perfect demonstration of what not to do in fielding a ground ball. My head hanging, I tugged and poked at my mitt, trying to find the spot where the hole had opened up to let the ball through.

Lee Fohl shuffled out of the dugout. “Leg okay?”

“Yeah, just let me walk it off.” I limped to the outfield grass and back. Pain had started to erupt in my knee, and the joint wasn’t bending as easily as it should.

“You want to come out?” the manager asked.

“No.” It would have looked like I was being removed for muffing the play. I at least wanted some sympathy from the crowd for playing hurt.

With a 7—1 lead, Fohl decided it was safe to leave me in for the moment, and went back to the dugout. The fans gave me a smattering of pity applause.

I was sure that one of those clapping was Margie, but I avoided looking in the direction of her seat. She was, after all, the reason I blew the play. More so than any flaw in the construction of my glove, at least.

This was the third game I’d been in the starting lineup, and Margie had come to the last two. I’d have preferred that she hadn’t. It was difficult enough for me to play baseball with a void in my chest, but with the woman who’d ripped out my heart sitting there watching me, I was barely functional and playing poorly. Which made me angry at myself; I should have been professional enough to forget about personal problems and focus on the ball games.

Those were the thoughts that kept ricocheting around in my head as the game went on.

We continued to run up the score, ending with a 13—2 win that gave us a sweep of the series. Marty McManus contributed a home run. I helped keep the ball game from going too long by grounding into a double play and striking out twice.

 

Spirits were high in the clubhouse. Word had come that the Yankees had lost to the Philadelphia Athletics, so the Browns were starting the month of May in sole possession of first place.

The team was playing stronger as the season progressed. Pitcher Elam Vangilder, a native of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, who’d had only a 10—12 record last year, was off to a 4—0 start. Ken Williams, already one of the best sluggers in the game, had ended April with an unprecedented nine home runs, earning him a new phonograph in a pregame tribute “because he was making new records.” Urban Shocker was pitching as well as expected, and the bats of George Sisler and Baby Doll Jacobson were also helping to power the club.

All of the players took part in the locker-room revelry. Except me. I remained apart from them; not only hadn’t I contributed to the success, my thoughts were occupied with other matters. As I lingered in a hot shower, Margie was still on my mind. She’d been extra attentive the past few days, trying to pretend that things hadn’t changed between us. They had, though. Although we didn’t discuss the subject, the fact that she’d rejected my proposal changed everything—for me, anyway. I had been certain she would say yes—as certain as I was that the Dodgers played in Brooklyn.

I was uncomfortable being with her now. The fact that she was trying to remain close—to “keep things the way they are,” as she’d put it—only made me more uneasy. As far as I was concerned, the Browns’ upcoming road trip to Detroit couldn’t come soon enough.

I finally dressed and met Margie outside. She greeted me with a kiss and a worried expression.

“Sorry it took so long,” I said. “Had to ice down the knee.”

“It’s not broken, is it?” She put her hand in the crook of my arm, and we started toward the trolley.

“Don’t think so.” It had swollen considerably, and lost much of its flexibility, but didn’t seem permanently damaged. “If it’s still bad in a couple of days, I’ll see a doctor.”

“Sure you will.” Margie shook her head, knowing full well that I would never go to a doctor as long as I could walk at all. “Well, you should stay off your feet at least. Let’s get you home, and I’ll put an ice pack on it.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say so, but I didn’t want her to nurse me.

It was almost a relief when I saw Tater Greene approaching. He wore the same rumpled Norfolk jacket that he had when he met me in this same location a little more than three weeks ago.

Greene tipped his tweed cap to Margie, and I made the introductions.

He bobbed up and down on the balls of his feet a few times before asking me, “Can I talk to you a minute? Just us?”

“Yeah, I guess.” I excused myself from Margie, who said she didn’t mind waiting.

Greene again tipped his cap to her before ushering me a few steps away. His head low and voice hushed, he said, “We got trouble.”

“Who does? What kind of trouble?”

“Enoch’s cars got trashed last night. Almost every one had its tires slashed, and windows and headlights busted. Most were dented up pretty bad, too—with baseball bats, we figure.”

“Sorry to hear it,” I said, although I really didn’t care about Roy Enoch’s automobile business. “But why are you telling me?”

“It was coloreds that did it. And it was because of Crawford getting killed.”

“Hell, Tater, it could have been anyone. How do you know it wasn’t J. D. Whalen wanting to get back at Enoch for firing him?”

“It wasn’t Whalen. It was a gang. They tied up the night watchman, and he heard them talking.”

“And they said they were getting revenge for Crawford?”

“No, but he could tell from their voices they was colored. It must have been because of that pitcher. Why else would they want to smash up the lot?”

Maybe because of that stupid
“Komplete Kar Kare”
slogan on the sign, I thought. Then I realized Greene might have a point: Crawford had been lynched after defeating the Elcars, so it made sense that Enoch’s club would be suspected in the killing. And that could make Enoch’s business a target for someone angry over Crawford’s death.

“Anyway,” Greene went on, “we’re gonna teach them niggers a lesson. Make damn sure they don’t try anything again.”

I didn’t like where Greene was going with this. “What do you have planned—another lynching?”

“Hey!” He wagged a finger at me. “I told you we didn’t have nothing to do with that.”

“Who’s the ‘we’? The team or the Klan?”

“Neither. I mean both.” He rubbed his stubbly cheek. “I mean it wasn’t the team or the Klan that killed Crawford.”

“And you know that because ...”

“Look, I don’t mind telling you: I’m in the Klan. And it ain’t nothing like what they have in the South. It’s a respectable organization up here—no lynching, no branding, none of that crap. I’d have heard about it if there was.” He shook his head. “Hey I’m trying to do you a favor here. Give you a chance to join us.”

“The
Klan?
I’m not joining the Ku Klux Klan.”

“No, you sap. I told you this don’t concern the Klan. This is about the team. We got to stick together—it’s a simple matter of self-defense. We’re gonna get them for bustin’ up the cars. Then they’re gonna come after us again. When they do, we all gotta be ready. They could go after any one of us.”

“They won’t be coming after me,” I said. “I only played one game, and it wasn’t under my real name.” I suddenly remembered the Cubs’ catcher, Denver Jones, picking up my bat and reading my name. Okay, so maybe I wasn’t as anonymous as I’d have liked, but I still didn’t see myself as a target. “Tater, I’m not having anything to do with this.”

“But we—”

I cut him off and tried to talk some sense into him. “Why don’t you guys just stop it now? Some cars are ruined, but so what? At least nobody got hurt. Leave it be, before somebody does.”

From the expression on Greene’s face, I might as well have been trying to convince John McGraw not to argue with an umpire.

After a couple more brief exchanges, Greene left, visibly unhappy that I wouldn’t be joining the Elcars in whatever mayhem they were planning.

I rejoined Margie and gave her a rundown on the conversation. Then I asked her to wait for me again, because there was somebody else I needed to tell about it.

 

Back inside the Browns’ clubhouse, I placed a call to the home of the writer friend Karl had been staying with since he’d arrived in St. Louis. No answer.

Then I had the operator connect me to the law office of Franklin Aubury. His secretary put my call through immediately, and the lawyer got on the line. “Mr. Rawlings,” he said. “A pleasure to hear from you.”

“You might not think so when you hear what I called about.”

“And that is?”

“Looks like you’re right about things getting worse,” I said. “Last night, a bunch of cars on Enoch’s lot were smashed. They think it was a colored gang getting back for Slip Crawford being killed.”

“How unfortunate.” Aubury didn’t sound particularly sorry to hear the news. Nor did he sound surprised.

“There’s more. Enoch’s guys are gonna get revenge for that now. Don’t know how they’re going to find out who busted up the cars, but when they do, they’re gonna get ’em.”

Aubury said dryly, “I doubt that they’ll bother to find out who was truly responsible. They’ll simply strike at any colored person who happens to be convenient.”

“Well, I just thought you might want to know.” I had no idea what he could do with the information, but hoped I’d accomplished something by passing it along. At least it was out of my hands now. Before hanging up, I said, “If you see Karl, or hear from him, could you ask him to give me a call?” There was a different matter I wanted to talk to him about.

“He’s here now,” Aubury answered. “One moment.”

When Karl got on the line, I asked what he was doing there.

“Working on the antilynching bill. I’m trying to get labor endorsements.” Karl launched into another one of his speeches, “See, we have plenty of support from Progressives and intellectuals. If we can show support from union members—working-class white people—then we can—”

“She said no, Karl.”

“What? Who said—Oh! You mean Margie?”

“Yeah. I proposed and she said no.”

“I am sorry to hear that. And surprised. I’d always assumed—”

“So did I. Well, she didn’t come out and say no, exactly, just that we should keep things the way they are for a while.”

“That’s not bad, then!” Karl tried to sound optimistic. “Perhaps she merely wants some time to get accustomed to the idea.”

“Could be,” I said. “She has been acting real nice, so I don’t think it’s that she doesn’t care for me. Maybe it was the way I asked her—I just blurted out that I thought we should get married. You think maybe I should have got on my knee and all that?”

Karl hemmed and hawed. “I don’t know,” he finally decided.

“Or do you think maybe she’s planning other things that don’t include me?” I asked. “She’s starting nursing school. Maybe she wants a life of her own.”

Karl again said he didn’t know. I had to give him credit; that wasn’t an admission he made often, and for him to say it twice in the same day was probably a record. Then he suggested, “Why don’t you ask her?”

“Ask her?”
I resisted the impulse to ask him if he was nuts. “No. If she wants to give me a reason,
she
should bring it up.”

“So you’re going to speculate instead of speaking to the one person who can give you a definitive answer?” Karl sounded like he thought I was the one who was nuts.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m gonna do.”

After getting off the phone with Karl, I went back outside to Margie.

At the sight of her, I almost did blurt out the question, “Why don’t you want to marry me?” Instead I suggested that we get something to eat and then catch the Gloria Swanson double feature playing at the Orpheum.

She agreed, and we went to dinner, where we talked little. Then it was off to the movie theater, where we barely talked at all.

While watching Swanson lounging about in the sort of opulent boudoirs and bathrooms that only existed in Cecil B. DeMille pictures, I did use the time and relative solitude to think.

One of the things I thought about was why my gut was so set against asking Margie directly why she’d turned me down. What I concluded was that I might be afraid to hear her answer. It occurred to me that perhaps the reason she didn’t say yes to my proposal had nothing to do with the way I’d asked, or because of any other plans she had. Maybe she simply didn’t want me for a husband.